A GRUDGING TRANSFORMATION CALIFORNIA'S LONG STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY CONTINUES.

Byline: Ralph E. Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs 

WHILE February is the month to recount the lessening of ethnic bigotry, Americans in general and Californians in particular need a reminder that the ongoing campaign to eradicate lingering vestiges of racism has required a prolonged and labored effort.

Historians cite the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870, with its provision for black suffrage, as a major factor in bringing African- Americans into the mainstream.

But that ignores the fact that even with its ratification, social equality was not then on the agenda. One and one-third centuries of struggle has achieved some semblance of racial tolerance, but it has been a grudging transformation.

In the California of 1870, racial separation was the rule. The civil rights battle, fought mainly by whites, was limited largely to the political equality promised by the suffrage amendment. Integration outside the ballot booth was scorned by nearly all whites, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Blacks had only recently won the right to testify in criminal cases in which whites were defendants, and school segregation was the law nearly everywhere in the state. Until the mid-1860s, even riding on horse-drawn streetcars had been denied to blacks in San Francisco.

For most Californians, black suffrage was the extent of their interest in racial equality. And a large portion of the population refused to go that far. Democratic opposition to any extension of black rights, including suffrage, was nationwide, and the Democratic-controlled legislature refused to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment in early 1870, though it received necessary approvals from enough other states to become law.

And a Los Angeles celebration of the amendment's ratification revealed the shallowness of the Republican commitment to the state's blacks.

Among the handful of white Angelenos who attended the predominantly black observance was Col. Edward Kewen, California's first attorney general, former state assemblyman, and likely Democratic congressional candidate. Originally from Missouri, Kewen's outspoken Southern sympathies had earned him a cell at Alcatraz for two weeks in 1862 - while an assemblyman-elect.

Referring to blacks as his ``colored brethren,'' Kewen addressed the assemblage, admitting that he had opposed all three Reconstruction amendments: abolition of slavery, federal guarantees for civil rights and equal suffrage. But he assured his audience that he now accepted their enactment. He had loved ``Negroes'' (several Democratic editors referring to the speech used the n-word) as slaves and hoped that they loved him now that they were free. During the ball following the speeches, Kewen unashamedly danced with the black women present.

As expected, Democratic editors across the state expressed outrage at this whiff of racial integration. But so did many Republicans, including the editor of the Los Angeles Republican, whose jeering harangue, reprinted throughout California, rejected the social equality that Democrat Kewen seemed to offer when he extended his arm to black women in an invitation to dance.

Distancing his party from the evil specter of integration, the Republican's editor wrote that Kewen and other Democrats ``danced frequently with the wives and sisters of their colored brethren, and promenading the hall with a dusky belle on each arm, or clinging fondly to some sweet dark one in the embraces of the waltz, were ready to vow it was the proudest and happiest moment of their lives.''

Republican editors elsewhere in the state echoed this criticism, noting that Democrats hoped to gain black votes by offering social equality while Republicans were content to stop at political equality.

Not only was bipartisan opposition to social integration revealed in the editorials following the Los Angeles celebration, but the anticipated benefits of the Voting Rights Amendment temporarily disappeared. Despite the federal amendment, California's Democratic attorney general instructed county clerks to refuse black registration since the state constitution prohibited voting by nonwhites.

Los Angeles County Clerk Thomas Mott not only refused black registration but won what apparently was the first test case anywhere involving the Fifteenth Amendment when County Judge Ygnacio Sepulveda (who happened to be Mott's brother-in-law) ruled that black registration was illegal.

It took passage of federal legislation to force Mott and a handful of other clerks to register blacks. By the summer of 1870 black suffrage was irrevocably established in California, and blacks voted solidly Republican.

While blacks could vote, only gradually did African-American candidates appear on the ballot. In 1888, the nearly all-white Prohibition party of Los Angeles nominated S.B. Bows for constable, the first black nominated by a political party in the county.

That same year Edward Duplex, a successful businessman, was elected mayor of the Sacramento Valley town of Wheatland, the first black to hold such a position in the state. Others would follow him, with African-Americans eventually holding the mayor's office in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland.

But in state politics blacks were on the sidelines until well into the 20th century. Not until Los Angeles Republican Frederick M. Roberts was elected to the Assembly in 1918 did a black man sit in the Legislature. Only after World War II did African-Americans win a significant number of legislative seats.

By then, as a result of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies of the 1930s, the growing conservatism of the post-World War II Republican party, and the civil rights revolution that followed the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, California's black voters had moved overwhelmingly into Democratic ranks and played a major role in the leadership of that party.

Augustus Hawkins was elected to Congress in 1962, and in 1970 Wilson Riles, State Superintendent of Schools, was the first African-American elected to a statewide office, followed by Mervyn Dymally's successful run for Lt. Governor in 1974. Other African-Americans served as speaker of the Assembly and head of the State Senate. In the 1980s, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley twice ran close races, but lost, as the Democratic candidate for governor.

If black political power emerged slowly, the equal rights promised by the 14th Amendment were attained at a glacial pace. Segregation in housing, jobs, public accommodations and education continued well into the 20th century. While legally required segregation in public schools was struck down by California courts long ago, de facto segregation remained as school boundaries were drawn to correspond to existing housing patterns.

The hostile reaction of white Californians in the 1960s and '70s to court-ordered busing in districts where judges found a pattern of covert discrimination in the drawing of attendance lines clearly indicated the attitudes of a century earlier were still widely held.

Although the busing controversy waned, racial tensions erupted again in the 1980s and '90s over affirmative action programs in education and the awarding of state and local contracts, as well as the first Rodney King verdict and the ensuing riots.

Although Californians tend to think of themselves as more progressive in racial matters than most other states, much of the improvement in race relations has come from pressure and legislation emanating from the federal government, especially the Supreme Court.

California courts had upheld restrictive covenants in deeds that denied blacks and other ethnic groups the rental or purchase of property in certain areas, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that practice in 1948.

Powerful interests within California fought doggedly against other efforts to integrate society. In the early 1960s, state legislation to end discrimination in housing was halted by a petition drive that forced a referendum on the Rumford Fair Housing Act. The state's voters, by a large majority, voted to retain the right of property owners to discriminate in the rental and sale of homes. The courts, however, overruled the voters' decision.

Other outside pressures forced Californians to break down some barriers. Public services such as swimming pools remained segregated in some communities until World War II, when it became more difficult to discriminate on racial grounds in light of the wartime effort to unite all Americans in a common effort.

Nondiscrimination in hiring resulted from action by the federal government in creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission shortly after the war.

Despite occasional setbacks, the trend toward social equality continues and gives promise of more tolerant days to come. Unfortunately, the long history of discrimination continues to retard that progress. While black Americans continue their efforts to achieve full equality, much of the racial animosity in California is now directed at illegal immigrants and Middle Easterners, who now face many of the problems African-Americans had to surmount over the past century.

It's been a slow struggle, and the struggle continues.

CAPTION(S):

7 photos

Photo:

(1) Augustus Hawkins, California's first black congressman.

(2) A Los Angeles civil rights march.

(3) Wilson Riles, the first African-American elected to state office.

(4) A 1980 anti-busing rally.

(5) Former Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally.

(6 -- color) The 1992 Rodney King riots.

(7 -- color) Former L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley

(Daily News/Associated Press photos)