In 1942, the Glendale Chapter of the California Real Estate Association formed the “Race Restriction Committee” an organization with the goal of banning Japanese people from being able to purchase or lease residences in the city [16].

The primary motivation for this effort, was due to the widespread Anti-Japanese sentiment that emerged during World War II. While the efforts of the Race Restriction Committee used the “dangers” of Japanese Americans as the primary reasoning for why Glendale housing should be prohibited from them, the Committee’s ultimate goal was to eliminate all POC people from Glendale. 

In an article published by the Glendale News-Press in 1942, it was reported that the Committee had successfully restricted 60% of all property in the city, and was hoping to increase this practice to the entire city [17].

In the article, Albert I. Stewart, the president of the Board of Directors in Pasadena, praised racially restricted housing measures and stated that, “the problem presented by the Japanese residents of Southern California is more acute today than it has ever been… Japanese aliens are seeking to infiltrate into communities like Glendale and Pasadena, where they can acquire property in the names of their American-born children and control such property in the capacity of guardians of such children” [17]. Stewart additionally proposed more extreme measures to take place in the future, such as his plan for Japanese Americans to be concentrated within specific districts in the U.S. in order to “eliminate any danger” [17]. 

Russel O. Cochran, a realtor, and director of the Race Restriction Committee additionally quoted that the Glendale Real Estate was able to successfully halt this “Japanese influx” and that completion of their restriction program would successfully “[bar] the gate of Glendale to any element that might affect adversely the property values” in the city [17]. In a separate Glendale News-Press article also published in 1942, J. Paul Clark, the president of the Glendale Real Estate attested that their goal was to “maintain Glendale as ‘the white spot of California’” [18].

The movement by the Racial Restrictions Committee was eventually deemed a “victory”, as it achieved a monopoly on all of Glendale’s housing. Glendale’s “success” of barring non-white residents through this private widespread agreements rather than official legislation, led other Southern California communities to follow suit [16]. The Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock, and the cities of La Habra and Huntington Beach, used Glendale’s strategy of forming alliances with residents and realtors as a model for controlling the racial demographics of their populations [16]. 

For the next two decades, Glendale remained an exclusively white community, with very few exceptions, until the passing of the California Fair Housing Act in 1963, which legally prohibited the practice of race restrictions [16]. Glendale’s Racial Restrictions Committee attempted to counter this by proposing Proposition 14, which would nullify the Act but the Proposition ultimately did not pass [16].