--- a forgotten hate crime ---


December 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the firebombing of the home of O'Day Short, an African-American who in 1945 moved his family from Los Angeles 60 miles east to Fontana, California. Shortly before Christmas, and after receiving warnings from police and local thugs about moving to a White neighborhood, his home suspiciously burned down, instantly killing his wife Helen and their two small children Ann and Barry. (Photo via the Los Angeles Sentinel)

Short himself hovered between life and death for a few more weeks, the only survivor of and witness to a blaze that the city quickly ruled an accident. The Los Angeles branch of the NAACP commissioned an independent forensics analyst who found arson to have incontrovertibly been the sole possible cause of the fire.

Short died before he could testify, and the NAACP dropped their pursuit of justice in Fontana after the depth of police indifference and possible collusion became clear, eventually diverting their efforts away from distant Fontana and closer to their main offices in Los Angeles. With that, the Short family's liquidation was complete.


--- recent press coverage ---


www.dailybulletin.com/general-news/20151215/oday-short-tragedy-still-smolders-in-fontana

www.pe.com/articles/fontana-789131-short-family.html

www.sbsun.com/general-news/20160123/community-members-gather-to-remember-fontana-family-killed-in-fire


--- the past we ignore and can't live down ---


We must force the current elected officials of Fontana and San Bernardino County to acknowledge this crime. Seventy years is already too long, and history must be set right.

But more importantly, we can only improve law enforcement's relationship with the public nowadays when law enforcement and local government acknowledge that their present abuse of citizens' rights isn't new; that it's part of a long history of shameful abuse.

From Staten Island to Ferguson, MO, and back to Fontana, that past -- crudely covered up, ignored, and denied -- sticks with us today. You need only scroll to the bottom of this page to find recent examples of law enforcement's brutal abuse of citizens' rights throughout San Bernardino County.

Would any of this have been possible if law enforcement hadn't turned a blind eye to the burning alive of African-American children 70 years before?

Why should we expect justice for Eric Garner's widow or Freddie Gray's mother and sisters if the Shorts' next of kin never got it?


--- who to contact, and how ---


Let them know the Shorts' murders can no longer be forgotten.

This petition will be sent to members of the grade school on the site of their land, and asks them to build a monument to the family.

www.change.org/p/fontana-unified-school-district-superintendent-fontana-unified-school-district-board-of-education-petition-for-a-peace-pole-at-randall-pepper-elementary-dedicated-to-the-o-day-short-family

The Mayor of Fontana is Acquanetta Warren. She can be reached at awarren@fontana.org and via Twitter at @Acqie2010 . The phone number to her office is (909) 350-7600.

The District Attorney for San Bernardino County is Mike Ramos, who tweets as @michaelramos . The phone number to his office is (909) 382-3669, and his email is da@da.sbcounty.gov .

(Ramos is also running for election to Attorney General of California. If you live in California, please let him know that he can't be trusted to prosecute crime statewide if murders in his backyard go not just unsolved but unacknowledged for decades.)

Tell them 70 years is too long.

Tell them that justice can't wait anymore.

Tell them to formally acknowledge these murders before another 70 years pass.


--- some reading ---


For info on the fight for human rights in the US today, there's of course www.blacklivesmatter.com .

For more information on Fontana and O'Day Short's family, please read the last chapter of Mike Davis' "City of Quartz"," or visit racialinjustice.eji.org/timeline/1940s/ .

For more information about "Sundown Towns," please read James Loewen's book of the same name, or have a look at this very thorough review of it at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001715.html .


--- San Bernardino County today ---


www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/us/barstow-california-police-video-pregnant-woman-arrest/

www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/04/when-police-brutality-goes-beyond-a-bad-apple/390303/

abc7.com/news/violent-arrest-by-fontana-police-officers-caught-on-video/912370/


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