Milpitas has a low African American population, at 3.2% of the total population, according to the Milpitas government, compared to 13.6% of the total population of the United States, according to the 2020 U.S. federal census. Despite these low statistics, Ben Gross would be one of the first African Americans to become mayor of a predominantly white city: Milpitas in 1966.
Gross was born and raised in Jim Crow Arkansas and was inspired to oppose racial discrimination after being denied downstairs seating at a theater with a friend, according to BlackPast. He led a successful protest at his high school against discrimination and segregation during his senior year.
After high school, Gross spent a year in the Navy before moving to Richmond, California in 1949.
Gross began work for the Ford Motor Company. He joined the United Auto Workers Union (UAW). He was promoted to housing committee chairman in 1954, according to BlackPast.
In the same year, Milpitas became an official city, a year after Ford moved their assembly plant to Milpitas.
As the housing committee chairman of UAW, Gross fought for integrated housing for African Americans in Milpitas alongside the American Friends Service Committee, according to The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein.
Gross encountered many obstacles, from uncooperative local developers to securing funding to the developers of Sunnyhills making a plea to the city council to deny access to sewer lines for the housing Gross was working on, according to Rothstein.
The union rallied against Sunnyhills and boycotted the sale of homes by flooding open houses to disrupt sales to white buyers. Gross, with the UAW, would find a developer willing to buy Sunnyhills and the housing UAW was working on, uniting them under the common name Sunnyhills, according to Rothstein.
Gross created the first integrated community in California, according to the Milpitas Historical Society. Gross became the first Black city council member in Milpitas in 1961, and then mayor in 1966, according to BlackPast. Gross’s achievements in creating one of the first integrated neighborhoods in California and fending off the annexation of Milpitas by San Jose as mayor have been major contributions to Milpitas.
Gross also initiated the request that led Nikita Khrushchev, Former Premier of the Soviet Union, to visit Milpitas and its integrated neighborhood in 1962.