i tried running…then I turned bac and…blazed her with a kiss….shit. Growing up, my mother often reminded me of how our neighborhood has always been a thriving community where everyone is part of an extended family. That community is located between Box Springs Mountain and Mount Rubidoux. It extends, but for now. This story begins At the top of Box Springs Mountain…..the city connects everyone because it is localized around the University of California at Riverside, it was established in 1954 at the end of 8th street which is now called University Avenue. At the bottom of Mount Rubidoux in the same direction as the University is Evergreen Cemetery. Which also happens to be some type of local legend that has also worked. as a promotional tool that began when the city population began to grow. Evergreen cemetery as it is today also serves as a place of rest for one of the city’s founders…there’s sooo many others with countless and generous families that have carved and paved their way into this cities industrial age. but for now we will mention John W. North, Citrus Farmer Elizabeth Tibbets, and my Grandfather David J. Hernandez.
To me Riverside has always resembled a nostalgic picturesque postcard of the Mission Inn with an orange in the background. You can find this postcard at CVS during Christmas season at the Riverside Plaza. What I mean is that the city has always seemed as if it was some extension of a Hollywood production with a dark secret. “Riverside is a borderland, a place where peoples, cultures, and political powers meet” (page 233). It was once home to the Tongvas, Luiseno, Cahuilla, and Serrano Indians. There was never a mission built in Riverside for Indigenous peoples during the mission occupations in Southern California. They were just displaced from their land and left with no options but survive in the city or run to Mission San Juan Capistrano or further north to Mission Santa Barbara. The Mission Inn downtown Riverside is not a mission, it’s a hotel built to resemble a mission to boost the economy as a tourist attraction. Climate, agriculture, and eugenics came to be a reason for the population growth for the city. That orange from the postcard is also part of the City of Riversides claim to fame. Spanish missionaries introduced citrus to California in 1769. But in 1873 a missionary came across a sweet, nearly seedless orange and sent samples of the tree to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington D.C. Genevieve Carpio writes, “The discovery of the naval orange in its homeland of Brazil and its rebirth in Riverside began in some accounts of a traveling American woman, and in others as an adept observation by a U.S. consul” (page 33). Hence the postcard. Eliza Tibbets a Riverside resident was sent two small trees from Bahia, Brazil. She then grew the orange trees renaming them Washington Naval oranges for their resemblance to a belly button. One of the trees is still living today and is located on the corner of Arlington and Magnolia streets in Riverside. The planting of those naval orange trees exploded the citrus industry in Riverside making it the epicenter of the citrus industry. The citrus industry was an easy way for economic exploitation. By way of hard work with long hours and little pay. A cheap labor work force were the Braceros (Immigrant Mexican men), Mexican American women and Native American students attending Sherman Indian Boarding School. So that picturesque postcard is just a city-wide marketing campaign to get you to spend money downtown chasing after some traveling women.
My Grandfather David J. Hernandez was born in Riverside in 1940, he lived with his mother Frances Hernandez and grandmother Otilia Hernandez Lopez on Park Avenue Street two houses away from the corner of 14th street. “Black homes, small businesses, and churches concentrated from 9th Street south to 14th Street with Park Avenue serving as Eastside’s spine” (Claimingourspace). My grandfather worked at the Mission Innbefore he passed away at the age of 29 in 1970. He was married to my grandmother Eleonor Flanagan who gave birth to my father Desmond Hernandez. Her mother, my great-grandmother Gladys B. Drayton- Flanagan was born in Winter Haven, Florida in 1917 then moved to Riverside, California when she was 17years old in 1934. She moved to a house on 9th street two houses from the corner of Eucalyptus. During the 1950s my grandmother Gladys was a member of Orange Valley Masonic Lodge #13 where she was an Eastern Star. She also attended Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church where she was an usher until 1987. Orange Valley Masonic Lodge #13 was built on Park Avenue in 1905 by David Stokes, Aaron Wiley, and other Black investors. The building was a two-storystructure with rental spaces on the ground floor that operated as a grocery store, housing, a Black doctor’s office and more. The second floor was a gathering space for generations of Black fraternal and sorority groups, civil rights organizing, and for other events. Allen Chapel AME was the oldest Black church in Riverside founded in 1875 at the corner of Howard and 12th. The church served the Eastside community in the areas of self-reliance; politically, economically, and educationally as it also operated as a Freedom school. Booker T. Washington once spoke at the church when it operated as Second Baptist in 1914. Famous Cosmologist/ Entrepreneur/ Philanthropist Madam C.J. Walker a Black female millionaire spoke at Allen Chapel then had a reception at Orange Valley Lodge #13. A clear representation of church, social, and economic life in the community.
Even though the city of Riverside is beautiful and has good marketing campaigns there is and has been racial division and open discrimination. “Riverside was founded three decades before President Roosevelt’s visit, as one of several colonies in Southern California” (Carpio page 23). There was a film premiere of the D.W. Griffith movie Birth of a Nation (The Clansman) in 1915. In 1924 there was a large ceremony by the Ku Klux Klan on the football field at Riverside Poly high, the only high school in the city at that time. In the 1940’s Stanley Beverly reported job discrimination in downtown Riverside where “whites only” signs still were in place even after a legislative banning. Stanley found that less than 3% of the Black population was locally employed in the citrus industry. Black residents had to find work on railroads in San Bernardino and Colton. There were no Black teachers teaching in the Eastside schools. In 1965, Lowell Elementary school mysteriously caughtfire. Residential discrimination continued in the city throughout the 1950’s with at least half of the city’s houses being limited for sale to white residents. Orders that were in place since the 1930s by the Victoria Association.
The city of Riverside has a beautiful image to uphold for its economy. But it has a history that is tarnished due to its history of colonization of its Indigenous peoples. Aligning with the history of the state and other cities. Who am I to think of Riverside being any different. I sort of feel like it is one of the worse, because of it is capitalizing from the colonization of California Indians by building a make-believe mission as a hotel. The city of Riverside marketed genocide and the colonization of California Indians with the building of the Mission Inn Hotel.
I am third generation resident of Riverside and a product of the Eastside community. My family is a part of this history. It’spart of my history. I still sometimes make a few extra turns while on my way home. I drive down 9th street from Kansas then turn on Park Avenue then up to 14th street just to try to imagine the city as it was. I was raised on Ohio street, then moved to Douglass in the third grade and lived there for 30 years. I went to Emerson elementary, the second school built on the Eastsidein the year 1965 by Ralph Waldo Emerson. My life between these two mountains has no boundaries or limits because I thrive. The Eastside is my community
Works Cited
Akins B. Damon, and Bauer Jr, J. William. “We are the Land; A history of Native California”. University of California Press. Oakland, California. 2021 by the Regents of The University of California
Carpio, Genevieve. “At the Sound of the Bells: How place and mobility make race”. University of California Press. Oakland, California. 2021. (pp. 33).
Carpio, Genevieve. “At the Sound of the Bells: How place and mobility make race”. University of California Press. Oakland, California. 2021. (pp. 23).
95 Golden Substance & Culture Magazine 