As Palmdale Grapples With A Hanging Death, Locals Recall The Area's Racist History
NOEL KING, HOST:
A young Black man named Robert Fuller was found hanging in the Southern California desert. His death is under investigation. People who live nearby say they find it and another similar death very suspicious. They say the area has a long history of racism. Emily Elena Dugdale from member station KPCC reports from the area outside of Los Angeles known as the Antelope Valley.
EMILY ELENA DUGDALE, BYLINE: A large American flag ripples in the desert breeze at the park in the City of Palmdale where Robert Fuller's body was found in mid-June. That's not lost on community members who step up to the mic at a rally on a recent afternoon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Do you see the symbolism of why they put it under the flag?
DUGDALE: People here are skeptical that Fuller's death was a suicide, the initial explanation that the LA County Sheriff's Department issued and then retracted days later. Some locals call it a lynching. And they're demanding the California attorney general launch an independent investigation.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: No justice, no peace. No racist police.
AEZANA NORA: The things that I've gone through, that could have been me.
DUGDALE: Aezana Nora is Black. He grew up in Palmdale. And he's around the same age as Fuller. He says while growing up, white classmates told him the KKK was going to get him. And at 12 years old, he was chased out of a restaurant by men with swastika tattoos.
NORA: We kind of ran into, like, the desert area that we were close to and ran and hid in a bush.
DUGDALE: The Antelope Valley was predominantly white until the late 1970s, when Black and brown people started relocating to the area in search of more affordable and safer places to live. Neo-Nazis and skinhead groups have lurked in the area for decades linked to hate crimes, including stabbings and the firebombing of a Black church. And it's not just extremist groups. Other, more systemic forms of racism have plagued the area. Black renters receiving federal Section 8 housing assistance said they were being harassed by the sheriff's department.
TONI CLARK: I was so angry, you know?
DUGDALE: Toni Clark was one of them. In 2008, she and a friend were driving from a barbecue when they saw flashing lights from a deputy's car.
CLARK: They pulled us over. They treated my friend like crap.
DUGDALE: The deputy cited Clark for $5 worth of medical marijuana in her purse. Because of that, she lost her eligibility for Section 8 subsidies and became homeless.
CLARK: My kids were with friends. Sometimes, I would get a room.
DUGDALE: In 2015, a U.S. Justice Department investigation found that LA County Housing Authority investigators and the sheriff's department worked together to discriminate against Black Section 8 residents in the hopes of driving them out of the valley. At a press conference about Robert Fuller's death, I asked LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva about how the region's history of racial discrimination, which included his department, affected community trust.
ALEX VILLANUEVA: That happened before I took office as sheriff. I think the reforms have been put in place. They're working today.
DUGDALE: Villanueva said officers are part of the community and many do live in the area. But many Black residents say that Antelope Valley's problems persist. Here's how Toni Clark, who grew up in Pasadena before moving to the Antelope Valley, puts it.
CLARK: They didn't want Pasadena out here. They don't want Los Angeles out here. They don't want no Blacks out here.
DUGDALE: A few days after Robert Fuller's death, Clark was talking to a relative about the protests.
CLARK: And she goes, that's our cousin.
DUGDALE: Turns out Clark was related to Fuller. It's a connection and a cycle of racism that she and her loved ones in the Antelope Valley say they've dealt with for decades. For NPR News, I'm Emily Elena Dugdale in California's Antelope Valley.
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