Alvin Taylor and his sister, Pearl, were kids when the City of Palm Springs, California began burning down their neighbours’ homes. But they still remember the smell of the smoke.
“We would come home, and a neighbour’s house would be gone – just burned rubble,” Pearl Taylor Devers said.
In 1965, the City of Palm Springs began razing the Taylor’s predominately black neighbourhood to make way for commercial development near the city centre. Their father, a carpenter, had built their modest home from the foundation up. Their mother, a house cleaner, worked for celebrities like Lucille Ball and Amelia Earnhardt and took the children to church every Sunday
