"A lot of young Mexican Americans became civil rights activists in the 1950s. My family left Richmond when the shipyards closed and moved back to the Central Valley to register voters and become community activists.” - Antonio Medrano

Betty Reid Soskin and Antonia Medrano

3. DIVIDED WE LIVE

   In 1944, you could stand here and wave to the folks living in Harbor Gate Homes. In one of those buildings, constructed for the influx of shipyard workers, the new Richmond chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, took up its first task. As Americans united in the war effort, they lived in segregation.

    Although life in Richmond was a great improvement, Jim Crow practices followed migrants from the South. At church, at the movies, in Scout meetings and in the union halls, black residents were separated from their white neighbors.

    When Cleophas Brown and Margaret Starks of the NAACP protested housing discrimination, officials tried to evict Harbor Gate’s African-American tenants. Black demonstrators rallied in front of City Hall, signed petitions and began a rent strike.

    “They thought they could scare the people, but. . .we were learning fast about how to get some of the things we needed,” Brown said. By 1945, Richmond’s NAACP was one of the most influential civil rights organizations in the region. Their call for equality and interracial solidarity inspired the next generation of activists.

   This marker uses its proximity to the founding place of Richmond’s NAACP to discuss racial discrimination on the home front and struggles for civil rights during and after the war.