In honor of DtMF, Black History Month, and the first Super Bowl in Santa Clara County, Dr. Lee Davenport looks back at the “Godfather of Silicon Valley” Roy Lee Clay Sr.
You may feel FOMO (fear of missing out), but what about DtMF?
DtMF stands for Debí tirar más fotos (translation: “I should have taken more pictures”), the wise words by Grammy Award-winning artist Bad Bunny (whose U.S. government name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) to conclude the Super Bowl LX halftime show.
But one thing about me is that DtMF is not a pain for me since I plan on storing “50-eleven” photos and videos from every event (YouTube Super Bowl LX Party, etc.).
In any case, the LX Super Bowl halftime show, ending with Bad Bunny’s DtMF, reminds us of the apt words of historian Jean-Baptiste Adkins: “The most important thing we can do is record our history.”
Record history with photos, videos, and words
Mr. Adkins spoke about the history of black people in Santa Clara County, particularly Santa Clara County, California, which hosted the Benito Bowl (also known as Super Bowl LX) this year.
So, in honor of DtMF, Black History Month, and the first Super Bowl in Santa Clara County, here is one of the many Black historical figures we should all know about, because Black history is American history.
Roy Lee Clay Sr. (1929-2024), known as the “Godfather of Silicon Valley,” was directly recruited by David Packard, one of the co-founders of Hewlett-Packard (HP), which at the time became known as the Silicon Valley giant. Clay later became a founding member of HP’s computer division, leading the team that developed the revolutionary HP 2116A.
Unfortunately, when Clay moved to Santa Clara County (along with people who were not considered white at the time), he encountered significant resistance from a housing market designed to exclude him.
More specifically, the California Association of Realtors (CREA) (today known as the California Association of Realtors) is a member of the Rumford Fair Housing Act of 1963, which allows property owners and real estate agents to discriminate against home buyers and renters on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. He spearheaded an organized campaign to legally preserve housing segregation by authoring and funding Prop. 14, a 1964 ballot initiative aimed at dismantling the fair housing protections of the landmark California law that prohibited housing segregation. origin or ancestry).
At the time, the Realtors Association effectively led legalization efforts that excluded nonwhite residents from rapidly growing areas. Like Roy Clay Sr., Americans who wanted to build a home in California had to overcome that barrier with extraordinary resilience.
Proposal No. 14 led by the Real Estate Agents Association The passage of the issue meant that even financially well-off Americans (like Clay, who was a Hewlett-Packard executive in its controversial heyday) were forced to use Joseph Eye to avoid the discriminatory “gatekeeping” of mainstream real estate. The real estate market meant that they were often forced to rely on rare and fair housing developers like Klar (famous for focusing on ability to pay rather than race or color) (simply because of their race or currently legally protected class).
This shows that institutionalized unfair housing practices tried to divert economic means (cash) simply because of race, but thankfully there were always opponents.
Find a Fair Housing Advocate
In California in particular, a small remnant of dissenting members of the real estate industry, including some leaders (like Richard Hallmark, state director of the California Association of Realtors and former president of the Covina Valley Board of Realtors), supported and advocated for fair housing during a time of notorious instability, as illustrated in the following excerpt from my Fair Housing DECODER seminar presentation slides.
News clippings and letters regarding the California Association of Realtors’ collective action for fair housing. But some of its members disagreed, claiming they supported fair housing.
For those who are wondering, “Why would I want to live somewhere where I’m not welcome?” The short answer is a rhetorical question and answer: “Who wants to spend a long time commuting? Most people don’t.”
Imagine how bad the “sea to shining sea” commute would be on routes like the 405, 285, I-95, and other already congested U.S. highways without the opportunity and access provided by fair housing. To simplify, fair housing means that if you work in an area where you can pay, you can also live in that area.
Ultimately, Clay’s presence in the Santa Clara County neighborhood and a small group of unscrupulous real estate agents offering fair housing (along with various civil rights laws in the 1960s) partially helped break down the technology industry’s geographic segregation, paving the way for the current generation of diverse innovators in Silicon Valley (although there is still room for improvement).
What’s interesting is that while Eichler, Hallmark, and Clay may not have marched for the various civil rights laws passed in the 1960s (including Title VIII of the Fair Housing Act of 1968), they used their everyday practices around real estate and homeownership to do so. I hope this inspires our generation to move away from the fair housing industry more than we thought possible.
Significantly, in 2020, the National Association of Realtors issued a historic apology for decades of discriminatory policies that promoted inequitable housing, followed in 2022 by the California Association of Realtors, which specifically apologized for its “shameful” role in spearheading Proposition 14 and other exclusionary practices that severely hindered Black Americans’ ability to build generational wealth. 95 years old in 2024.
This push for institutional accountability is echoed by several other organizations, including the Minneapolis Regional Association of Realtors (2021), the Atlanta Association of Realtors (2021), the St. Louis Association of Realtors (2022), and was preceded by the Chicago Association of Realtors (2018). All of these organizations have formally acknowledged their historic role in promoting inequitable housing and excluding Americans from the real estate industry on the basis of race, gender, or any other currently protected basis. class — protected as a result of the 1960s civil rights movement and subsequent legislation, as well as future amendments.
