William Byron Rumford was born in 1908 in Courtland, Arizona. A graduate of UC San Francisco School of Pharmacy and certified pharmacist, Rumford also earned a BA in Political Science and MA in Public Administration, both from UC Berkeley. He applied his knowledge in the areas of housing, health, and narcotics legislation. He passed the Fair Employment Practices Act of 1959 that outlawed discrimination in employment. Rumford’s bill led to the establishment of California’s Fair Employment Practices Commission. He authored the Rumford Fair Housing Act signed by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr. in 1963 that outlawed discrimination in housing. The California Supreme Court upheld the Rumford Fair Housing Act when it ruled that Proposition 14, a Constitutional Amendment to invalidate the act and permit housing discrimination, was unconstitutional. Byron Rumford was the first African American elected to public office in Northern California. He died in 1986, at the age of 80.