Oceanside’s downtown post office, dedicated in 1936, is being named for one of the city’s first Black residents, Charlesetta Reece Allen — a businesswoman, church pastor, and founder of the Oceanside Girls Club and the North San Diego County Branch of the NAACP.
“Charlesetta Reece Allen was a trailblazer for the Black community in Oceanside and her contributions improved the lives of residents of North County,” said Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, who introduced a bipartisan bill to rename the building at 517 Seagaze Drive.
“We are beginning the process of naming this post office to highlight Mrs. Allen’s service to Oceanside and hope that it will provide inspiration to residents for decades to come,” Levin said in a written statement. “Naming this postal facility is the least we can do to honor someone who did so much for Oceanside.”
Allen was born in Texas in 1913 to Thomas and Stella Reece. The family later moved to Muskogee, Okla., where Allen was the eldest of six daughters and two sons.
Oceanside’s downtown post office is being named for Charlesetta Reece Allen, one of the city’s first Black community leaders.
(Phil Diehl/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
She and a sister moved to Oceanside in the late 1930s, where they established the Church of God in Christ in 1941 with Allen as the church pastor, according to history provided by Levin. She also worked as a cook in the downtown Casa Blanca restaurant.
Allen soon met and married local resident John Callen Mann. They first lived on South Tremont Street and later bought a house on San Diego Street in the Eastside neighborhood. After John Mann died, she married the Rev. Wesley H. Allen, who was pastor of a church in Eastside.
Charlesetta Allen began catering food out of her home and eventually opened her own restaurant in a small building next to her house that was the first Black-owned storefront in Oceanside. It became a popular gathering place for Black residents who began to arrive in the area during and after World War II.
“It served all the Black servicemen from Camp Pendleton,” said her nephew, Eddie Parks, 71, a retired long-time Coca-Cola employee who lives in Oceanside.
He was surprised and happy at the news his Aunt Charlesetta will be recognized.
“That’s awesome,” Parks said Thursday. “I’m very thankful. I didn’t see that one coming.”
Others in the community also expressed their satisfaction with the announcement.
Satia Austin, current president of the North San Diego County NAACP, compared Allen to Dorothy Height, a Black woman prominent in the national Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s and a counselor to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson.
“Ms. Allen, like Dorothy Height, used herself to work for justice and freedom,” Austin said. “This is especially true for the Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton she fed and cared for. Her desire to eliminate injustice led her to become the first NAACP president for North County San Diego.”
The interior of Oceanside’s downtown post office on Seagaze Drive.
(Phil Diehl/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Oceanside Mayor Esther Sanchez said Allen is “an excellent choice for this honor.”
“Charlesetta strove for equal justice … had deep ties to Oceanside and continues to be honored and remembered for her contributions to the community,” Sanchez said.
Allen received the San Diego Sojourner Truth Award in 1969. Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, N.Y., in 1797 and escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826. She became a well-known abolitionist and public speaker.
Allen died Sept. 28, 1983. She had no children and is survived by her nieces and nephews, some of whom live in Oceanside.
Levin’s bill is sponsored by the full San Diego County and Orange County congressional delegations.
The building on Seagaze Drive was Oceanside’s first permanent post office. At the time the city had about 4,500 residents.
It was one of several projects completed in Oceanside by the Works Progress Administration or WPA that was created in 1935 and renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939.
The WPA was created by presidential order as a New Deal program to employ millions of Americans during the Great Depression.
