Palm Haven was a "residence park." I have researched other residence parks from around the early 1900s and nearly all that were advertised as "residence parks" had race clauses in their deeds.

Surprising? Not at all.

In 1910, Baltimore, Md. approved the first city ordinance segregating neighborhoods. Similar ordinances followed all over the country. In 1913, the federal government carried this further when President Woodrow Wilson's administration began government-wide segregation rules.

In 1913, the year Palm Haven opened, the California enacted the Alien Land Law, which prohibited foreigners from owning, purchasing or leasing land for more than three years. That law was not repealed until 1956.

More than 400 state laws, constitutional amendments and city ordinances legalizing segregation and discrimination were passed in the United States between 1865 and 1967. These laws governed nearly every aspect of daily life, from education to public transportation, from health care and housing to the use of public facilities. Outside the South, California passed more Jim Crow laws--17--than any other state in the country.

An amendment to the California State Political Code in 1921 established separate schools for Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian children. By 1924, with the exception of Filipino "nationals," all Asian immigrants, including Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indians, were fully segregated by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land.

However, in 1963, California became one of the first states to enact a fair-housing law targeting discrimination in all aspects of housing through the Rumford Act. The following year an overwhelming majority of Californians voted in favor of Proposition 14--a measure spearheaded by the California Real Estate Association--to repeal the progressive act. But three years later, in 1966, the California Supreme Court found the proposition to be unconstitutional.

On April 11, 1968, just one week after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, the Federal Fair Housing Act was put into law.

On Eklund's "Writer Guy" website for North Willow Glen, it indicates that the race clause on Palm Haven deeds is "undeletable." This is not true. The Federal Fair Housing Act not only supersedes all other housing discrimination laws, it also holds a provision to allow a person to request that their local county recorder permanently remove discrimination clauses if they wish.

Residence park race clauses simply reflected the attitudes and higher state and federal laws of the time. But that does not deter people who live here today. Not only is there a diverse group of residents in Palm Haven but there are several interracial married couples. Interracial marriage was not made legal until 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court. And Gallup polls taken across the country showed for the first time in 1991 that a majority of U.S. citizens, 48 percent, approve of interracial marriages, versus 42 percent who do not.

So I agree with Eklund's statement, "You can't learn from history if you don't get the complete picture." I hope this more complete picture does just that.

Michael Borbely is a resident of Palm Haven and one of its local historians. He can be reached at mail@palmhaven.info.