The stereotypes of Oklahoma City geography are well established: If you drive east on NE 23, you will hit the "black part of town. " If you drive to NW 23 and Classen, you can see "Little Asia. " If you visit Little Flower Church on S Walker, you are in the heart of Oklahoma City's Hispanic community.
While the latter two areas formed independently, northeast Oklahoma City can directly trace its roots to discriminatory Jim Crow laws enforced by city ordinances for more than 20 years after statehood, said Bob Blackburn, deputy executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Blackburn researched the history of northeast Oklahoma City for his book, "Heart of the Promised Land: An Illustrated History of Oklahoma County. " Racial coexistence has been a part of Oklahoma City since 1889, when approximately 200 blacks made the land run shoulder-to-shoulder with their white neighbors, Blackburn said. By 1910 the number of blacks in the community had increased to more than 7,000, approximately 10 percent of the total population.
Until 1910 the majority of blacks in Oklahoma City lived in three loosely segregated neighborhoods: South Town, between Washington and Choctaw avenues south of town; West Town, on W 1 Street; and Sand Town, along the river east of the Sante Fe tracks.
All three districts were near the railroad tracks or the river - neighborhoods that were undesirable due either to rail traffic or periodic flooding, Blackburn said.
After 1910 the economic shackles confining black families to "slum" areas were removed, Blackburn said. An expanding economy allowed the black population to begin moving out of depressed areas into previously all-white neighborhoods.
The white outcry for separation of the races peaked in 1916, Blackburn said. That year, the Oklahoma City Board of Commissioners enacted an ordinance making it illegal for a person of either race to move into a block on which 75 percent of the structures were occupied by people of the opposite race, he said.
Local opposition to the Jim Crow ordinances centered around the Black Dispatch, a newspaper founded in 1915 by Roscoe Dunjee, Blackburn said.
Dunjee financed at least two efforts by black homeowners to move into areas not zoned for blacks.
William Floyd, a black shoemaker, bought a house at the corner of NE 2 and Central Avenue, an all-white block. Floyd tried to occupy his home four times. Each time, he was arrested and jailed, Blackburn said.
Dunjee paid Floyd's bond and encouraged the man to return home each time.
When the case reached federal court, a judge stated that Floyd had the right to move into his property, based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1916 declaring ordinances such as Oklahoma City's unconstitutional.
A 1930 Oklahoma City Master Plan, published by the city planning commission, made note of Supreme Court rulings outlawing segregated housing and then proceeded to expand existing "Negro residential areas. " "Oklahoma City is primarily a city of native born white Americans," city planners wrote. "This points to the necessity of developing a city to meet the high standards of American living and working conditions.
"As in most of the cities of the Central and Southern states, the principal racial problem centers about the Negroes. They are a necessary and useful element in the population and proper provision should be made for their living facilities. While it is an advantage of each race that living areas be segregated, the white race should be much interested in the welfare of the Negroes because of the close contact resulting from the employment of the Negroes as servants in various capacities. " Jim Crow ordinances continued in Oklahoma City until the mid-1930s, when another battle financed by Dunjee reached the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Dunjee described his defense of black homeowner Sidney Hawkins in a 1947 biography he provided to The Oklahoman: In the early 1930s, Hawkins had bought a house on the north side of NE 8. Zoning regulations prohibited blacks from living farther north than the south side of NE 8, so Hawkins was arrested.
Dunjee bailed Hawkins out of jail and told Hawkins to return to his house. Hawkins agreed and was arrested again.
Again Dunjee bailed him out and told him to go home. Hawkins did and was arrested. The routine was repeated numerous times, including three arrests in one day.
"The Supreme Court of Oklahoma rendered an opinion in this case in 1936," Dunjee recalled. "The opinion ... outlawed residential segregation in Oklahoma. This was the first time that a Southern state supreme court had concurred in the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Louisville decision (which declared residential segregation unconstitutional). " Dunjee's battles may have begun the downfall of legal housing discrimination, but 55 years later, community leaders charge that de facto housing segregation lives on.
"There are still vestiges of housing discrimination in all parts of the city," said Leonard Benton, president of Urban League of Greater Oklahoma City.
"I certainly think that history has an effect. In northeast Oklahoma City, we have seen an out-migration of blacks since 1968, when the fair housing laws (state statutes that tightened prohibition against housing discrimination, pursuant to the 1964 Civil Rights Act) were passed. But we've not seen a corresponding in-migration of whites. " Home sellers and landlords have become more sophisticated in discriminating against minorities, said Oklahoma Human Rights Commission director Ronald Lee Johnson.
"We sometimes get reports of real estate agents that show certain houses to one couple, they then take a minority couple into another area. " De facto segregation also is surfacing in the form of economic development, Benton said.
"We're just not seeing the kind of activity we've seen in other areas of the city. When was the last significant new housing built here? " Benton said.
While the northeast area may have the highest minority concentration, it is not the only area dominated by one race or cultural group, Blackburn said.
But Blackburn credits ethnic closeness, instead of historical segregation, for concentrations of Asian and Hispanic populations.
"The Vietnamese have their own little community near NW 23 and Classen," Blackburn said.
A Hispanic concentration has been long established near the Little Flower Church at 1125 S Walker, Blackburn said.
"Ethnic grouping is at work here too. The Catholic church is at the center of lot of these people's lives. The Hispanic community formed near their church. " BIOG: NAME:
Archive ID: 486174
