Re-posted from Word in Black, a ground-breaking collaboration of ten legendary Black news publishers.

As the rapidly-spreading Eaton wildfire in Los Angeles crept closer to the home he’d lived in for nearly six decades, Rodney Nickerson, 83, wasn’t going to panic. Despite the pleas of his worried daughter and anxious neighbors, he was staying put. 

It apparently made sense for him to hold on: he bought the house in 1968, back when it wasn’t easy for Black people to own property in L.A., much less in a great neighborhood like Altadena. To Nickerson, a retired engineer who clocked in at Lockheed-Martin for almost half a century, there was no reason to panic. He would ride it out. 

“He said, ‘I’ll be fine,’” his daughter, Kimko Nickerson, told a reporter for KCAL, a local TV news station. “He said, ‘I’ll be here when you come back and the house will be here.’” 

Tragically, he miscalculated: when she returned to the house, Kimko Nickerson found her father’s body in the charred, smoldering ruins. 

For the sixth day, firefighters continued to battle a series of deadly wildfires sweeping through portions of Los Angeles, killing at least 10 people, consuming thousands of homes and displacing some 180,000 people. Although headlines about the fire’s human toll has centered on celebrities like Billy Crystal and Mel Gibson burned out of posh homes, the blaze destroyed Altadena, a Black upper-middle-class enclave, and stories like Nickerson’s don’t get much attention.

Moreover, Altadena was one of the few places Black people could purchase homes in metro Los Angeles because the area was exempt from redlining. Over time, the neighborhood transformed from a segregated enclave to an oasis for Black homeowners: 2 in 10 residents are Black, and a sizable portion of them own property.

Indeed, most of the Black Angelenos hit hard by the fire bought in the well-regarded neighborhood to build generational wealth for their families. Like Nickerson, some had paid off their homes; others, however, were uninsured — the result of insurance companies pulling out of California due in part to excessive fire risk.

As a result, families who lost homes, clothing and all their possessions are essentially on their own, with next to no financial help to rebuild their lives. 

Please consider financially contributing to a displaced Black family from Altadena here.