Covenants & Lost Neighborhoods
I recently visited the San Diego History Center to view the San Diego’s Lost Neighborhoods exhibition, which examines the local history of African-American communities displaced by redlining, freeway construction, and other discriminatory policies. One of those lost neighborhoods was in La Jolla, which was the setting for my historical novel The Esmeralda Goodbye.
This may come as a surprise to anyone visiting La Jolla today, but at one time a significant black population considered it home. As you’ll see in this map from the exhibition, black residents represented more than ten percent of La Jolla residents in the 1950s, the highest percentage of any community in San Diego at the time.
The map confirmed something I’d felt when I was writing The Esmeralda Goodbye. As a kid who grew up in La Jolla in the late fifties and sixties, I remembered a small but thriving black community you won’t find there today. It was one of the things I wanted to capture in some small way in my novel. The characters of Mabel and Willie Denton, Charlie Buchanon and Mr. Bell as well as Mr. Parker’s Little Pig BBQ were all inspired by memories of people and places from that time.
There were a number of reasons for the decline of the African-American population in La Jolla, but the most heinous and deliberate were the restrictive property covenants. Black residents were allowed to live in the homes of their employers but were otherwise confined to specific and less desirable parts of the town if they wanted to own their own home. As you’ll see from below, the covenants were used to keep anyone who wasn’t White or Caucasian from purchasing, renting or leasing residential properties. This restriction was intended to exclude Jewish owners as well.
As hinted at in my novel, the pending arrival of the University of California in the 1960s brought political pressure that resulted in the covenants being overturned. But the black community of La Jolla had already started to move on. As of 2023 the black population of La Jolla hovered around 1%.
Thank you Corey for bringing light to this sad history of La Jolla.
Even you guys lived in the house of the first Jewish family allowed to own in Hidden Valley. Oh I guess you weren’t born yet. Then only the Colbys with Dana and Lynn lived there next door to us. Lynn and Mommy Ruth built that house next to Lyerlys, geeze in the late 40’s. Then they sold to the Furgatches and built the bigger place below our house… they needed to expand for the arrival of you and Bruce. Ann got married to Carl there… Anyway the area of Piggy’s BarBq also housed some Mexican people too.
Thanks Linda. I did know that about the Furgatch house. I was there for a very short time, just born and in a stroller when they were building the second house.
Do you know the story about your dad and Lynn sneaking Mabel and her husband into the bank after hours so she could buy her house?
always such great articles – thanks. when Jeff and I purchased a home in Pt. Loma, we found such a covenant in our closing documents! sort of soured our initial delight after closing, but at least it wasn’t still being enforced —
Wow, thanks for sharing. That would be a bit of a shock. I assume they got rid of it by now but who knows. It’s like those laws that stay on the books for years even when they’re not enforced anymore.
Hi Corey
I arrived in La Jolla in 1943. My Dad was a Marine. He taught riflery at Camp Matthews and 9 months later was shipped out to the Pacific. I grew up in La Jolla in the 50’s, graduating from Bishop’s in 1958. Your picture of the Shores is great, but it is definitely before 1950. We lived on Viking Way as of 1949 – a dirt road then – but there were some houses in the Shores. So your pic is rarer than you thought. It was a great place to grow up. Yes, we did ride horses on the beach…the stable was where the Shell gas station is. But there was a lot of seaweed and the horses would shy and buck from the flys so it wasn’t always terrific. Lots of good memories….the gardenia smells of LJ in the spring…from the gardens (now people have built out so fewer gardens), the lobster pots many families had in the Shores (yum fresh caught Ca lobster), the grunion hunting each summer and then cooking them on the beach, etc. Good luck on the book. I look forward to reading what you have discovered…there is so much.
Hi Joan. Thanks for sharing this. I’ve never known the exact date of those photos but I think you’re probably right. My father took those photos. He moved out here during WWII and did some photographic work for Convair. Mid to late forties seems a more likely date.