Families displaced from California neighborhood seek $2B

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — As a child, Lawrance W. McFarland lived on a small piece of land on a Native American reservation in Palm Springs he described as a “little world of its own,” surrounded by the parts of the city that were tourist magnets and depicted in movies. Decades later, Palm Springs’ city council is reckoning with those actions, voting in 2021 to issue a formal apology to former residents for the city’s role in displacing them in the 1960s from the neighborhood that many Black and Mexican American families called home. Palm Springs officials expect to work with a “reparations consultant” to decide whether and how to compensate the families displaced from the area, said Amy Blaisdell, a spokesperson for the city, in an email. Lisa Middleton, a city council member and former Palm Springs mayor, said it was important to acknowledge the city’s role in displacing Section 14 residents. “But it also includes some moments for which we have every reason to be remorseful, to learn from those mistakes and to make sure that we do not pass those mistakes onto another generation.” But the story of displacement at Section 14 is more complicated than some people may realize, said Renee Brown, associate curator and archivist for the Palm Springs Historical Society.