Los Angeles

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/31/2022
  

  Los Angeles's Response to 1992 Riots Remains Model of How Not to Do It

  by V.N. Trinh

  The strategy of encouraging private business development, without seriously reforming police, fixing public schools, or addressing poverty, proved unequal to the task of promoting justice in LA. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/29/2022
  

  Racist Jokes Were the Glue of the LAPD Culture that Led to 1992 Riots

  by Raúl Pérez

  The LAPD was never forced to confront the documented ways that a culture of racial stereotyping and bigoted jokes cemented the systemic abuse of communities of color in the city. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  4/12/2022
  

  Greg Ginn, SST Records, and the Rise of SoCal Punk

  "In its 1980s heyday, SST released at least a dozen canonical rock albums that were notable for their rejection of convention."

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  3/17/2022
  

  Two Artists Unearth Hidden Histories of LA

  Devon Tsuno and Alan Nakagawa discuss the histories and daily life of the Japanese American community in Midtown Los Angeles, an area that has largely been erased from Angelenos' maps of their city. 

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• SOURCE: Protean
  2/25/2022
  

  Broken Homes of the Drug War

  by David Helps

  Rather than a mistake or an isolated instance of excess, a notoriously brutal and destructive LAPD raid on an apartment complex in 1988 should be seen as part of a political attack on the city's Black poor, enabled by cultural stereotypes of families of color. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  3/1/2022
  

  CORE's Fight for Fair Housing in Los Angeles

  by M. Keith Claybrook, Jr.

  The fight for fair housing in Los Angeles demonstrates the way that racism has been maintained through the institutions of housing and real estate. 

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• SOURCE: CSPAN
  1/27/2022
  

  CIA Director John Deutch at Los Angeles Town Hall in 1996 Denies Agency Sold Cocaine in City

  A town hall meeting in Los Angeles grew heated when the CIA director denied allegations published by reporter Gary Webb that the Agency was involved in importing and distributing drugs to South Central Los Angeles. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/6/2021
  

  Black Family's Success in Recovering California Land Could Spark National Land Return Movement

  "Activists and scholars say there are other similar cases nationwide, but proving them — and getting the current property owners to cooperate — will be a different matter."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/24/2021
  

  150 Years Ago, a Mob Attacked Los Angeles's Chinese Community

  by Reece Jones

  It's essential to understand white supremacy as a national phenomenon that defended the color line against multiple groups and linked white identity to the nation's borders. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/10/2021
  

  How a Black Family Got Their Beach Back

  The historic Bruce's Beach case is inspiring social justice leaders and reparations activists to fight for other Black families whose ancestors were also victims of land theft in the United States.

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  9/10/2021
  

  Los Angeles Pioneered American Racial Segregation

  by Gene Slater

  The real estate industry acted as a cartel to limit the free market in housing to preserve racial homogeneity, claiming it was necessary to protect property values. This form of housing segregation was tested in the booming market of 1920s California and spread nationwide. 

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• SOURCE: Tropics of Meta
  8/27/2021
  

  A Historic Seaside Community: Recovering Santa Monica's "Inkwell" Beach

  by Brian Dunlap

  "Memorial Day 1920. A young African American chauffeur, Arthur Valentine, settled on “Whites Only” Topanga Beach. With friends and family, he stepped from his truck. Three sheriff’s deputies demanded that they leave."

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• SOURCE: KCET
  7/6/2021
  

  Before Downtown L.A.'s High Rises, Bunker Hill Was Simply Home

  "Today, the Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill are often remembered nostalgically, but the community was also a vibrant, walkable neighborhood in the middle of a bustling downtown."

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/27/2021
  

  California’s Novel Attempt at Land Reparations

  Los Angeles County will return title to land that once was "Bruce's Beach," one of the only Southern California oceanfront resorts welcoming Black visitors, to the descendants of the owners from whom the property was taken by eminent domain in 1927.

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• SOURCE: Vox
  5/17/2021
  

  The Violent Origin Story of Dodger Stadium

  by Ranjani Chakraborty and Melissa Hirsch

  Through interviews with several former residents of the area, Vox explores the story of their neighborhoods razed to make room for Dodger Stadium. It’s one that’s often missing from the history of Los Angeles and has created a double-edged relationship for some Dodger fans. Features commentary by historian Priscilla Leiva. 

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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.