How white people used police to make L.A. one of the most segregated cities in America

In the summer of 1948, more than 60 residents of the all-white community of Eagle Rock descended upon a home that was poised to sell to a Black family, breaking the neighborhood’s color barrier. The group contained some of the area’s most esteemed businessmen and homeowners, as well as a uniformed police officer. But this was no welcoming party. Upon arrival, the mob set a 12-foot cross aflame and watched it burn.

The timing of the cross burning was not coincidental. It happened shortly after the Supreme Court’s Shelley vs. Kraemer decision made racial covenants — which barred Black, Latino and other people of color from living in certain homes by deed — unenforceable by law. A key legal protection for state-sanctioned segregation had fallen.