‘Pioneer’ Black Activist Reflects on O.C. Progress

On a Friday evening in 1963, a couple from a neighborhood in Orange phoned Los Angeles residents Ken and Jo Caines and asked to visit. The couple arrived, accepted a cup of coffee and offered the Caineses $500 not to move to their block.

It wasn’t prejudice, the visitors explained nervously. It was, said the couple, the fact that two minority families--one black and one Asian--already lived on their block, and residents felt that it would be more difficult to sell their homes at top prices if there were three.

Today, as the county observes Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Jo Caines sees a more hospitable--but still less than ideal--climate for blacks in Orange County.

“I feel things are better. But there is still discrimination and prejudice,” said Caines, 60, an active member of two dozen community organizations and director of community relations for KOCE-TV, Channel 50, the county’s public television station. “Opportunities still have to be opened so we can have a piece of the pie.”

Anyone outside Orange County looking in would see what appears to be progress: two black college presidents and more black families who earn at least $50,000 than most other places. But inside, blacks earn 70% that of whites, similar to the national average, according to the Urban League. Their numbers hover at 1% or less of the population compared with 12.2% nationally. There are no elected black officials in the county, and black youths suffer high drop-out and unemployment rates.

Moreover, while some black families have congregated in Irvine, Huntington Beach, Fullerton and Santa Ana, the majority are middle-class families scattered throughout the county without a tangible community, making social life difficult, particularly for young adults.

“The black population in Orange County is different,” Caines said. “We have a small poverty pocket. Most are upper or middle class and have fulfilled that dream--buying a home and living where you want.” But consequently, she said, “We’re everywhere. We can’t find each other.”

As a result of social isolation, some have moved out. But those who have stayed regard the Caineses as hardy pioneers in what was once the nearly all-white frontier of suburbia.

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Jo Caines calls herself a “mutt,” a “black,” whose ancestors included a Jewish white grandmother, an Indian great-grandfather as well as Nat Turner, the infamous 19th-Century black preacher who was hanged following a slave rebellion in which 60 Virginia whites were killed.

“I’m proud to call myself black; I wouldn’t be Jo Caines without all that.”

But, born into a Philadelphia family with a few wealthy relatives, she knows she has not suffered as did the Southern blacks. “I would never put myself in that category,” she said.

She was raised the only child of restaurateurs who valued education and gave her a strong sense of self-esteem, making her feel that she was the most important thing in their lives, she said.

Caines faced prejudice from white teachers who thought she should not go to college, as well as jealousy from less fortunate black girls who taunted her about the fancy “pencil curls” her father put in her long hair. “My mom and dad always told me to turn the other cheek,” she said. They said, ‘They have problems and you have to understand them.’ ”

With top grades and an outgoing personality, Caines majored in English and drama at New York University, where she met her husband, Ken, a native of the West Indies, whose parents were homeowners in the Bronx.

“We knew we didn’t want to bring our kids up in New York,” she said. “We wanted more open space.”

Their odyssey took them first to Denver, then to Lompoc and Los Angeles and finally Orange County where they had found their $27,500 dream house. It was a glass-walled atrium tract home built by Los Angeles architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick E. Emmons and marketed by the progressive developer Joseph Eichler, whom the Caineses knew as a pioneer in qualifying buyers equally, regardless of race.

But when the neighbors heard that a second black family was moving in, they became scared, recalled Joyce Conrad, who lives across the street. “The neighbors thought it was blockbusting, like in Chicago where a black would move in, the whites would leave, more blacks would move in and get the houses for less.” While some wanted to meet them “and judge them on their own merits,” others supported the couple who made the $500 offer, she said.

Jo Caines said her husband jokingly asked for $2,500 and then politely refused, saying, “You can’t offer us anything. We want to be good neighbors and good friends of yours.”

A few weeks later, they attended a meeting in the neighborhood to discuss their impending move.

“Ken spoke of the logic of our decision: that the center of the tract was safer for the kids to play and that the lots were larger,” Jo Caines recalled.

“I was very dramatic. I said, ‘Believe me, we love like you love. We bleed like you bleed.’ They still talk about that,” she said laughing.

“Ken was absolutely wonderful, Jo was warm and human,” Conrad recalled. “Everyone liked her immediately.” The Caineses blended into the tight-knit neighborhood and have made close friends through 27 years of neighborhood potlucks, songfests and teen-age bands, she said.

The Caines children were the only blacks in their elementary schools. They ran into problems only later when they reached dating age and some white parents balked at interracial dating, Caines said. To help their daughter socially, Caines said, they sent her to interracial summer camps run by the National Council for Catholics and Jews.

Both her son and daughter eventually married whites, Caines said. Although Caines taught them that “people are people” and “skin color comes second,” she said she teases her other son that she hopes he finds a black wife.

Throughout the civil rights movement, Caines said, she was a sympathizer but not a demonstrator.

“We were not marchers. We were writers of letters.”

Caines said blacks need three types of leaders--the radicals, who can get people’s attention; the educators, who can make people understand issues of poverty, inequality, unemployment and housing; and people like herself, who help create policies, get involved with traditional organizations and institutions, who can “make an impact where the power is.”

As a community activist, she said, she was able to make people listen by saving her most ardent appeals for the causes that mattered to her most: the creation of the Orange County Fair Housing Council, the Commission on the Status of Women and the Human Relations Commission, the county’s civil rights office.

Her husband, a management consultant, also became involved in city politics. He waged unsuccessful campaigns in 1972 and 1978 for City Council. They do not believe race was a factor in the campaign.

Her son Chris was elected student body president of Villa Park High School.

Jo served on the Orange County Grand Jury, the board of the United Way, numerous councils, commissions and advisory boards including the African American Council of the Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County.

In United Way, she said, she encourages the board not to cross off inexperienced grass-roots minority organizations for grants if they provide a needed service. At the same time, she said, she discourages a “poor me” attitude among minorities looking for funds. “You ask because it is a community need, not because ‘we’re poor blacks and you owe us.’ You come with your head high, your shoulders back and say, ‘This is a need in our community.’ ”

Caines has received so many awards over the years that the plaques no longer fit on her office wall and pile up in boxes underneath a table.

Caines said one black group rejected her several times for an award because they thought she was not “black enough.”

“I didn’t live in a black community. I didn’t go to a black church,” she said.

“I was helping the blacks, but also the disenfranchised, women and children (of other races).”

Women’s groups who also wanted her to get involved solely with their organizations have been equally disappointed, Caines said. “I had to concentrate on the whole ball of wax,” she said.

For blacks to succeed in Orange County, Caines said, they must pull together with other minorities. “We’re spread so thin, we need to develop partnerships.”

“Santa Ana took forever to get a black on the school board,” she said, referring to Sadie Reid-Benham, who has moved to Los Angeles. “It’s almost written: The minorities cancel each other out. We need to say, ‘This year, we’ll support you, black candidate. Next year, we’ll support you, Hispanic candidate.’ ”

Moreover, she said it’s important to teach about black contributions to make sure black youngsters appreciate their culture heritage.

And, perhaps most of all, she said, blacks need to follow the example of Martin Luther King Jr. and demonstrate that prejudice against one minority is harmful to all.