Los Angeles

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  5/2/2021
  

  L.A.’s History is Often Whitewashed, Romanticized and Censored. A New Push to Tell the Truth

  Christopher Hawthorne leads a Civic Memory Working Group convened by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, that works to reverse the city's tendency to boost myths in the place of public history. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/2/2021
  

  What Manhattan Beach, Calif., Says About Reparations

  "When a wealthy, liberal California town can’t bring itself to even apologize for seizing land from Black residents a century ago, it underscores what a long road lies ahead for justice and reconciliation."

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  4/29/2020
  

  ‘I’ve Lost Everything to the Beast’: Reviewing 4 Books on MS-13

  by Rachel Nolan

  While the specter of the MS-13 gang has been central to political panics about immigration, the group's origins are American. A Latin American historian reviews four new books. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  4/5/2021
  

  What Manhattan Beach’s Racist Land Grab Really Meant

  by Alison Rose Jefferson

  Debates over  the redress of past racial injustice must acknowledge that some past actions have harmed communities in ways that can't be repaired, including the loss of space for communal leisure or equal access to everyday pleasures. 

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• SOURCE: The Metropole
  3/30/2021
  

  The Emergence Of Gangsta Rap — A Review Of To Live And Defy In LA

  by Katherine Rye Jewell

  A review by historian Katherine Rye Jewell of Felicia Angeja Viator's new book on the rise of "gangsta" rap music in the context of racism, poverty and policing in South Los Angeles in the 1980s. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  3/17/2021
  

  John Singleton Saw a Tenderness in Black L.A. that the World Refused to Look At

  John Singleton's films showed the fullness of life in South Central Los Angeles during the tumultuous 1990s that the news media didn't always portray.

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  3/17/2021
  

  The Future of L.A. is Here. Robin D.G. Kelley’s Radical Imagination Shows Us the Way

  Historian Robin Kelley discusses the work of his mentor Cedric Robinson, whose discussions in "Black Marxism" offer a way to circumvent the reductionist tendencies of the class- and race-oriented wings of the left today. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/11/2021
  

  This Black Family Ran a Thriving Beach Resort 100 Years Ago. They Want Their Land Back.

  The descendants of the Bruce family seek restitution for the taking of their family's beachfront land, which had been Southern California's first beach resort serving African Americans. Historian Alison Rose Jefferson says recreational access was an underappreciated facet of the struggle for justice. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/6/2021
  

  We Need to Put a Name to This Violence

  Attacks on Asian Americans in many cities have raised comparisons to Black-Korean tensions in Los Angeles at the time of the 1992 riots, but writer Jay Caspian Kang argues the comparison isn't apt, and more work needs to be done to determine whether a wave of hate crimes is happening, and if so, why. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  3/8/2021
  

  Latinos: The LA Times' 1983 Pulitzer Prize Winning Series Now Available

  The LA Times won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on Latinos in Southern California. Now this important journalistic primary source is available online. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  2/9/2021
  

  Behind these Names, You’ll Find Stories of L.A.'S Black History

  The city of Los Angeles's early Anglo history was marked by the national conflict over slavery, and local decisions granting freedom to Black Angelenos shaped the city. Longtime LA Times columnist Patt Morrison discusses the public markers to African American history in the city. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  10/29/2020
  

  The Dossier That Destroyed Frank Wilkinson’s Dream of Public Housing in LA

  by Eric Nusbaum

  Frank Wilkinson's advocacy for racially integrated public housing in Los Angeles set off a red-baiting campaign that landed him in prison. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Review of Books
  10/25/2020
  

  Sanctuary Unmasked: The First Time Los Angeles (Sort of) Became a City of Refuge

  by Paul A. Kramer

  Los Angeles’s first sanctuary law grew out of the refugee wave that had brought Alicia Rivera to the city. By 1982, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 refugees from El Salvador — a country with fewer than 5,000,000 people — and tens of thousands of Guatemalans had fled to the United States to escape murder, poverty, and starvation.  

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  10/13/2020
  

  A Scholar of American Doom Doesn’t See How Capitalism Can Fix This Crisis

  "There are probably a billion and a half people, maybe more, maybe 2 billion, in the informal working class who have simply been triaged already in advance. So the fate of a very large minority of humanity has been determined now."

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  10/7//2020
  

  Getting to Freedom City (Review)

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  Historian Robin Kelley reviews Mike Davis and Jon Weiner's "Set the Night on Fire," which chronicles the growth of resistance to inequality and miltarized policing in 1960s Los Angeles.

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• SOURCE: Associated Press
  8/23/2020
  

  Film Shows Trailblazing Black Female Editor, VP Candidate

  A new documentary short highlights the journalistic and political career of Charlotta Bass, the Progressive Party candidate for Vice President in 1952.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/20/2020
  

  For Japanese Americans, Housing Injustices Outlived Internment

  After enduring internment, Japanese Americans were forced to resettle in a changed society with a dire housing shortage. The government's response was grossly inadequate. 

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• 8/16/2020
  

  A Lost Lyrical Commemoration of the Watts Rebellion

  by Ken Lawrence

  A never-recorded song from 1955 linked the Watts rebellion to systemic injustice and a long history of police abuse. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  8/3/2020
  

  She Played a Key Role in the Police Response to the Watts Riots. The Memory Still Haunts Her—But Black History Is Full of Haunting Memories

  by Morgan Jerkins

  Regina was a Black woman working as an LAPD dispatcher in the 77th Street Division of South Los Angeles. She sent officers to respond to another's call for aid on August 11, 1965, warning them not to escalate any situation. Today she still asks “why didn’t they listen to me?”

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• SOURCE: Forbes
  7/27/2020
  

  Celebrating the 19th Amendment and the First Safe Haven Hostel for Women

  Hotel Figueroa in Los Angeles has served as a backdrop for some of the most challenging and memorable moments in American history, a representative of both the endurance of women and the City of Angels’ entrepreneurial, creative, and resilient spirit.