Black people migrated from exploitative sharecropping and overt racism in the South and Midwest, further west in hopes of prospering in California’s booming agricultural market.
They had no idea the trouble it would cause their families for generations to come.
Despite California’s dreamy reputation, many all-Black communities like Teviston in the Central Valley experienced harsh droughts and years without access to running water.
Families who had sacrificed everything to claim their share of the Golden State’s rumored prosperity were instead haunted by an old enemy.
20th century Jim Crow laws still ruled how resources were divided. Cities often enforced curfews that stifled productivity and freedom as discriminatory banking practices limited the land available to Black homesteaders for purchase and cultivation.
This left Black communities with only one option: to settle undesirable arid land on the fringes of fruitful farmlands. The evidence of this trend and its impact on subsequent generations can still be felt today.
The New York Times reported that “the legacy of segregation in the Central Valley reverberates underground, through old pipes, dry wells and soil tainted by shoddy septic systems... Rural redlining, poverty, and regulatory gaps have left hundreds of thousands of people vulnerable and distrustful.”
The United States has plenty of reliable freshwater and waste removal systems, yet because of this nations’ racist roots, access is tragically not universal.