Some folks just like the desert despite the racism they go through

[theking]

'We're here to stay.' Despite isolation and racism, Black Americans feel at home in California's desert




PALM SPRINGS — La’Ronjanae Curtis has grown used to the disbelief of college classmates and friends when she tells them she was born in Palm Springs, a city of 48,000 where people of color are relatively few.
“There are Black people out there?” they always say. Curtis proudly tells them that she’s living proof.

Tourists flock to the Coachella Valley and Mojave Desert to take in the psychedelic hues of their sunsets, lose themselves among otherworldly rock formations, and sip drinks poolside at Modernist hideaways in Palm Springs the way Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack did in an earlier era.

For the few Black Americans who live in the California desert, it takes willpower to feel at ease in these playgrounds, and imagination to make them feel like home.

In the first half of the last century, hundreds of Black people from the South, and from Los Angeles and the Bay Area, settled in desert communities like Palm Springs. They came for some of the same reasons that drew many white people: plentiful jobs, ample land to put down stakes, and the live-and-let-live openness of what still felt like America’s frontier.

But the picture-postcard settings and air of possibility masked an uglier reality for Black newcomers.

Many towns historically restricted Black families to segregated neighborhoods through housing covenants and lending practices. That legacy lives on.

Today, the presence of an established Black community isn’t obvious when driving through Curtis’ hometown, where low-lying houses hide behind Moorish-style screens, meticulously kept cactus gardens look as untouchable as jewelry displays, and locals ride around their condo complexes in golf carts designed to resemble Mercedes and Rolls Royces.

Most Black residents live far from the carefully constructed fantasy visitors see.

Curtis, who attends San Diego State University, says relatives on both sides of her family migrated from San Francisco in the middle of the last century. They mainly settled in Desert Highland Gateway Estates, a neighborhood of about 400 homes that sits on the wind-whipped northern outskirts — three miles from the Midcentury Modern furniture stores and spray-misted restaurant patios of downtown.

The other historically Black neighborhood, Lawrence Crossley, is at the opposite end of the city near the airport — a single U-shaped street lined with several dozen two- and three-bedroom houses shaded by palms. The lush green of a municipal golf course borders the neighborhood on one side. At the far end, a strip of barren desert.

Dominique Brenagh, 38, takes shelter from the 100-degree heat in the shade of his carport at the small ranch-style house where he grew up and his family still lives.

Brenagh says his father’s relatives moved to Palm Springs in the 1950s from Louisiana in part to escape the segregation and violence of the Jim Crow era.

“Back in those times, you had the KKK out there that was oppressing people,” he says of the South.

Brenagh looks back on his own life as a happy one by comparison. He smiles when reminiscing about sneaking from his backyard onto the golf course to play with friends.

“I love it here,” he says.

[DuMa]

I have lived in the high desert of Barstow back in 93.

If people have lived, meaning they have seen the ocean life, city slicker life and chose to live there then sure, they are there by choice.  Not many Asians where I was.  We only know one viet family but she's different, possible a hooker from VN back in the VN war era and her man is a military guy who works over seas, pumping over $5k a month for her n her two half white kids.  She takes that money to Vegas as soon as she gets payed since Vegas is only 2 hrs away.  Not your typical viet right?  Then them blacks are not your typical blacks either.  All my neighbors got a profile.  People who settled in Barstow at the time are either stuck there cuz they gamblers or they have spouses in the military since there are a few bases out there in the area 51 look a like deserts. 

Kids in my high school don't do chit for the weekend.  The ones that do got a car are famously known at the school as they can drive their friends to the nearest bigger city for parties.  The rest of us that knows nobody are unpopular n possible virgins for the rest of our lives. 

It builds character I do say but I wouldn't allow a bright individual to be stuck out there.  No friends, I was a loner, n miles of desert was my playground and I had to formulate my own form of entertainment and that Was jogging, working out, getting tan and hunting for Jack rabbit.  My only escape is every other weekend where my father took me to the oc to see the real moving world.   Thinking back makes me depress n good thing they made the hwy going to Vegas on that new bridge connecting the two hwy otherwise, we would be passing the dirty ass motel that we be living.  Rent was $300 all inclusive with cable n all.  Sketchy azz neighbors running around asking to borrow chit n high turnover rates.  The landlord manager was a hoe, seeing different guys coming n going at her place and her ex husband would come up to me n ask for info n I'll tell him the truth to what I see n he gave me candy bars.  Then you see them arguing constantly like a horror movie with a murder is about to happen.  Eff that, I got out of there after my jr. Year was done n luckily my dad agreed to go with me to up north.  Thanks for reading, my life is not that important.   

[theking]

Man, Barstow. Passed by it many times, only stopped by for gas and one time at Peggy:

sp

[theking]

And yep, most of those passes were to and from Vegas where lots of folks lined up just to take picture with the sign: