By Susie Ling
Introduction: This is the third part of a series on African-American history of Monrovia. A public lecture will be held on Sunday, Mar. 29 at 2 p.m. at the Monrovia Historical Museum. Part 4 and 5 will focus on Huntington Elementary and Monrovia High School.
Jessica Valentine came to Monrovia from Mississippi with her family during the Depression. She said, “At Monrovia-Arcadia-Duarte (MAD) High School in the 1940s, I was selected for the Girls’ Glee Club. I was the only Black of the twelve or fifteen girls. For the Christmas program, the Girls’ Glee Club was supposed to be angels for this pageant. But the teacher didn’t want a Black angel. So she must have thought about it and she had me sing a solo from the back. She just didn’t know how to deal with having a Black angel.” Jessica continued, “We could go into a restaurant to take out a sandwich, but we knew we were not welcomed to sit. Nobody told us but we knew. The businesses had no signs – unlike Mississippi. Monrovia Plunge was segregated; we could swim only on Mondays. Later, they allowed us to swim on Thursdays too. There was segregation in Monrovia. But there were no signs. In Mississippi, the signs said ‘No Colored.’ But in Monrovia, you knew.”
Young Bobby Bartlett, who was born in Monrovia, had similar experiences. “When I was in the ninth grade, I had a friend named Keith; Keith was Caucasian. After school one day, Keith said, ‘Let’s go to Ben’s and play pinball.’ Ben’s was a popular eating place. We went in and had so much fun on that pinball machine. I had never played pinball and I was just delighted. The next day, I said, ‘Let’s go back to Ben’s and play pinball machine again.’ And he said, ‘I’ll tell you the truth. They told me never to bring you in there again.’ He was hurt. I was humiliated. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was just too dark. It was a terrible indignity.”
Bartlett continued, “The African-American community in Monrovia was very segregated. It was between Myrtle on the west, Duarte Road on the south, Shamrock on the east, and Olive on the north. If you were caught outside this area when it got dark, the police would cruise by and say ‘Where are you going, boy? Come over here.’ If I got stopped by the police, I would not tell my mom. I didn’t understand racial profiling then.”
Most residents of African, Mexican, or Asian American descent can tell similar stories. Housing was red-lined, work opportunities were limited, and schools were segregated then. There is no sign but even Live Oak Cemetery has a section that was for Blacks and Mexican Americans.
And from the early days also were community leaders who fought against this injustice. Black parents went to jail instead of allowing their children to attend the earthquake-damaged Huntington Elementary in 1933. Betty Fisher Thomas remembers the popular department store that wouldn’t let people of color try on clothes, “A group of Black women got together and asked their employers to boycott McBratney’s. But McBratney’s didn’t give in. Around 1949, Lawyer Johnson from Pasadena NAACP came to talk to the folks in Monrovia. People decided it was time to get rid of the racial restrictions in Monrovia. Isaac Epperson was president of the Monrovia NAACP for a long time.”
By the 1950s and 1960s, international attention on the civil rights movement in the South heightened Monrovia’s awareness of its own racism. “Our teenage son begged us for permission to go to the South and march,” said one concerned parent. After serving in the military, another Monrovian went east and joined the Black Panthers. Interestingly, the prominent Monrovian who was assistant to Martin Luther King and a leader in the gay activist movement was Steven Kiyoshi Kuromiya, Monrovia High Class of 1961.
90-year old Bernice Washington said, “I was outspoken. One time, I went down to the bank on Myrtle Avenue to get a loan. A single woman who worked with me had gotten a loan. But I couldn’t get a loan because I had a husband. It was ridiculous. I took all our money out of that bank.” Ms. Washington concluded, “California chastised the segregation in the South. But there were more racial problems in California than I saw growing up in Georgia. I could work in department stores in Georgia even though I couldn’t ring the cash registry. I never knew communities that wouldn’t even have Blacks in it, like Arcadia, Sierra Madre, and Alhambra.”
Ralph Walker of KGEM has been deeply disturbed by the recent deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. A father and a grandfather, he asks, “Can such tragedy happen here in Monrovia? Do we have enough self-introspection to have a proactive agenda for social justice?”
