Nell Soto

“Always Keep Your Back to the Wall” Part Two

Part II

Nell Soto Part II  The 1960s: Politics, the Fair Housing Act & Other Progressive Legislation - the Real Estate Industry, ‘Hit’ Pieces, ‘Limousine Liberals,’ Headstart and Parks.

By Julian Lucas
Edited by Pamela Casey Nagler

Denver Post / Getty Images

Published August 15, 2023 9:41 Am PST


Excerpts from Nell Soto’s 1988 interview conducted by Carlos Vasquez with the UCLA Oral History Program, California State Archives, State Government Oral History Program.


Nell Soto on Fair Housing

The Rumford Fair Housing Act (AB 1240) passed in California on September 20, 1963. Its goal was to end unfair discrimination against people of color who were seeking housing, a common occurrence at the time. All too often, white landlords and property owners would not rent apartments or sell houses to ”colored people'' or “brown people.” 

The Rumford Act stated that ”the practice of discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, or ancestry in housing accommodations is declared to be against public policy.

Nell Soto reveals in her interview that it was the Real Estate lobby that provided powerful opposition to the Fair Housing Act. They circulated racist flyers to spread fear among voters.


NELL SOTO: [My husband, Phil Soto] got elected [to the assembly] in 1962. He was a party man. In 1964, he almost lost because of the famous Rumford [Fair Housing] Act.  (33)

CARLOS VASQUEZ:  Did the Rumford Act [or Fair Housing Act of 1963] hurt Democrats that badly?

NELL SOTO: Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was a big campaign in the San Gabriel Valley against it, against him because of that.

Carlos Vasquez:  Who headed that campaign?

Nell Soto:  Campbell’s people [her husband’s opponents’ people].

Carlos Vasquez:  Was he tied into real estate?

Nell Soto:  Sure. Herbert Hawkins [Realty]. A lot of the big realtors were against it and debated him on the logic of why he was supporting it. San Gabriel Valley is very conservative. Even though they vote for Hispanics, they expect you to be as conservative as they are.  (37-8)

Carlos Vasquez: What kind of campaign was it at the local level that William Campbell was able to mount? What kind of issues did he raise?

Nell Soto: The issue was fair housing. That's what the issue was.

Restrictive Housing Covenant 1954
Pomona, CA (Ganesha Hills)

Page One

Restrictive Housing Covenant 1954
Pomona, CA (Ganesha Hills)

Page Two

Carlos Vasquez:  In 1968, four years later?

Nell Soto:  Yes. He was still doing the same thing . . . (39-40)

Carlos Vasquez: How much did the reaction to the Rumford Fair Housing Act as expressed in the Proposition 14 campaign have to do with Mr. Soto's loss in 1968?

Nell Soto:  I think it had a lot to do with it. In 1964, he barely squeaked through. He only won by about 1,600 votes . . . Again, that area, the West Covina area. . . . There was a very strong campaign waged against him in 1964.

Carlos Vasquez:  By?

Nell Soto:  By the same guy who beat him. Bill Campbell.

Carlos Vasquez:  Did the real estate lobby play much of a role?

Nell Soto: Absolutely . . .

Carlos Vasquez: Doing what?

Nell Soto: Well, editorials, ads. I don't know who paid for the "hit piece" that went out. There was one very bad one. At that time, they weren't known as hit pieces . . . I just picked up that term from other politicians. A hit piece is something put in the mail that says something bad about the office holder or candidate . . . It was in reference to the Rumford Act. [It said] “If you don't sell to a black, you're going to wind up behind bars."

It had a picture of a white couple behind bars with a black couple outside of the jail laughing at them. That was circulated in the district.

All of that had an Impact, like the editorials against the Fair Housing Act calling it the "Rumford-Soto Act." Although all the Democrats had co-authored it, they acted as if he was the only one . . . Incidentally, Rumford also lost, as did most of the people who signed that bill. 

Carlos Vasquez:  What do you think it was about the Rumford Act that made people react, or that others were able to exploit in order to make people react? What was the argument that made people go the direction that they did?

Nell Soto:  It was called the Fair Housing Act. It made it illegal to discriminate against anybody because of race, color, or creed, in selling or renting them a house. That's all it did. But it was distorted to the point where it caused a lot of paranoia with people who owned houses they wanted to sell. People would say, "I don't want to sell my house to a black, and nobody's going to make me do it." 

The average, redneck WASP who all these years had felt very, very secure and complacent in their own little bailiwick, their all-white neighborhoods, now, all of a sudden, here was a law that was going to require them to sell to or rent to people of color, be they brown, or black, or yellow, or whatever. That was not something they appreciated or were looking forward to. To this day, I think that there's more of those people than we like to think there are.

Carlos Vasquez:  People in the Brown administration that I and others have interviewed were profoundly surprised by the reaction to the Rumford Housing Act. Were you surprised?

Nell Soto:  No. What I'm telling you is that the limousine liberals who live in Beverly Hills and send their kids to parochial or private schools author or help to author liberal legislation, yet they wouldn't live next door to a black if they got paid to or under any circumstances. They espouse liberal legislation because they think that's the right thing to do, even though if push came to shove they wouldn't like it for their own neighborhood.

Carlos Vasquez:  Could you give me an example of such a “limousine liberal”?

Nell Soto:  No, I wouldn't care to do that.

Carlos Vasquez:  How about another issue where "limousine liberals" may have carried the day and yet not had to pay the piper?

Nell Soto:  Well, I think it's everywhere.

Carlos Vasquez:  Do you think affirmative action is an example?

Nell Soto: Affirmative action, absolutely. Just think of any type of legislation where they've had to literally legislate morality. They say, "Well, you can't legislate morality." I say, "The hell you can't." If it wasn't for legislation, we would not have civil rights, we would not have fair housing. There are so many things we would not have if it had not been for legislation . . .

On education . . . I don't think we've done enough, not even for the Anglo kids, let alone for minorities. In the Brown administration, you had a lot of people who were philosophically liberal but who had never been down to or lived in the ghetto, never been poor, never known what it was like to have to go to bed hungry. I appreciate the fact that they're at least attempting to provide through legislation the means to help the people who are in those circumstances . . . [but] there are very few people in government who have been through the agony of poverty. It's because people in poverty don't have the opportunity for an education, to go through the different steps to become a bureaucrat and be able to make some of these decisions.

So for the most part . . . I'm not saying 100 percent, but I would say 99 percent of the people who are making these decisions have never been poor. They've never known what it's like to go hungry. They've never lived in a ghetto or a barrio, even though they try to legislate to help these people. It's appreciated, and if it wasn't for them we probably wouldn't be this far in legislating, if you will, morality.

I really do wish that they would come out and live here. Try it. Then they could really write some good legislation, because then they would really know what it's all about. Maybe some of the legislators, themselves, know, because they come from a different point of reference than the people in government making decisions who are not legislators. I think the advisers that the elected people hire are the ones who should really know what it's like.

Especially in the old days, nobody came from a barrio. They mostly came from agricultural areas or were attorneys or businessmen who got elected. And while they might have been poor growing up or might have been poor farmers, it was a long time before anybody was elected with a really liberal philosophy to help generate some of the liberal legislation that we've had in the last twenty or thirty years . . . 

Structural Racism Redlining Map

Structural Racism and Land Use Redlining Map
Pomona, CA

[Just think], the Rumford Act was voted down. People voted against it! Fair housing! The state supreme court said it's unconstitutional to vote down a fair housing situation, so the fair housing law stood. 85-94

Nell Soto on Other Progressive Legislation - The Compensatory Education Bill (Headstart) of 1865 & the Quimby Act of 1965 (Requiring Developers to Set Aside Land for Park and Recreational Use)

CARLOS VASQUEZ:  During the time he [Nell Soto’s husband] was in the Assembly, what issues particularly got you involved in politics as a wife of an assemblyman, do you remember?

NELL SOTO: Oh, I was interested in everything he was doing. Some of the things I brought up to him, he would take them in. We drew up—he didn't get the credit for it--the 1965 Compensatory Education Bill of 1965, Headstart (AB. 1331). a lot of those things for disadvantaged children, Phil and I thought of. He would take them up with him, they would get put into the hopper, and it would come out as some kind of a bill sponsored by somebody else . . . 

Another thing that was my idea, that he [Phil] did and took back, came out as the Quimby Act of 1965 (AB 1150).  I think it's very important that every developer putting in a new subdivision now has to dedicate a little bit of land commensurate with the amount of children that are projected to be in the tract [for parks or other recreational purposes.] That idea was conceived in my home . . .

I said, "You know what you ought to do? You ought to make it a law that every developer that puts in houses should leave some land for kids to play in.”

And they did.” 42-5

Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books and writer in training, but mostly a photographer. Julian is the founder of Mirrored Society Books. Julian was once called a “bitter artist” on the Nextdoor app. Julian embraces name calling, because he believes when people express themselves uncensored, they are their most creative self. Unless of course it’s by someone who holds a leadership position.

Pamela Casey Nagler, Pomona-born, is an independent scholar, currently conducting research on California’s indigenous people, focusing on the Spanish, Russian, Mexican and US invasions between 1769 and the 1860s. The point of studying this history is to tell us how we got here from there. 

Always Keep Your Back to the Wall: A 1988 Interview Conducted in Two Parts with Former Pomona City Council Member, State Assembly Member and State Senator Nell Soto

Part I:

The Early Years: Growing Up With Segregation in Pomona in the 1920s, 30s & 40s - Neighborhoods, Swimming Pools, Movie Theaters, Public Schools & Jobs.

By Julian Lucas
Edited by Pamela Casey Nagler

Published 8:30 Am PST

Nell Soto

In this interview, conducted by Carlos Vasquez of the UCLA and State Government Oral History Program, Former Pomona City Council Member Nell Soto (1926-2009) talks about  her early days growing up as a Spanish/Mexican girl and young adult,  and, later, describes her days helping her politician husband, Assemblyman Phil Soto in the 1960s. 

Soto was proud that her husband broke race barriers in California politics:

“I think the most significant thing to me was that Phil [Soto’s husband] was one of the first Hispanic legislators. To me, that was very significant. Although he never ran on that banner, as the standard-bearer of anything, it was very coolly and calmly accepted. But we knew that we had broken a barrier— the two of us knew it— that had been there for years;- - I mean, in the whole century of this State, a state that had been founded by and been [part of] Mexico, they had never had a Mexican in the legislature. I think that is still significant, and I would hope that somebody would put that in the history. To me, it’s really very important that people know that.”  (pages 55-6)

She also acknowledged that she would have liked to have run for office herself in the 60s, 70s, 80s, but the time was not right for a woman: “My mother used to say, ‘Why don't you run? Why don't you? That poor guy [Soto’s husband]! You're just making him run! You're always campaigning. Why don't you run it? You're the one that should run.’ I'd say, ‘Ma, people are never going to elect me. This is not the time for women. Women are not going to be elected.’ I would have loved to have run then. I would still love it, to be an assemblyperson, but I'm too old now. That'll never happen.” (47)


However, history proved Soto wrong on this one. She served as an Assembly member between 1998 and 2000, and again in 2006 and 2008. In the interim, she served as a member of the California State Senate. In 2006, she authored legislation that included expansion of the Nell Soto Teacher Involvement program, improving foster care licensing, and improving welfare to work programs.


During Soto’s life, she attended many colleges and loved to study, but poverty, jobs, marriage, babies and politics interfered. She took many business courses because that was expected, but she loved history and English - and loved to write. She talks about attending Mt. Sac in Pomona in the early days:

“A lot of the G.I.'s who came back from the war just went back and enrolled at Mount San Antonio [College]. A lot of us had never gone on to higher education, so we went to school there. That was quite an experience because Mount San Antonio, if you see it now, is a beautiful college campus. In those days it was in army barracks on dirt hills. We had to climb through mud and rain to get to the barracks to our classes, but it was fun.” (3)


Throughout the interview, Soto’s vibrant personality and optimism shines through. Even though she grew up in poverty with the attendant problems of segregation and discrimination, she says,  “It was a fun life because we used to laugh at everything. No matter what happened, we would make fun of things that happened to us. Being so poor, it didn't really matter.” (15-6)

At the end of the interview, she sums up her life in politics when the interviewer asks her, “Of all the lessons that you learned in your political experiences to date, which stands out most in your mind?” She answers, “About politics, either as a woman, as a wife of a politician, or as a principal player?  Always keep your back to the wall.” (107)

Nell Soto Part I: The Early Years: Growing Up in Segregated Pomona in the 20s, 30s & 40s - Neighborhoods, Swimming Pools, Movie Theaters, Public Schools & Jobs

NELL SOTO:  I’m a sixth or seventh-generation Pomonan. I don't know which, but my dad always said we were seventh generation. I've gone back and counted, but he must have known . . . My grandfather [Antonio Marta Garcia] was from the Palomares and Yorba and Veja people who got the land grants here in Pomona. My great-great-great-grandmother [Nelli Garcia] was a Garcia who married into the Palomareses and Vejars. Some of them are buried here in the historical cemetery [Palomares Cemetery]. My great-grandfather [Forestino Garcia] was born here, and so on, all the way back . . . 


The poor people lived on the south side of the tracks . . . The haves lived on the northside of Holt[Avenue] and the have-nots lived on the south side of Holt. Holt is one of the main streets and runs east and west. What always stands out in my mind is that my dad, being a descendant of one of the founding families, should have been treated with a little more dignity. But there was so much prejudice that if you had brown skin or a Spanish surname, there was a lot of prejudice. At the time it wasn't noticed that there was prejudice. It was just understood that the [Mexican] people here became sort of like the servants, the peons. They picked the oranges and the lemons. The "settlers," as they called them, were the Anglos who bought the land, cultivated it, planted oranges, and became very successful citrus growers. The people who lived in Pomona who were Hispanic and had come here in the late 1700s and early 1800s became the labor force. They're the ones who harvested the oranges and lemons. On the outskirts of Pomona and in Chino there was a great agricultural industry. A lot of people from Pomona worked in the fields in Chino . . .” (4-6)

 

CARLOS VASQUEZ:  When you say discrimination wasn't noticed, by whom was it not noticed? 

Soto: The Anglos.
Vasquez: Did you notice it?

Soto: Oh, yes. (6-7)

Soto: Some people don't like to admit to this—that is, people who are old-timers in Pomona--but Mexicans were not allowed to live on the north side of town.


Vasquez: There were restrictive covenants in the selling of homes?

Soto: There wasn't any [legal] segregation, it was sort of de facto segregation. It wasn't anything that was written. It was just understood that you lived in a certain part of town if you were Mexican. They didn't recognize that you were Spanish, like my dad was. His great-grandmother was from Spain. They didn't recognize it. They didn't really care, and I don't think the dignity that was owed him was given. But he didn't seem to mind. He just went on his way and didn't need them for anything. He just didn't get in their way. My mother never allowed us to be humiliated in that manner. She would say, "No, you don't go there, because you're not wanted. You're not going to go there.”

Vasquez:  Why were you not wanted at the swimming pool? 

Soto:  Because we were "Mexicans" even though we were considered Spanish by my parents. They had only one day in which Mexicans could swim.

Vasquez:  What day was that?

Soto: I don't remember if it was Monday or Friday, but on that day the pool would be cleaned out at night. Then the Anglo kids would swim. If there was a Mexican child who didn't know the rules and went there, they would just chase him away, ‘No, Mexicans aren't allowed in here.’ The same way in the theaters. There were a lot of places where they wouldn't allow Mexicans. They didn't hire any Hispanics on Second Street until the end of the war.

Vasquez:  What is Second Street?

Soto: Second Street was where the main shopping [district] used to be. I was one of the first  Hispanlcs to go to work on Second Street. I worked as a salesgirl [at the] National Dollar Store. I'll never forget it, because the man had the courage to give me a job. It must have been 1943 or '44, towards the end of the war. There were only maybe two of us Mexican/ Hispanic girls working on Second Street- At the time my mother used to tell us, “Don't let anybody tell you that you're not as good as anybody else. You go out there and you look for a job. You make them see that you're smart and you can do the job.”  She never really let us believe that we were less than anybody else because we were Hispanic/Mexicans And she used to say, “You're not Mexicans. You just have to remember that. You're not Mexicans as in 'came from Mexico.' You're Spaniards like your father is. You have to remember that.”  My dad was very proud of the fact that he was a Spaniard, a pioneer-native rather than a Mexican. Because he was a Spaniard. But my mother came from Tecate, Baja California. She was very proud of the fact. I could never see myself saying, "I'm Spanish." I always said, "I'm a Mexican."

I didn't see the difference.

Vasquez:  Now, when the war came along and you went to work in the defense industries, was the composition there pretty reflective of the society? That is to say, was there discrimination there too?

Soto: In the factory that I worked in in Pomona, there were a lot of Mexican girls from school who went to work there. And there were some Anglos.

Vasquez:  Was there any pay differential?

Soto:  No. Not that I knew of. Even my mother worked there, because they needed it. One thing happened which I think is very significant. It's not written in history books, but I think it should be. We moved to the outskirts of Pomona one day, because in those old days, when you were poor, you just kept moving. You moved around a lot.

Vasquez:  Why was that?

Soto: Because you just sometimes couldn't afford to pay the rent. You would go two or three months without paying your rent and get evicted-. You’d go find another house for rent. You didn't need a first or last month's rent. You would just need a few dollars and you could move in. We moved to the outskirts of Pomona towards Chino. The Chino school was closer than the Pomona school, so my mother took my little brother and sister there. I didn't want to go there because I was already in high school and wanted to go to Pomona. My mother took the kids to Chino. The schools were segregated. There wasn't any covenant, as you call it, or de facto [segregation]. It was blatant. She took them to the Anglo school [Chino High School]. The principal told my mother that her children couldn't go there because they were Mexicans. 

She asked, “Why? My children are Americans.”

He said, "No. No, they're Mexicans and they can't go here."

She said, ‘Okay, will a bullet go around my son should he go into the service? Since he's a Mexican, is the bullet going to go around him? . . . I want you to answer that. He's an American. He's going to be fighting for his country. Is a bullet going to go around him? Or is it going to stop with him just like it does with the other kids?’

Vasquez:  What answer did she get?

Soto: Nothing. He let the kids in . . .

So I used to tell my mother afterwards, during the days of the civil rights movement and everything that was going on, I'd say, ‘Mom, you don't even realize that you were a pioneer in integration, because of what happened in Little Rock [Arkansas] and so forth.’ . . . I said, ‘You know, you were probably one of the first people that had the nerve to stand up to people who were segregating children.’ 

I wish that somebody would have been there to record that, because it was very significant around here. Nobody had the nerve to stand up to those people. And she did. She called him a dirty name.

She said [whispers], ‘You sonuvabitch, is a bullet going to go around my son?’ (7-11)

 

Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books and writer in training, but mostly a photographer. Julian is the founder of Mirrored Society Books. Julian was once called a “bitter artist” on the Nextdoor app. Julian embraces name calling, because he believes when people express themselves uncensored, they are their most creative self.

Pamela Casey Nagler, Pomona-born, is an independent scholar, currently conducting research on California’s indigenous people, focusing on the Spanish, Russian, Mexican and US invasions between 1769 and the 1860s. The point of studying this history is to tell us how we got here from there.