Just as they are today, unscrupulous landlords were a major problem for residents of the Oakland flatlands in the 1960s; those who found themselves unable to keep up with rent, then The Flatlands often published coverage of rent strikes and other collective tenant actions, but its attention also turned to the plight of individual tenants on occasion as well. This September 1966 article highlights a direct action undertaken by several Flatlands contributors to keep a woman and her two children in their home.
Mrs. Allen, the subject of the story, found herself facing an eviction notice from her landlord, who claimed that the eviction was necessary in order to perform essential repairs. When a sympathetic friend called Mark Comfort and alerted him to the situation, he was able to assemble media and neighborhood activists to Allen’s house in only a short time. Members of the Oakland Welfare Rights Organization (WRO) and Flatlands-affiliated groups like the Western End Help Center and Blacks United to Motivate Progress (BUMP), headed by Curtis Lee Baker and Booker T. Emery respectively, arrived to excoriate the landlord and promise immediate legal action.
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The piece also offers a good example of how The Flatlands used photojournalism to dramatize its stories. Here photographer Lynn Phipps offered images of Mrs. Baker lodging a complaint against her landlord, her youngest child against what had been her bedroom wall, and of Curtis Lee Baker and others who had assembled to help her in her fight.
