Difficulty Nothing New to Residents of Pacoima

Residents of Pacoima have faced hardships for decades, shaped in large measure by the racial bias of the post-World War II years.

Discrimination kept many African American families out of other areas of the Valley, said the Rev. Zedar E. Broadous, president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

The Pacoima area was well known as a black enclave. It included a neighborhood known as the Joe Louis tract, after the former heavyweight boxing champion, who was involved in the housing development.

“The reason it attracted them was, at that time, that was the only place they were allowed to buy homes,” said Broadous, whose family was among those who moved in. “If a black family looked for a home, that is where the real estate agent took them.”

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, many Pacoima neighborhoods had a majority of African American residents, he said.

As blacks gained upward mobility and discriminatory housing practices were outlawed, an exodus of African American families occurred in the 1970s, Broadous said. They have been replaced over the past three decades by Latino families, including many poorer immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

It has been a “dramatic shift” in demographics from the days of his youth, Broadous said.

The most recent figures, for 1998, show Pacoima as 6.8% black, 80.4% Latino and 6.3% white.

According to the 1990 census, the most recent statistics available, 53.4% of Pacoima’s residents are foreign-born, compared with 38.8% of the population of Los Angeles.