2 months ago
PALM SPRINGS —
Alvin Taylor and his wife, Delia Ruiz Taylor, look retired complete a vacant batch owned by nan Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and fto puerility memories flood nan quiet space.
In nan precocious 1950s and early 60s, erstwhile nan brace were successful people school, nan batch was portion of nan square-mile tract known arsenic Section 14. It was astir nan only spot successful municipality wherever workers of color, Indigenous Americans and different marginalized group could unrecorded successful a godforsaken playground that catered to nan rich, glamorous and white.
Neighbors looked retired for 1 different successful Section 14, nan mates said, and dissimilar successful nan remainder of nan city, wherever galore of nan tract’s residents worked arsenic cooks, cleaners and building workers, cipher seemed to attraction astir nan colour of your skin.
“We were safe and comfortable pinch it being Indian onshore because achromatic group didn’t want america surviving anyplace else,” said Alvin Taylor, now 71. “On nan reservation, we were each 1 large community.”
That tone of fellowship prompted Taylor to subordinate an experimental theatre accumulation that dramatizes nan neighborhood’s chopped characteristic and explores nan complexities of its demise: “Displacement: Stories From Section 14.”
A Coachella Valley theatre institution rehearses for a shape reference of “Displacement: Stories From Section 14,” which dramatizes nan displacement of working-class residents from Section 14, wherever nan homes of hundreds of residents were razed successful nan 1960s.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Taylor wants audiences to cognize that a full world was destroyed erstwhile his home, Ruiz’s location and dozens of others successful Section 14 were either razed aliases burned to nan crushed betwixt 1959 and 1968 successful acts that nan authorities lawyer general’s agency said amounted to “a city-engineered holocaust.”
The series of staged readings by Green Room Theatre Co. is group to tally June 22 and 23 astatine United Methodist Church of Palm Springs and June 28 to 30 astatine nan Coachella Library’s Community Room.
The accumulation comes arsenic 350 survivors from Section 14 and much than 1,000 descendants activity restitution for nan profound nonaccomplishment and trauma their families faced. It besides takes spot during a statewide reckoning complete slavery and group injustice. A package of historical reparations bills is moving done nan authorities Legislature, and Indigenous Californians person made their ain strides successful safeguarding, reclaiming and co-stewarding stolen ancestral lands.
Although immoderate Palm Springs residents conflict that group hostility led to nan evictions, metropolis officials issued an apology successful 2021 and precocious pledged to “right that wrong.” The metropolis is engaged successful colony talks pinch nan Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors group, which Taylor helped recovered earlier stepping distant recently.
Alvin Taylor successful Section 14, wherever his family’s location was seized.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“Everything was taken distant from us,” Taylor said of nan harm families specified arsenic his suffered.
But really do you cipher successful dollars and cents — aliases seizure successful a organization theatre accumulation — nan nonaccomplishment of belonging and societal harmony that survivors opportunity they discovered astatine Section 14? Further complicating nan story, nan onshore was marked by trauma agelong earlier Black and brownish transplants built their dwellings connected it.
The people has been mostly silent successful nan restitution debate, but astatine nan Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, video displays explicate really their onshore was seized and divided into parcels arsenic newcomers flocked to nan desert.
With fewer options to raise gross for nan tribe, individual Agua Caliente members had rented onshore to newcomers of colour who were barred by existent property covenants from surviving elsewhere successful Palm Springs.
By nan precocious 1950s, though, Agua Caliente spot owners were forced to salary for court-appointed conservators to power nan guidance of their plots, including terminating leases and moving pinch nan metropolis to transportation retired evictions, according to a 2019 article successful nan Smithsonian’s American Indian Magazine about nan tribe’s struggle for sovereignty.
An undated photograph of residential structures connected a parcel of onshore successful downtown Palm Springs called Section 14. Homes were demolished successful nan early 1960s, displacing arsenic galore arsenic 1,000 people, including hundreds of African Americans.
(USC Library of Special Collection)
It’s a acheronian and messy history. The staged reference isn’t meant to relitigate past wrongs but to “uplift nan voices, nan truth and nan humanity of nan group who lived successful that space” and thief audiences subordinate to their plight, said Allison Scarlet Jaye, 1 of nan playwrights.
There were bully times mixed successful pinch nan bad, nan Taylors said.
Taylor, who is Black American, and Ruiz Taylor, who is Mexican American, grin erstwhile remembering really nan ungraded roads successful Section 14 were truthful constrictive that cars had to scoot complete to walk each other. Kids would stroll to nan adjacent Fosters Freeze for soft-serve crystal cream.
Taylor fondly impersonates nan roving saccharine murphy vendor who shouted into his loudspeaker: “All you small children playing successful nan sand, spell show your mama, ‘Here’s nan Sweet Potato Man!’”
Ruiz Taylor happily recalls stepping alongside a comparative of her relative who traveled up from Tijuana to waste tamales from her small reddish wagon.
When nan evictions started, Taylor says, his family and others bunked successful nan homes of generous neighbors successful Section 14, only to person to move again erstwhile those families’ houses were slated for demolition too. Taylor was conscionable 8 astatine nan time. He remembers emotion arsenic if he and his neighbors were being herded for illustration animals.
“As we continued to move from 1 location to nan different location — coming location and seeing nan location pain and smelling nan smoke, seeing nan bulldozers tearing down nan structures — it was a horrifying ordeal,” Taylor said. “Believe it aliases not, I still person nightmares.”
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Ruiz Taylor, 72, says she was astir to participate nan seventh people erstwhile her family moved out. Banks refused to lend her family money because they were Latino. When they recovered a spot connected nan dusty outskirts of town, achromatic neighbors hurled group insults and yelled for them to “go backmost to Mexico.” One young man changeable her successful nan limb pinch a BB gun, she says.
“When they took america retired of here, oh, we hated it,” she said. “I was deathly afraid. I didn’t cognize astir thing other but surviving here.”
Taylor suppressed his ain intelligence anguish arsenic he became a renowned drummer. Little Richard saw him beryllium successful pinch a set performing astatine nan Palm Springs Biltmore Hotel erstwhile he was a 14-year-old busboy, and earlier Taylor knew it, he was opening for Elvis Presley successful Vegas. He played pinch nan likes of Tina Turner, Bill Withers, Jimi Hendrix, Ron Wood and Cher, recorded euphony astatine George Harrison’s house, partied connected nan Concorde pinch Elton John and built a castle for himself successful nan Hollywood Hills.
Living a life of sex, narcotics and stone ‘n’ rotation offered a distraction, for a while.
Taylor says he yet sewage sober pinch thief from his friend Eric Clapton. Years of therapy and moving backmost to his hometown person helped Taylor afloat understand why he needed to flight from himself truthful badly. He credits his continued betterment to Ruiz Taylor, his boyhood crush and a chap subsister whom he joined successful 2012.
Alvin Taylor has a prima connected nan Palm Springs Walk of Stars.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
While nan rocker has a plaque connected nan Palm Springs Walk of Stars, crossed nan thoroughfare from Presley’s, he says he still suffers from post-traumatic accent because of what his family endured conscionable a fewer minutes’ thrust away.
He hopes nan theatre accumulation — successful which he serves arsenic a imaginative advisor and a formed personnel — will thief audiences spot nan calamity of Section 14 successful a clearer light.
Taylor precocious parted ways pinch nan survivors group, which is helmed by his sister Pearl Devers and represented by nan Los Angeles civilian authorities lawyer Areva Martin, because of soul conflicts complete a strategy that he believes focuses excessively overmuch connected anti-Black racism arsenic a origin of nan evictions.
Taylor agrees that achromatic supremacy runs done Palm Springs’s history and that achromatic residents coming must beryllium consenting to ain up to that legacy. But he believes nan communicative of Section 14 was much astir nan erasure of a loving and inclusive working-class vicinity that didn’t mesh pinch nan city’s glamorous image.
A thoroughfare segment adjacent nan El Patron edifice successful downtown Palm Springs.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Martin said that while she’s not opposed to a play astir Section 14, she believes nan timing is premature and that it’s unwise for survivors to return part, fixed that nan group is successful delicate ineligible talks pinch nan city.
She rejected nan conception that nan group has go excessively focused connected Black survivors, noting that nan group has called for establishing a group and taste treatment halfway wherever survivors of each backgrounds tin stock their stories. Martin said that nan group has made efforts to admit and observe nan Latino survivors and that it has welcomed support from nan city’s ample LGBTQ+ community.
In consequence to an L.A. Times petition for remark astir Taylor’s concerns and his information successful nan production, nan Palm Springs Section 14 group emailed a connection from its governing board, which includes Devers.
“We cognize that successful each conflict for justice, location are forces that will activity to disagreement america and distract america from nan ngo astatine hand,” nan connection reads. “As we ever have, we stay singularly focused connected reaching a solution successful business pinch nan City of Palm Springs. That — and only that — will stay our apical privilege until location is restitution.”
Taylor says he wants only to make judge nan staged reference accurately captures nan experiences of each who called Section 14 home.
“It’s my emotion that arsenic a Section 14 subsister and a founding personnel of nan survivors group that if personification was to spell and do a play, they’ve sewage to talk to personification who was there,” he said.
Alvin Taylor, left, laughs pinch formed personnel Eddie Stephens during a rehearsal for “Displacement: Stories From Section 14,” astir nan forced removal of residents from Section 14.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
During 1 caller rehearsal, formed members from different group backgrounds publication pieces of narration and speech that they’ve written and that Jaye and chap playwright Jerome Joseph Gentes will style into a last script.
Taylor, his slim framework draped successful a button-down garment pinch a jazzy geometric print, offers humanities specifications to guideline nan group discussion.
Throughout nan rehearsal, nan actors represent Section 14 arsenic a bubble — geographically attached to Palm Springs, yet socially sealed disconnected from it. Until nan mid-1960s, astir of nan city’s resorts, nightspots and state clubs were off-limits to patrons of colour and Jews. Taylor says his mother crossed backmost and distant betwixt those worlds because she worked arsenic a housekeeper for Lucille Ball.
Director and theatre institution Executive Artistic Director David Catanzarite says his attraction arsenic an creator pinch a mixed inheritance is to illuminate nan overlooked stories of Black and brownish group successful nan Coachella Valley. While nan Section 14 calamity is well-documented, those humanities facts incorporate galore layers that make for rich | worldly connected which to guidelines a fictional account, he said.
Above all, Catanzarite wants nan accumulation to thief Palm Springs reckon pinch its past and move toward corporate healing.
“This is simply a truth and reconciliation project,” he said.
Gentes, a caller transplant to Palm Springs who is descended from nan Gros Ventre and Standing Rock tribes, says he hopes that Section 14 survivors get justice. But he wonders: Is location ever a cleanable infinitesimal to prosecute artistically pinch a trauma that sweeps up truthful galore lives and reveals truthful overmuch astir a city’s societal fabric?
“Theater tin astatine slightest jump-start nan conversation,” Gentes said.
For Taylor, who’s astir to people a memoir documenting his life and career, truth-telling remains an agonizing endeavor.
“I could commencement crying immoderate minute,” he said by telephone earlier revisiting Section 14 pinch his wife.
Joe Abner pinch his wife, Vera, locomotion done a batch that was erstwhile a portion of Section 14 wherever he grew up successful Palm Springs.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Taylor says he has friends from nan aged Section 14 who are still mislaid and surviving pinch supplier and intoxicant problems that he believes stem from nan traumas they endured arsenic survivors. He wants his foray into theatre to show them that it’s patient to analyse nan guidelines causes of your life crises.
At nan tract pinch Ruiz Taylor, Taylor’s sound cracks arsenic he reflects connected what his vicinity meant to him. Overgrown writer yellows successful nan basking godforsaken sun. Only a fewer actual foundations stay wherever homes erstwhile stood.
Mt. San Jacinto rises much than 10,000 feet supra a skyline of glistening palms.
It is simply a bittersweet opportunity for Taylor to contemplate nan meaning of location and nan worth of reclaiming — astatine slightest connected an affectional level — wherever you came from.
