Search for Community Prompts Move

For African American Douglas Cotton, his move to Dallas was a no-brainer. He had found a better job. Housing was cheap. And his dad, a Texas native, had taken his children back home for visits as they grew up in Oxnard.

“It’s weird,� said Cotton, 38, a lifelong Oxnard resident until he moved in 1996, and whose sister has now followed him to Texas. “I was back in Oxnard for Thanksgiving, and I didn’t see anybody I grew up with.�

In North Carolina, another longtime Oxnard resident has also settled in a Southern city that has gone out of its way to welcome back black migrants who left for opportunity in the West a half century ago.

“I just love it here. It’s so nice and quiet,� said Inez Carter, 65, from a new big house in a racially mixed community on the outskirts of Raleigh. “It was always our idea to return to our homeland. So we came back to Carolina. My daughter had already moved back three years ago.�

The departures of the Cottons and the Carters illustrate an exodus of African Americans that cut Oxnard’s black population by 961 over the last decade as one of every seven blacks moved out.

More African Americans also left Ventura, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks than moved in during the 1990s, as Ventura County’s tiny black population--about 2% of residents--dropped by 1,069 to 13,490. Only in Port Hueneme and Moorpark did the number of blacks increase much--by 173 and 71, respectively, according to new census figures.

Local blacks say there are good reasons for that. Their sons and daughters, siblings and friends are leaving Oxnard--many after decades there--for higher education, better jobs and cheaper housing. And because they are now older and want to return to their Southern roots. Or because it is just not the same place it used to be.

Oxnard, 6.5% black 20 years ago with concentrations exceeding 15% in some south-city neighborhoods, is now just 3.1% black. Latinos, meanwhile, have become a strong majority, comprising at least 62% of the city’s population.

Those numbers jibe with public school enrollments, which show blacks make up just 3.5% of Oxnard Elementary District students--down from 5.1% in 1990. About 82% of students are Latino.

“Oxnard is just not a friendly place anymore. They cater to Hispanics in Oxnard,� said Ruby Vines, 55, a Texas native who came to California in 1963 and has lived in Oxnard off and on since 1985. “California is beginning to seem like a foreign country to me. Just people from Mexico and China and Japan and the Philippines--wherever.�

Vines’ 32-year-old daughter has already moved to North Carolina, Ruby Vines said. And Vines plans to move back to Texas soon. There, her current $1,000-a-month rent will plummet to perhaps $500. “And I’ve got a sister and cousins and aunts there,� she said.

Maurice Qualls, 30, was back home last week from Las Vegas, where he had settled in recent years after graduating from Channel Islands High School in 1988.

“There’s a lot of opportunity in Las Vegas, a lot of black businesses,� he said. “This is an agricultural town and blacks are not into that type of work. Here there’s a Latino mayor and Latino city manager. And there has been a lot of problems with black and Latino gangs. Out on the streets, black people are outnumbered.�

Many blacks say it’s not racial tension that is prompting African Americans to leave. Oxnard’s violent black-Latino gang war came and went in the early 1990s.

What blacks are really looking for when they move, beyond economic opportunity, is often a sense of community. Nowhere in Oxnard, except in its several black churches, does the black community have a center.

“Ours is kind of a divided community,� said Pastor C. Jessel Strong of the Bethel AME Church. “What integration has done for us is that we live anywhere we want, so we don’t have the close community that we want.�

Redlining in the Real Estate Market

Oxnard Councilman Bedford Pinkard, the second black elected to a local city council, said that wasn’t always the case. When his family arrived from Texas when he was 12 in 1942, blacks clustered in the Colonia area, now a barrio that is at least 95% Latino.

And when Pinkard decided to buy his first house 40 years ago, real estate agents ushered him to the Bartola Square area south of Hill Street in the southern half of the city.

“There was redlining in Oxnard,� Pinkard said. “That was the only place they would sell to me. And a lot of African Americans moved in and just stayed.�

Today, Pinkard and a handful of other black families live in north Oxnard’s upscale, racially mixed River Ridge development.

His old Bartola Square neighborhood makes up the portion of the city with the greatest loss of black residents since 1990, the new census reported. Designated Census Tract 37, an area near Dennis McKinna Elementary School and Durley Park lost 204 of its 546 black residents during the decade. And an adjacent neighborhood lost 146 of its 372 African American residents.

“I know a lot of people who came here 30 or 40 years ago, and when they retire a lot of them go back home to Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana,� said Pinkard, 70. “You might get a 3,500-square-foot, two-story house on 10 acres for $70,000. So families are going back and building nice homes on the old homesteads. My dad always wanted to go back, but he couldn’t get anybody to go with him.�

You can see the change in Bartola Square, where 82% of residents are now Latino and just 5% are black. Longtime black residents say they can feel the difference, though the change has not necessarily been for the worse.

“A friend of ours moved to Florida when his father died and they had property back there,� said Kansas City native Frances McLucas, 81, whose 82-year-old husband, David, from Oklahoma, helped build the Bartola tract in 1958. The next year the couple bought one of the houses themselves.

“And Mr. Gillespie, down the street, they moved back to Texas,� Frances McLucas continued. But she said she doesn’t mind the change. “My good friend next door, she’s a Mexican. They’re all good friends in this neighborhood.�

Oxnard College student Anthony Camper, 18, who works at Durley Park recreation center, has lived in the same neighborhood all his life, and watched his friends and acquaintances move away.

“I think black people are leaving because there aren’t many black people,� Camper said. “Oxnard is not as interesting as it used to be. And maybe it’s the job factor. Some went to Vegas, some to Sacramento.�

In the early 1990s, a friend moved out partly because of the gang violence, Camper said. “Back then it was real scary. People were scared to go places. It was a [black] gang and the Colonia Boys. But they’re not really around any more.�

At McKinna, just down the street from Camper’s house, educators have watched the enrollment shift from 77% Latino in 1990 to 96% today. Only 16 black students still attend, down from 43 in 1990.

“It’s clear to all of us that there’s been a change,� Principal Ileene Gershon said. “We just don’t know why or where they’ve gone.�

Across J Street from McKinna, Robert Wilber, 33, rents a room in a house for $300 a month and tries to make ends meet on his salary as a dishwasher in a Ventura cafe. At his income level, he competes with Latinos for jobs and housing, he said.

“There’s not enough work to go around,� he said. “I don’t think it’s prejudice, but once Hispanics get in a neighborhood, they bring all their family, and then they all get jobs. So they have so many working, they can always get a house and keep it.

“It’s kind of like business,� Wilber said. “They see opportunities. Then they use every resource so they can progress. It’s basically like any time there’s a job open or housing open, Hispanics get the jump on them.�

That is exactly what Mario Espinosa’s family has done.

When the Espinosas moved from Michoacan to south Oxnard in 1990, there was only Mario, his big brother and his mom and dad. Since then, eight more have joined the household--a grandfather, an uncle and aunt, two cousins and three younger brothers.

All 12 live in a freshly painted, three-bedroom house on Hill Street, not far from Frances and David McLucas. The Espinosas bought it four years ago. They plan to expand it and put in new windows.

The five adults and Mario’s 17-year-old brother all work--one in an electronics plant, one as a maintenance man, three as farm workers and his brother at a McDonald’s restaurant. Mario said he will get a job next year, as soon as he is old enough.

In the meantime, the Hueneme High School freshman--a football and soccer player--is planting roses and shrubs in precise rows in his front yard. A new lawn is his next project.

“We like it here,� he said. “Everybody works. And mostly everybody around here speaks Spanish.�

Young People Moving Away Spur Decline

By all accounts, the future will probably bring more of the same.

And many African Americans are not disturbed by the trend. They see the change as a natural evolution as young blacks go away to college and never return, as middle-aged blacks seek out communities with more African Americans and as retirees decide they want to go home again.

For more than a decade, Councilman Pinkard and wife Irene, a vice chancellor at the Ventura County Community College District, have helped black youths take pride in their racial history and make informed choices about their future.

In all, the Pinkards have taken nearly 200 teenagers on tours of black colleges in the South. In two weeks, they will fly with 16 more youths to Atlanta to visit universities. So far, about 100 have decided to go to black universities. And they often stay in the South after graduation.

“There’s not always an opportunity in Ventura County for young African Americans to see people like themselves in positions of authority,� Irene Pinkard said. “We want them to see African Americans very much in charge, so they can see they can be in those positions too.�

The history of the black colleges also inspires the teenagers, Irene Pinkard said. “It makes them proud, and makes them think they can do something themselves.�