Yes it is a white as all shit place. The only reason Hispanic people are there is to do the yard and wash the dishes...

Palm Springs celebrates its past, reckons with ‘historic wrongs'

Andrew Pridgen

As revelers begin to flock to the Coachella Valley for warm temperatures and festival season, the area’s epicenter, Palm Springs, is confronting its past, facing up to who and what was displaced to make it all possible. 

The story of the Black population removed from Section 14 — a 1-square-mile swath of downtown Palm Springs — in the early 1960s, is now being rethreaded into the town’s narrative.

In ways that are varied and complicated, an attempt at confronting previous injustices coincides with celebrations of the same past. The shiny veneer of nostalgia clashing with a history that has, until recently, been swept aside can be directly seen in Modernism Week, the 11-day (Feb. 16-26) celebration of the signature midcentury architecture and lifestyle of the Coachella Valley. 

The event attempts to lead the way by pivoting its own narrative.

‘More than one story’ 

“We are known for a healthy, idyllic, Southern California lifestyle and have been since this area first became a destination well before golf courses and swimming pools,” Lisa Vossler Smith, executive director of Modernism Week, told SFGATE. “Modernist architecture sort of represents simplicity — you have this outpost where you can recover.

“But as we continue to learn and peel back pages of history, we find there’s more than one story.” 

Headquartered in Palm Springs, Modernism Week exists in the heart of a daisy chain of must-do draws that include the Palm Springs International Film Festival, Southwest Arts Festival, and Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals.

Right now, crews are busy preparing home tours, cocktail hours and breakout sessions showcasing the best of the place that made midcentury modern happen. It’s no small affair: In 2022, the event drew nearly 100,000 visitors and more than $50 million to the area, Palm Springs Life reported.

‘A horrible time in our history’

When the Coachella Valley started to attract celebrities and the well-to-do from Los Angeles via Interstate 10, the city of Palm Springs decided to clear out the downtown neighborhood, composed primarily of Black residents, due to redlined housing restrictions elsewhere. 

Section 14 was a parcel that belonged to the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, who gave the already displaced population an opportunity to live there. But as money and celebrity started to pour in, city officials, including Mayor Frank Bogert, decided to eradicate these neighborhoods altogether, beginning in 1951 and culminating in a final razing in 1966. (Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians representatives who were asked about the tribe’s history with Section 14 had not responded to SFGATE at press time.) 

“I was scared to death that someone from Life magazine was going to come out and see the poverty, the cardboard houses, and do a story about the poor people and horrible conditions in Palm Springs,” Bogert told the Los Angeles Times in 2001.

So how does one celebrate days gone by when, at the same time, actions taken then compromised the present and future of populations that were already being oppressed? 

It starts with fully acknowledging the area’s past, a process that is both “difficult and necessary,” Vossler Smith said. “There are two things happening at once: One is this is a great cultural time, our most wonderful time of cultural tourism.”

When asked about Section 14, she said the decision to remove a marginalized population was “a horrible time in our history.” She further clarified, explaining Modernism Week “honoring one part of history while ignoring another is something we no longer choose to do.”

‘We were treated like animals’

But some say an apology and a statue removal aren’t enough. The families and survivors of Section 14 are suing the city for reparations — a movement that has been gaining momentum across California, including in San Francisco. The state established a task force on reparations in 2020, which is expected to go before the legislature in June. 

“I’m a grown man with tears in my eyes and my heart,” Alvin Taylor, 69, a Section 14 survivor, told the Guardian in January. Taylor’s family home was destroyed when he was 10 years old. “We were treated like animals and literally disregarded as human beings. And to relive, in my mind, coming home from school to see neighbors’ homes being burned and bulldozed to the ground … I mean, this was really a terrible and horrifying memory that’s indelibly etched in my mind.”

Correcting injustice ‘would be a small step’

While evicted families like the Taylors did not own the Section 14 land, there is a recent precedent for reparations here. Los Angeles County reissued the deed to oceanfront property in Manhattan Beach to the Bruce family in July 2022, nearly 100 years after the city used eminent domain to claim the land.

“Section 14 in Palm Springs, like Bruce’s Beach, is the return of property that was wrongfully taken from many African American families,” Senator Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, a member of the reparations task force, told SFGATE via email. “Correcting this injustice would be a small step toward restitution. 

“I would hope our work on the State Reparations Task Force, and my legislation on Bruce’s Beach,” he continued, “will also spur others to fight and correct the many historic wrongs that have taken place here in California and elsewhere. The work of the Reparations Task Force can serve as a blueprint of what can and should be done when it comes to addressing these horrible atrocities.”

Vossler Smith said that Modernism Week is committed to recognizing the past and carving a better path forward. “We’re here in large part because of communities, including LGBTQ+, that haven’t always had representation,” she said. “We recognize we’re here to talk about preservation of culture and arts when others have not had that opportunity.”

‘Providing a platform for conversations to happen’

Part of how Modernism Week is reckoning with Palm Springs’ history involves bringing Black voices back into the narrative. This upcoming Modernism Week will continue its Stories Untold program, which hosted a three-part symposium on Black modernists in 2022.

“Last year, Stories Untold was focused on the Black community and Black architects in Southern California,” Vossler Smith said. “This year, we will continue to showcase that work. Part of the reason we have these panels is to talk about what’s going on in Palm Springs as it relates to what’s happening in the rest of the country — and providing a platform for conversations to happen.

“We have to look at emerging narratives in art and design as a reflection of that, and we have to include overlooked areas or events that have been hard to talk about.”

One emerging narrative is that of Jerald Cooper, a Cincinnati-based archivist who started the Instagram account Hood Century in 2019. He has quickly risen to become a leading voice in what he calls “Black modernism,” with recent profiles in Vogue, Dwell and the New York Times. 

Cooper says the next generation of architects and the ability for Black, Indigenous and people of color to design their own spaces is an outcome he is eager to see. 

“The architecture and design pipeline is going to be one of the more liberating things of our culture,” Cooper told Vogue. “A Black kid for the first time in modern history could be encouraged to build their space? That’s some new s—t. It’s something that I really want to work on, this movement.” 

‘Every community has an old or overlooked part of town’

Modernism Week is taking cues from influencers like Cooper in part to expand its geographic and aesthetic reach. 

Fresh sets of eyes may be exactly what midcentury modern needs, area designers say. The genre that has captured the zeitgeist from “Mad Men” to “Don’t Worry Darling” — with watered-down versions ubiquitous in every Ikea and West Elm showroom for the past decade — is beginning to show its age. 

Consequently, as new places, emerging narratives and fresh voices surface, Modernism Week’s audience is also starting to shift, event organizers say.

“The 25-45 sector is our fastest-growing group,” Vossler Smith said. “We feel people can come learn here in a way that makes them respect their own community better. We show them why saving old communities is better. If you interest people in the design aspect, they ultimately respect the heritage and want to learn more, to do better. 

“Every community has an old or overlooked part of town, and there’s value in that.”

‘There’s a lot we’ve ignored. There’s a lot to preserve.’

And while Palm Springs’ classic 1960s ranchers still steal the show at Modernism Week, younger and more diverse enthusiasts account for a pivot to ascendant places and designs, area design experts say.

“Little Beverly Hills or Ramon Rise, that neighborhood used to be overlooked,” designer Howard Hawkes of Santa Barbara and Palm Springs-based H3K Home+Design told SFGATE. “They’re just modest homes, but people are starting to see them differently. The Shag House for Modernism Week is in that neighborhood now. There’s still a lot of inventory there — room to be discovered and homes that haven’t been updated.”

Hawkes’ partner, Kevin Kemper, said neighborhoods and cities in the Coachella Valley outside of Palm Springs are also starting to become popular. Not only is real estate more affordable, but the aesthetic there — areas that were built out in the 1980s and 1990s — is now highly sought after by younger, more diverse modernists. 

“The houses are going to be a little less, and there’s more opportunity,” he told SFGATE. “But also, there’s another opportunity there: The houses haven’t been upgraded, and now they’re coming back into style. 

“There’s a lot we’ve ignored. There’s a lot to preserve.”

Even as voices and populations that were previously willfully kept down rise up, the work to bring light to what has been taken away or otherwise ignored for decades is not only ongoing but has become part of Modernism Week’s primary mission, Vossler Smith said. 

“We can no longer say we’re here to celebrate art and architecture without recognizing the whole past,” she concluded.