By Dianne Anderson

Land grabs forced primarily African Americans out of their family homes through evictions and burnings in Palm Springs, but survivors of Section 14 are seeing some consolation with a unanimous city council vote for direct cash payments in a $5.9 million settlement.

That reparation will be split among verified Section 14 descendants and former residents. Also, $21 million, while not legally tied to the settlement agreement, supports future housing and economic development, along with other community programs.

The four-year fight for what’s right started during COVID-19, when survivors came together by Zoom to strategically press for justice. Their first win came in the form of a formal apology from the city for its “Role in the Destruction of Section 14.”

Next came the removal of a 1990 installed statue of Frank Bogert in front of city hall, the former mayor in charge when Section 14 families were forcibly evicted, many burned out of their homes.

At the last city council meeting, speakers spoke of long generational trauma on family members, their parents and grandparents, whose lives were destroyed decades ago when they were redlined to the uninhabitable fringe of the North End. One speaker spoke of how the atrocity became a money-maker for city development, a spa, and a fancy car place.

Back then, the City of Palm Springs was a grand attraction for movie stars and wealthy tourists.

Earlier this year, Section 14 unveiled its “Know Before You Go” billboard campaign to shed light on its hidden back story. Continuing today, each year the city draws about $8.6 billion in economic impact from over 14 million visitors.

Even considering the city’s dark and tragic past, Pearl Devers sees an opportunity to partner, to heal, to unite and to bond.

In her appeal to the city council before the closed session, Devers said she stood in honor of her hard-working father and mother, that they were also taxpayers who worked in the city.

“I could never be repaid in the tears that I’ve shed to watch my father become an alcoholic because he could not get a loan to move [our] home. You could never repay me for that. But you know what? I do want to thank you for considering something to remember the pain and suffering that we experienced,” she said at the city council meeting.

Devers said that many Section 14 stories have not been heard, but she looks forward to mending and healing.

“We look forward to making this city a truly united city, a city where there is justice for everybody,” she said.

Survivors gathered outside the United Methodist Church in Palm Springs last Friday to celebrate the settlement, along with the prospect of a park renamed to honor of them, and a monument to commemorate the history of Section 14.

They also talked about important changes that will happen because of their fight for justice.

Now in the works, the City Council voted 5-0 to support community housing and economic development programs, including $20 million into affordable housing over the next 10 years. Half of that, $10 million, will help first-time homebuyers and the other $10 million will go toward a community land trust. To address diversity and economic inclusion, the city is set to spend $1 million over five years to help small businesses grow.

“This unanimous vote represents more than just monetary compensation – it is a long-overdue acknowledgment of a deep historical wrong that tore apart a thriving community,” said Areva Martin, civil rights attorney and lead counsel for the Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors. “While no settlement can fully heal the wounds inflicted by the horrors of displacement, this agreement is a monumental step in restorative justice. This vote tells the Section 14 Survivors: your pain was real, your stories matter, and you deserve justice.”

Through the 1950s and 60s, some city officials wanted to tear down and rebuild the Section 14 area, and pushed people in charge to stop renting homes on short-term leases and make long-term deals with mostly white property owners.

The city used its money to clear out the land, and burned down smaller homes. In 2021, California’s Attorney General called it a “city-engineered holocaust” that forced Black and Latino families out, taking away their chance to build and pass down wealth.

Although the Agua Caliente tribe owned Section 14 land, the City of Palm Springs Fact Sheet notes that some members did not have control over the land as their estates were overseen by guardians and conservators.

“The conservatorship program in Palm Springs, which was dismantled in 1968, barred the Tribe or members from managing their own estates and redirected the wealth to their assigned, often white guardians and conservators,” the Fact Sheet states.

While evictions may not be as heinous today, the impact continues to be massive, and mostly against Black Americans.

One scientific journal studied a comprehensive demographic profile of the US evicted population, showing that one-third of households in the United States, about 44 million households, rent their homes. Each year, 2.7 million of these households are threatened with removal through the legal process of court-ordered evictions.

“Despite making up only 18.6% of all renters, Black Americans account for 51.1% of those affected by eviction filings and 43.4% of those evicted. Roughly one in five Black Americans living in a renter household is threatened with eviction annually, while one in ten is evicted,” PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported last year.

Other land grabs of Black property owners by cities and counties have also widened the wealth gap over the decades. A study by the Institute for Justice found that between 1949 and 1973, 2,532 eminent domain projects across 992 cities displaced one million people, with two-thirds being African American.

Last year, the California Reparations Report from the Department of Justice also looked at the wealth gap between African American and white Americans at about the same today as two years before the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.

Studies show that land ownership today is worse than in 1910 when African American farmers owned 16 million acres of land. In 2007, they owned 3.2 million acres, an 80% loss.

“Funded by the federal government, state and local officials used eminent domain to destroy countless thriving Black communities in the name of highway and park construction, and urban renewal, erasing generations of accumulated Black wealth. African American business districts were cleaved, and never recovered,” the report said.

For more information, see
Learn more at Section14Survivors.com

To see California Reparations Report – Final Report – AB 3121 – California Department of Justice,
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/ch13-ca-reparations.pdf