Transcription
[Music] On May 8th, 1959, the Adicha family and the rest of the remaining residents of the Chavez Ravine were forcibly removed from their homes by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department to make way for the construction of Dodger Stadium. Members of the Adicha family were physically carried out of their homes by sheriff's deputies, restrained, and in the case of Aurora Vargas, even arrested. After years of resisting the seizure of their properties, the remaining families watched as bulldozers tore down the final standing homes of their once lively communities, destroying the legacy of what had been the three predominantly Mexican-American neighborhoods of the Chavez Ravine.
The story of what would come to be known by many as the Battle of Chavez Ravine began a decade before the violent evacuations that occurred on May 8th, and long before Los Angeles politicians began making deals to move the Brooklyn Dodgers to LA. In the years leading up to the 1959 evacuations, Los Angeles was experiencing rapid growth and urbanization, as well as an influx of problems associated with this kind of growth. Housing shortages and the development of high-density working-class communities of color, which city officials described as slums, required LA leaders to consider what a modernized LA would finally look like.
Politicians and city planners began to consider government-sponsored public housing projects as a way to solve the city's housing shortages, as well as eradicate the so-called blighted slums of the city. In a project that sought to develop 11 new public housing sites for a price of $110 million, the City Planning Commission of Los Angeles marked Chavez Ravine as the largest of the blighted sites that needed to be replaced. Chavez Ravine was composed of three distinct neighborhoods: Loma, Bishop, and B. The three communities were predominantly Mexican-American, and each had retained a kind of semi-rural lifestyle. Families of these communities often kept live chickens on their properties, while many practiced small-scale farming and gardening. The majority of the residents lived below the poverty line. These families were able to remain self-sustaining, due in large part to their ability to live off of their land.
In 1950, basing their decision on a narrow definition of what made a community a slum, the City Housing Authority of Los Angeles informed the residents of Chavez Ravine that their homes would be purchased from them at a price determined by the Housing Authority representatives and then torn down and replaced with modern public housing projects. The residents of the Chavez Ravine were promised space in the new housing, which would be named Aliso Village. The city set up offices in the three communities of Chavez Ravine to answer any questions residents might have and to encourage them to sell. Representatives told residents that the new housing sites would not significantly change their lifestyles and would only improve their living conditions by bringing electricity and a functional sewage system to the area.
While most families sold their properties and left Chavez Ravine, many refused to sell until they were paid what they felt was a fair price for their homes. Others resisted being forced to leave their family-built homes that they'd lived in for generations. Before the city could begin its efforts to force the resisting families to concede to the Housing Authority's demands, a shift in the political climate of Los Angeles brought the project to a screeching halt. Reflecting a national trend brought on by McCarthyism and rising tensions caused by the Cold War, government programs came under fire for their supposedly communist values. The proposed public housing projects were criticized as a form of creeping socialism.
As a result, the project and its proponents suddenly experienced extreme backlash. Against the projects that had already begun, in a series of court cases and voter referendum propositions, the city attempted to clear itself from its responsibility to uphold the contract it had made with the City Housing Authority. Eventually, a negotiation was reached. The Housing Authority would continue with most of their public housing sites, but the two largest, which included Chavez Ravine, would be completely canceled. This proved only a small victory. By then, most residents had already moved away, and the Chavez Ravine had largely become a ghost town.
In 1953, reflecting the public sentiment against the so-called creeping socialism, Norris Poulson ran for mayor of Los Angeles with anti-public housing at the forefront of his platform and won. After playing a pivotal role in the city's cancellation of the Chavez Ravine site, Poulson began to consider what his own vision of a modern Los Angeles was. In 1957, he struck a deal with Walter O'Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who was looking to move his team Westward. Poulson offered up Chavez Ravine, which the city had received ownership of as part of the negotiation with the Housing Authority, as a possible site for the construction of a new state-of-the-art stadium to house the baseball team.
Two years later, the remaining residents of Chavez Ravine would once again be asked to sell their homes. This time, the city would have no patience for families who refused to sell. The Adicha family, who had become somewhat of local celebrities for their vocal resistance to the city's claim of their property, became the primary targets of the evacuations that occurred on May 8th, 1959. Despite having been promised residences in the new housing project and despite claims that the culture and lifestyle of the Mexican-American residents of these communities would not be changed, in 1962, Dodger Stadium opened to the public. Poulson's vision of a modern LA had been realized, but at the expense of the 3,800 people who had once called Chavez Ravine home.
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