The entrances on Hobart, Harvard, and Oxford streets, south of Washington Boulevard are marked with stone pillars with the inscription “West Adams Heights.” [1] Many of the neighborhood's early residents were required to sign a restrictive covenant.

Amongst requirements such as building a “first-class residence,” of at least two stories, costing no less than two-thousand dollars (at a time when a respectable home could be built for a quarter of that amount, including the land), and built no less than thirty-five feet from the property’s primary boundary,” residents were also prohibited from selling or leasing their property to people of color.

Residents included Golden State Mutual Insurance Company president Norman O. Houston, actress Hattie McDaniel, civil rights activists John and Vada Sommerville, actress Louise Beavers, band leader Johnny Otis, performers Pearl Bailey and Ethel Waters.

Judge Thurmond Clarke left the courtroom to see the disputed neighborhood and threw out the case the following day.

He said, "It is time that members of the Negro race are accorded, without reservations or evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

"[3] McDaniel’s case would go on to set a precedent that later impacted the 1948 Shelley v. Kramer Supreme Court Ruling which in summary states that “holding that state courts may not enforce racially restrictive covenants.”[4] Time magazine, in its issue of December 17, 1945, reported: Spacious, well-kept West Adams Heights still had the complacent look of the days when most of Los Angeles' aristocracy lived there.

His reason: "It is time that members of the Negro race are accorded, without reservations or evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

[7] In April 2006, the city instructed the Department of Transportation to install four "West Adams Heights" signs.