The fight for racial equality has been fought on many fronts: education, public transportation, and accommodations. But one of the most contentious and, in many ways, still unresolved is the fight to end racial discrimination in housing.

In California, this fight opened up and exposed the attitudes that many white residents held toward African Americans. And the state has never quite solved the problem.

The story starts during World War II. During this time, African Americans in Missouri and Michigan brought action in state courts opposing the enforcement of what was known as "racial covenants." These were restrictions put in the language of a deed that explicitly prevented the sale of the property to people of certain groups. Most commonly, restrictions were against African Americans and Asians but also included Jews. Any sales to a restricted group would cause the property to revert to the county where it was located, and the property would be auctioned off.

These cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948. The court ruled in a 6-0 decision that the enforcement of racial covenants violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and state courts could no longer enforce them (Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 [1948]). However, people could still privately opt not to sell their property to people of specific races or religions.

In California, this unofficial segregation of housing continued, without much done about it until 1959. In that year, California had a new governor, Pat Brown (father of Gerry), who promised to end housing discrimination in his inauguration, and an up and coming state assembly member, Jesse Unruh, passed what became known as the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

There were usually two different types of housing discrimination used: redlining and blockbusting.

Redlining got its name from maps created by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, a Federal agency created during the New Deal. The organization commissioned maps of cities showing which parts of a city were the most desirable for home mortgages. The maps were color coded and the areas marked in red were considered the highest risk, these areas tended to be neighborhoods which were already predominantly African-American. Other lenders relied on these maps to set interest rates.

Blockbusting was performed by real estate agents and developers. The developers would offer to buy housing in a particular area at a reduced price. Owners were encouraged to sell when the developers would tell residents that ethnic minorities (usually African Americans) were planning to move into the neighborhood. The developers would then sell the properties at a higher price to a new set of buyers, who were almost always white.

This act at first just banned discrimination in public accommodations and restaurants for reasons of race or religion. The law is still on the books, and many more classes of people are included in it, notably protecting people on the basis of sex, disability, and sexual orientation, among many others.

However, making it so anyone could buy a home or rent an apartment in any part of any city was proving difficult to enforce. To remedy this, an Assembly member from Berkeley, Byron Rumford, introduced a measure on February 13, 1963, to prohibit discrimination by race, religion, national origin, or ancestry in any publicly assisted housing. Violations of the law would carry some criminal penalties.

Rumford was a pharmacist who ran for the State Assembly in 1948 and won, becoming the second African-American to serve in the State Legislature. The other was Los Angeles area Assembly member, Augustus Hawkins. By 1963, Hawkins had moved on to Congress, leaving Rumford as the lone Black Assembly Member.

Governor Brown, in his second term after defeating Richard Nixon in the 1962 election, quickly championed Rumford's bill and pushed for its passage. Unruh, now the Speaker of the State Assembly, also backed it. Both pushed for Rumford to strengthen the bill and widen its scope to include nearly all housing, not just public housing. Rumford, Unruh, and Brown decided to wait until after an April 2, 1963 election in the City of Berkeley to see if voters there would approve a similar law. It was believed that if Berkeley, a city with a large African-American and Asian population, would pass its fair housing measure, the rest of the state would follow.

The fair housing measure in Berkeley failed at the polls by a little over 2000 votes. Not dissuaded by the defeat, Unruh continued to pass the Rumford bill in the Assembly. Unruh felt that since the margin of defeat was so small, there was not a large opposition to fair housing laws in California.

One of the first major amendments to the bill was to eliminate any criminal penalties. People who were subject to housing discrimination would only be subject to what was known as "injunctive relief." That is, someone could sue to force the sale of a property, and the court would be obligated to grant it.

An exception was also made for housing with four units or fewer where the owner occupied one of them.

The Rumford bill attracted the attention of the NAACP and CORE. The latter sent members to Sacramento to stage a prolonged sit-in until the Legislature passed the bill.

The bill did make it out of the Assembly but ran into roadblocks in the State Senate. At the time, the California State Senate was not apportioned by population but used a system that resembled the U.S. Senate, with members apportioned by the County. (This would be changed the next year after California implemented changes after the Supreme Court ruled such apportionments to be unconstitutional in Baker v. Carr in 1962.)

The State Senators wanted to limit Rumford's bill's reach to public housing only, which caused CORE members to step up their protests. On June 14, 1963, 25 CORE members blocked the entrance to the Senate chamber to show their desire for the passage of the fair housing bill.

Eventually, all the major players in both chambers of the Legislature met behind closed doors to hammer out a compromise measure. And the compromise measure turned out not to have given in to any of the demands of the Senate.

On June 21, 1963, just hours before the Legislature was scheduled to adjourn, the Rumford bill became the Rumford Act. The Senate approved the measure with a 23-12 margin, and the bill was hurriedly moved back to the Assembly for approval, where it prevailed 63-9. Governor Brown signed the bill on July 18, and it went into effect on September 20, 1963.

Fair housing was now the law in California, but many questions would remain. This long, winding path through the State Legislature was just the first stage of a very long battle.

Authors note: I would like to thank colleague Kim Creighton of the Social Sciences, Philosophy & Religion Department for her collaboration and photo research for this piece.