Although Verdicts in the 1st King Beating Case Triggered Violence, They Also Led to. . . : A Minority’s Political Awakening : County Report / Changing Black Mood

In the aftermath of the first Rodney G. King beating trial in Simi Valley last April, the Rev. John Baylor launched a series of forums on racism that have continued throughout the year so frustrated Ventura residents could vent their feelings and work together for racial unity.

In Oxnard, black political activists responded to the verdicts with an unprecedented drive to register voters which, some of them believe, helped propel the second black in county history onto a city council.

And throughout the year in Simi Valley, black groups helped organize rallies against white supremacists seeking to recruit new members there since the trial ended.

Since the verdicts of a Ventura County jury sparked widespread rioting and soiled the county’s image last April, the traditionally low-key black community has become increasingly activist.

Now, as a second jury deliberates the King civil rights case in Los Angeles, many Ventura County blacks have begun to see the entire King episode as a turning point in what amounts to the political awakening of a tiny minority in an overwhelmingly white county.

“Before, we didn’t have the kind of awareness, the level of communication, the kind of networking that you see now,” said Andrew Rucker, vice president of the tricounty African-American Chamber of Commerce in Oxnard. “The riots forced us to become closer.”

And though the gains have been modest, last spring’s anger has brought greater unity to a community of less than 15,000 that makes up slightly more than 2% of the county’s population, scattered among 10 cities with few common institutions and little history of activism.

Black churches in Ventura and Oxnard were among the first to respond.

“Some of the pastors got together after the verdicts and decided that as a group we hadn’t been vocal enough on a number of issues, including racism in the county,” said Baylor, pastor of Olivet Baptist Church in Ventura. “There was a lot of frustration and anger in the community and I thought people might start burning things up.”

Baylor presided over four town meetings, three of which attracted 150 people to his Anacapa Street church. Other ministers followed with similar forums in Oxnard, Camarillo and Oak View.

Additionally, Oxnard’s Bethel AME Church collected baby food and other supplies for riot-torn areas of Los Angeles, and the Ventura Ministers Assn. drafted an open letter which called for “non-tolerance for racism” and which detailed hate crimes against religious minorities and homosexuals as well as ethnic groups in the county.

Meanwhile, the county’s branch of the Black American Political Assn. of California began planning a voter registration drive last spring among Oxnard’s blacks and Latinos aimed at sending school board member Bedford Pinkard to the City Council and electing others who had a rapport with the black community.

The outcome was 600 additional voters, a factor--if even a small one--in a win for Pinkard and in the first election of a Latino mayor and the fourth Latino council member in the city’s history.

Said Pinkard, “African-Americans in Ventura County have never been active in politics, but we’re hoping this will be a door opener for them.”

The voter registration effort in Oxnard, combined with an even larger drive among the city’s Latinos, was an important step toward the kind of racial coalition needed to give the county’s black population more political clout, some leaders believe.

Latinos account for about 27% of the county’s population and about 54% of Oxnard’s population. While the black population in Oxnard is greater than in any other Ventura County city, it still amounts to only 5% of the city’s population.

“There are so few African-Americans in the county that it’s very important for us to form coalitions, especially with Latinos because a lot of our interests and concerns are the same,” said Irene Pinkard, president of the Ventura County chapter of the Black American Political Assn. of California, vice president of Oxnard College and the wife of Bedford Pinkard.

Lonnie Miramontes, director of community services for the Latino advocacy group El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, said Pinkard’s election was part of a long history of cooperation between Latinos and blacks.

“We’ve always worked together in Ventura County because we know we won’t make it without each other,” Miramontes said. “It’s good to be proud of your cultural heritage, but society works in strength.”

BAPAC, primarily a political education group, has also expanded its mentorship program for black youths, which includes counseling, tutoring and tours of black colleges, and has even started teaching black youths how to avoid confrontations when stopped by police.

But, in the aftermath of the King case, the black community has not focused solely on political unity and education. The last year has also seen a more confrontational posture by the county’s NAACP leadership toward local law enforcement.

The deaths of two young blacks during the past year triggered criticism of local law enforcement agencies by John Hatcher III, president of the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

The first was the February, 1992, killing of 17-year-old Timothy Moss, who was shot four times at a Ventura house party by a Latino man who allegedly had ties to skinhead gangs. The second occurred this February when a Port Hueneme merchant fatally shot 23-year-old Timothy Morrison outside his market. The shop owner said Morrison had stolen a bottle of wine.

In both cases, the victims were armed--Moss with a gun which witnesses say he had fired earlier that evening, and Morrison with a knife, which he had allegedly brandished at the merchant.

In a ruling announced the same day as last year’s Simi Valley verdicts, the district attorney’s office held that the Moss shooting was in self-defense and did not press charges. In the Morrison case, county prosecutors are still investigating, but Port Hueneme police have already concluded that the shooting appeared to be justifiable.

“I don’t understand how a person can be killed and the charges dropped,” Hatcher said. “It sends the message that it’s justified to kill a black person . . . and shows that any African-American in Ventura County is going to have a hard time getting justice here.”

Last year, after the King beating trial was moved to Simi Valley from Los Angeles, Hatcher--who takes pride in his bluntness--predicted that a local jury would not find the police officers guilty and called Ventura County the most racist county in America.

Since then, he has railed against the racism that he says is prevalent in employment practices, in obtaining loans and in the county’s school and government systems.

Hatcher has not been alone in such criticism, which also surfaced earlier this year when angry residents at a Ventura town meeting accused city and school officials of giving more attention to the slaying of a white Ventura High School student than they would have to a nonwhite student.

But despite the increase in meetings and political activity, some black leaders in Ventura County say there has been no significant change in the African-American community. They say the new activism has been minimal and not very effective.

“You’ve got all these things happening and no one gets upset,” said Louis Bryant, a longtime civil rights activist in Ventura who last winter formed the student group Youth Against Racism to open up lines of racial communication.

“African-Americans in Ventura County are too laid-back,” he said.

But Paige Moser, co-coordinator of the Simi-Conejo chapter of the National Organization of Women, said activism in Ventura County is more difficult because of the area’s demographics.

“Most people who live here are rather comfortable, even well-off,” said Moser, who helped form Neighbors Against Nazis which rallied 300 to 400 people to protest the appearance of avowed racists at the Simi Valley courthouse. “And because they commute for work, they just don’t have time.”

After the first King verdicts, while neighborhoods in cities from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Atlanta were paralyzed by violence, Ventura County was calm. And when Simi Valley was branded a hotbed of racial intolerance, the county’s blacks and whites collectively battled the world’s judgments.

Most of the 40 black county residents interviewed for this article still share that view. While they maintain that there is pervasive racism in the county, they say it is no worse than anyplace else.

“To pinpoint Simi Valley as the hub of racism is silly,” said Yvette Sutton, an aide to county Supervisor Susan Lacey. “It could happen anywhere, it just happened to happen here . . . people were frustrated long before Rodney King got his name in the paper.”

Nor, they say, should the nonviolent reaction of blacks in Ventura County following the verdict be taken for passivity.

“It doesn’t mean we weren’t as angry as the rest of the country,” said Oxnard College’s Irene Pinkard. “I just think we expected it more because we live here.”

While racism often is closely linked to class bias, especially in large urban areas with large pockets of poor blacks and other minority groups, Ventura County black leaders say it exists here despite racial demographics that show the county’s black population is relatively prosperous.

Ventura County’s blacks have larger household incomes than the national average for all races and higher education levels than the county average for all races, according to the 1990 U.S. census.

For example, although their household income of $39,983 lags about $7,000 behind their white counterparts in the county, Ventura County’s black households earn more than the statewide and national median for all races. Their income was also about $14,000 higher than California’s average for black households and almost twice the national average for black families.

In addition, 25.3% of the county’s black adults have degrees from four-year colleges and just 17% do not have high school diplomas. In comparison, only 23% of county residents of all races have college degrees and the high school dropout rate for all races in the county is 20.6%.

Home ownership among blacks in Ventura County is also higher than the state average. Forty-four percent of Ventura County’s adult blacks own homes, compared to an average of 36% for blacks statewide.

But superior educations, high incomes and good jobs do not protect them from the pall of subtle, pervasive racism, they say.

“There is a certain mentality here,” said Gary Windom, a senior public defender and one of the few prominent African-Americans in the county’s criminal justice system. “It’s a very conservative area, so you have to show people their expectations about minorities are not true. It’s a shame in the 1990s that you still have to do that, but that’s exactly what you do.”

Adds fitness consultant Donna Adams, who has lived in the Oxnard area for 16 years: “No one’s coming out saying you’re not welcome, but there is this attitude that says, as long as you put up and shut up and don’t stir up trouble, then we’ll all get along.”

Others complain of nuisances, such as being frequently stopped by police, followed by store employees while shopping and receiving slow service in restaurants.

“Its not a concrete thing that you can pick up for the world to see, but it is very irritating,” said recent Oxnard City Council candidate John Patton, a county resident for 23 years who works at a water company in Thousand Oaks.

Although the county population became more diverse throughout the 1980s, whites have increasingly segregated themselves in enclaves where at least four of five residents are also white, according to census data. While in 1980, 53% of the county’s whites lived in such communities, the rate rose to 57% in 1990, even as the county’s Latino and Asian populations were booming.

Four of the county’s five largest cities--Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Ventura and Camarillo are at least 77% white.

Meanwhile, the county’s black population is scattered, with no city more than 5% black and no census tract more than 12% black.

Overall, Ventura County is 66% white, 26.5% Latino, 4.9% Asian and 2.2% African-American.

Some blacks say that because the county lacks a single city or area where blacks predominate, it has been easier for them to assimilate.

“Because we’re so spread out, we don’t have an opportunity to set up an invisible wall like other black communities,” said Oxnard Assistant Police Chief James Latimer, a 36-year resident of the county who became the department’s first black officer in 1966. “When that happens, you get ignored, and your problems start festering.”

Although signs outside restaurants along Oxnard Boulevard that forbade “coloreds and dogs” in the 1950s are long gone, some fear that the political integration achievements of the ‘70s and ‘80s are now shrinking for African-Americans in Ventura County.

Larry Horner, the county’s first black city councilman and mayor, for example, was elected to the Thousand Oaks City Council in 1974 and served 16 years until he was defeated in his fifth reelection bid in 1991.

Although he does not attribute his loss to racism, Horner said the city’s newer arrivals have brought with them biased attitudes that would make it difficult for him to repeat his past political success.

“Things change, and not always for the better,” said Horner, the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Man of the Year for 1993. “To my knowledge, race has never been made an issue in the past but I think it would be a limiting factor now.”

But many residents say that in addition to battling racism, the county’s blacks must guard against complacency.

“Most people who live here did not grow up in inner-city neighborhoods, and the ones that did came here to have quiet lives,” said Peggy Onakomaiya, publisher of an African-American newspaper in Oxnard that serves Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. “That’s why the few you see here are focused on getting ahead and making that dollar.”

But Simi Valley resident Debra Gibson, who grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, said the trials of the past year have made it impossible for either her or her adopted city to turn back.

“It gives Simi Valley a chance to finally deal with racism,” said the mother who with her six teen-agers, participated in the rallies against white supremacists. “Before, the topic of racism was hush-hush, even in the family. But my kids are forcing me to deal with it. And we’re doing it together. “

Black Population The black population in Ventura County is about 2.2%. About half of the county’s 14,559 black residents live in Oxnard, while Ojai has the smallest black population of any city in the county.

Black City Population Population Camarillo 52,303 839 Fillmore 11,992 25 Moorpark 25,494 396 Ojai 7,613 20 Oxnard 142,216 7,464 Port Hueneme 20,319 1,127 Santa Paula 25,062 78 Simi Valley 100,217 1,527 Thousand Oaks 104,352 1,270 Ventura 92,575 1,208 Countywide 669,016 14,559

Source: 1990 U.S. Census