Hattie McDaniel - Legal Case: Victory On "Sugar Hill"

Legal Case: Victory On "Sugar Hill"

Time magazine, December 17, 1945:

Spacious, well-kept West Adams Heights still had the complacent look of the days when most of Los Angeles' aristocracy lived there. In the Los Angeles courtroom of Superior Judge Thurmond Clarke last week some 250 of West Adams' residents stood at swords' points.

Their story was as old as it was ugly. In 1938, Negroes, willing and able to pay $15,000 and up for Heights property, had begun moving into the old eclectic mansions. Many were movie folk—Actresses Louise Beavers, Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters, etc. They improved their holdings, kept their well-defined ways, quickly won more than tolerance from most of their white neighbors.

But some whites, refusing to be comforted, had referred to the original racial restriction covenant that came with the development of West Adams Heights back in 1902 which restricted "Non-caucasians" from owning property. For seven years they had tried to enforce it, but failed. Then they went to court ...

Superior Judge Thurmond Clarke decided to visit the disputed ground—popularly known as "Sugar Hill." ... Next morning, ... Judge Clarke threw the case out of court. His reason: "It is time that members of the Negro race are accorded, without reservations or evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Judges have been avoiding the real issue too long."

Said Hattie McDaniel, of West Adams Heights: "Words cannot express my appreciation."

It was McDaniel, the most famous of the black homeowners, who helped to organize the black West Adams residents that saved their homes. Loren Miller, a local attorney and owner/publisher of the California Eagle newspaper represented the minority homeowners in their restrictive covenant case. In 1944, he had won the case Fairchild v Rainers, a decision for a black Pasadena, California, family that had bought a non-restricted lot but was sued by white neighbors anyway.

McDaniel had purchased her white two-story, seventeen-room house in 1942. The house included a large living room, dining room, drawing room, den, butler's pantry, kitchen, service porch, library, four bedrooms and a basement. McDaniel had a yearly Hollywood party. Everyone knew that the king of Hollywood, Clark Gable, would be faithfully present at all of McDaniel's Movieland parties.