In Placentia, Black Homebuyers Persevered in the Face of Racist Violence
After two Black families, the Harrises and the Josephs, bought houses here in 1956, someone broke into their new homes, spread motor oil on the kitchen floors, sliced the carpets, broke the windows, poured quick-drying concrete down the drain pipes, and burned a cross on the front lawn. This modest neighborhood between the orange groves and the freeway did not have restrictive covenants, and some neighbors used intimidation to try to keep African Americans out.
Placentia's police chief, Albert Simmen, told the press that it was his "duty to uphold the law and protect the life and property of everyone regardless of race, creed, or color." He warned anyone planning violence that "you'll see me," but he had not seen the vandals. He interviewed more than fifty people who had made threats against the Harrises and Josephs, then declared, "The people have the bitterness out of their system." He was mistaken.
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Six days after that first vandalism, someone threw a fiery bomb through the window of Gerald and Catherine Harris, burning the bedsheets and curtains of their daughters, 15-year-old Jean Ann Harris and 10-year-old Pam Harris. The family stayed up the rest of the night, reading their Bible. Gerald Harris told the newspapers, "I'll never leave in a million years," but by 1960 he and his family had moved to Santa Ana, and in 1962 he died at the age of 41. The house was condemned in 1965, razed to provide room for a proposed widening of the 57 freeway that never happened.
Ironically, publicity about the firebombing enticed more Black people to move to this neighborhood by alerting them that there was housing they could legally buy here. The 1960 census reported 176 African Americans in Placentia, up from 0 in 1950, almost all living in the Kansas-Missouri neighborhood.
Integration into the rest of Placentia was still a struggle. In 1966, when Charles Ray tried to move from here to a more upscale tract in the city, he had to sue the builder to desegregate there. In 1968, when John Frank Smith tried to move from here to northern Placentia, he relied on his fellow Marines to encourage Placentia neighbors to stop harassing him.
