O'Day H. Short (died January 22, 1946) was an African American refrigerator engineer who broke the

color barrier Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Internati ...

Fontana, California Fontana is a city in San Bernardino County, California. Founded by Azariel Blanchard Miller in 1913, it remained essentially rural until World War II, when entrepreneur Henry J. Kaiser built a large steel mill in the area. It is now a regional h ...

after buying land and constructing a house south of Base Line Road. Short contacted the FBI and the

black press Black Press Group Ltd. is a Canadian publisher of prominent daily newspapers in Hawaii and Alaska and numerous non-daily newspapers in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, and (via Sound Publishing) the U.S. state of Washington. Black Press M ...

after receiving a warning of imminent violence from vigilantes. On December 16, 1945, the house exploded in a fireball. His wife Helen, and young children Barry and Carol Ann died due to their burns by the following day. O'Day would linger for a month before succumbing to his injuries.

Base Line Road

During the Dust Bowl, 5,000 Southern white families headed west and found jobs in Fontana, home of Kaiser Steel, but they did not leave behind their preferences for segregation. African-Americans were welcome to live north of Base Line Road but were not permitted to live south of it. Possibly because he and his family were

light-skinned Light skin is a human skin color that has a base level of eumelanin pigmentation that has adapted to environments of low UV radiation. Light skin is most commonly found amongst the native populations of Europe and East Asia as measured through s ...

, however, Short was able to buy a five-acre lot on Randall Avenue and Pepper Street. While the home was still being completed, Short and his family moved there in the fall of 1945.

Threats

As word got out that the family was black, neighbors became concerned, and asked a sheriff's deputy to advise Short that he was "out of bounds". The local white

Chamber of Commerce A chamber of commerce, or board of trade, is a form of business network. For example, a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to ad ...

offered to buy the property back for full value. The seller, once apprised of his mistake, warned Short that the local "vigilante committee" might have to resort to violence. In response, Short contacted the FBI and local black newspapers.

Explosion

On December 16, 1945, the house exploded while the Shorts were inside. The family was taken by a friendly neighbor to

Kaiser Permanente Hospital Kaiser Permanente (; KP), commonly known simply as Kaiser, is an American integrated managed care consortium, based in Oakland, California, United States, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield. Kaiser Pe ...

. Although he lingered for a month, Short died soon after being informed by the

District Attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a l ...

that none of his family had survived. Authorities claimed that the explosion was due to a faulty oil lamp. However, the coroner's jury was skeptical of this conclusion and ruled that the fire was of unknown origin, although they were not informed of the threats, as the coroner considered the reports to be hearsay. An

arson Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wat ...

investigator hired by the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

, Paul T. Wolfe, found the lamp to be mostly intact, and concluded that the fire was deliberately set from outside the house.

Aftermath

Black newspapers decried the deaths as an injustice. The

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

and NAACP organized rallies in Los Angeles and San Bernardino which drew upwards of 6,000 people calling for a full investigation. The land on which the home stood is now the site of Randall Pepper Elementary School. Grassroots efforts from the community are calling an
petitioning
for the renaming of the Elementary school or some memorialization of O’Day and the Short family. It would be another 20 years until a black family would again live in downtown Fontana.

References

External links

Vigilante Terror in Fontana: The Tragic Story of O'Day H. Short and His Family
(Pamphlet, 1946) {{DEFAULTSORT:Short, O'Day People from Fontana, California 1946 deaths African-American engineers Engineers from California Murdered African-American people Racially motivated violence against African Americans