“I have been quite outspoken on the issue of open housing in our community. A member of my congregation had a home for rent and asked for my assistance in finding a suitable tenant. He said that race was not a problem. Unfortunately, race was a problem for many in my congregation. Upon showing the home in question to negro families, half the members left my church. I did talk to them and the response by and large was, ‘We like the negroes. We really do. We have many negro friends and we’re not opposed to equal rights per se. We just don’t feel that you have any business talking about it from the pulpit. You should stick solely to the gospels.’ Now, they would never admit that they were basically prejudiced, and who am I to judge and to say that that is the reason for their anger and their hostility, but it does appear to me that much of their resistance really is reflecting a deep-seated prejudice.”
—Rev. Dorel Londagin, San Leandro pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings, May 6, 1967
Dorel Londagin was a very interesting guy in that he never stopped fighting for civil rights. He was, for lack of a better phrase, San Leandro’s conscience. Born in Oklahoma, Rev. Londagin had a deep sense of social justice. As a young minister in the 1950s, he caused a major stir among his Oklahoman congregation when he refused to sit in the dining room of a restaurant after a black woman, who was part of a church outing he was leading, was refused service. When the woman was told that she could take her meal in the kitchen where blacks were served, Londagin went and ate with her.
In 1952, he was named the founding pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church, a half block up the street from our apartment complex. His congregation grew and the church thrived until the good reverend began challenging the de facto segregation in the community.
In the mid 1960s, Londagin invited the mostly black congregation of a Presbyterian church from the nearby city of Emeryville to a picnic with his flock. The event was to be held in Washington Manor Park (the park I was looking for on my first venture outside of our apartment). People called the minister’s home and threatened to kill him and his family if he “brought those niggers into this town.”
Rev. Londagin was a family man with a wife and young children. Mrs. Londagin was terrified for their safety, but understood the conviction of her husband’s principles and urged him to go ahead and hold the event. The picnic took place without incident, though, as expected, the participation by Londagin’s church members was less than overwhelming.
Things hit crisis mode during the attempt to rent a congregant’s home, referred to in the testimony recounted above. Despite the opposition from his church members, the minister persisted in trying to get a black family into the neighborhood. According to Londagin’s daughter, Beth Wilcoxin, he came close.
“A young black couple was all set to sign a rental contract for the property,” she said. “They were sitting in my parents’ living room finalizing the agreement, when suddenly the woman burst into tears and said that she couldn’t do it. She said that she knew about the hostility of the people in town and feared what they would do to them.”
With that, Rev. Londagin abandoned his efforts to rent that particular home. He didn’t, however, abandon his quest to integrate the community. A couple of years after he testified before the commission, half of the remaining members of his congregation deserted when Rev. Londagin partnered with Temple Beth Shalom and supported the construction of a senior citizens’ housing facility that would be open to black people. The building went up and is an integrated senior-living home to this day, but it devastated the minister’s church.
With his congregation too small to support a full-time pastor, Rev. Londagin switched careers and decided to fight for equal rights another way. He became a San Leandro Realtor.