https://hammerandhope.org/article/los-angeles-altadena-fires
Between Fires in Los Angeles and Fascism in America
by Robin D.G. Kelley
Altadena’s vision of regeneration is the antidote to the political conflagration that threatens us all.
Hammer And Hope
No. 6
Spring 2025
The dirt pit that was once the author’s childhood home at 403 East Poppyfields Drive on Altadena’s west side, Jan. 31, 2025. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
No amount of words or pictures can adequately capture the magnitude of the devastation caused by the Eaton fire, and nothing could have prepared me for seeing my old neighborhood of West Altadena reduced to rubble. The burned-out cars, twisted and discolored metal, thick toxic ash, lone chimneys and concrete porches, trees charred beyond the point of regeneration, appeared to extend as far as the eye could see. Accompanied by the brilliant photographer Gabriella Angotti-Jones, I drove up and down familiar streets taking in wreckage while sharing tales of legendary house parties, loving neighbors, prom, jam sessions, my mom and little sister wearing flowers plucked from our yard in their hair, our garage turned artist’s studio. When we turned the corner on Santa Anita Avenue and Poppyfields Drive and saw the remains of what was once my home, only shock kept me from weeping. Gone was the beautiful two-story stucco Janes Cottage house with the cathedral windows, the dark hardwood floors, the wild backyard garden. All that remained was the elevated redbrick porch and the long driveway leading nowhere. The street was eerily quiet as dozens of people in hazmat gear gingerly cleared endless piles of refuse. Even on North Lake Avenue, the main thoroughfare dividing West and East Altadena, where drivers lined up to receive protective masks, gear, buckets, water, and other supplies, there was a solemn quiet, broken by muffled expressions of encouragement and determination.
No amount of words or pictures can adequately capture the magnitude of the devastation caused by the Eaton fire, and nothing could have prepared me for seeing my old neighborhood of West Altadena reduced to rubble. The burned-out cars, twisted and discolored metal, thick toxic ash, lone chimneys and concrete porches, trees charred beyond the point of regeneration, appeared to extend as far as the eye could see. Accompanied by the brilliant photographer Gabriella Angotti-Jones, I drove up and down familiar streets taking in wreckage while sharing tales of legendary house parties, loving neighbors, prom, jam sessions, my mom and little sister wearing flowers plucked from our yard in their hair, our garage turned artist’s studio. When we turned the corner on Santa Anita Avenue and Poppyfields Drive and saw the remains of what was once my home, only shock kept me from weeping. Gone was the beautiful two-story stucco Janes Cottage house with the cathedral windows, the dark hardwood floors, the wild backyard garden. All that remained was the elevated redbrick porch and the long driveway leading nowhere. The street was eerily quiet as dozens of people in hazmat gear gingerly cleared endless piles of refuse. Even on North Lake Avenue, the main thoroughfare dividing West and East Altadena, where drivers lined up to receive protective masks, gear, buckets, water, and other supplies, there was a solemn quiet, broken by muffled expressions of encouragement and determination.
An undated photograph of the author’s childhood home before the Eaton fire. Photograph by the author.
I left Altadena nearly 40 years ago, but my ties to the place are as strong as ever. As fires raged all around us, light gray ash dusting our streets and filling our lungs, I remained singularly focused on Altadena. On the morning of Jan. 8, I captured the sheer immensity of the Eaton fire, the eastern horizon glowing bright red and orange against a backdrop of dark clouds. It struck me as a terrifying metaphor for the political conflagration that awaited us.
Even before the inauguration, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the MAGA crew blamed DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) for the California fires. They circulated screenshots of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s racial equity action plan, accusing it of prioritizing “DEI over saving lives and homes.” They derided Chief Kristin Crowley, the first woman and first openly queer person to lead the LAFD, as a DEI hire, and spewed racist and sexist vitriol at Karen Bass, Los Angeles’s first female and second Black mayor, falsely claiming she shuttled funds from the fire budget to DEIA initiatives — ridiculous claims, but dangerous nonetheless. Anti-DEIA laws are a smokescreen to criminalize antiracism and any effort to protect the rights of women, gender-nonconforming and trans people, and people with disabilities, and to legalize racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. One of Trump’s executive orders claims DEIA violates federal civil rights law by replacing “merit” with unearned race-based entitlements. Nonwhite, female, queer, and disabled people occupy positions for which they are not qualified. The real victims of discrimination are white heterosexual cisgender men.
I left Altadena nearly 40 years ago, but my ties to the place are as strong as ever. As fires raged all around us, light gray ash dusting our streets and filling our lungs, I remained singularly focused on Altadena. On the morning of Jan. 8, I captured the sheer immensity of the Eaton fire, the eastern horizon glowing bright red and orange against a backdrop of dark clouds. It struck me as a terrifying metaphor for the political conflagration that awaited us.
Even before the inauguration, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the MAGA crew blamed DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) for the California fires. They circulated screenshots of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s racial equity action plan, accusing it of prioritizing “DEI over saving lives and homes.” They derided Chief Kristin Crowley, the first woman and first openly queer person to lead the LAFD, as a DEI hire, and spewed racist and sexist vitriol at Karen Bass, Los Angeles’s first female and second Black mayor, falsely claiming she shuttled funds from the fire budget to DEIA initiatives — ridiculous claims, but dangerous nonetheless. Anti-DEIA laws are a smokescreen to criminalize antiracism and any effort to protect the rights of women, gender-nonconforming and trans people, and people with disabilities, and to legalize racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. One of Trump’s executive orders claims DEIA violates federal civil rights law by replacing “merit” with unearned race-based entitlements. Nonwhite, female, queer, and disabled people occupy positions for which they are not qualified. The real victims of discrimination are white heterosexual cisgender men.
An intact house sits behind a row of homes burned by the Eaton fire off Lake Avenue at the base of the Angeles National Forest on Altadena’s west side, Feb. 5, 2025. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
The response to the Southern California fires demonstrates the absurdity of MAGA’s postracial fantasies. Despite the eruption of 14 different conflagrations across two counties, the story of the 2025 Southern California wildfires is really a tale of two cities: to the west, the Pacific Palisades — a world of celebrities and a few billionaires with means to hire private firefighters to protect their own homes as surrounding properties burned — and to the east, Altadena, a largely working- and middle-class multiracial community with a historic legacy of Black homeownership. Thanks to recent reporting by The Washington Post, we now know that the Eaton fire was first reported around 6 p.m. on Jan. 7. Warnings and evacuation orders were issued an hour later, but only to residents east of Lake Avenue, living in a predominantly white and affluent section of Altadena. By 11 p.m., fires were reported in the largely middle-class multiracial neighborhoods west of Lake. Authorities knew but did not issue warnings or evacuation orders to West Altadena residents until 3:25 a.m. and again at 5:42 a.m.
EPA workers clean up a home on Altadena’s west side, Jan. 31, 2025. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
The Eaton fire killed 17 people, 10 of them Black; all lived west of Lake. More than 9,400 structures were destroyed. Although African Americans account for just 18 percent of the city’s population, 48 percent of Black-owned homes were destroyed or damaged, compared to 37 percent of homes owned by non-Black people. As I write these words, thousands of families are still seeking permanent shelter, applying for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of California, and filing insurance claims. Thanks to deregulation, many Altadenans had their homeowner’s insurance canceled before the fire on account of their proximity to wildfire zones, triggering a scramble for new policies. Now they are facing skyrocketing premiums and woefully stingy claims settlements.
Behind Trump’s anti-DEI spectacle lurk even greater threats to families trying to recover from the fires. Following the Project 2025 playbook, the administration had planned to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and FEMA. It has already begun blocking reimbursements for disaster recovery costs in some states and withdrawn funds for projects aimed at reducing damage caused by climate change. To be clear, the point of abolishing FEMA is less about the devolution of the administrative state than enriching private insurance companies by eliminating government-funded disaster relief. The administration has also cut funding to organizations fighting housing discrimination and rescinded job offers to thousands of federal firefighters on the eve of the summer wildfire season.
Much of the Trump/Project 2025 agenda is really an intensification of five decades of neoliberal policies that have made us more vulnerable to extreme weather catastrophes by reducing federal funding for states, shrinking government capacity by cutting taxes for the rich, and privatizing public assets, such as the electrical grid. In 1978, the passage of Proposition 13 slashed California property taxes, forcing municipalities to cut funding for schools, libraries, infrastructure, and fire departments. Deteriorating infrastructure and a water shortage explain why Altadena’s hydrants ran dry. Of course, policies that have accelerated the climate catastrophe contributed to the surge of wildfires and our increased vulnerability to their impact. And the Trump administration’s agenda of expanding fossil-fuel extraction, repealing regulations on pollution, and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization guarantees bigger and more frequent fires, storms, and pandemics, and an inevitable path toward planetary extinction.
The LAFD, similar to other big-city fire departments, is saddled by outdated and inoperative rigs and a shortage of mechanics to maintain the equipment. The price of fire trucks has risen exponentially, in part spurred by private equity firms buying up manufacturers, cutting labor, and streamlining production, resulting in a backlog of orders and increased demand. The shortage is often chalked up to the Covid-era collapse of the supply chain, but Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, observed that the Covid crisis “was masking what ends up being a main driver of higher cost and lag time in production: the monopolizing of fire truck and ambulance manufacturing in the United States.” Ladder trucks that sold for $1.3 million only a few years ago currently cost about $2.3 million. Chief Crowley admitted in January that some 100 fire vehicles, including 40 engines and 10 ladder trucks, were out of service.
Signs declaring “Altadena’s Not for Sale” are everywhere, aimed primarily at unscrupulous developers and private equity firms like BlackRock looking to turn Altadena into the Beverly Hills of East Los Angeles. With land parcels selling above the asking price — investors are paying $69 a square foot or more for lots that averaged $22 a square foot a year earlier — the incentive to sell is high. But the signs remain, along with a determination to rebuild. Altadena Strong, a loose coalition of residents, activists, and architects, and established organizations like Dignity and Power Now are pushing for an equitable and sustainable rebuilding of the community. They want land trusts to keep developers at bay, strong zoning regulations to maintain Altadena’s original character, and protections against displacing longtime Black homeowners. Black activists have helped families raise money and launched a Displaced Black Families GoFundMe directory to help residents recover and ideally hold on to their property.
An “Altadena Not for Sale!” sign in front of a home hosting a donation drive organized by the Bakersfield church The Garden, near the intersection of Glenrose Avenue and West Woodbury Road on Altadena’s west side, Jan. 25, 2025. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
Behind the urgency to save Black-owned homes are two narratives: West Altadena is a thriving Black community, and the greatest crisis it faces is the loss of generational wealth. Both claims are partly true, but if we are to be honest, the Black Altadena I first encountered nearly half a century ago has largely disappeared. In 1980, when I graduated from high school, 43 percent of Altadena was Black, compared to 18 percent today. Altadena is legendary for its high rates of homeownership; three-quarters of Black residents own their homes, a rate equal to whites, who make up 49 percent of the population. Likewise, Latinx and Asian/Pacific Islander residents — 20 percent and 7 percent of Altadena’s total population, respectively — have homeownership rates of 61 percent and 77 percent. But unlike other residents, Black homeowners dedicate a much higher percentage of their income to cover housing costs. Nearly half of Black households nationwide paid over 30 percent of their income on housing, compared to 32 percent for non-Black households; 28 percent of Black households spent more than half of their income on housing, compared to 13 percent for all others.
Our obsession with the loss of Black generational wealth exposes an unspoken paradox: The source of that wealth — rising property values and gentrification — is responsible for the Black community’s evisceration. My colleagues at UCLA produced a devastating study showing that from 2019 to 2023 Altadena’s median home value reached $1,000,000, over a third higher than that of Los Angeles County, and single-family homes purchased in 2023 sold at a median price of $1.2 million. With African American families being priced out, it’s little wonder that only 7 percent of Black homeowners are under 45 years old and 57 percent are over 65.
Generational wealth is individual wealth, not community wealth. And if the point is to build generational wealth, then selling property, turning it into multifamily dwellings or whatever it might take to make a profit is to be expected. But if we see the struggle of Black Altadenans to hold on to their land and rebuild motivated only by a desire to build monetary wealth, then we misunderstand what’s going on and what made this community special. For most Black residents, Altadena was never just real estate; it was a promise.
Another narrative circulating on the internet and in the media is that Altadena was unique for its absence of housing discrimination and racism, that it was always a welcoming place where Black strivers could thrive. This is simply not true. Pasadena and Altadena have a long history of racism. In 1914, the year the Ku Klux Klan entered a float in the Rose Parade, Pasadena opened a new public swimming pool in Brookside Park for whites only. The pool was desegregated in 1942 only after the NAACP waged a long fight. The Pasadena Improvement Association was formed in 1939 to “limit use and occupancy of property to members of the white or Caucasian race only.” Its efforts, backed by the local government and Chamber of Commerce, succeeded in segregating the Black community on the west side of town. Freeway construction forced African Americans farther north, where they remained on the west side and with a few exceptions locked out of Altadena until the 1960s.
During the 1930s and ’40s, the Great Northwest Improvement Association, another housing association, informed real estate agents and potential home buyers, “We want our section of Pasadena and Altadena to be a place for white people only.” For the small sum of $5, homeowners could attach a racially restrictive covenant to their deeds and become members of the Altadena Property Owners’ League. By the start of World War II, 80 percent of homes in Altadena had restrictive covenants, and most of these remained even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such covenants unconstitutional. Some white residents turned to terror in order to keep Altadena white. In 1956, when word got out that the Reverend James Foshry Scheree, a white minister, planned to sell his home to a Black couple, neighbors set his gas meter on fire. By 1960, Altadena was 95 percent white. Black people accounted for 4 percent of the population, and most of them resided in a canyon situated on the far west side of Altadena known as the Meadows. Among those residents were the renowned radical artist Charles White, whose wife Frances Barrett was white; Wilfred Duncan, Pasadena’s first Black fireman; and a few Communists, including Pettis Perry, the Black leader of the Communist Party of the United States of America. The late Don Wheeldin, a longtime Black Pasadenan and former Communist Party member, told me that there were so many leftists in the Meadows, it was nicknamed Red Gulch.
White resistance to Black neighbors was not unique to Altadena. Throughout Los Angeles County, Black efforts to move into white neighborhoods were met with vandalism, cross burnings, bombings, arson, and death threats. During the late 1950s and early ’60s, cities and towns we now think of as Black or multiracial — including Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena, Compton, Lynwood, South Gate, and Leimert Park — came to resemble Birmingham, Ala. In fact, on Sept. 20, 1963, just five days after white terrorists bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four Black girls, the California State Legislature passed the Rumford Fair Housing Act, prohibiting racial discrimination in the rental and real estate market. Fourteen months later, voters overwhelmingly backed a ballot proposal rescinding the law. It took the California Supreme Court to restore fair housing laws after ruling the repeal unconstitutional.
Seeing the writing on the wall, in 1964 a group of white homeowners calling themselves Altadena Neighbors decided that the best way to protect their property was to accept Black home buyers and, in the words of co-founder Robert Girvetz, “educate the white residents that if they don’t panic and move out there will be no devaluation of their property.” It’s unclear how much influence they had. Not long after Altadena Neighbors formed, Joseph Henry Davis, a Black man who had just purchased a house at 2367 North Holliston Avenue, found a cross with the words “Not Wanted Here” on his lawn.
Pure determination and the 1968 Fair Housing Act created an opening. By 1970, Black residents made up 27 percent of the town. Arguably, the main factor leading to Altadena’s demographic shift was a 1970 federal court order to desegregate Pasadena’s public schools. A court-mandated busing program was enough to send a lot of white families to surrounding cities, such as Eagle Rock and Glendale, or enroll their children in private schools. White flight meant more affordable homes for Black working-class families, artists and musicians, young couples, and even single mothers on public assistance. A decade later, Altadena’s Black population would peak at 43 percent.
Top row, left to right: the author’s aunt Pearl, grandmother Carmen, brother Chris, sister Makani, stepfather Paul, mother Ananda, and the author. Bottom row, left to right: the author’s sister Meilan, Paul’s ex-wife Marie (kneeling) with Idris (her son with Paul) and Michio (her youngest son) on her lap, and Marie’s daughter Nefertiti, Christmas 1982. Photograph courtesy of the author.
When I left my father in Seattle to live with my mother and my three siblings in Pasadena in March 1977, they were living in a rough neighborhood in a tiny house that she had purchased for about $16,000. Not long after I arrived, she married a white jazz musician, sold the house for $32,000, and purchased the home on Poppyfields Drive for a little over $50,000. We never had much money. My stepfather was going to school for music education, and when he wasn’t playing an occasional gig, he drove a tour bus. My mother was a skilled baker who made organic wedding cakes and opened a short-lived bakery in Altadena called Ananda Bakes, but it did not make enough to cover the rent. And yet we had a great life, surrounded by art and music, neighbors, friends, trees, and mountains. There were no sidewalks, and occasionally we encountered people on horses trotting down the street. The only threat to our safety I can recall was the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Living in an unincorporated area, we fell under the county’s jurisdiction, and every Black and brown teenager knew the sheriff don’t play. Teenagers were subject to a curfew, and we were frequently stopped and detained by the sheriffs, who forced us to sit on the ground or stand for what felt like an eternity while we underwent interrogations and background checks.
Music was everywhere. Our community included the pianist Joe Zawinul; the saxophonist Bennie Maupin; the drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, whose commitment to the community inspired the pianist Richard Sears to compose a five-part suite in tribute to Heath titled “Altadena”; and the trumpeter, composer, and legendary educator Bobby Bradford, whose talented daughter Carmen was my classmate at Pasadena High School. (Carmen went on to enjoy a successful career as a jazz vocalist and was the lead singer of the Count Basie Band.) Our next-door neighbor Arvid Garrett sang with Three Sharps and a Flat and the Ink Spots, and his son Arvid Jr. — we called him Gary — was a brilliant drummer and composer. House parties were funky and frequent. In those days, all you had to do was drive or walk around the neighborhood until you came upon a long line of parked cars. You would just follow the music, walk in, and get on the dance floor — no invitations required, though the person throwing the party reserved the right to kick you out. I’m still proud of the fact that my classmates chose my house party, a GQ Affair on Poppyfields, as Party of the Year!
Tom Metzger, the leader of the California Ku Klux Klan, in his Fallbrook home office after winning a narrow victory in the Democratic primary in the 43rd Congressional District, the nation’s most populous district, Oct. 21, 1980. Photograph via Bettmann Archive/Getty Images.
When I graduated from high school in 1980, Ronald Reagan was on the campaign trail headed to the White House. His election portended dark times — cuts in social spending, rollbacks in civil rights law, an exponential rise in racist violence. That year Tom Metzger, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of White Aryan Resistance, garnered enough votes to win the Democratic primary in Southern California’s 43rd Congressional District. But against this moment the poet and singer Gil Scott-Heron called “Winter in America” stood Altadena. Altadena was the promise of what America could be, the opposite of oligarchy and fascism, a bulwark against white nationalism and racist terror.
The promise of Altadena was a Black community living inside a multiracial community in which interracial couples were unremarkable, Black kids were kids, not predators, community gardens were for the community, and my hippie mother could walk the block barefoot.
The promise of Altadena was the Omowale Ujamaa School, a fixture from 1971 to 2006, founded by Naima Olugbala, Mshairi Kisenga, and several Black parents seeking to raise intelligent, independent, and proud African children who were taught to “believe in constant struggle for freedom to end oppression and build a better world.”
The promise of Altadena was the resident artists: John Outterbridge; Charles Carter, my sister’s father; the poet Blossom Powe, who came out of the Watts Writers Workshop; my brother’s friend Romye Robinson, who made hip-hop history as a co-creator of the Pharcyde; the choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders and her husband, the composer and sound designer Everett Saunders; and the musicians John Clayton, Bobby Bradford, Bennie Maupin, Roy McCurdy, Dale Fielder, and Steve Lehman (all of whom lost their homes to the Eaton fire), as well as Patrice Rushen and so many others. They all represent a different source of generational wealth: the cultural and artistic riches that keep us alive and teach new generations to carry on the legacy.
The promise still remains. It can be found in the Altadena Poetry Review, edited by the former Altadena poet laureate Dr. Thelma Reyna, who was my high school English teacher and responsible for creating three generations of writers. She believes poetry has the potential to make community and free us all.
Nikki High, the owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, March 20, 2025. The bookstore has become a hub of support in the wake of the Eaton fire. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
And the promise lives in Nikki High, my younger sister’s childhood friend and the visionary behind Octavia’s Bookshelf, the city’s favorite bookstore and a community hub. Even in the face of financial challenges and with her own home threatened by the fire, Nikki managed to turn her modest space into a source for supplies, meetings, and mutual aid. She didn’t open Octavia’s Bookshelf to get rich; it was an act of love for Altadena and its beautiful Black queer artistic heritage.
The promise of Altadena, then and now, explains why so many families held on to their property or passed it on to their children and grandchildren. They never intended to renovate and flip their houses for a profit in order to move to a better neighborhood. They stayed because of something much bigger than generational wealth: community, memory, joy. Why they stayed and choose to remain made me think more deeply about what it means to hold on to a place in the face of colossal destruction, to return home to rubble. Beneath the rubble is land. The land is sacred; it is where ancestors dwell. It holds all our memories close. It is the source of life and renewal.
The response to the Southern California fires demonstrates the absurdity of MAGA’s postracial fantasies. Despite the eruption of 14 different conflagrations across two counties, the story of the 2025 Southern California wildfires is really a tale of two cities: to the west, the Pacific Palisades — a world of celebrities and a few billionaires with means to hire private firefighters to protect their own homes as surrounding properties burned — and to the east, Altadena, a largely working- and middle-class multiracial community with a historic legacy of Black homeownership. Thanks to recent reporting by The Washington Post, we now know that the Eaton fire was first reported around 6 p.m. on Jan. 7. Warnings and evacuation orders were issued an hour later, but only to residents east of Lake Avenue, living in a predominantly white and affluent section of Altadena. By 11 p.m., fires were reported in the largely middle-class multiracial neighborhoods west of Lake. Authorities knew but did not issue warnings or evacuation orders to West Altadena residents until 3:25 a.m. and again at 5:42 a.m.
EPA workers clean up a home on Altadena’s west side, Jan. 31, 2025. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
The Eaton fire killed 17 people, 10 of them Black; all lived west of Lake. More than 9,400 structures were destroyed. Although African Americans account for just 18 percent of the city’s population, 48 percent of Black-owned homes were destroyed or damaged, compared to 37 percent of homes owned by non-Black people. As I write these words, thousands of families are still seeking permanent shelter, applying for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of California, and filing insurance claims. Thanks to deregulation, many Altadenans had their homeowner’s insurance canceled before the fire on account of their proximity to wildfire zones, triggering a scramble for new policies. Now they are facing skyrocketing premiums and woefully stingy claims settlements.
Behind Trump’s anti-DEI spectacle lurk even greater threats to families trying to recover from the fires. Following the Project 2025 playbook, the administration had planned to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and FEMA. It has already begun blocking reimbursements for disaster recovery costs in some states and withdrawn funds for projects aimed at reducing damage caused by climate change. To be clear, the point of abolishing FEMA is less about the devolution of the administrative state than enriching private insurance companies by eliminating government-funded disaster relief. The administration has also cut funding to organizations fighting housing discrimination and rescinded job offers to thousands of federal firefighters on the eve of the summer wildfire season.
Much of the Trump/Project 2025 agenda is really an intensification of five decades of neoliberal policies that have made us more vulnerable to extreme weather catastrophes by reducing federal funding for states, shrinking government capacity by cutting taxes for the rich, and privatizing public assets, such as the electrical grid. In 1978, the passage of Proposition 13 slashed California property taxes, forcing municipalities to cut funding for schools, libraries, infrastructure, and fire departments. Deteriorating infrastructure and a water shortage explain why Altadena’s hydrants ran dry. Of course, policies that have accelerated the climate catastrophe contributed to the surge of wildfires and our increased vulnerability to their impact. And the Trump administration’s agenda of expanding fossil-fuel extraction, repealing regulations on pollution, and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization guarantees bigger and more frequent fires, storms, and pandemics, and an inevitable path toward planetary extinction.
The LAFD, similar to other big-city fire departments, is saddled by outdated and inoperative rigs and a shortage of mechanics to maintain the equipment. The price of fire trucks has risen exponentially, in part spurred by private equity firms buying up manufacturers, cutting labor, and streamlining production, resulting in a backlog of orders and increased demand. The shortage is often chalked up to the Covid-era collapse of the supply chain, but Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, observed that the Covid crisis “was masking what ends up being a main driver of higher cost and lag time in production: the monopolizing of fire truck and ambulance manufacturing in the United States.” Ladder trucks that sold for $1.3 million only a few years ago currently cost about $2.3 million. Chief Crowley admitted in January that some 100 fire vehicles, including 40 engines and 10 ladder trucks, were out of service.
Signs declaring “Altadena’s Not for Sale” are everywhere, aimed primarily at unscrupulous developers and private equity firms like BlackRock looking to turn Altadena into the Beverly Hills of East Los Angeles. With land parcels selling above the asking price — investors are paying $69 a square foot or more for lots that averaged $22 a square foot a year earlier — the incentive to sell is high. But the signs remain, along with a determination to rebuild. Altadena Strong, a loose coalition of residents, activists, and architects, and established organizations like Dignity and Power Now are pushing for an equitable and sustainable rebuilding of the community. They want land trusts to keep developers at bay, strong zoning regulations to maintain Altadena’s original character, and protections against displacing longtime Black homeowners. Black activists have helped families raise money and launched a Displaced Black Families GoFundMe directory to help residents recover and ideally hold on to their property.
An “Altadena Not for Sale!” sign in front of a home hosting a donation drive organized by the Bakersfield church The Garden, near the intersection of Glenrose Avenue and West Woodbury Road on Altadena’s west side, Jan. 25, 2025. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
Behind the urgency to save Black-owned homes are two narratives: West Altadena is a thriving Black community, and the greatest crisis it faces is the loss of generational wealth. Both claims are partly true, but if we are to be honest, the Black Altadena I first encountered nearly half a century ago has largely disappeared. In 1980, when I graduated from high school, 43 percent of Altadena was Black, compared to 18 percent today. Altadena is legendary for its high rates of homeownership; three-quarters of Black residents own their homes, a rate equal to whites, who make up 49 percent of the population. Likewise, Latinx and Asian/Pacific Islander residents — 20 percent and 7 percent of Altadena’s total population, respectively — have homeownership rates of 61 percent and 77 percent. But unlike other residents, Black homeowners dedicate a much higher percentage of their income to cover housing costs. Nearly half of Black households nationwide paid over 30 percent of their income on housing, compared to 32 percent for non-Black households; 28 percent of Black households spent more than half of their income on housing, compared to 13 percent for all others.
Our obsession with the loss of Black generational wealth exposes an unspoken paradox: The source of that wealth — rising property values and gentrification — is responsible for the Black community’s evisceration. My colleagues at UCLA produced a devastating study showing that from 2019 to 2023 Altadena’s median home value reached $1,000,000, over a third higher than that of Los Angeles County, and single-family homes purchased in 2023 sold at a median price of $1.2 million. With African American families being priced out, it’s little wonder that only 7 percent of Black homeowners are under 45 years old and 57 percent are over 65.
Generational wealth is individual wealth, not community wealth. And if the point is to build generational wealth, then selling property, turning it into multifamily dwellings or whatever it might take to make a profit is to be expected. But if we see the struggle of Black Altadenans to hold on to their land and rebuild motivated only by a desire to build monetary wealth, then we misunderstand what’s going on and what made this community special. For most Black residents, Altadena was never just real estate; it was a promise.
Another narrative circulating on the internet and in the media is that Altadena was unique for its absence of housing discrimination and racism, that it was always a welcoming place where Black strivers could thrive. This is simply not true. Pasadena and Altadena have a long history of racism. In 1914, the year the Ku Klux Klan entered a float in the Rose Parade, Pasadena opened a new public swimming pool in Brookside Park for whites only. The pool was desegregated in 1942 only after the NAACP waged a long fight. The Pasadena Improvement Association was formed in 1939 to “limit use and occupancy of property to members of the white or Caucasian race only.” Its efforts, backed by the local government and Chamber of Commerce, succeeded in segregating the Black community on the west side of town. Freeway construction forced African Americans farther north, where they remained on the west side and with a few exceptions locked out of Altadena until the 1960s.
During the 1930s and ’40s, the Great Northwest Improvement Association, another housing association, informed real estate agents and potential home buyers, “We want our section of Pasadena and Altadena to be a place for white people only.” For the small sum of $5, homeowners could attach a racially restrictive covenant to their deeds and become members of the Altadena Property Owners’ League. By the start of World War II, 80 percent of homes in Altadena had restrictive covenants, and most of these remained even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such covenants unconstitutional. Some white residents turned to terror in order to keep Altadena white. In 1956, when word got out that the Reverend James Foshry Scheree, a white minister, planned to sell his home to a Black couple, neighbors set his gas meter on fire. By 1960, Altadena was 95 percent white. Black people accounted for 4 percent of the population, and most of them resided in a canyon situated on the far west side of Altadena known as the Meadows. Among those residents were the renowned radical artist Charles White, whose wife Frances Barrett was white; Wilfred Duncan, Pasadena’s first Black fireman; and a few Communists, including Pettis Perry, the Black leader of the Communist Party of the United States of America. The late Don Wheeldin, a longtime Black Pasadenan and former Communist Party member, told me that there were so many leftists in the Meadows, it was nicknamed Red Gulch.
White resistance to Black neighbors was not unique to Altadena. Throughout Los Angeles County, Black efforts to move into white neighborhoods were met with vandalism, cross burnings, bombings, arson, and death threats. During the late 1950s and early ’60s, cities and towns we now think of as Black or multiracial — including Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena, Compton, Lynwood, South Gate, and Leimert Park — came to resemble Birmingham, Ala. In fact, on Sept. 20, 1963, just five days after white terrorists bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four Black girls, the California State Legislature passed the Rumford Fair Housing Act, prohibiting racial discrimination in the rental and real estate market. Fourteen months later, voters overwhelmingly backed a ballot proposal rescinding the law. It took the California Supreme Court to restore fair housing laws after ruling the repeal unconstitutional.
Seeing the writing on the wall, in 1964 a group of white homeowners calling themselves Altadena Neighbors decided that the best way to protect their property was to accept Black home buyers and, in the words of co-founder Robert Girvetz, “educate the white residents that if they don’t panic and move out there will be no devaluation of their property.” It’s unclear how much influence they had. Not long after Altadena Neighbors formed, Joseph Henry Davis, a Black man who had just purchased a house at 2367 North Holliston Avenue, found a cross with the words “Not Wanted Here” on his lawn.
Pure determination and the 1968 Fair Housing Act created an opening. By 1970, Black residents made up 27 percent of the town. Arguably, the main factor leading to Altadena’s demographic shift was a 1970 federal court order to desegregate Pasadena’s public schools. A court-mandated busing program was enough to send a lot of white families to surrounding cities, such as Eagle Rock and Glendale, or enroll their children in private schools. White flight meant more affordable homes for Black working-class families, artists and musicians, young couples, and even single mothers on public assistance. A decade later, Altadena’s Black population would peak at 43 percent.
Top row, left to right: the author’s aunt Pearl, grandmother Carmen, brother Chris, sister Makani, stepfather Paul, mother Ananda, and the author. Bottom row, left to right: the author’s sister Meilan, Paul’s ex-wife Marie (kneeling) with Idris (her son with Paul) and Michio (her youngest son) on her lap, and Marie’s daughter Nefertiti, Christmas 1982. Photograph courtesy of the author.
When I left my father in Seattle to live with my mother and my three siblings in Pasadena in March 1977, they were living in a rough neighborhood in a tiny house that she had purchased for about $16,000. Not long after I arrived, she married a white jazz musician, sold the house for $32,000, and purchased the home on Poppyfields Drive for a little over $50,000. We never had much money. My stepfather was going to school for music education, and when he wasn’t playing an occasional gig, he drove a tour bus. My mother was a skilled baker who made organic wedding cakes and opened a short-lived bakery in Altadena called Ananda Bakes, but it did not make enough to cover the rent. And yet we had a great life, surrounded by art and music, neighbors, friends, trees, and mountains. There were no sidewalks, and occasionally we encountered people on horses trotting down the street. The only threat to our safety I can recall was the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Living in an unincorporated area, we fell under the county’s jurisdiction, and every Black and brown teenager knew the sheriff don’t play. Teenagers were subject to a curfew, and we were frequently stopped and detained by the sheriffs, who forced us to sit on the ground or stand for what felt like an eternity while we underwent interrogations and background checks.
Music was everywhere. Our community included the pianist Joe Zawinul; the saxophonist Bennie Maupin; the drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, whose commitment to the community inspired the pianist Richard Sears to compose a five-part suite in tribute to Heath titled “Altadena”; and the trumpeter, composer, and legendary educator Bobby Bradford, whose talented daughter Carmen was my classmate at Pasadena High School. (Carmen went on to enjoy a successful career as a jazz vocalist and was the lead singer of the Count Basie Band.) Our next-door neighbor Arvid Garrett sang with Three Sharps and a Flat and the Ink Spots, and his son Arvid Jr. — we called him Gary — was a brilliant drummer and composer. House parties were funky and frequent. In those days, all you had to do was drive or walk around the neighborhood until you came upon a long line of parked cars. You would just follow the music, walk in, and get on the dance floor — no invitations required, though the person throwing the party reserved the right to kick you out. I’m still proud of the fact that my classmates chose my house party, a GQ Affair on Poppyfields, as Party of the Year!
Tom Metzger, the leader of the California Ku Klux Klan, in his Fallbrook home office after winning a narrow victory in the Democratic primary in the 43rd Congressional District, the nation’s most populous district, Oct. 21, 1980. Photograph via Bettmann Archive/Getty Images.
When I graduated from high school in 1980, Ronald Reagan was on the campaign trail headed to the White House. His election portended dark times — cuts in social spending, rollbacks in civil rights law, an exponential rise in racist violence. That year Tom Metzger, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of White Aryan Resistance, garnered enough votes to win the Democratic primary in Southern California’s 43rd Congressional District. But against this moment the poet and singer Gil Scott-Heron called “Winter in America” stood Altadena. Altadena was the promise of what America could be, the opposite of oligarchy and fascism, a bulwark against white nationalism and racist terror.
The promise of Altadena was a Black community living inside a multiracial community in which interracial couples were unremarkable, Black kids were kids, not predators, community gardens were for the community, and my hippie mother could walk the block barefoot.
The promise of Altadena was the Omowale Ujamaa School, a fixture from 1971 to 2006, founded by Naima Olugbala, Mshairi Kisenga, and several Black parents seeking to raise intelligent, independent, and proud African children who were taught to “believe in constant struggle for freedom to end oppression and build a better world.”
The promise of Altadena was the resident artists: John Outterbridge; Charles Carter, my sister’s father; the poet Blossom Powe, who came out of the Watts Writers Workshop; my brother’s friend Romye Robinson, who made hip-hop history as a co-creator of the Pharcyde; the choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders and her husband, the composer and sound designer Everett Saunders; and the musicians John Clayton, Bobby Bradford, Bennie Maupin, Roy McCurdy, Dale Fielder, and Steve Lehman (all of whom lost their homes to the Eaton fire), as well as Patrice Rushen and so many others. They all represent a different source of generational wealth: the cultural and artistic riches that keep us alive and teach new generations to carry on the legacy.
The promise still remains. It can be found in the Altadena Poetry Review, edited by the former Altadena poet laureate Dr. Thelma Reyna, who was my high school English teacher and responsible for creating three generations of writers. She believes poetry has the potential to make community and free us all.
Nikki High, the owner of Octavia’s Bookshelf in Pasadena, March 20, 2025. The bookstore has become a hub of support in the wake of the Eaton fire. Photograph by Gabriella Angotti-Jones for Hammer & Hope.
And the promise lives in Nikki High, my younger sister’s childhood friend and the visionary behind Octavia’s Bookshelf, the city’s favorite bookstore and a community hub. Even in the face of financial challenges and with her own home threatened by the fire, Nikki managed to turn her modest space into a source for supplies, meetings, and mutual aid. She didn’t open Octavia’s Bookshelf to get rich; it was an act of love for Altadena and its beautiful Black queer artistic heritage.
The promise of Altadena, then and now, explains why so many families held on to their property or passed it on to their children and grandchildren. They never intended to renovate and flip their houses for a profit in order to move to a better neighborhood. They stayed because of something much bigger than generational wealth: community, memory, joy. Why they stayed and choose to remain made me think more deeply about what it means to hold on to a place in the face of colossal destruction, to return home to rubble. Beneath the rubble is land. The land is sacred; it is where ancestors dwell. It holds all our memories close. It is the source of life and renewal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Robin D. G. Kelley is a professor of American history at U.C.L.A. and the author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.
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