LOS ANGELES — Pearl Devers was too young to understand why her mother was bundling her and her brothers up and fleeing their family home on tribal land in Palm Springs, California.
Devers' father, who built the house with his own hands, stayed behind to make a stand against the brutal 1950s urban renewal project that was seizing their prime downtown land for nothing — no legal process, no compensation, no relocation aid.
In the years after city employees and the Fire Department razed and burned down the houses in the area known as Section 14, Devers said her father, a community spokesperson and devoted family man, fell into alcoholism and never recovered.
