The Browns of California Page 8

  Pat did make a difference, real and symbolic, with his appointments. He hired the first black assistant district attorney in the state and the first Chinese. Three of his twenty-six deputies were women. Several were Republicans.

  His commitment to diversity came as the social and economic upheavals of the war years exacerbated racial tensions, amid early stirrings that would grow into the civil rights movement. The armed forces remained segregated until 1948. But the need for workers in the wartime industries had spurred President Roosevelt to issue an executive order in 1941 that required all defense department contractors to follow equal employment standards. That opened jobs for blacks, who had previously been denied membership in key craft unions that were now forced, grudgingly and sometimes under court order, to integrate. The wartime years drew about 150,000 blacks to California, most to the well-paying jobs in shipyards in the East Bay. The end of the war and returning veterans brought clashes over housing and jobs.

  The civil rights movement in California, from its earliest years, was shaped by the state’s large Mexican American population, particularly in Southern California. The influx of servicemen from around the country exacerbated discrimination against ethnic Mexicans, most prominently in a series of attacks in 1943 known as the Zoot Suit riots, named after the baggy suits popular among young Mexicans. For several days, mobs of servicemen roamed Los Angeles and attacked Mexicans in clashes inflamed by sensational media coverage. Two years later, Mexican American families in Orange County challenged their school districts’ policies of segregating their children in inferior “Mexican” schools. The successful class action suit became a precedent cited nine years later by Thurgood Marshall when he argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case; Marshall had written the NAACP’s supporting brief in the California case.

  Pat viewed easing social tensions and promoting equality as part of his mandate. He formed a committee on race relations that investigated substandard housing. He set up a special court where women arrested for prostitution received medical examinations and treatment if needed; young women who had turned to prostitution after being stranded in the wartime city were given a bus ticket home. Pat focused in particular on young people, handing out a pamphlet titled “Youth, Don’t Be a Chump,” which promised to “aid the youth of San Francisco in playing The Game of Life.” Demand was so high that 275,000 copies were printed in eight editions. The booklet detailed curfews, child labor laws, alcohol restrictions, truancy, and other laws pertaining to young people. Pat addressed the book “to every boy and girl in San Francisco of every race, creed and color: My office is, and always will be, open to you. Just walk in, tell the girl at the switchboard that you are a San Francisco boy or girl, that you want to talk to the district attorney, ‘Pat’ Brown.”

  The emphasis on prevention suited his staff, which had minimal capacity to conduct serious probes. His three investigators were friends, and only one did much investigating. One drove him around and arranged meetings. The third tried to generate stories that would help position Pat for his next campaign: California attorney general.

  In 1946, less than three years into his term as district attorney, Pat made his first statewide run. Earl Warren headed the Republican ticket and, thanks to cross-filing, the Democratic ticket as well. Facing long odds, Pat viewed the race as a way to begin to develop a reputation outside San Francisco. “I want to be Attorney General7 of this state more than anything else in the world other than retaining my own self-respect,” Pat wrote a supporter in June 1946. “I do not intend to compromise one iota in order to be elected. I intend to stand upon the things I think are right even though I may be wrong.”

  Pat had hired his friend Tom Lynch as his chief deputy, which facilitated cordial relations with Warren. Warren and Lynch had become friends when their offices shared the same lunchtime hangout, an Irish bar called the Waldorf. Lynch campaigned as a surrogate for Pat at meetings of dozens of small organizations that all expected a visit from the candidate: Ethnic groups like the Steuben Society, French Club, United Irish, and Sons of Little Italy. Neighborhood improvement clubs. Craft unions like the tile setters, bricklayers, carpenters, and sheet metal workers. The Oddfellows Hall, Native Sons, Eastern Star, and Daughters of Pocahontas.

  Pat lost, as he had expected. He began to campaign almost immediately for a rematch. He coasted to an easy reelection as district attorney in 1947, cementing his stature as a leading California Democrat, albeit in a party that was all but moribund. He spent as much time as he could traveling around California to meet people, prop up the Democratic Party, and create his own political network.

  His trips left Bernice to cope with two teenaged girls, a young boy, and a toddler. She strove to instill in them the frugality that had been part of her upbringing. She vetoed the puppy that a friend offered as the perfect hiking companion for Jerry. (“She says she has enough trouble8 with Jerry trying to keep the house clean,” Pat wrote in declining the offer. “It really started a small-size riot in the family but the ‘boss’ generally wins.”) She turned down Barbara’s request to attend an all-night high school graduation party—only to have Pat come home, guilty about his long absences, and acquiesce.

  Pat visited hot, dusty farm towns in the Central Valley and beautiful cities on the Central Coast, but he spent the most time in Los Angeles. That’s where the votes were. As California’s population grew from 6.9 to 10.6 million during the 1940s, most of the new arrivals had settled in Southern California. Even for Democrats whose base of support had been the more liberal, cosmopolitan north, the balance of political power began to shift south. The economy and lifestyle of Southern California had been transformed by World War II, first through military installations and then the postwar influx of veterans. The epic changes came with the speed that had been the hallmark of the Golden State since its earliest days.

  The concentration of military personnel had begun right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when General Patton started to train troops in the desert near Palm Springs. Soon, Southern California became home to the largest collection of military bases in the country. The Marines arrived in 1942 and turned a desolate area between Los Angeles and San Diego into Camp Pendleton. The Navy expanded its bases in San Diego and added facilities in Ventura, Long Beach, and Wilmington. The Army Air Force opened a training center in Santa Ana, in Orange County.

  The combination of sunshine and open land spawned an aircraft industry that grew exponentially to meet the military’s voracious appetite. To attract the women workers needed to accelerate wartime production, aviation plants became virtual villages, with onsite daycare, health clinics, counseling, and banking kiosks. Companies offered picnics, softball games, dances, and shows. In 1944, Lockheed employed ninety thousand workers9 and operated a cafeteria that covered an entire block and served sixty thousand meals a day, six days a week. To transport workers to and from Burbank, Lockheed gave out six thousand bicycles and operated 117 buses, one of the largest commuter bus systems in the country. In Santa Monica, the Douglas aircraft plant employed 162 police officers, the sixth-largest force in California. Workers got free Eskimo Pies at breaks, to bolster morale and to improve nutrition during wartime rationing.

  When the war ended, many of the men who had first glimpsed California as military trainees chose to settle in the Golden State. About 850,000 veterans ended up in California, most of whom had lived somewhere else before the war. In the fall of 1947, veterans made up half the students10 at the University of Southern California and more than 40 percent at UCLA. The San Fernando Valley, north of downtown Los Angeles and still largely undeveloped, began to fill with subdivisions.

  In 1949, as Pat Brown began to campaign in earnest, Los Angeles was the third-largest metropolitan region in the United States. Almost one third of the population had arrived since 1940. Though still overwhelmingly white, Los Angeles had more ethnic Mexicans than any city outside Mexico, a growing black population, and a sizable Japanese community.

 
“If you ever want to get to Sacramento, you will have to come by way of Los Angeles,” wrote Pat’s former law partner, Frank Mackin, who had moved to Los Angeles. He suggested Pat model himself, again, on Earl Warren. “What you should do, I think, is to Warren-ize yourself,11 become a Democrat who can get as much support, financial and otherwise, from the Republicans as from the Democrats.”

  Pat calculated that by the 1950 election, 42 percent of the voters in the state would live in Los Angeles County. He decided to spend several weeks in Los Angeles each summer, to cultivate financial and political support. He needed to find a Southern California finance chair who could raise at least $100,000 for billboards, radio time, and other publicity. Like all statewide campaigns in California, his would require separate committees in the north and south. The newspapers in Southern California were even more problematic than those in San Francisco, and just as important. The Los Angeles Times, owned by the Chandler family, was solidly conservative Republican. Although registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in California, Pat believed that the biases of the major papers, and their attacks on Democrats, discouraged strong candidates and left the party with generally second-rate nominees.

  In early 1950, Pat made his pitch12 to the political editor of the Los Angeles Daily News. He expected to raise $150,000 before the primary. He was president of the District Attorneys Association, supported by the Peace Officers Association, and hopeful of endorsements from two San Francisco papers. At the same time, Pat wrote a thirteen-page confidential letter13 to Frank Clarvoe, the editor of the San Francisco News, whose early support had been crucial in the district attorney race. Pat described the office he had inherited in 1944, the changes he had made, and the results. Before he arrived, one third of those charged with crimes had pleaded guilty. Today, 92 percent of those arrested pleaded guilty or were found guilty after trial. In six years the office had lost only six major cases. He was typically blunt in assessing his shortcomings: “We have failed to bring integrity into the San Francisco Police Department,” where gambling protection continued to be a lucrative source of corruption. And the forty-five-year-old critiqued his own style. “I have been guilty of being too unguarded in my remarks. It has given me an impression of immaturity.”

  Pat emerged as the Democrats’ best hope of winning a statewide race. In the U.S. Senate contest, Richard Nixon was waging a strong, vicious campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, whom he dubbed the Pink Lady for her alleged Communist ties. Governor Warren was so far ahead of his Democratic challenger, Jimmy Roosevelt, that the Republican declined to debate. As a result, the attorney general candidates engaged in the first televised debate for statewide office in California. Television was becoming a major factor in campaigns for the first time; almost half of all Americans owned TVs. Pat went low-tech, too, handing out notepads that said JOT IT DOWN … VOTE FOR BROWN.

  Interest groups and Democratic clubs put together what they called slate cards, which listed all the endorsed candidates, and mailed them to all their members. The most important slate card was distributed by the Civic League of Improvement Clubs, San Francisco businessmen who charged money for the listing on the glossy two-page mailer sent to every registered voter. The mailer included a mock ballot card, which many people marked up and took into the voting booth. Voters would toss them on their way out, and in some precincts campaign workers pulled them out of the garbage to see how the vote was going during the day. The results were known as the Garbage Poll.

  Pat Brown’s affinity for old-fashioned campaigning propelled him to victory in 1950, the only Democrat to win statewide office.

  For the first time in races for statewide office, there was a more traditional California poll, too. Mervin Field had become interested in survey research as a teenager in New Jersey, where he worked part time for the polling pioneer George Gallup in the early 1940s. After a wartime stint in the Merchant Marine, Field settled in San Francisco. In 1947, he launched the Field Poll, which became a California institution, one of the most respected nonpartisan surveys in the country. Less than a month before the 1950 election, the Field Poll showed the race for attorney general was a dead heat. Pat reached out for help to a Republican—his high school friend and fraternity brother Norton Simon, who had founded Hunt’s Foods and become a wealthy business entrepreneur. Simon’s last-minute contribution of $10,000 funded a billboard and newspaper ad campaign that was credited with turning the race. In the ads called “Our Choice,” Pat’s photo appeared next to the governor’s, with the slogan “Elect Warren and Brown.” Pat had made sure in advance that Warren, who was not fond of Brown’s opponent, would not object.

  Pat won by a relatively slim margin of 225,000 votes, the only Democrat elected to statewide office. He piled up large pluralities in his hometown and did well in areas covered by the McClatchy-owned Bee newspapers, which supported him, compensating for weaker results in Southern California.

  Ida Brown was there to see her son sworn in on January 8, 1951, just three days before her seventy-third birthday. She had sold the Grove Street house a few years earlier for $11,550 and moved to a studio apartment off Golden Gate Park. The studio had a closet big enough for her bed, and a little table and chair by the window where she could see the park. On her mantel she kept a picture of Jack Johnson, the prominent African American boxer. She took her shopping cart to buy groceries down the block at Park ’n Shop and took the bus to the beach to watch the ocean, which she loved. She organized a speakers program at the Howard Presbyterian Church, one of the oldest congregations in the city, a few blocks from her old Grove Street house. She knew all her neighbors, and they watched out for one another. She followed current events closely and spent time with her children and grandchildren, but spurned any suggestion that she give up her apartment and move in with family.

  She didn’t talk much about her early life in Colusa, though she went back from time to time to visit her brothers and sister. She played the role of family matriarch for the children, grandchildren, and cousins. Younger family members confided in Ida because she was accepting and nonjudgmental. She collected information, still the nosy girl who had steamed open letters, now the family linchpin who kept track of who was doing what and disseminated the news.

  On Magellan Avenue, Pat’s new job meant he was home even less, and Bernice juggled the demands of children who ranged in age from five to nineteen. Twelve-year-old Jerry lived in a makeshift bedroom off the kitchen; his parents and sisters slept upstairs. “Atty. General Pat Brown’s children run the gamut;14 he has a girl in kindergarten, a boy in grammar school, a girl in high school and a girl at Cal—which makes life pretty complicated for Mrs. Brown,” noted an item in the San Francisco Examiner gossip column. “She belongs to parent-teachers’ groups in all four categories.”

  Barbara, a strong student like her mother, attended the University of California and lived at the Tri Delt house near the Berkeley campus. One of her sorority sisters was Joan Didion, who would later describe the university as “California’s highest, most articulate idea of itself,15 the most coherent—perhaps the only coherent—expression of the California possibility.” Barbara majored in English and journalism. She worked on the Daily Cal covering off-campus politics and tried as hard as she could to keep her family connections secret. She was eager to establish her own identity and resented the publicity.

  Cynthia was a junior at Star of the Sea Catholic high school, with a boyfriend who would turn out to be far more than a teenage romance. Joe Kelly had attended St. Ignatius High School, putting himself through school during the war working a swing shift as a bellhop at the Franciscan Hotel. Teenagers were in demand for jobs because so many men had gone into the service. Most of the hotel’s clients were military shipping out or on leave, and they tipped well. For a while, Joe earned as much as his father. By 1950, he was a student at the University of San Francisco, working part time for the phone company and coaching boys’ basketball at Star of the Sea. On a ride home after practice one d
ay so many people piled into the car that Cynthia Brown ended up on his lap. A few days later, she approached Joe through the chain link fence that separated the girls’ high school from the coed grammar school and asked the nineteen-year-old to take her to the junior prom.

  The Brown family, which would come to warmly embrace Joe Kelly, was at first a little wary, particularly the naturally reserved Bernice. For the first few years she would greet him at the door in a businesslike manner and show him to the living room to wait. That gave Jerry an opportunity to pepper the visitor with questions.

  Jerry was finishing eighth grade at St. Brendan, where the class prophecy at graduation was that he would grow up to be New York State attorney general. Jerry wanted to attend the new Catholic high school, Riordan, where his friends were headed. Pat wanted his son to go to Lowell, his parents’ alma mater. Pat objected that a new school lacked traditions. He may also have wanted to steer his son toward a less religious environment.

  “I have heard that your son is interested in being a priest,”16 Pat’s cousin Burt Chandler, who was in a seminary, wrote in the summer of 1951. “I know that it does seem a little fantastic for a boy so young to be thinking along those lines, but very often God works just that way. He gives His vocations as He wants, some to the young and some to the older. Be sure and encourage him if he thinks that he wants the priestly life but by no means pressure him to it.”

  Pat and Jerry compromised. He would go to St. Ignatius, an elite high school with plenty of tradition. St. Ignatius traced its roots to a one-room school for boys the Jesuits had opened in 1855 on Market Street. The high school’s goal, explained the catalog, was to train young minds to analyze, “to mold manhood,17 to develop the entire man, mind and heart, body and soul; to form as well as to inform.”