Realtor, 85, Hailed for Helping Blacks Desegregate Valley

In the late 1950s, armed with a realtor’s license and a strong desire to succeed, James Robinson began selling homes in a tiny area of Pacoima in the northeast San Fernando Valley--the only part of the Valley in which African Americans were welcome.

Then, ignoring the unspoken racial covenants of the day, Robinson began selling homes to blacks in formerly segregated Valley neighborhoods during the early 1960s.

He became a master trader, able to navigate over and around white residents enraged by the idea of having black neighbors.

It is a story of bittersweet reflection, of a time before federal civil rights laws and affirmative action policies, and at 85 Robinson is still around to tell it, and to be praised by those he helped.

“I was told that I wouldn’t be accepted--that I would never make it--because I was colored, but I wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “I was the first one out here, and I was trying to open the door up for the other folks.”

Robinson’s refusal to bend to peer pressure and threats cracked open the door for a slow but steady westward migration of black residents across the Valley from Pacoima.

Robinson “is kind of a living legend around here,” said Jim Ezell, a real estate agent with Mickie Ardi & Associates. “Longevity is not a cornerstone of our business, and he has been around forever.”

The Valley still has a small African American population--55,000, or about 4% of the region’s 1.5 million residents. That their numbers have spread to all geographical corners is now taken for granted.

In fact, the changes were painful. Some black realtors resented Robinson for selling homes to blacks outside Pacoima. “But I told them that I saw myself as the guy who was opening the gates so the rest could eventually come with me,” he said.

Born in the small east Texas city of Marshall, Robinson attended Shorter College in Little Rock, Ark., before working his way to Chicago and then to Los Angeles, where he met a man who would change his life: Joseph Beecham, a prominent African American real estate broker.

Robinson, who began working for Beecham in 1952, earned his own license in five years and decided to strike out on his own in Pacoima.

He began selling homes in Valley View Village, a 200-acre tract in Pacoima of about 1,000 bungalows built by retired heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. The small three-bedroom houses, most of which still stand on side streets between Foothill Boulevard and San Fernando Road, sold for between $9,500 and $12,500.

Everywhere in the nation, black opportunities to buy were severely limited. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1948 that racial exclusion covenants long common in residential deeds could not be legally enforced, the written prohibitions had been replaced by unspoken agreements among home sellers and real estate dealers. It was the kind of conduct that kept blacks restricted to small communities, such as Pacoima and South-Central Los Angeles--patterns that have yet to be completely broken.

“I sold homes (in Pacoima) to black teachers, preachers and business people, because that’s the only place they could live in the Valley,” Robinson said. “There were state laws on the books that made everything accessible to everyone, but uhere was still that gentleman’s agreement not to sell to blacks.”

Robinson was part of a small black professional community that ran businesses on Van Nuys Boulevard. His real estate office was next to a barbershop owned by Hillery T. Broadus. It was the place where black men sat, talked and compared their experiences, said Zedar Broadus, the barber’s son who today heads the San Fernando Valley chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 1962, influential members of the San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors nominated Robinson for membership. It gave him the access he needed to begin branching into sometimes hostile white neighborhoods in the West Valley.

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Not surprisingly, Robinson experienced difficulties from some residents in neighborhoods where he was trying to sell homes. Suspicious neighbors did everything from rip his “For Sale” signs from the ground to offer him a cash commission not to sell a home, he said.

Robinson’s days as a mentor and a realtor are pretty much over, but he still shows up at his one-room Mission Hills office, a couple of miles away from Pacoima, almost every day.

The faded license of Joseph Beecham, the man who gave Robinson his first job, hangs in the far corner of the room, complying with Beecham’s last wish.

“It seems like history was repeating itself,” Robinson said. “Because my license hung in his office first.”