Black Voices in Orange County: Community activist for fair housing and human rights;Director of community relations at KOCE Channel 50; Orange County resident for 27 years.

Jo Caines: She’s Scaled Lots of Mountains

When Jo Caines was about 16, a band played at her Atlantic City high school every day at lunchtime. The whites danced on the cafeteria floor. The blacks stayed in the balcony and never came down.

One day, Caines got mad.

“I went up there and yelled, ‘Why are you here? Nobody told you to stay here. You have every right to be down there. Exercise your rights. No one is doing this to you--you’re doing it to yourselves!’ ”

It took a few days, she said, but gradually the black students began to come down.

Almost half a century later, she hasn’t stopped fighting for rights.

“I’m just a person who gets passionate about causes that will improve people’s lives,” said Caines, 62, who talks with her hands. “I get angry about any inequity, about anyone who is treated unfairly.”

Today, scores of plaques and certificates that line the walls of her homey office are testimony to the Orange County activist who was instrumental in starting the Orange County Fair Housing Council, the Commission on the Status of Women and the Human Relations Commission, and who now works for more than two dozen groups.

Caines, whose ancestors include a Jewish grandmother, an Indian great-grandfather and Nat Turner, a slave who led an abortive revolt, was born in Philadelphia and educated at New York University.

About 30 years ago, she and her husband moved to Lompoc, a then-segregated town near Santa Barbara, where a petition was circulated to force them out. But by the time they moved to Los Angeles, the residents were fighting over who was going to give the going-away party, she said.

In 1963, the Caines moved to a house in Orange, despite a neighbor’s offer of $500 if they didn’t.

In 1964, she joined the League of Women Voters to help defeat a discriminatory housing bill. She went to white communities to talk about the rights of others to live where they choose. She was, in 1969, the first black woman accepted for the Orange County Grand Jury. Then her activities mushroomed.

“I do believe that there’s a plan for a person,” she said. “Yes, you can persuade it this way and that, but it’s almost set. Rather than marching, carrying placards and protesting, my role was one of policy and decision-making. Some causes were big, and some were little. They were all important to someone.”

Failure, she said, “is impossible. Even if it doesn’t turn out like you want, if you learn from it, it’s not a failure.”

Laughing, she added: “My children say if I moved to the mountains, I’d organize the birds and the bees and get them into some kind of support group.”

She picked up a National Black Hymn song sheet from a shelf.

“Lift ev’ry voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,” she sang. “Let our rejoicing rise, high as the list’ning skies.”

She smiled and raised an open palm.

“I love to sing,” she said.