The first Palm Springs Black History Tour, in 2021, was a 100-car caravan that nearly shut down the city.
In a clever attempt to deal with COVID-19 restrictions, participants lined up in their own cars, and the tour commenced with narration broadcast via FM radio. What could go wrong?
Deiter Crawford laughed as he recounts the epic traffic jam. A police escort provided by the city was outnumbered from the start. There was lots of honking from gridlocked motorists, along with some angry gestures. It was chaos, but it taught organizers a lesson: They had a hit on their hands.
Today’s version of the tour happens in a charter bus, or in SUVs and off-road vehicles for smaller groups. The narration is provided in person. However, the mission is the same: to present the greater Palm Springs area through the lens of Black residents whose contributions are an enduring part of the culture.
The tour runs under the banner of Urban Palm Springs. Founder and CEO Deiter Crawford and his cousin, Jarvis Crawford, are fourth-generation Palm Springs residents. They’ve amassed a catalog of information about the Black community here. Their volunteer-based nonprofit, the Palm Springs Black History Committee, partners with the city to provide programming for Black History Month and throughout the year.
This year’s tour program includes an update: The Palm Springs City Council recently approved a $5.9 million reparations settlement for families who were forcibly evicted from Section 14 in the 1950s and 60s.
This particular tour started at Section 14. The plot, a square mile, is bigger than you’d think. The west border runs through the center of downtown Palm Springs. On the eastern border, there are vacant lots where slabs from razed houses protrude aboveground. The tour guides point out a defunct cemetery where Blacks were allowed to be buried alongside Indigenous residents.
The tour winds through the Black neighborhoods that grew out of the razing of Section 14. In the Desert Highland Gateway Estates and Lawrence Crossley neighborhoods, Crawfords point out examples of midcentury modern design. They note the slanted roofs, decorative breeze blocks and floor-to-ceiling windows.
Buildings designed by renowned architect Paul R. Williams are on the tour, as are developments owned and operated by Crossley, a famed entrepreneur. Black celebrities get their due as well; the tour points out where luminaries from Sammy Davis Jr. to Rosa Parks performed or found accommodations.
About 50 participants, myself included, took a special edition of the tour for Black History Month on Feb. 17. (Normal tours usually have fewer attendees.) The Independent spoke to three attendees and asked them to share their connection to Black history in Palm Springs, and their reactions to the tour.
Nancy Asin and Jack Dimond, self-described “snowbirds” from Ann Arbor, Mich., have been regular visitors to Palm Springs since 2013. Asin grew up in upstate New York, but her parents moved to Palm Desert years ago. She visited them often before becoming a part-timer and considers herself pretty well-versed in the Palm Springs cultural scene. A retired administrator for the University of Michigan Board of Regents, Asin spends about eight weeks here during the winter months. The couple came to the Urban Palm Springs tour on the recommendation of a friend.
“A good friend of ours, she and her husband live in L.A., but they also have a place out here,” Asin said. “She went last year. She told me how much she liked it. She had told me about the documentary Racist Trees and how we should watch it. We did watch it over the past year, so when I got the email saying, ‘You should sign up for this,’ we did.”
Dimond said the tour was informative, but he would have liked better explanations of some of the references.
Said Asin: “When you come here just as a winter person, as a snowbird, you don’t really see any part of the African-American community like that. I thought it was eye-opening to learn about it and see the parts of town where people live.”
Octavious Scott brought 12 people with him on the Urban Palm Springs tour. He said it was important for him that his constituents see where he grew up.
The Navy veteran was elected to the Twentynine Palms City Council in 2022.
“It was awesome,” Scott said about the tour. “I felt like everybody was excited to be there, and it was an honor for me to represent my community and to show people from Twentynine Palms this is where I come from, and this is maybe why I am the way I am.
“You know, Twentynine Palms is different from Palm Springs. I think when I first got elected, people were like, ‘Why is this guy so politically active?’ Well, I come from an area that’s very politically active. I come from a place where we’ve had to fight for everything that we have.”
Scott owns a home in Desert Highland Gateway Estates. He has family members who live there, and he has known Jarvis and Deiter since his school days. Deiter ran Scott’s successful campaign for the Twentynine Palms City Council.
“Deiter) has been hosting these tours for a while, and as a council member in Twentynine Palms, I’ve been wanting to bridge that gap between our cities, because we’re not close, but not that far from each other,” Scott said.
Scott has family members who were Section 14 survivors.
“My great-grandparents came from East Texas, along with my grandparents on my mom’s side,” he said. “They were on Section 14, and they were displaced. My great-grandparents, they moved to Banning. My grandparents (moved) to the Desert Highland Gateway Estates, where we’re at today.”
Scott said he’s looking at ways to bring more tourism and housing to Twentynine Palms.
“I was showing some of the houses (in Palm Springs) that were self-help construction homes, including a house that I still own in that neighborhood. We actually built (them) through a partnership called the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition,” he said. “That’s one of our things, building homes, because we don’t have a high home ownership rate. We have more of a renter market, so we want to increase home ownership. We’re talking with (the CVHC) now, in Twentynine Palms, to fill that need.”
Yolanda and Cary Eatmon moved to the Coachella Valley because West Covina was becoming too pricey. Married in 2019, they live in Cathedral City, and have worked throughout Los Angeles and Riverside counties in the areas of health care, construction management and arts leadership.
Yolanda said she teaches online classes in business project management at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. She plans to retire this year and is writing a book on the subject from a female perspective.
“It’s from the perspective of a minority in a very heavily financially driven industry,” she said. “(Many minorities) have been limited to either public service jobs or working in community development or the nonprofit (arena).”
Yolanda Eatmon was especially excited about the stops on the tour that paid homage to the architecture of Paul R. Williams. She, like Williams, is an alumnus of the USC School of Architecture.
Yolanda’s hairdresser invited her to an event with the Palm Springs Black History Committee.
“I call her the welcome line of the Coachella Valley,” Yolanda said. “So, I go to get my hair done in January, and she tells me that she’s getting a lifetime achievement award at the committee’s awards gala.”
The Eatmons went to the gala—and booked seats on the tour.
Yolanda was especially excited about the stops on the tour that paid homage to the architecture of Paul R. Williams. She, like Williams, is an alumnus of the USC School of Architecture.
Willis Edwards, a longtime resident of Desert Highland Gateway Estates who died in 2012, was a contemporary of Yolanda’s.
“He was the guy who started the NAACP awards show,” Eatmon said. “I knew him at Cal State-Los Angeles, so it was a long time ago.”
For Eatmon, the tour reinforced a phenomenon she has encountered throughout her life: the inter-connectedness of Black communities. It motivates her to keep working, and she said she’s looking for ways to contribute the expertise she has gained throughout her career, and to get more involved with the community here.
Urban Palm Springs provides two tour options: the Palm Springs Black History Tour (2-3 hours) and the Black Modernism Architectural Tour (2 hours). Tours depart at 2 p.m. from the Palm Springs Visitors’ Center, 2901 N. Palm Canyon Drive. For tickets or information, call 760-641-4652, or visit urbanpalmsprings.com.
Are the tours still going on after this week of modernization. Would like to take the tour.
Yes. Info can be found at the end of the article.