Kelly, champion of desegregation in California, dies
Kenneth C. Kelly just wanted to buy a house near his office. An electrical engineer, he had moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1953; four years later, with a growing family, he dreamed of having a home in one of the city’s fast-growing suburbs.
He had zeroed in on Gardena, not far from his job as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. in Culver City. But he couldn’t get a real estate agent to return his calls, and he knew why: He was Black.
“They would play games, say nothing was available, blah blah blah,” he said in a 2009 interview.
Jokingly, Kelly asked a white friend if he would buy a house for him; he would pay him back, Kelly said. To his surprise the friend agreed, and a few weeks later white residents in the neighborhood were shocked to see Kelly and his family moving in.
“The neighbors were up in arms,” he said. “But it was my house.”
At work, Kelly was a respected scientist, designing antennas to communicate with satellites and spacecraft; in Gardena, he was often treated as a blight. Someone wrote an anonymous note begging him to leave, claiming that he and his family were dragging down home values in the neighborhood.
In 1963, a new job took him to Northridge. Once again, he had to ask a white friend to buy his house; once again, he faced constant slights. Neighbors refused to say hello and crossed the street to avoid passing him on the sidewalk.
Kelly’s experience was typical for middle-class Black families who wanted to settle in the booming postwar suburbs. But rather than move or suffer quietly, he joined the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council, where he led “tests” — sending Black homebuyers to agents, then suing if they were discriminated against. He became so committed to tearing down barriers to Black homeownership that in 1973 he quit his job to become a real estate agent.
During training, his instructor told him that a Black man wouldn’t be able to sell houses in the valley. Not only was the area over 80% white, double the rest of Los Angeles, he was told, but its biggest draw was its promise of the lily-white “good life.”
The instructor was wrong. Within a few years, Kelly was one of the valley’s best salesmen, shepherding Black families into neighborhoods where there were few, if any, people of color. He also joined the San Fernando Valley Board of Realtors and served on state-level committees. In 1979, he was named Realtor associate of the year for the valley.
He returned to engineering in 1986, again working for Hughes. By that time, the valley was significantly more diverse, in part a result of Kelly’s efforts.
He died at 94 on Feb. 27 at his home in Sherman Oaks. He had had Parkinson’s disease, his son Ron said. Kelly is also survived by his wife, Anne; his sister, Gloria John; another son, Steven; and two grandchildren. Another son, David, died in 1994.
In 1968, not long after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Kelly was approached by Harriet Glickman, a white, socially conscious colleague on the fair housing council. She had reached out to Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” to ask if he would consider adding a Black character. Schulz had politely demurred, saying it might seem patronizing.
Undeterred, Glickman thought that Kelly might have more luck if he made the same appeal to Schulz. In a letter to Schulz, Kelly argued for a Black character who would be just one of the gang, a “supernumerary” whose skin color would be incidental.
“An accusation of being patronizing,” he wrote, “would be a small price to pay for the positive results that would accrue!”
His words won Schulz over, and Franklin Armstrong debuted in “Peanuts” on July 31, 1968, as a friend of Charlie Brown who just happened to be Black.