“A Place of Celebration and Pain”

That the Guthrie and Crissman families and “forty blacks” would be allowed on just any stretch of 1937 Southern California beach did not pass the test of reality with this reader.

Before any future authors write on the subject I would invite them to research Kaufman's own comments on the liminal nature of California's Okies and historian Alison Rose Jefferson's work on Santa Monica's so called “Ink Well.” ...And careful how and when you use that title if you please.

PDF:
http://alisonrosejefferson.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AfAm-Beach-Description-REVMay2017-Final.pdf

Note: I've found no mention of Guthrie's newsletter in Dr. Jefferson's work so far. In my own family history such places aren't so much “black” as “non-white” and the racism worked in very much in all directions. There are no saintly races.

One largely debunked urban legend surrounding the Santa Monica Ink Well's origins is the very real, but not directly related, beating, shooting and arrest of African-American Arthur Valentine on a beach at the foot of Topanga Canyon. This is same canyon where so many of Woody Guthrie's friends and supporters would eventually settle and where Guthrie met his third wife. Afaik the area did not desegregate until the 1960s, begrudgingly, along with the all the rest.