CALIFORNIA: Victory on Sugar Hill

Spacious, well-kept West Adams Heights still had the complacent look of the days when most of Los Angeles' aristocracy lived there. But the look was deceiving. 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 colonial 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...