It has been 60 years since the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) targeted racially segregated housing in Los Angeles. Although the main stage of the Black Freedom Movement was the American South, the struggle stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. The Black population in Los Angeles grew exponentially after WWII, settling largely in the “socially isolated and physically dilapidated South Central and Watts” while others would integrate the historically white areas of West Adams and Compton. This resulted in white flight. By November of 1961, CORE turned its attention towards integrating housing in Los Angeles with a renewed sense of power and faith in the ability to challenge and change racially discriminatory practices after the success of the Freedom Rides. Like chapters in Brooklyn, NY and Seattle, WA, CORE in Los Angeles started the “special Freedom Dweller campaign” targeting the areas of Glendale, Burbank, Torrance, Monterey Park and the Centinela Valley. The Freedom Dweller campaign executed the CORE strategy of research and dialogue before taking nonviolent direct-action. And according to Andrea Gibbons, “By early 1962, CORE had tested thirty-three buildings, and was involved in litigation and campaigning around several of them.”
Consider the 35-day sit-in in a Monterey Park tract east of downtown Los Angles in March and April of 1962. This effort initiated the first CORE chapter in the West to engage in housing sit-ins. The demonstrations sought to bring attention to racial discrimination when Montgomery Ross Fisher refused to sell a house to a Black family. Sylvia Richards, a spokeswoman for CORE, praised Earl P. Snyder, head of Kenbo Corp. and owner of the land for acquiring full possession of the tract through foreclosure and selling it to Bobby Liley, the 29-year-old Black physicist who purchased the house for $25,000.1
Philadelphia and Los Angeles CORE chapters were among the first chapters to launch “Operation Windowshop” in late spring and early summer of 1962; a strategy whereby CORE would guide Black groups on tours of suburban developments to look at model homes. In Los Angeles, CORE launched a two-day project on June 23 and 24. CORE was testing the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Hawkins Fair Housing Act which prohibited discrimination by real estate brokers, salesmen, builders, developers, apartment house owners, and managers. Operation Windowshop sought to put individuals and businesses on notice that Jim Crow housing will no longer be tolerated in California while simultaneously acquainting racialized communities of their rights.