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More than my color: race, space and politics in black Los Angeles, 1940 - 1968

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More than my color: race, space and politics in black Los Angeles, 1940 - 1968

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Content MORE THAN MY COLOR: RACE, SPACE AND POLITICS IN BLACK
LOS ANGELES, 1940 - 1968
by
Christopher D. Jimenez y West
________________________________________________________
_
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)
August 2007
Copyright 2007 Christopher D. Jimenez y West
ii
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
Abstract iv
Introduction vii
Chapter 1
The Black Imagineers 1
Chapter 2
No Oasis in the Desert: The Confinement of
Black Los Angeles 1940 – 1960 31
Chapter 3
Does My Vote Matter? The Spatial Politics of
Race in Los Angeles 1950 – 1965 81
Chapter 4
Watts: A Reconsideration 121
Conclusion/Epilogue 163
Bibliography 178
iii
Dedication
The dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Annie Lee
“Mother” Cooney, the first historian I ever knew.
iv
Acknowledgements
In the Fall, of 1992 I interviewed for a residential
life position in student affairs at the University of
Southern California. The director of the department,
Ken Taylor, took a risk on hiring a young professional
with a chip on his shoulder, I am forever indebted to
his mistake.
My first seminar in the department of history at
the University of Southern California was lead by,
Mauricio Mazon. His grace, generosity and support were
instrumental in my decision to pursue a graduate degree.
The faculty of the department were extraordinarily
supportive providing an atmosphere that was
intellectually challenging and collegial. In
particular; Marjorie Becker, Steve Ross, Lon Kurasheige,
Terry Seip and Charlotte Furth made the journey a
pleasant adventure. My fellow graduate students: Anne
Choi, Sharon Sekhon, Matt Roth, Pete La Chapelle and Ana
Rosas were always available with a kind word or a timely
article. George Sanchez was a consistent source of
positive energy and resources. My two years as his
research assistant were as rewarding as any experience
of my graduate career. I will never find the words to
v
express my heartfelt appreciation. Phil Ethington was
the perfect dissertation chair, striking a delicate
balance between challenge and support. My skills as a
researcher and scholar derive from his tutelage and I
will never forget his training.
I learned from my parents Earl and Kathleen West
that humility; dignity and sacrifice were more than
words but a creed to live by. I learned from my
children, Hal’ia and Ea’sus to have fun and smile. And
I learned from my wife that no matter where you come
from believe in yourself and look to the future.
vi
Abstract
Specifically, this study is an analysis of how changes
and variations, in the residential landscape(s) of black
Los Angeles in the post – war era influenced how black
folks defined themselves and for whom they voted. The
electoral politics of black Los Angeles is of particular
note because of its relative power and impact
vii
Introduction
This is a study of the relationship between
identity and cultural agency, both within the black
community and in the way these communities were
perceived by others, and of the impact of that
relationship the political empowerment of post World War
II black Los Angeles. In search of employment blacks
migrated from the rural south to the West during World
War II fundamentally altering the landscape of western
cities.
1
Preexisting issues of discrimination in
education, housing and employment grew to epidemic
proportions by the influx of migrants who found the
brief opportunities provided by the war. These
opportunities quickly eroded with the close of
hostilities in 1945. Over the next thirty (30) years,
various political movements in cities along the Pacific
seaboard (Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Los
Angeles) arose seeking solutions to these problems. The
response by black communities in the West to these
issues took on a trajectory that was influenced by the
landscape, history and culture of racial identity and
race relations in the region. For example, while pre

1
Johnson, M. S. (1993). The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East
Bay in World War II. Berkeley, University of California Press.
viii
World War II Chicago was the focal point of black
migration until 1930, during the same period the black
Los Angeles community grew at a relatively moderate rate
with a host of institutions (church, business and social
clubs) that flourished around two nexus points of the
black community: Central Avenue and Watts.
2
The story of
this region in general and of the city of Los Angeles in
particular is important in the shaping of the identity
and the politics of the black community
It is difficult, however, to analyze politics in
urban black communities simply by examining the
traditional mechanisms: elected representatives, voting
tallies, etc. applied to other migrants, such as white
ethnics, because the legacy of institutional racism
precluded blacks from seeking political office. As
Robin D. G. Kelley suggests we must look elsewhere to
places such as clubs, social organizations, churches,
and informal networks, which along with popular culture
(music, dance, and language) as sources of information
that can uncover the politics of these communities.
3

2
Tuttle, W. M. (1996). Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919.
Chicago, University of Illinois Press.
3
Kelley, R. D. G. (1993). “We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking
Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South.” The Journal
of American History 80(1): 75-112.
ix
“What is needed then is an examination of African –
American communities that goes beyond attempts to
understand and explain the ‘riots’ and examines how
racial identity informs individual identity, which in
turn contributes to racial construction.”
4
Taking this
call by historian Earl Lewis a step further I argue that
space is a critical component of racial identity
formation. In other words, where people see, feel, and
experience life affects how they define themselves and
contributes to racial construction.
Specifically, this study is an analysis of how
changes and variations, in the residential landscape(s)
of black Los Angeles in the post – war era influenced
how black folks defined themselves and for whom they
voted. The electoral politics of black Los Angeles is of
particular note because of its relative power and
impact. Black Los Angeles entered WWII with a number of
substantive and vibrant political organizations and yet
unlike their brethren in Chicago, Philadelphia and other
northern cities, they could not penetrate local elected
political power structures. Yet by the spring of 1965

4
Lewis, E. (1995). “To Turn As On a Pivot: Writing African Americans
Into A History of Overlapping Diasporas.” American Historical Review
June: 765 - 787.
x
representation of black elected officials in Los Angeles
had proportionately out-paced all other northern urban
black communities.
5
This compelling story of the
demographic and political transformation of black Los
Angeles to a large extent is buried under the dominant
narratives of the Watts Riots of 1965 and the election
of Tom Bradley to the office of mayor in 1973. More
Than My Color excavates the voices of post war migrants,
third generation Angelenos, working class laborers and
veterans as they forged lives that were defined by more
than race.
The development of More Than My Color comes in the
midst of a golden age of historical writing on black
communities as a number of recent studies have emerged
which have expanded our understanding. Works such as Joe
William Trotter’s Black Milwaukee: The Making of an
Industrial Proletariat, 1915 -1945 (1988), Allen B.
Ballard’s “One More Day’s Journey”: The Story of a
Family and a People (1984), Earl Lewis’s In Their Own
Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century
Norfolk, Virginia (1991) James Brochert’s Alley Life in

5
John Kramer "The Election of Blacks to City Councils: A 1970
Status Report and a Prolegomenon." Journal of Black Studies 1(4,
1971): 443 - 476.
xi
Washington: Family Community, Religion, and Folklife in
the City, 1850 – 1970 (1980), Lillian Serece Williams’s
Strangers in the Land of Paradise: The Creation of an
African American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900 –
1940 (1999), Myra B. Young Anderson’s “Lord, Please
Don’t Take Me in August”: African Americans in Newport
and Saratoga Springs, 1870 – 1930 (1999) have applied
the methodology of the new urban history to illustrate
the complex relationships of family, work, class and
color in the black community. For Los Angeles three
recent works have contributed to what was a fairly
sparse historiography of the black community. Douglas
Flamming in Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim
Crow America builds a narrative around the aspirations,
hopes and ultimate losses for blacks as Los Angeles
devolved into a racially segregated city. In L.A. City
Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great
Depression to the Present Josh Sides weaves stories of
the expectations of black migrants to Los Angeles
against a political, economic and social landscape that
more often than not provided frustration rather then
opportunity. And R.J. Smith in The Great Black Way: L.A.
in the 1940s and the Lost African American Renaissance
xii
focuses on the evolution of Central Avenue before,
during and after the war as the cultural, social and
political center of black Los Angeles. However, though
these works broaden the historiography on the black
community they do not highlight the important
relationship of social activism and its influence on
electoral politics.
Anthropologist Stephen Gregory’s Black Corona is an
example of a work, which balances the internal and
external politics of black communal life. Part
contemporary ethnographic study and part historical
analysis, Gregory’s narrative illuminates the
relationship of racial construction and identity to
political activism often in response to the policies and
initiatives of state institutions. Gregory is at his
best analyzing the internal politics of black communal
life as black elected officials, formal political
institutions and informal networks find common ground
and work toward opposing goals dependent upon their
perception of self and community interests. My initial
research on black communal politics in Los Angeles
builds on the analysis in Gregory’s Black Corona by
suggesting that racial identity and construction varied
xiii
over time and space and was but one of several variables
that influenced political activism.
Any analysis of Los Angeles politics and the black
community must take into account these overlapping
structures of power and influence and the ways they
impact and where citizens choose to engage political
institutions. With this in mind, I am critical of the
current definitive work on black politics in post World
War II Los Angeles, Raphael Sonenshein’s Politics in
Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles (1993).
His focus on the local genesis of the bi – racial
coalition which elected Tom Bradley mayor in 1973 offers
little information toward a full understanding of the
political terrain of black political life in the
twentieth century. Seminal figures such as Augustus
Hawkins who served the 62
nd
district much of the early
twentieth century as the ONLY African American elected
to the California State Assembly is barely mentioned.
Mervyn Dymally, an early protégé of Hawkins who followed
Hawkins into the Assembly from the 52
nd
District (1962 –
66); and served as a State Senator from the 29
th
District
(1966 – 1975); Lieutenant Governor (1975 – 79); US
Congressman from the 31
st
District (1981 – 1993) served
xiv
as a counter to the Bradley coalition working with the
powerful Speaker of the House Jess Unruh. Billy G.
Mills, the first black graduate of the University of
California, Los Angeles Law School who was a colleague
of Bradley on the Los Angeles City Council representing
the 8
th
District from 1963 – 1974 and Gilbert Lindsay the
first African American to serve in the Council
representing the 9
th
District from 1963 – 1990 receive
short shrift. Sonenshein’s work largely ignores the
complexity of governance and power both internal and
external to the black community and most critically he
overlooks the spatial composition of post World War II
Los Angeles. Bradley’s political coalition of Westside
Jews, white liberals and blacks was largely forged in
the 1950s with the migration of black professionals away
from Central Avenue and Watts and west to the Crenshaw
district. What Sonenshein describes as the common
interests of the black community and white liberals are
the political interests of Westside black professionals
who because they lived away (i.e. the Crenshaw district)
from other black enclaves constructed their identity in
ways similar to white liberals and Westside Jews, this
was a, not the black community.
xv
My contribution is an analysis of black political
interests incorporating the various residential enclaves
and political perspectives as I integrate identity,
space and formal electoral politics into the rich
historiography of informal politics to further our
understanding of black migration to the urban north.
In Chapter 1 The Black Imagineers the focus is on
black boosterism of the early twentieth century, which
entices early black migrants into an area, which came to
be known as “South Central Los Angeles.” Chapter 2 No
Oasis in the Desert: The Confinement of Black Los
Angeles, 1940 – 1960, racially restrictive covenants
combined with the policies of the Home Owners Loan
Corporation, the Los Angeles City Housing Authority and
home owners associations transformed the black community
of Los Angeles from a pre-WWII collection of racial
enclaves into a post-WWII contiguous ghetto. The irony
of this transformation of black Los Angeles was that as
black racial enclaves became spatially whole through the
1950s and 1960s they also fractured socially along lines
of class and politics.
During my analysis of post-WWII black politics in
Chapter 3 Does My Vote Matter? The Spatial Politics of
xvi
Race in Los Angeles 1950 – 1965 the dynamic of a
fractured political sphere coupled with gerrymandering
of city council districts facilitated the exclusion of
blacks from holding local political office through the
1950s. By the dawn of the 1960s, black electoral
majorities in three districts resulted in the election
of Gilbert Lindsay, Billy Mills and Tom Bradley to the
Los Angeles City Council, joining Augustus “Gus” Hawkins
in the United States Congress and Mervyn Dymally in the
state senate to form arguably the most powerful African
American concentration of black elected officials in the
nation.
6
Concluding in Chapter 4 Watts: A
Reconsideration I explore a narrative of the events
leading up to the rebellion of August 1965. The focus
is on the struggle over the distribution of War on
Poverty funds between City of Los Angeles Mayor Samuel
Yorty and various community leaders, elected officials
and social activists in the black community. The
unresolved struggle was a significant contributor to the
frustration and political isolation of blacks,
particularly in Watts, contributing to the explosion
social unrest that shook the city and the nation.

6
Ibid.
xvii
More Than My Color excavates the community stories
of black Los Angeles, which lay buried underneath the
dominant narratives of the Watts Riots of 1965 and the
election of Tom Bradley to mayor in 1973.
1
Chapter 1
The Black Imagineers
He was born on October 25, 1923 in an area of
Mississippi known as meridian. The birth certificate
lists one Lula Hammond as the mother and a Georgia man
with the last name of Watkins as the father. Ted would
never meet his biological father, nor would his mother
ever speak of the man who supplied half of his DNA and
who name he was given. Lula possessed an angelic face
and the graceful mannerisms of a dancer (her listed
profession). But her gift was patience in the midst of
adversity.
Ted was seven or eight years of age (he did not
recall exactly) at home playing in the front yard of his
mother’s house. Lula had married a man name John and he
was off tending the fields leaving Lula at home with
Ted. A cousin raced in to the yard screaming that white
men were after her. The cousin had transgressed one of
the numerous (in this case sassing or back talking a
white person) de facto public rules of white supremacy
and was subject to punishment. No sooner had Ted’s
2
cousin beat a hasty retreat into the house than three
whites approached the yard.
Reclined in the chair on her porch, Lula listened,
as they demanded to see the cousin. Ted, terrified
under the bed, heard no response from his mother. With
a quiet patience, she merely sat on his porch, waiting
for the men to approach. The men demanded the child,
they threatened Lula, and they cursed her name. All the
while, Lula merely sat, and waited. Frustrated, the men
turned and walked away. It was a patience tested not
merely at the blows of racism; she would also suffer
physical attack at home, as John vented his anger where
he could find power.
7
The patience of Lula was in stark contrast to the
seething defiance of young Ted. His physique matched
his rage as a boy of 12 Ted stood down John during a
particularly violent attack upon his mother. While John
could be held to a physical standoff, defiance of white
supremacy in this time and space could (and often did)

7
The account that follows is based upon a series of interviews with
Tim Watkins the grandson of Lula. Ted Watkins, the son in the
account who leaves Louisiana would go on as an adult to create the
Watts Labor Community Action Coalition. This account, re – told to
his children, served as a formative experience in Ted’s life
impacting his work in the United Auto Workers and later as a
community activist in Watts. Interview with Tim Watkins, Watts Labor
Community Action Coalition, Watts, California November 19, 1999
3
mean death. The public theatre of white supremacy in the
American South tasked blacks to express humility and
deference. Institutional race oppression was reinforced
through the day-to-day performance of subservience.
Stepping into the public theatre of the street demanded
that the mask be worn securely (eyes downtrodden,
shoulders hunched, a smile) to avoid a rebuke. To the
young, prideful Ted, the mask was particularly
uncomfortable.
In his thirteenth year, Ted was in town to run
errands. It had rained the night before and Ted was
sporting a new pair of boots that he had received from a
friend. As he walked along the street, a white Western
Union delivery boy approached from the opposite
direction. The rules were clear, masked individuals
were expected to defer the sidewalk and step into the
street. Whether a touch of insolence, the folly of
youth, or weariness, Ted strode forward. As they
neared, the delivery boy swung, Ted ducked, and he felt
the white boy’s ribs crack with his responding blow.
8
By the time Ted arrived at home, word had already
reached John and Lula, at midnight a lynch mob would

8
Interview with Tim Watkins, Watts Labor Community Action Coalition,
Watts, California November 23, 1999
4
arrive to kill the young man. He begged John and Lula
to stand with him and fight the mob when they arrived.
He told his mother and stepfather that he was tired of
folks just bowing down to whites. Patient as always,
Lula looked at her son and told him to flee quickly
least the mob arrive early and kill him. He gathered
what clothes he could, some food for his journey, and a
memory. Folks said that Chicago was the place to go,
jobs, housing, and a community. However, Ted wanted to
get as far away from Meridian as he could. The furthest
place he could think of was a place he had heard about a
couple of times. The train went first to New Orleans,
as he stood on the platform the conductor yelled final
boarding call of The Argonaut Ted boarded in route to a
place out west called Los Angeles.
9
The general phenomenom of the migration of blacks
is one familiar to scholars of African-American history
of the 1920s and 1930s. Blacks motivated by a variety of
push factors (the public theatre of white supremacy,
agricultural mechanization leading to unemployment for
laborers) coupled with the pull of the promises of labor
agents, the imagineers of the black press, and family

9
Interview with Tim Watkins April 12, 1999, Watts, California
5
letters black migration flourished. Historians have
largely ignored the relationship of the migration to the
complex issues of the post war urban environment.
Specifically, I am interested in the real and imagined
space that migrants constructed as they considered their
journey. How did black migrants negotiate the
difference between the imagined space of boosterism with
the reality of the urban environment? The cultural
traditions (specifically jazz) were also part of the
transformation. I argue that the powerful imagery of the
imagined space; hope, opportunity, jobs, and freedom co-
existed with the grit of the urban environment - in this
case Los Angeles - in complex cyclical patterns.
The Imagineers
10
of Place

10
I define imagineers as folks not explicitly seeking to create
excitement about a geographic location (see boosters) but rather
through images, and words that tie into cultural memory they seek to
paint an imagined racial space of hope and salvation, and Eden of
sorts but defiantly utopist. The reference to cultural memory is
from Samuel Floyd’s work on black music, I quote his definition here
at some length “…to refer to nonfactual and no referential
motivations, actions, and beliefs that members of a culture seem,
without direct knowledge or deliberate training, to ‘know’-that feel
unequivocally ‘true’ and ‘right’ when encountered, experienced, and
executed. It may be defined as a repository of meanings that
comprise the subjective knowledge of a people, its immanent
thoughts, its structures, and its practices; these thoughts,
structures, and practices are transferred and understood
unconsciously but become conscious and culturally objective in
practice and perception.” Samuel A. Floyd Jr. The Power of Black
6
Walk Together Children
Oh, get you ready children,
Don’t you get weary,
Get you ready children,
Don’t you get weary,
We’ll enter there, oh, children,
Don’t you get weary,
There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land.
(Folk Spiritual)
11
The role of imagined space in the migration of blacks to
southern urban and northern urban environments cannot be
overstated.
12
As Leon Litwack made clear in his seminal
work “Been in the Storm So Long” and Nicholas Lehman
chronicles in his “The Promised Land” the labor agents
and the black press (for example the Chicago Defender’s
lead story on May 15, 1917 was called “Great Northern
Drive”) contributed to blacks transitioning from a
largely rural and agricultural workforce in 1910 to a
urban northern population in 1970. Though Chicago and
New York were primary destinations, (and imagined
spaces), other locations - Africa and the West Coast -
also occupied places in dreams and aspirations.

Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States
Oxford Press, Oxford. 1995
11
Dudley Randall ed. The Black Poets (New York, Bantam Books) pg. 3
12
Benedict Anderson Imagined communities : reflections on the origin
and spread of nationalism London: Verso, 2006. pg. 21
7
Another imagined space for the rural Southerner was
the West Coast and specifically Los Angeles. Before
1915, travel costs, and little employment for laborers
conspired in making the city of Angels a destination of
primarily affluent American blacks. However, imagineers
of Los Angeles following the boosterism campaigns of the
Los Angeles Times defined the region in the black
imagination. In September 1913 “The Crisis” featured a
three young blacks leisurely lounging in front of a
typical California craftsman.
13

13
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People "California
Number." The Crisis 1913).
8
California made the cover again in March 1914, when
editor W.E.B. Du Bois featured the mother of Vada Watson
Somerville on the cover, and inside the issue he spoke
reverently of the “aggressive and hopeful” black
Angelenos that he met on his trip to the city.
14
1
Given Du Bois’s increasing focus on the talented
tenth during this period, we can assume that his focus
was largely on a small, but established community of
blacks who resided on the so-called Westside (Jefferson
Avenue to Western, and south to 36th Place). However,
the Black communities in Los Angeles previous to 1915
(1. a colony that resided around Temple St., 2. another

14
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Ibid. 1914).
9
along Central Avenue, a third at Avalon, and two more
colonies in Watts and Pasadena) ran the gamut of college
educated - largely a result of the University of
Southern California’s policy of non-discrimination in
admissions in the late 19th century - to preachers,
janitors, porters, and servants. While each community
used its own informal and formal networks (family,
newspapers such as The Liberator and The Crisis, word of
mouth) each (consciously or unconsciously) served as
imagineers who sent back sterling reports of the
possibilities, sowing the seeds of later migration. As
Los Angeles resident Charles D. Conner wrote,” My faith
in Los Angeles is built on the fact that a long series
of observations during a period of extended travels has
convinced me that Los Angeles Negroes are among the most
progressive in the nation. Right here, we have more
business in the hands of colored men and women than they
have in a great many Eastern States.”
15
The internal and external demographics of the
African American community played a critical role in its
emergence. As Charles Johnson, author of the study of
the 1919 Chicago Race Riot and an important contributor

15
Los Angeles Negro Directory and Who’s Who (Los Angeles, The
California Eagle Publishing Company, 1931) pg. 75
10
to the Harlem Renaissance wrote about Los Angeles Blacks
in 1926, “The focusing of racial interest upon the
Oriental has in large measure overlooked the Negro, and
the city accordingly, has been regarded by them, from a
distance, as desirable and likely to yield for them
important opportunities for living and earning a
living.”
16
By the close of World War I, a couple of unrelated
events dramatically increased Black migration to Los
Angeles; increased demand for manual laborers due to an
economic boom, and the closure of the Storyville jazz
club in New Orleans. Before 1915, travel to Los Angeles
while possible, was prohibitively expensive except for
the well to do, or when possible supported by a family
member already on the West Coast. By 1915, the choices
for blacks seeking to pursue a “Promised Land”, meant a
trip to New Orleans, and (with the opening of Southern
Pacific rail routes) a decision of Chicago, New York, or
Los Angeles on The Argonaut - the rail line that
traveled from New Orleans to Los Angeles. Los Angeles as
a destination point was both a space in America, as well

16
Emory J. Tolbert The UNIA and Black Los Angeles : ideology and
community in the American Garvey movement Los Angeles: Center for
Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1980.
11
as a place that was still American. While African-
Americans elite were beginning to travel to Africa, ACS
propaganda aside, for the average Black, Africa remained
– as it did to most Americans – a Dark Continent removed
from the mainstream. In addition, given the recent
service of Black Americans in the armed forces during
the First World War improving their own life situation
was important. Thus, the appeal of the rhetoric of the
imagineers lay in the promised opportunities for
employment and an imagined space of less violent racism
than the American south. For Edward Robinson - writer
and head of distribution for the California Eagle (1936-
38, writer; 1953-1964, writer and distribution chief) -
his journey to the city from New Orleans was as a six
year old in 1921. Upon arrival in Los Angeles, his
mother - Naomi Joseph Robinson - worked as a maid in the
Elms hotel (a Victorian on Bunker Hill) and young Edward
sold newspapers at 12th & Central.
17
For Richard Dunn (a
jazz aficionado and long time Los Angeles county
employee) his parents met in San Francisco but
ultimately migrated to the city where Richard’s father
found work with the public works department of the city

17
Interview with Edward “Abie” Robinson October 28, 1998, Los
Angeles, California, Edward “Abie” Robinson Home
12
of Los Angeles.
18
Part of Black migrational patterns
that were both rural to urban, and Southern to Northern,
the trip to Los Angeles for the Dunn and Robinson family
was of common laborers seeking relief from Southern
labor that offered mostly sharecropping in the rural
South. For other Blacks, in this case jazz musicians,
Los Angeles offered employment when little was available
in the South.
History of racialization and urban space in early
twentieth-century California
Restrictive racial covenants were an endemic plague
that infected American cities through most of the
twentieth century.
19
The origin of restrictions in
California dates to 1870s and the focus was on Chinese
immigrants. In language that foreshadowed the later 1882
Chinese Exclusion Act the 1879 California constitution
allowed incorporated cities and towns to remove and

18
Interview with Richard Dunn October 20, 1998, Richard Dunn Home
19
For a broad analysis of restrictive racial covenants see:Martha R.
Mahoney "SYMPOSIUM: SHAPING AMERICAN COMMUNITIES: SEGREGATION,
HOUSING & THE URBAN POOR: SEGREGATION, WHITENESS, AND
TRANSFORMATION." University of Pennsylvania Law Review 143(U. Pa. L.
Rev. 1659, 1995), Christopher Ramos "THE EDUCATIONAL LEGACY OF
RACIALLY RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS:
THEIR LONG TERM IMPACT ON MEXICAN AMERICANS." The Scholar: St.Mary's
Law Review on Minority Issues 4(Scholar 149, 2001), Camille Leslie
Zubrinsky ""I Have Always Wanted to Have a Neighbor, Just Like You
... ": Race and Residential Segregation in the City of Angels (Los
Angeles, California)." DAI 57(02A, 1996): 325.
13
prohibit the creation of Chinese neighborhoods.
20
The
first effort to implement residential restrictions on
the Chinese in an urban environment occurred in Ventura,
California. The response by Mr. Lee Sing to sue the city
began a pattern by Chinese and other racial minorities
to contest the legality of racial restrictions. The
response by the federal court in1892, which stated that
the state and municipal governments could not
discriminate but allowed individuals to enter into
restrictive covenants would establish a precedent which
would not be overturned until the Shelley v Kramer
Supreme Court decision of 1948. This loophole, which
allowed neighbors in a community to voluntarily enter
into an agreement to limit the purchase and selling of
property in a proscribed area to particular racial
group(s), was exploited throughout cities in California
against a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The
first racially restricted covenant filed in Los Angeles
was 1902, using the all - inclusive term "non –
Caucasians" to define all who fell outside the
parameters of the agreement. Reflecting the racial make

20
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 - 261.
14
up of early twentieth century California cities, these
early racially restrictive covenants were applied to
Chinese and Japanese in Los Angeles and San Francisco,
Mexicans in San Diego and Armenians in Fresno.
21
This is
not to suggest that racially based housing
discrimination was not a factor for blacks; however, as
sociologist J. Max Bond points out in his work on early
twentieth century black Los Angeles, given the
population size and disbursement of these residential
communities, the relative impact on housing for black
was minimal.
Blacks were a fairly small set of the
population less then 4% of the city of Los
Angeles as late as 1930. Nowhere else probably
are (realtors)...so successful in selling
sunshine and bungalows, bare lots and
sunshine, mountains and sunshine or just plain
sunshine itself. The 'sunshine', thats'
California's stock in trade.
The California Realty Board, headed by Sydney P.
Donaner, during the 1920s, became one of the most active
advertisers attempting to lure Blacks to Los Angeles.
22
Their small numbers allowed blacks to move into various
neighborhoods in Boyle Heights, along the burgeoning
black business and entertainment district of Central

21
Ibid.
22
Keith E. Collins Black Los Angeles : the maturing of the ghetto,
1940-1950 Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Pub., 1980.
15
Avenue, West Adams and south along the railroad tracks
in Watts. It is ironic that private home ownership
would be a highly charged issue for black Angelenos in
the post World War II era because during the 1920s and
1930s homeowner rates for African Americans in Los
Angeles were among the highest in the nation with 36.1%
of Black Angelenos owning their own home.
23
A History of Early Watts
One such area of working class homeownership was
the community of Watts. Located South of the pueblo
(and later city) of Los Angeles, Rancho Tajuata –
present day Watts – through the late nineteenth century
was composed mostly of farming and ranching land. Even
before Watts was annexed in 1927 by the city of Los
Angeles as part of its growth to the San Pedro/Long
Beach harbor the two areas were tied together because of
railway lines. Dating to 1869 with the construction of
rail lines by the Southern Pacific Railway Company along
Alameda Street (the Eastern boundary of the Watts
community) railroads dictated the growth and shape of

23
Fernando Javier Guerra "Ethnic Politics in Los Angeles: The
Emergence of Black, Jewish, Latino and Asian Officeholders, 1960-
1989 (California)." DAI 51(07A, 1990): 209, Sally Jane Sandoval
"Ghetto Growing Pains: The Impact of Negro Migration on the City of
Los Angeles, 1940-1960." MAI 12(01, 1974): 165.
16
Watts. With the construction of a train depot in 1900
the property of Rancho Tajuata became more valuable as
potential residential and commercial rather than
agricultural space and the land was surveyed for future
development. The peculiar quirkiness of lots in the
vicinity of the station with narrow lots of 25 X 130
feet explains much of this area. The land around Rancho
Tajuata was sub-divided and sold with the intent of
offering affordable housing to the working-man. The
slogan of the Golden State Realty Company: “$1 down, $1
a month” – drew working-class Mexican, Japanese, and
Swedish immigrants to the area.
24
Along Main Street (see
map), Japanese families combined tracts to establish
farms and gardens along the eastern perimeter of the
area. On the southern edge of the city grid, farm labor
attracted Mexican immigrants to an enclave known as El
Jardin (The Garden).

24
Patricia Rae Adler Watts: From Suburb to Black Ghetto, (UNIVERSITY
OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 1977).
17
Map #1
25
Black residency of the area occurred a bit
differently. An urban legend chronicled in Fun, Fights
and Fiestas in Old Los Angeles suggests that Marshall
Stimson deeded a block of land in Southern Watts for the
“exclusive use of Negroes.” This alleged act of

25
Map adapted by author from Ibid.,
18
benevolence aside, what is factually known is that by
1912 the intersection of Pacific Electric street railway
lines at the train station provided transportation and
jobs for black men. The combination of jobs and the
unincorporated farmland south of the city grid (which
allowed for squatting on land) combined to create an
opportunity for residency. This early colony of black
residency was named “Mud Town.” Arna Bontemps (an
artist/writer of the Harlem Renaissance) wrote of this
black colony:
The small group in Mudtown was exceptional.
Here removed from the influences of white
folks, they did not acquire the inhibitions of
their city brothers. Mudton was like a tiny
section of the Deep South literally
transplanted…There were songs in the little
frail houses and over the steaming pots lilacs
grew at every doorstep. In every house there
was a guitar.
26
Watts like other neighborhoods of black Los Angeles
in the early twentieth century were small and discrete
residential enclaves in which race was important but did
not dominate. From the upper class homes of the second
generation elite in the hills of Pasadena overlooking
the Arroyo Seco and the Rose Bowl down to the tidy

26
Arna Bontemps God Sends Sunday New York: Harcourt, 1931.
19
residences of the professional class in and around
Exposition and West Adams to the dwellings, flop houses
and businesses along Central Avenue and into the
sometimes ramshackle self- built houses of Watts, the
City of Angels offered both charm and opportunity to
black migrants. The railway provided not just jobs but
connected Watts to the rest of the central city.
Railroad workers would ride the Red Car (the inter city
railway system) up Central Avenue from Watts to shop,
get a haircut, conduct business and mingle along the
busy thoroughfare. At night the Red Cars would take
middle and upper class black residents to and from the
jazz clubs or to visit out-of-town guests at the Dunbar
Hotel and into the wee hours of the morning.
The elite business owners of black Los Angeles,
however, perceived Watts, as the wild country bumpkin.
Partially, this was due to the fact that as a
municipality outside the boundaries of the city, Watts
entertainment establishments, unlike Central Avenue
clubs were not subject to the prohibition and vice laws
of the city of Los Angeles. Business and cultural
entrepreneurs took advantage of this to develop racially
integrated entertainment spaces that would not have been
20
allowed in the city proper. For example, in 1915 black
realtor Charles C. Leake took a bog at Wilmington Avenue
and created an amusement area with playgrounds for
children, fishing, and late night/early morning jazz
venues. By 1922, Leake’s Lake as it was known became an
integrated public space in which Japanese truck farmers,
Mexican laborers, Irish immigrants and black railway
workers shared a love for jazz and spirits to the wee
hours. The success of Leake's Lake drew performer Jelly
Roll Morton, along with local jazz promoters Reb and
John Spikes to open Wayside Park near the Lake in 1922.
With Morton as entertainment director, together the two
establishments grew big through the mid 1920s.
27
When
the city annexed the area black business elites,
appalled by the debauchery of the area and of their
profits heading south, collaborated with the Los Angeles

27
The schism between the Central Avenue clubs and Watts clubs
represented not only one of vice and money but also of taste.
Musicians with formal musical training and were of a lighter
complexion received the majority of gigs in Central Avenue clubs
while in Watts improvisational and darker skinned acts were allowed
to proliferate. For more reading on this see: Michael B. Bakan "Way
out West on Central: Jazz in the African-American Community"
California Soul Music: Music of African Americans in the West.
Jacqueline Codgell Djedje and Eddie S. Meadows: Berkeley,
(University of Calfornia Press, 1998) 23 - 78, Ralph Eastman
""Pitchin up a Boogie": African-American Musicians, Nightlife, and
Music Venues in Los Angeles, 1930-1945" California Soul Music: music
of African Americans in the west. Jacqueline Codgell Djedje and
Eddie S. Meadows: Berkeley, (University of California Press, 1998)
79 - 103.
21
city council seeking to cut down on corruption and vice
ordered the police to close all dance halls at midnight.
It was not just where they partied on Saturday night but
how they prayed on Sunday morning, which distinguished
the black community of Watts from the Central Los
Angeles black elite. In early 1906 when the affluent
A.M.E. congregation of Pasadena needed a new pastor The
Reverend S.E. Edwards was dispatched from Alabama to
lead the congregation. Stylistic differences motivated
the Pasadena congregation to reject their new pastor
conflict and Edwards in need of a base established the
Grant A.M.E. church in September 1906. Borrowing from
other local A.M.E. churches the Rev. Edward’s
congregation began on 108th & Wilmington with a
congregation of eight families. During the 1920s and
1930s, the congregation grew from eight families to
nearly 400 congregants by 1940.
28
By 1940, Watts was largely a bedroom community.
Planning by early city leaders relegated industry
largely to the Alameda corridor. While there was room
for increased population density, there was no room for
factories. Perhaps romantically, residents remember

28
“A History of the Early Church” Watts, California: Grant A.M.E.
114
th
and Compton, Archival Room, Box 1
22
this time as one of peaceful tranquility. Whether
shopping along Main Street (103
rd
Street) for clothes, or
baked goods in the mostly Jewish-owned stores or black,
Mexican and white children working side by side in the
Japanese Gardens, and later attending one of the only
integrated high schools in Los Angeles, Jordan High
School, Watts was a community that on the surface was
tranquil.
However, beneath the tranquility lay distinctive
racial and class barriers that would grow during and
after WWII. Though blacks were almost 25% of the total
population of the city in 1940 there was a small
percentage of community members who benefited by
providing services to the community. In the district
known as “The Front” at 116
th
and Wilmington, black,
Mexican and Japanese business owners ran small mom and
pop operations filing the day-to-day consumer needs of
the community. There was a Mr. Jenkins who ran a laundry
and cleaners, a Mr. Pitman who cut hair in his barber
shop, and the Gibsons who not only had a gasoline
filling station, but a small motel with a restaurant.
And a convenience store run by the Japanese Toguri
23
family sat next to the taco stand.
29
The complex
tensions of race and class (little to no black
employment in Alameda corridor industry, racial
covenants dictating where blacks and Latinos could live)
lay under the still waters but would emerge in the post
- War era. Watts with its proximity to the sugar beet
farms of Compton and the Japanese truck farms of Watts
was an advantageous location for Mexicans and Mexican
Americans seeking work as migrant farm laborers. “El
Jardin” at the southern periphery of Watts was less a
permanent housing site than a labor camp serving as a
base in the area. As historian George Sanchez chronicles
in his work Becoming Mexican American, as the Great
Depression shrank the need for manual labor, local
officials co-operated with the federal government to
first limit and then repatriate Mexican laborers. By
1933 as trains, and automobiles filled with Mexicans and
Mexican Americans left Los Angeles for Guadalajara,
Mexico City and Tijuana, the neighborhoods they left
behind in the Eastern portion of the city of Los Angeles
down through Watts lost significant numbers. The
repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans from

29
Interview with Cecil Ferguson by author May 30, 1999 in the
Ferguson home.
24
1931–35 and the Japanese internment during the war years
had not only catastrophic effects on the families of
those removed but also on the landscape of Southern
California. Watts, which in 1940 was roughly equally
balanced between black, Mexican and Japanese families,
by 1946 was nearly 50% black.
The Destructive Alphabet; HOLC, FHA and CHA
Before 1930 the federal state had little interest
in homeownership, treating real estate transaction as
mostly private decisions by individuals and groups.
However, with the collapse of the economy and widespread
mortgage foreclosure during the Great Depression, the
federal government established the Home Owners Loan
Corporation (HOLC) in 1933.
30
The purpose of the HOLC was
two – fold. First it was established to provide funds
for refinancing urban mortgages, which had suffered a
spate of foreclosures due to the depression; second it
was to provide a systematic approach to home appraisal.
This unified approach to home appraisal was of
particular importance to provide stability to a real
estate market which by 1935 experienced an average of

30
Charles L. Neir "Perpetuation of Segregation: Toward a New
Historical and Legal Interpretation of Redlining Under the Fair
Housing Act." The John Marshall Law Review 32(Spring, 1999): 617 -
640.
25
100,000 mortgage foreclosures a month and because of the
fragmentation of the market into various interests
(developers, bankers and brokers) prevented the industry
from adapting a nation wide approach. The HOLC became
not only a venue to mediate these various conflicts but
also the place where the racial policy, which would
shape post WWII American cities was crafted. Utilizing
article 34 of its 1924 code of ethics, “A realtor should
never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood
a character of property or occupancy, members of any
race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence
will clearly be detrimental to property values in that
neighborhood.” representatives of the National
Association of Real Estate Boards (NAERB) interjected
race as a significant criteria into the policy. Thus,
when the HOLC home appraisal system moved away from
using the physical structure of an individual home as a
primary tool for the evaluation of the value of a
property into examining the socio economic
characteristics of a neighborhood the racial makeup of
the community took on a heightened significance.
Engaged in the majority of single-family dwelling
property transactions in American cities, realtors had
26
traditionally served an important role as middle - men.
With the codification of their racial value systems into
federal state policy they now were instrumental in the
racial makeup of urban neighborhoods. Using the realtor
ethos that integrated neighborhoods inherently brought
down property values, HOLC evaluators downgraded
racially integrated Los Angeles neighborhoods such as
Boyle Heights, Watts, Central Avenue, Green Meadows in
which blacks, white ethnics, Chinese, Japanese and
Mexicans had co – existed through the 1930s. The
residential security maps became the standard by which
all lenders evaluated mortgage applications.
31
The
residential security maps of the HOLC along with the
loan guarantees of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA)
placed the federal state in the role of dictating the
racial/spatial layout of American cities.
The HOLC established a systematic approach to real
estate appraisal but not the economic resources to jump
- start the real estate market that would take funded
mandate by the Congress. The National Housing Act of
1934 act established a new federal agency to address the
private and public housing markets by earmarking funds

31
Kenneth T. Jackson Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the
United States New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
27
for the creation of state and local agencies focused on
the amelioration of slum housing and the creation of
alternative housing facilities.
32
In the private housing
market the FHA fundamentally changed the landscape of
the American cities by guaranteeing 90% of the value of
collateral for loans made by lending institutions.
33
Previously, potential homeowners needed to provide a
down payment of anywhere from 20 to 30% of the total
purchase price of the home to secure a loan. With
Americans now only needing 10% down to purchase a home,
the FHA provided the stimulus that the construction
industry needed as housing starts jumped nationally from
332,000 in 1936 to 619,000 in 1941.
34
The FHA utilized
the HOLC residential maps in deciding which loans to
guarantee. Race was a significant though not sole factor
in determining the availability of 15 year amortized
loans.
35
The effect in the private housing market was the
reinforcement of the NAERB bias toward racially

32
Donald Craig Parson Making a better world : public housing, the
Red Scare, and the direction of modern Los Angeles Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2005. pg 226
33
Charles L. Neir "Perpetuation of Segregation: Toward a New
Historical and Legal Interpretation of Redlining Under the Fair
Housing Act." The John Marshall Law Review 32(Spring, 1999): 617 -
640.
34
Ibid.
35
Amy E. Hillier "Residential Security Maps and Neighborhood
Appraisals: The Home Owners' Loan Corporation and the Case of
Philadelphia." Social Science History 29(2, 2005): 207 - 233.
28
homogenous neighborhoods by deeming racially integrated
neighborhoods integrated "subversive" and thus unable to
receive federal funds. The penetration of realtor’s
racial preferences followed federal policy into the
state and local level with the implementation of public
housing.
Similar to other programs of the New Deal, the
National Housing Act of 1934 provided the federal policy
and funding while the particular provisions and
implementation were left to the local state to
administer. On March 21, 1938, at a special session of
the California State legislature, the Housing
Authorities Law, Housing Cooperation Law, Tax Exemption
Law and an Eminent Domain Law were overwhelmingly passed
and signed by the state government. The Housing
Authorities Law created Housing Authorities in every
city and county in the state, and the other laws
provided such authorities with full and sufficient power
to develop slum clearance and low-rent housing
programs.
36
On June 2, 1938, the Los Angeles City Council
adopted a resolution authorizing the Housing Authority

36
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles "A Decent Home An
American Right (State Establishing info)" Los Angeles (Housing
Authority of the City of Los Angeles, 1945)
29
of the City of Los Angeles to function pursuant to the
provisions of the California Housing Authorities Law.
Beginning in late 1938 and extending into 1940, the
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA)
began to explore potential sites for multi unit public
housing developments. However, race quickly became a
factor as residential communities, which either through
voluntary association or by developer’s insertion were
covered by restricted racial covenants, fought against
the placement of non – white public housing units
adjacent to their neighborhoods. The response by the
HACLA was two fold: first, to limit the development of
public housing to ten sites on the Eastside and South
and South Central areas which already contained a high
density of black, Mexican and other racial minorities;
and second, to establish racial quotas for existing and
new construction that privileged white occupancy in
those public housing units adjacent to racially
restrictive covenant communities.
37
The sum effect of racially restrictive covenants in
combination with the bias of realtors, codified into law
at the local and federal state level was to reconfigure

37
Don Parson Making a Better World: Public Housing and the Direction
of Modern Los Angeles. Thousand Oaks: 404.
30
the racial/spatial configuration of the city of Los
Angeles. The HOLC residential maps, which labeled
integrated communities and especially those which
contained blacks as a high risk for mortgages, limited
working class blacks’ access to FHA secured housing
loans and eroded the favorable conditions which had
existed in the early twentieth century for African
American homeownership in the City of Angels. This along
with the HACLA decision to follow the restrictive racial
covenant sensibilities of the local community in the
placement and occupancy of public housing reconfigured
the landscape of Los Angeles neighborhoods from racially
mixed neighborhoods into increasingly racially and
ethnically homogenous communities.
31
Chapter 2
No Oasis in the Desert: The Confinement of Black Los
Angeles 1940 – 1960
On May 13, 1953 Alfred and Luquella Jackson pulled
up to their first home on 2324 Reeve Street in Los
Angeles, California. Alfred hit the double jackpot, not
only had he found work in the shipyards of San Pedro but
the GI was able to find a home and secure a Veterans
Administration backed mortgage. The jubilant couple
Alfred and Luquella, along with their daughter
Jacqueline and another related couple and their two
children, began to unload their belongings, looking
forward to decorating their piece of the American dream.
By early evening a small crowd of neighbors began to
gather on the lawn next door to the Jackson home. As
dusk gave way to night, a voice from the all white crowd
called out, ”Hey nigger, what you moving here for?”
Another shouted, “Plenty of corn pones now!” Another
followed, “The house looks good now – it aint going to
look good in the morning! – There won’t be any windows!”
When the police finally arrived shortly before midnight
they dispersed the neighbors but warned the Jackson’s
they could neither guarantee their safety nor post a
32
unit indefinitely and left the families to fend for
themselves.
38
After WWII Los Angeles emerged as a major
destination for black migrants. Southern California
held a special place in the imagination of black
Americans as a space of racial utopia.
39
These ideas
were generated not merely by the usual appeals of the
West’s favorable weather, boosterism and burgeoning
employment, but for blacks in particular this was a
region that was widely perceived as an oasis from the
racial violence and humiliating public theater of the
Jim Crow south. As poet and writer James Weldon Johnson
said of the early twentieth century West,
”it is giving the Negro a better deal than any other
section of the country. I cannot attempt to analyze the
reasons for this, but the fact remains that there is
more opportunity for my race, and less prejudice against
it in this section of the country than anywhere else in
the United States.”
40
However, despite these widely held
sentiments the landscape for post World War II black

38
"The Story of Reeve Street, United States of America" California
Eagle, May 14,1953.
39
I explore Los Angeles as a space of imagined racial utopia in
Black Imagineers, chapter 1 of my dissertation
40
Quintard Taylor In Search of the Racial Frontier: African
Americans in the American West 1528 - 1990 New York: WW Norton and
Company, 1998.
33
migrants to Los Angeles was an isolated dystopia. This
chapter will explore the dimensions and effects of the
crisis in housing for African Americans migrants to Los
Angeles in the period of 1940 – 1964. With the support
and cooperation of the federal and local state, various
private interests centered around real estate worked to
maintain the city of Los Angeles as racially segregated
housing market to insure homogenous neighborhoods and
increased property values. The real estate options
available to black migrants were limited by the efforts
of builder, real estate agents, homeowner associations,
and developers. Despite the availability of new and
existing single-family dwellings in the Los Angeles
Basin and a burgeoning rental market blacks were
confined to an increasingly dense neighborhoods of South
Central Los Angeles. In Map 1 the communities of Van
Nuys, Reseda, Canoga Park, Sepulveda, and Northridge
were largely off limits to blacks seeking housing. The
four communities of the early twentieth century the
comprised the bulk of the black residential population
could not contain a population that grew 104% in the
1950s.
41
Black Angelenos comprised 14% of the population

41
Keith E. Collins Black Los Angeles : the maturing of the ghetto,
34
of the city but lived largely in a spatially contiguous
but socially diverse ghetto.

Map #2 Communities of the City of Los Angeles
42

1940-1950 Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Pub., 1980.
42
(1956). Communities of the City of Los Angeles. Los
Angeles, Department of City Planning.
35
While externally with 90% of the population confined to
these communities it could appear to be a homogenous
community; however the response by black Angelenos to
this housing crisis varied. The community fragmented
along class lines as the black middle and professional
class sought refuge in the neighborhoods of Baldwin
Hills, and West Adams (Crenshaw Boulevard) away from the
working class neighborhoods. Working poor and recent
immigrants more often than not found their housing
options limited to Green Meadows and Watts. This
internal fragmentation along class lines had profound
implications on electoral politics generating an energy
that resulted in the election of three men (Gilbert
Lindsay, Billy Mills and Tom Bradley) to the Los Angeles
City Council and laid the groundwork for the successful
run of Augustus Hawkins to the Congress and Mervyn
Dymally and F. Douglas Ferrell to the California State
Assembly. The fragmentation produced negative
consequences as well with Watts in particular suffering
from dilapidated housing, a crumbling infrastructure and
inferior education. African Americans despite concerted
efforts to affect public policy in Los Angeles could not
affect how and where the local and federal state
36
concentrated public housing. With public housing
disproportionately black and overwhelmingly situated in
Watts the south - eastern edge of the black ghetto
proved to be a recipe for disaster by 1965. This did
not occur by accident but was the result of policy
decisions.
War Changes Everything and Nothing, WWII and Los Angeles
Housing
The boom in wartime manufacturing and population
growth both quickened the pace of and solidified the
creation of racialized communities. The growth of
airplane design development and manufacturing along with
ship - building and other war related industries led to
a demand for plant labor. This along with the internment
of the Japanese, the military draft and the repatriation
campaigns of Mexicans in the 1930s, created a need for
human resources that was filled by women and racial
minorities.
43
Blacks were a significant component of this
growth, with the black population doubling to nearly

43
See: Patricia Rae Adler "Watts: From Suburb to Black Ghetto." DAI
41(02A, 1977): 01, Joe T Darden "Black Residential Segregation Since
the 1948 Shelley V. Kraemer Decision." Journal of Black Studies
25(6, 1995): 680 - 691, Becky Nicolaides ""Where the Working Man Is
Welcomed": Working - Class Suburbs in Los Angeles, 1900 - 1940."
Pacific Historical Review 1999): 516 - 572, Adler Patricia Rae
Watts: From Suburb to Black Ghetto Los Angeles, (University of
Southern California, 1977).
37
70,000 by 1946. The problem of course was that racial
covenants limited the supply of private single family
dwelling units available to black families and, with
public housing mirroring the limited opportunities of
the racial landscape of the private housing market,
there was a crisis for black war workers in Los Angeles.
As Floyd Covington said in his address to a conference
addressing WWII health issues in minority communities,
“The most serious problem at present facing all
newcomers is the critical housing shortage. The Negro,
of course faces an even greater plight in this respect.
On every hand over-crowding and congestion is becoming
the rule rather than the exception. The usual mal-
social factors of over-crowding, delinquency, disease,
and group exploitation have come to California.”
44
The
response by the federal state was to funnel resources
through the existing agencies (FHA, HACLA) by an
increased allocation of funds known as the Lanham Act of
1940. Southern California, with its concentration of
aviation design and manufacturing in the San Fernando
Valley and ship building in San Pedro and Long Beach,

44
Floyd Covington. "Negroes in California" Tuberculosis
in Minority Groups, Los Angeles, California Tuberculosis
and Health Association. 1944)
38
received a lion's share of the $1.3 billion in Lanham
funds identified for military related housing.
45
While
Lanham fueled a boom in construction starts in the San
Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys during the 1940s, it
did so in the context of racially restrictive covenants.
Citrus and other agriculture enterprises of the Valleys
were torn up in favor of defense manufacturing along
with temporary and permanent housing for the workers.
Blacks sought alternative mechanisms to secure housing.
Their efforts to unlock the private housing market
occurred on multiple levels: the expansion and in fill
of black (census tracts with five or less black
families) into neighborhoods with a majority black
families, second a move into the area around Little
Tokyo (Bronzeville), Watts and other residential spaces
vacated by Japanese and finally lawsuits to contest
restrictive residential covenants.
The response by black Angelenos varied dependent
upon their access to resources. Middle class
professionals and upper class blacks were especially
distressed by the effect of the housing crisis on their
quality of life. As large numbers of working class

45
Greg Hise Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century
Metropolis Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1997..
39
blacks migrated to Southern California during the war
the residential neighborhoods around the business and
entertainment center of African American Los Angeles,
Central Avenue became both predominately black and
densely populated. As these encroachments increased,
middle class professionals along with upper class and
entertainment elites migrated away from the Central
community and into Santa Barbara and West Adams by
utilizing financial resources which allowed them to pay
for superior housing and social networks that could
rally powerful friends on their behalf. Meanwhile the
Maywood-Bell Southeast Herald newspaper reported,
“Within the next few weeks one section of the community
is definitely threatened with the moving in of
undesirables for race restriction run out in this...Up
to now your child...could attend...school without fear
of having to mix with undesirables...It would not be
fair to subject them to the humiliation and depravation
which mixed races would force upon them.”
46
For example
in 1943, eight white families, organized under the name
West Adams Improvement Association, tried to remove
about thirty black homeowners from the Sugar Hill area

46
Keith E. Collins Black Los Angeles : the maturing of the ghetto,
1940-1950 Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Pub., 1980.
40
of Los Angeles. Sugar Hill, a West Adams community
adjacent to Central Avenue, was a racially mixed
neighborhood of early twentieth century Victorian homes.
With relatively high maintenance costs, a burgeoning
black community to the east and with an enclave of black
movie stars such as Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers and
Ethel Waters it became a highly desirable residential
space for black professionals. After discovering that
covenants protecting several homes in the area had
expired, Norman O. Houston, president of the largest
black-owned insurance company west of the Mississippi,
Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, purchased a
home at 2211 Hobart. However, alarmed white residents
rushed into circulation a petition that would
'recovenant' the entire area until the year 2053. The
effort failed, at least partly because a few owners were
anxious to sell to anyone with the money to buy. White
landowners obtained a temporary injunction to prevent
Houston and others from moving into their homes. Two
years later, however, with most of the white plaintiffs
having sold their homes the suit was dismissed.
47

47
(1944). HAZEL FAIRCHILD et al., Respondents, v. ROSS H. RAINES et
al., Appellants, Supreme Court of California.
41
The Sugar Hill case was indicative of an on going
pattern by middle class professionals and upper class
blacks to test the Western boundaries to escape the
black ghetto that was forming along Central Avenue.
Restrictive racial covenants did not blanket the areas
around black Los Angeles communities but rather formed a
crazy quilt with neighborhoods of blacks interspersed
throughout. And while the covenants were uniformly
enforced in the newly constructed housing tracts of San
Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys and in existing housing
that were not contiguous to black residential
communities, blacks were successful in overturning non
comprehensive covenants that were contiguous to black
neighborhoods.
48
For example, Los Angeles attorney Loren
Miller representing the plaintiff in the 1944 Fairchild
v Raines petitioned successfully for the California
Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision which
stated that if the community was already "invaded" by
Negro families there was no compelling reason to

48
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 - 261.
42
maintain the covenant.
49
Miller would serve as lead
attorney in over one thousand cases filed in the years
1938 – 1948 pushing the boundaries of restrictive racial
covenant.
50
These cases, however, were mostly brought by
middle class and other well to do black Angelenos with
access and resources to seek redress in the court
system. For recent migrants and working class blacks
already economically marginalized the only alternative
for relief was in the public housing market.
Public housing became a much sought after
alternative for black war workers as both the HACLA and
the Department of Defense erected temporary as well as
permanent housing adjacent to military industries.
Between 1938 and 1941 the HACLA had constructed over
twenty public housing complexes throughout Los Angeles
and, as the United States entered the war, identified
potentially ten other sites for temporary housing for
military industrial workers. The primary sites for
military related industries were the San Fernando Valley
and Westchester (aircraft construction and other related

49
"- Federal Agencies Are Nearing Goal for War Housing" Los Angles
Times,1944.
50
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 - 261.
43
industries); San Pedro and Long Beach (ship construction
and retro – fitting).
51
Unable to secure housing in the
San Fernando Valley and with the infrastructure of
public transportation mostly defunct employment in
aircraft manufacturing was impossible to acquire for
black Angelenos. And despite the crisis in housing the
HACLA remained committed to the development of public
housing developments which reflected the pre – existing
racial make up of the community, thus, the San Fernando
Valley was off limits. The proximity of the shipyards of
San Pedro and Long Beach to Watts, a primary embarkation
point for black migrants, made them desirable as sites
of employment and as a result public housing in and
around this area was in especially high demand by
blacks. However, this was a white working class area
with overlapping restrictive racial covenants both in
and around San Pedro. Public housing such as Normont
Terrace, Dana Strand Village, Bataan Park, Western
Terrace and Lumina Park all constructed by Lanham funds

51
David R. Colburn Racial Change and Community Crisis: St.
Augustine, Florida, 1887 - 1980 New York: Columbia University Press,
1985, Greg Hise Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century
Metropolis Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1997, Sally Jane Sandoval
"Ghetto Growing Pains: The Impact of Negro Migration on the City of
Los Angeles, 1940-1960." MAI 12(01, 1974): 165, Alonzo Nelson Smith
"Black Employment in the Los Angeles Area, 1938 - 1948." DAI 39(10A,
1978): 471.
44
specifically to relieve the crisis in military
industrial housing, was anywhere from 75 to 99%
allocated for whites.
52
Map #3 Public Housing, 1943
53
However, because of the restrictions placed upon
blacks in the private housing market they applied
disproportionately to the HACLA for public housing
slots. In 1943 alone blacks were applying to the HACLA

52
Don Parson Making a Better World: Public Housing and the Direction
of Modern Los Angeles. Thousand Oaks: 404.
53
(1943). Public Housing South Los Angeles. Los Angeles,
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.
45
for public housing at more than four times the rate as
whites (1,795 for blacks as opposed to 362 for whites).
With San Pedro and its vicinity inaccessible to blacks
due to racial covenants the HACLA attempted to locate a
development in Watts to supplement the largely black and
overcrowded Imperial Courts and Jordan Downs with
another housing project. The 465 - unit project was to
be constructed at Avalon Blvd and 104th St in close
proximity to Alameda Street or what historian/activist
Mike Davis labeled the “cotton curtain.” As was the case
in West Adams, the local white homeowners’ association
rallied to prevent the construction of integrated public
housing in their community. “All these, you'll pardon me
for swearing,” apologized a Mr. DeHogue of the South Los
Angeles Homeowners Association, speaking at their
October 26, 1943, meeting, “all these god dam New York
Jews are coming here to put the niggers in our
neighborhood...”
54
Local realty broker Walter Carrol
reassured homeowners that “we Caucasians are certainly
not going to stand for any colored people deteriorating
our property.
55
” The end result of the pressure by the

54
Don Parson Making a Better World: Public Housing and the Direction
of Modern Los Angeles. Thousand Oaks: 404.
55
Ibid.
46
white homeowners association and local realtors was the
FHA refused to underwrite the property because of
racially restrictive covenants, and the project was
delayed for a decade.
56
By the end of the military hostilities in 1945 the
46,000 blacks who lived in Los Angeles were left with
precious little benefit from the war on fascism. The
larger story of the battle for local housing is their
relationships to the broadening category of whiteness in
post WWII American cities. With anti – Semitism and anti
– European racism losing credibility and the 1940 census
no longer distinguished native whites of native
parentage from those of immigrant parentage, whiteness
was broadened to include most European ethnics and
Jews.
57
Blacks who built the tanks, serviced the ships
and assembled the munitions for the war machine could
not find adequate housing in the city Angeles. And for
those who served in the military their return from
service to their country would not begin a time of
triumph but of tragedy.
The GI Bill of Rights, as the 1944
Serviceman's Readjustment Act was known, was

56
Ibid.
57
George Lipsitz. "The Racialized City" Symposium on Los Angeles, The
J. Paul Getty Center. (May 11, 1993)
47
arguably the most massive affirmative action
program in American history...The GI benefits
that were ultimately extended to 16 million
GIs included priority in jobs...financial
support during the job search, small loans for
starting up businesses, and most important,
low-interest loans and educational benefits,
which included tuition and living expenses.
58
While the language of the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act
remained neutral preferential treatment for white
ethnics was an unintended consequence. While Polish,
Irish and other white ethnics leveraged the benefits of
the GI bill into the new American dream of a house in
the suburbs and a college degree black GI’s returned to
dilapidated housing and menial labor. As historian Becky
Nicolaides chronicles in her work on white working class
communities of Southern California My Blue Heaven the
inclusion of European ethnics into a broader category of
whiteness was reinforced by the FHA which tended to
guarantee mortgages for white ethnic communities which
excluded Chinese, Japanese, Mexican and Blacks.
59
For
black Angelenos the addition of returning war veterans
who could not take advantage of their G.I. benefits

58
George Lipstiz. "The Racialized City", Getty Center. (May 11,
1993)
59
Becky Nicolaides ""Where the Working Man Is Welcomed": Working -
Class Suburbs in Los Angeles, 1900 - 1940." Pacific Historical
Review 1999): 516 - 572.
48
because of restrictive racial covenants stretched the
already tight housing market to the point of breaking.
The Making of Contemporary Watts
World War II brought radical demographic changes to
the population of Watts. A black community which totaled
only 63,774 and comprised only 4.2% of the total
population of Los Angeles in 1940 by 1946 had more than
doubled to 133,082 and was by then nearly 8% of the city
populace.
60
As black migrants streamed to the area in
search of employment and housing they found both in
short supply. The demand for labor in war-related
industries created opportunities for unprecedented
access to industrial employment for racial minorities
and women. Racial discrimination however prevented
blacks from making significant in-roads into the
shipyards of San Pedro and Long Beach and aircraft
production in the Central and West San Fernando Valley.
And, despite the creation of the Fair Employment
Practices Commission (FEPC) in 1941 to address issues of
racial discrimination in defense-related employment,

60
Adler Patricia Rae Watts: From Suburb to Black Ghetto Los Angeles,
(University of Southern California, 1977).
49
blacks remained confined largely to manual labor.
61
This
pattern was true throughout the West Coast as Marilynn
Johnson in The Second Gold Rush, her work on the black
community of Richmond, California, in WWII illustrates:
Initially, Black employment increased as
defense manufacturing ramped up to supply the
insatiable need of the Allied military forces.
The first large influx came in the spring of
1942 when the Southern Pacific Railroad
Company imported workers from the Southern
states. During the peak of this operation,
blacks entered Los Angeles at the rate of 300
to 400 per day; the entire importation brought
close to 3,100...It reached its peak in June,
1943, when between 10,200 and 12,000 Blacks
entered the city. Black employment at the
California Shipbuilding Company and
Consolidated Steel yards increased from a few
hundred in the spring of 1942 to 5,600 by
November 1943 and 7,022 by the end of 1944.
Lockheed-Vega employed approximately 600
Blacks in August 1942; by April 1943 its
plants had over 2,500.
62
However, fears of racial mixing relegated blacks to
segregated unions and discriminatory management
practices. Calls to the local FEPC office did not
change conditions and the filing of cases had little
short – term affect. By the time appeals worked their

61
The Fair Employment Practices Commission was created by United
States President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933 – 45) after A. Phillip
Randolph, head of the Sleeping Car Porters Brotherhood, threatened a
massive March on Washington to publicize the plight of black
Americans and the war effort.
62
Keith E. Collins Black Los Angeles : the maturing of the ghetto,
1940-1950 Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Pub., 1980.
50
way through the bureaucracy the war was over.
63
Blacks’
successes in gaining employment were usually the result
of cooperative engagement with white unions committed to
a unified workforce. For example, the United
Autoworkers were instrumental in increasing the
participation of blacks in automobile manufacturing from
just 4% of employees in 1940 to nearly 15% of employees
in 1945.
64
Art curator and historian Cecil Ferguson’s
reflections upon his own life story are a telling
account of life for then-recent arrivals. Arriving in
Watts with his family in 1939, Cecil’s father
expectations of finding work quickly as a craftsman we
dashed as he searched vainly for a job. Unable to
secure employment Cecil joined his father as they
solicited work door-to-door washing cars in Hancock Park
charging $.4.00 per month for a simple car wash a week
and $5.00 for hand waxing.
65

63
Marilyn S. Johnson The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay
in World War II Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
64
Thomas J. Sugrue The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and
Inequality in Postwar Detroit Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995.
65
Cecil is a character. Dedicated a living legend by the city of
Los Angeles in 1997 he has been instrumental in the cultivation of a
number of artists in Watts. His story is fascinating, he started
out as a janitor in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and working
the night shift and going to school taught himself art history. By
the time he retired in the late 1980s in protest that no black
artist had ever been exhibited in the main hall of the museum he had
51
For common laborers, who were the majority of
black migrants during and after the war, their journey
to Los Angeles was fueled by the fantasy of the West
including decent employment, a beautiful little
craftsmen, and egalitarian racial relations. Oftentimes
with just the clothes on their back and enough money for
bus or train fare they arrived believing that
opportunities were just around the corner, when in fact
they were not.
Instead, what the recent migrants discovered in
their first weeks in Los Angeles was that housing, of
all sorts, was scarce and particularly so for blacks.
Due to racial covenant restrictions, African Americans,
despite the nearly doubling of the population of blacks
were largely confined to the space around Central Avenue
and the Watts community.
A number of factors would contribute to the re-
shaping of this community but perhaps most important was
the decision to intern Japanese Americans (Executive
Order 9066, February 1942).
66
Taking over the residences

worked himself up to assistant curator. I had the honor of
interviewing him a number of times. This particular occasion was at
his home on May 30, 1999.
66
There are a number of oral histories through the Japanese American
National Museum detailing the experiences of Japanese American
interned from Los Angeles during WWII. The best work on the
52
vacated by the now-interned Japanese and with the truck
farms and gardens converted to temporary war housing, a
pattern was established that would affect Watts through
the 1960s.
Post World War II Economic and Demographic Shifts
The migration of World War II was significant in
that it not only doubled the population of blacks by
1946 and set a pattern in place that is significant in
the shaping of place-based identity. Given the relative
size of early twentieth century demographic shifts in
black Los Angeles, migrants found housing and employment
relatively available. In fact, during the decade of the
Great Depression there was a growth of businesses,
social institutions and services along the Central
Avenue corridor. The incorporation into the community
of this modest increase of blacks during the 1930s
reinforced the image of the region as a utopia. However,
beginning in 1943 and extending through the 1960s the
infrastructure (housing, employment and social services)
of the black community could not sustain itself against
the flood of newcomers. As migrants from the South and

relationship of Japanese to Blacks in Los Angeles is by: Scott Tadao
Kurashige Transforming Los Angeles: Black and Japanese American
struggles for racial equality in the 20th century, (University of
California, Los Angeles, 2000).
53
working class blacks from other parts of Southern
California filled the inner core, the middle class fled
west to the outskirts of the burgeoning black ghetto.
Black Los Angeles despite being a spatially contiguous
whole at the center and south of the metropolis was a
socially and economically fractured community with Watts
at its bottom rung. The overall affect was to shift the
fortunes of working class and poor blacks from a place
of hope to one of broken dreams. In a post – riot survey
nearly 90 percent of Watts residents who responded to a
survey believed that discrimination existed in housing,
jobs, schools and the practices of landlords.
67
As an
NAACP official explained in 1954, he sought not to be a
‘foreboder of doom’ but to disabuse the public of any
idea that this region (meaning the West) had blossomed
into a utopia for those of his race.
68
The demand for labor in war-related industries
created opportunities for unprecedented access to
industrial employment to racial minorities and women.
With the industrialization of cotton farming in the
American South black tenant farmers streamed first to

67
T. M. Tomlinson "Views of the Los Angeles Riot." The Journal of
Social Issues 26(1, 1970): 93 - 120.
68
"Coast Study Finds Negro Worse Off" The New York Times, January
16,1954.
54
cities in the region and during the War the North and
West seeking employment. A legacy of Jim Crow
educational policies left many of these migrants suited
primarily to work as manual or semi-skilled laborers in
the burgeoning manufacturing sector of defense related
industries. A constellation of forces ranging from the
federal government to realtors, developers and community
associations several curtailed where the post-WWII black
migrant could find communities. A black community which
totaled only 63,774 and comprised only 4.2% of the total
population of Los Angeles in 1940 by 1946 had more than
doubled to 133,082 and was by then nearly 8% of the city
populace.
69
However, racially segregated housing coupled
with the location of defense plants severely limited the
type and quality of black employment. With North
American Rockwell, for example, operating plants fifteen
miles east of Watts, Lockheed in Santa Monica almost
thirty miles east and McDonald Douglas thirty miles
south in Long Beach. Though the furthest in distance
from Watts the shipyards of San Pedro and Long Beach
with their easy access via the street cars and the
progressive union movement lead by Harry Bridges made

69
Keith E. Collins Black Los Angeles : the maturing of the ghetto,
1940-1950 Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One Pub., 1980.
55
them desirable as sites of employment. As a result,
public housing in and around this area was in especially
high demand by blacks. Though racial covenants were
broken in 1948 with blacks and moving north of 92
nd
street, housing remained a pressing concern. According
to the 1960 census nearly one third of all housing
available for purchase or rent in the Watts community
was considered dilapidated.
70
As I illustrate in my chapter on housing the
Housing Authority for the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) in
an attempt to relieve the severe overcrowding of the
black ghettoes of South Central Los Angeles in the early
1950s pushed forward with the construction of over 2,000
public housing units. However, for a number of reasons:
1) the policy of the HACLA to have new public housing
reflect the existing racial make-up of the community 2)
restrictive racial covenants which led to densely
populated black neighborhoods and the decrease in other
racial minorities (i.e., Japanese Internment and Mexican
Repatriation and migration to East Los Angeles), the

70
Quintard Taylor In Search of the Racial Frontier: African
Americans in the American West 1528 - 1990 New York: WW Norton and
Company, 1998.
56
units were located within one mile of each other in the
Watts community.
While Hacienda Village and Palm Lane Homes were
mostly WWII temporary bungalows the Jordan Downs,
Imperial Courts and William Nickerson Jr. Gardens public
housing units were all newly realized facilities. In
the beginning, the physical conditions of Nickerson and
Jordan were superior to much of the housing stock
available to blacks. Neglect of basic maintenance,
combined with less strict screening of the residential
population led to squalid conditions in both
developments. The traditionally working class community
of well-kept lawns and small houses in Watts
deteriorated around the gang-infested projects of
Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Courts and Jordan Downs. In
an interview with a Compton Police Department Lieutenant
Reggie Wright who group up in Nickerson Gardens the
housing projects of Watts had by the late 1950s lost
whatever little desirability they once held. Isolated
from public parks and recreation youths formed gangs for
camaraderie and protection.
71

71
Interview Lt. Reggie Wright, Compton Police Department, Compton
Project, Center for Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University, July
1999.
57
The focus here is not an analysis on the host of
socio-economic issues that lead to the creation of the
black Los Angeles ghetto, rather it is to understand the
context, which contributed to the conditions of Watts in
August 1965. As I referenced earlier in this section the
growth of defense-related employment and housing
restriction drew recent black migrants into an
increasingly dense urban core centered at Central
Avenue. Blacks with the economic means sought
alternative housing options by pushing along the Western
periphery. As the Central Avenue addresses of major
black institutions in Los Angeles gave way to the
Crenshaw corridor, a not-insignificant schism was
created in the black community of Los Angeles.
Shelley V Kraemer and its aftermath
While lawyers, in particular Los Angeles attorney
Loren Miller, were successful in continuing to open
communities contiguous to black neighborhoods the influx
of returning black G.Is nullified the gains afforded by
these lawsuits.
72
Miller collaborating with National
Association for Advancement of Colored People legal
defense fund lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice

72
"- Federal Agencies Are Nearing Goal for War Housing" Los Angles
Times,1944.
58
Thurgood Marshall appealed in 1947 to the US Supreme
Court a state of Missouri case that they hope would end
racially restrictive covenants. Miller’s experience in
constructing a compelling legal argument against a
region in which there was a patchwork quilt of
restrictive racial covenants, such as Los Angeles, was
invaluable in the Shelley case. The case involved the
transfer of a private residence from one defendant, a
white man Fitzgerald who initially purchased the
property, to another Shelley, a black man who purchased
the property. The deed in question covered an area that
was not uniformly blanketed by a restricted racial and
in a community where blacks had occupied at least one
parcel since 1882.
73
Marshall and Miller, supported by an
amicus brief from the Solicitor General who was given
special leave to address the Court argued that racially
restrictive covenants violated the equal protection
clause of the US constitution and should be invalidated
on those grounds.
74
Though the court in its Shelley v

73
(1948). SHELLEY ET UX. v. KRAEMER ET UX., SUPREME COURT OF THE
UNITED STATES.
74
It is up to the discretion of individual Justices to review Amicus
Briefs as they are under no legal obligation to review. And while it
was certainly not the first time it had occurred nevertheless
extraordinary for the Solicitor General to receive permission to
address the Court regarding a case in which the federal state was
not directly a party to the action.
59
Kraemer ruling largely agreed with Marshall and Miller
and invalidated racially restrictive covenants and
enjoined the local and federal state from their
enforcement. Previous court rulings had only prevented
the local and federal state from enacting racially
restrictive covenants but had protected agreements
between private parties. With the decision in Shelley v
Kramer private agreements i.e. title deeds on property
which restricted occupancy or ownership based on race,
could no longer expect judicial protection.
75
The decision, while broad, did not address a
central contention of the Marshall and Miller brief or
the amicus brief of the Solicitor General. The majority
and supporting opinions though sympathetic to the
endemic issues of racial discrimination in American
cities offered no legal redress for blacks who sought
generalized equal protection of their right to access
private and public housing.
76
On this broader matter of
equal protection to access of private and public housing

75
(1948). SHELLEY ET UX. v. KRAEMER ET UX., SUPREME COURT OF THE
UNITED STATES, United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings
before the United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller
statements)" United States Commission on Civil Rights, United States
Government Printing Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 -
261.
76
(1948). SHELLEY ET UX. v. KRAEMER ET UX., SUPREME COURT OF THE
UNITED STATES.
60
the Court deferred to the legislature and its mandate to
formulate policy.
The struggle for public and private housing in the 1950s
In 1949 the Congress responded to Shelley and more
generally the problems of urban housing by its passage
of a housing act. The 1949 National Housing Act
established a national housing policy with a declared
goal," of a decent home and a suitable living
environment for every American family.”
77
While multi-
faceted of particular importance was Title III that
authorized federal contributions and loans to local
housing authorities for the construction of 810,000
units of public housing over the next six years. The
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, now headed
by housing crusader Frank Wilkinson, saw the funds as
mandate not only to construct more public housing but to
push forward on his goal of scraping the old HACLA
policy of racially homogenous housing. However, his push
ran immediately into opposition by real estate interests
who managed to place Proposition 10 on the November 1950
ballot. Proposition 10 called for all future public
housing proposals to be approved by public referendum in

77
Don Parson Making a Better World: Public Housing and the Direction
of Modern Los Angeles. Thousand Oaks: 404.
61
the city or county affected while exempting all projects
that were to an existing contract with the federal
government. The proponents of Proposition 10
represented by savings and loan associations, realty
boards, home builders, building contractors, etc. argued
that the local state had no business attempting to
socially engineer neighborhoods. As E.R. Thrapp,
executive vice-president of the Southern California
Building and Loan Association, wrote Councilman
Davenport to commend his anti-housing position; “Public
Housing is a big step in the direction of Socialism and
that is one of the things we are trying to stay away
from these days.”
78
Though Proposition 10 passed on November 7, 1950
effectively limiting Wilkinson’s options in implementing
new racially integrated public housing in Los Angeles
there remained the federal contract funded by the
National Housing Act. In late 1949 Wilkinson and the
HACLA had reached an agreement with the Federal Housing
Authority to construct 5,649 over three sites in Los
Angeles; Rose Hills, Chavez Ravine and Watts. In mid -
July 1953 Mayor Norris Poulson and a delegation of city

78
Ibid.
62
officials traveled to Washington to re-negotiate the
federal contract. By late 1953 Chavez Ravine and Rose
Hills were removed from the contract cutting almost 60%
of the original 5,649 units/ were removed from the
contract, and the Chavez Ravine and Rose Hills projects
were cancelled with the proviso that the land would go
to public use.
79
What remained of the contract was the
largest public housing complex west of the Mississippi
River, Nickerson Gardens. At 1100 housing units, William
Nickerson Jr. Gardens was the largest HACLA project
constructed from the federal contract. By 1954 public
sentiment had shifted away from public housing and the
Congress passed a new Housing Act, which cut federal
public housing starts to 35,000 units per year. Of the
810,000 units, which were authorized by the 1949 act
over 6 years, only 200,000 were completed.
80
For black families who lived in and migrated to Los
Angeles in the postwar era to purchase or lease a house,
secure a loan and occupy a residence was fraught with
racial discrimination. While Lanham fueled a boom in
construction starts in the San Fernando and San Gabriel
Valleys during the 1940s, it did so in the context of

79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
63
Mexicans and blacks segregated in and struggling over
the densely populated and dilapidated housing in the
Central and South Central core of the city. With Shelley
decision new mechanisms were needed to control black
access to the real estate market place, and the group
with the power to create and maintain these restrictions
was the Los Angeles Realty Board.
Operating less as a professional organization and
more like a cartel the Los Angeles Realty Board managed
the racial landscape of Southern California by
controlling the middlemen of residential transactions,
realtors. Since by state law in California, to be
recognized as a realtor a real estate agent one had to
be affiliated with a local realty board membership was
important. This was especially true in the post Shelley
era. Without the judiciary to reinforce racial
homogeneity in neighborhoods real estate agents became
the front line in controlling access to white
communities. Thus, member agents who violated the value
system of the board by showing or selling property in
white communities to non – whites soon found themselves
64
ousted from the membership.
81
And the value system of
realtors remained focused on maintaining racial
homogeneity in America’s cities. In a nation wide study
of the attitude and values of realtors done by Rose
Helper she termed "exclusion ideology" as a description
of the real estate industry and its approach to race.
She summarized the values of the industry as follows,
"White people do not want Negroes as neighbors, property
values decline when Negroes enter an area, residential
integration is not likely for a long time to come if at
all, there are harmful consequences for the people of a
white community when Negroes enter, and it is morally
wrong or violates some principle or value of the real
estate business or of the country to sell or rent to
Negroes in a white area."
82
At is most basic level, membership, the Los Angeles
Realty Board, despite numerous applications by black
real estate brokers, remained a lily-white organization
into the early 1960s. And while in 1950 in response to

81
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 - 261.
82
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Parker statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 26, 1960) 320 - 335.
65
the Shelley decision the NAERB (the representative
national body of realtors) removed the reference to
nationality or race from its codes of ethics, race and
the maintenance of racially homogenous communities
remained a central consideration of realtors.
Membership in the Los Angeles Realty Board conveyed a
number of different benefits not the least of which was
the Boards control over access to the multiple listing
services (MLS) for Southern California. The MLS allowed
for the standardization and wide spread distribution of
information on all real estate available for purchase in
any given region and also limited the flow of this same
information. The MLS was and is an essential tool for
the selling and purchasing of non - commercial
residential property in urban environments. With more
than 65% of all transactions of single family dwellings
facilitated by realtors without board membership and
access to the MLS a real estate agent could not hope to
comprehensively cover the real estate market.
In real estate, information is power, and the Los
Angeles Realty Board sought to manage this flow of
information not only internally to its membership but
also to the wider market. Realtors were but one point of
66
information about houses for sale. The Los Angeles
Times newspaper ran both daily classifieds as well as a
Sunday supplement of available real estate in the
Southern California region. However, even here the Board
had a role in managing the racial landscape of Los
Angeles neighborhood. Under an agreement with the Board
the Los Angeles Times would only accept real estate
listings from realtors affiliated with the Los Angeles
Realty Board. Further, through the 1950s the real
estate classifieds included a small section designated
as “Unrestricted,” which is where property for sale in
racially integrated areas were listed.
83
While black real estate agents facilitated the sale
of property in black owned areas, a number of techniques
were used to exclude them from the wider real estate
market. The clearest example of exclusion was membership
in the Board itself. As this testimony before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights by Frank
Barnes, local NAACP chapter president, indicates, the
Los Angeles Realty Board was an all white
membership;”actions on the part of the realty boards

83
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 - 261.
67
have been to exclude Negro real estate men from becoming
members. As of this moment [1960] there are no Negro
realtors in the city of Los Angeles. There are no Negro
real estate salesmen on the Los Angeles Realty Board.”
84
By 1956, as black migrants swelled the black
population to over 220,000, the black middle and
professional class was now in full flight from the
overcrowded and now exclusively black ghetto in the

84
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Poulson statements)"
United States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government
Printing Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 6 - 9.
68
central core of Los Angeles.
Map #4
85
With the Los Angeles County communities of Vernon,
Huntington Park, South Gate and Lynwood working class
white and violently anti – black, and with the
communities of Avalon, Green Meadows, Watts, South
Vermont, Central and Exposition densely populated and
mostly working class black the black middle class
continued its push west. While West Adams and Santa

85
(1956). Communities of the City of Los Angeles. Los
Angeles, Department of City Planning.
69
Barbara were now racially mixed, the frontier for the
black elite became Leimert Park, and Baldwin Hills.
Leimert Park an early twentieth century development of
spacious apartments and single-family dwellings,
centered on the business district and park at 41
st
and
Crenshaw.
86
While the community had maintained
equilibrium of white, black and Japanese residents
through the early 1950s as black families began to push
farther west tensions increased. By July 25, 1956 they
exploded,
The sign of the cross, hate symbol of the Ku
Klux Klan, was burned into the lawn of a
Vernon Avenue real estate broker sometime
Saturday night. The flames singed the grass
in front of James Sidney's real estate firm,
2601 W. Vernon Avenue...He said, however, that
some of the homes he has been selling have
been in mixed neighborhoods in Leimert Park,
and that there has been some manifestation of
resentment against Negroes moving into these
areas.
87
Baldwin Hills formally a proliferation of oilrigs was
now a community of upper class homes. Real estate
availability in these communities, given their proximity
to the growing black community was maintained in secrecy

86
Greg Hise Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century
Metropolis Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1997.
87
"Club Awards To Be Given" California Eagle, July 5,1956.
70
by the Los Angeles Realty Board to prevent possible sale
to unwanted elements, i.e. blacks. The Los Angeles
Realty Board could not and did not operate to maintain a
racialized landscape without the consent of the state.
Between the Federal Housing Authority and the Veterans
Administration, the federal state provided the resources
for local developers, builders and sub dividers to
construct over 125,000 housing units through the 1950s.
Sociologists calculated the minimum percentage of
nonwhites who would have to change the block on which
they live in order to produce an unsegregated
distribution. For Los Angeles, this percentage was
84.2% in 1940, 84.6 in 1950, and 81.8 in 1960, placing
it generally around the middle of the distribution for
major northern cities – more segregated than New York
and Washington, but less than Chicago and Detroit.
88
While the San Fernando Valley as a whole was
experiencing a dramatic growth in population with
housing tracts opened almost daily to accommodate the
new residents, blacks were prevented from acquiring
housing. For example, a single census tract in Canoga

88
Paula B. Johnson, David O. Sears and John B. Mcconahay "Black
Invisibility, the Press and the Los Angeles Riot." The American
Journal of Sociology 76(4, 1971): 698 - 721.
71
Park, in the Eastern portion of the San Fernando Valley,
grew by almost 14,000 residents between 1950 and 1956
and added nearly 5,400 dwelling units to accommodate
these residents, without adding a single African
American.
And though Shelley prevented the state from enforcing
racial covenants, it did not prevent agents or
beneficiaries of the state’s largesse from practicing
racial discrimination. After 1950 and the adaptation of
anti – discrimination language by the Federal Housing
Authority, developers who accepted FHA underwriting
pledged to offer those units to any and all applicants.
However, in the post Shelley era, builders and
developers worked with realtors to insure that housing
tracts were only available to white applicants. The
statement of Preston Morris, an employee of Lockheed
Aircraft, Missile Division, is illustrative of the
struggle that blacks faced in finding housing.
...I hired in at Lockheed on September 2,
1959. ...I had made arrangements with triple
A for accommodations at the San Fernando
Hotel. I arrived there. I was refused, even
though I had a signed statement stating that
there would be accommodations available for me
there. So I called a Mr. Boyer who was sales
manager, I think, at the Rolling Greens Vista
Estates, And I told him my problem, and I told
him that I was interested in buying...He
72
[another man who worked for the firm as a part
time salesman] took me out there, and in my
discussion with him I found that the prices as
quote by him were much elevated over those
that I obtained from Mr. Boyer...I told him
that and I told him his prices did not
correspond with what was said in the
paper...He suggested that I try used housing,
maybe I would be more successful there...Then
the following week I called Mr. Todd of the
Northridge Downs. I talk to him on the phone
and found for this $1,000 down payment that
they had stated in the paper, the monthly
payments were $200 a month...After we appeared
on the scene he came in with a loud voice
asking, 'What can I do for you now?' I told
him that I would like to discuss the financial
arrangements. He said, 'Well, there is a
$8,000 plan.' There I stopped him, I said, 'I
don't recall an $8,000 although there was a
$6,000 plan stated to me and there was a
$1,000 plan stated. I would like to hear
about the $1,000 plan.' He said, 'Well, for a
thousand dollars down, monthly payments are
$250 a month.' I questioned him again. I
told him this was not in line with what Mr.
Todd had told me. He told me that in the
beginning it was $215, and it went up to $250.
He said that this increase was because of
taxes...He told us there was only one house to
look at. We looked at this and it was
undesirable because the garage was separated
from the house. However, canvassing the
neighborhood we found that there were seven
more units available. I called him the
following evening to give him the down
payment. He called back and stated to me that
the owners would only sell to Caucasians. My
last refusal was with Sherman Way Estates. I
have just received a letter from them today
stating I do not qualify for the loan.
89

89
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights ( Beavers statements)"
United States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government
Printing Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 23 - 30.
73
In 1959 the National Urban League conducted an
unscientific but illustrative experiment in Los Angeles-
based FHA tracts. Ten phenotypic ally white and black
couples were sent on the same day to suburban housing
tracts. In all ten of the cases the white couples were
immediately offered favorable rates and shown model
units, while none of the black couples was welcomed and
all were told that the developments were either sold out
or unavailable. Anecdotal evidence of the prevalence of
racial discrimination in housing was clear on the front
pages of the California Eagle. On the front page of the
September 10, 1959 edition of the California Eagle was a
story of two separate incidents of bricks thrown at
homes newly purchased by Blacks. In the middle of the
night Mr. and Mrs. Mary Morgan, she pregnant with their
child, woke to the sound of a brick striking their front
porch just below their bedroom window. That same week in
Pacoima, Emory Holmes, a psychologist, who lived at
14039 Remington Avenue, had a brick thrown at his home.
For Holmes this was but one in a series of incidents of
74
vandalism.
90
The Los Angeles County Commission on Human
Relations made similar findings in its report dated
September 1960. They documented more than ninety-five
incidents of discrimination in the real estate market
with the majority directed against blacks. What both
reports concluded was that of all housing starts
underwritten by the FHA in Los Angeles during the 1950s
less than 2% were occupied by non – whites.
Despite all evidence to the contrary the Los
Angeles Realty Board did not see itself as practicing
racial discrimination, but rather as serving all of the
communities of Los Angeles. When United States
Commission on Civil Rights regarding racial
discrimination questioned the Board secretary in 1960,
this was the response:
As a result of the rapid and remarkable growth of
Los Angeles during the past 20 years, there have
been marked shifts in neighborhoods compositions.
Today, many of the most desirable residential areas
in the city are, almost in their entirety, the home
places of minority groups who are as proud of and
as secure in their homes as any Americans could be…
In conclusion, the Los Angeles Realty Board
recognizes that each of us, regardless of race,
color, creed, or national origin, would like to
live in a mansion or a palace if we could; but, as
a practical matter, it is the pocketbook of the

90
Committee on Un-American Activities "Report on the Southern
California District of the Community Party Structure-Objectives-
Leadership" Washington D.C. (U.S. House of Representatives, 1959)
75
family and the people with whom we are able to
associate on a equivalent economic level which
limits each of us as to where we may find out homes
and live in peace and security. The inability of
one to fulfill a desire in not discrimination -- it
is frustration, which only the individual can
overcome by personal improvement in his financial
and social position.
91
Proposition 14
The promise, importance and ultimately the
difficulties of black legislators in moving forward an
agenda to mitigate racial discrimination is clearest in
fair housing. As I note in the chapter on efforts
during the 1950s Gus Hawkins was widely criticized for
less than vigorous efforts to support the political
campaigns of other blacks. His work, however, in
writing and shepherding the Hawkins/Rumford fair housing
bill in 1959 is an example of his concerted efforts to
impact the discriminatory racial climate of the state.
The 1959 session of the legislation enacted a
statue, Assembly Bill 890 authored by Augustus Hawkins
based on New York’s Baker-Metcalfe law forbidding
discrimination in the sale or rental of publicly

91
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Poulson statements)"
United States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government
Printing Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 6 - 9.
76
assisted housing which is defined to include FHA and VA
housing. The violator is subject to damages to be
recovered in a private suit in a sum no less than $500.
92
“Publicly assisted” included 1) housing exempt from
state or local taxes 2) multiple dwellings financed by
state or federal loans and housing three or more
families living independently of one another, 3) housing
constructed by the state on land acquired through
condemnation proceedings and 4) housing sold below cost
by the state. When Gov. Edmund G. Brown signed the bill
on Wednesday July 8, 1959 he took the occasion to laud
Hawkins for his work in guiding the bill through the
legislature and for his long legislative service.
93
The Act restricted only original developers and
applied to only twenty percent of California dwellings.
94
As a result in the 1963 legislative session Byron
Rumford proposed an act, which would have prohibited
discrimination in the sale, rental or leasing of all

92
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 - 261.
93
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights ( Beavers statements)"
United States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government
Printing Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 23 - 30.
94
James W. Galbraith "The Unconstitutinality of Proposition 14: An
Extension of Prohibited "State Action"." Stanford Law Review 19(1,
1966): 232 - 253.
77
dwelling units and vacant lots. Passed by the assembly
April 25, 1963, the Rumford enforcement would have
fallen under the jurisdiction of the Fair Employment
Practices Commission.
95
After passage of the act, with a
bit of parliamentary maneuvering by Jesse Unruh the
California Real Estate Association (CERA) responded with
Proposition 14. The language of the proposition read as
follows “Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency
thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or
indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or
desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of is
real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such
property to such persons as he, in his absolute
discretion, chooses.
96
The success of CERA in framing the Rumford Act as a
restriction on the discretion of single-family
homeowners to decide whom they would sell their property
was a tremendous factor in its passage. Despite a range
of organizations (American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP,
etc.) endorsing the NO on 14 position they could gain
little traction amongst California voters. Rev. King
emphasized the importance of the law. Its repeal, he

95
Ibid.
96
Ibid.
78
said, “would be one of the most shameful developments in
our nation's history. It this happens...the nation would
be set back, civil rights would be set back and the
cause of democracy would be set back. Every citizen
must rise up and save it.”
97
Despite this on November 3,
1964 Californians voted overwhelmingly to pass
Proposition 14.
However, successful CERA was rhetorically in framing
this as a restriction on private property for many in
the black community it was perceived as a direct attack
on their desire for full incorporation into American
life. Bayard Rustin makes this point in a reflection on
the McCone Report, ”Significantly (the report) also
ignores the political atmosphere of Los Angeles. It
refers, for example, to the repeal in 1964 of the
Rumford Act, ’in addition, many Negroes here felt and
were encouraged to feel that they had been affronted by
the passage of Proposition 14,’ Affronted, indeed! The
largest state in the Union, by a three – one majority,
abolishes one of its own laws against discrimination and
Negroes are described as regarding this as they might

97
"Housing Foes Picket King, CRB Banquet" California Eagle, February
20,1964.
79
the failure of a friend to keep an engagement.
98
Conclusion
The effect of these efforts was to confine black
Angelenos to the spatially contiguous but socially
fractured ghetto in the Central and South Central core
of the city. While there was internal sifting in these
communities with middle class professionals and the
upper class in the Western neighborhoods of Santa
Barbara, Leimert Park and Baldwin Hills; working class
blacks in Central Avenue and Green Meadows communities
and recent migrants and the poor in Watts and
surrounding communities, more than 90% of African
Americans in Los Angeles called these neighborhoods
home. This confinement would have its positive and
negative effects. Positively, the concentration of
voters into these neighborhoods afforded blacks the
opportunity to elect three city councilmen by 1963,
making Los Angeles proportionately the most influential
black community in the nation. On the negative side, the
de – industrialization of the central core of the city
and new job development primarily in the suburbs left
working class blacks increasingly unemployed and

98
Bayard Rustin The Watts "manifesto" & the McCone report New York:
League for Industrial Democracy, 1966.
80
isolated. As one Glendale business reported to the Fair
Employment Practices Commission in 1958, it was unable
to hire a single black employee because discrimination
prevented them from moving near the plant. And while
numerous efforts were made at the state level to
mitigate the impact of racial discrimination, most
notable the Rumford housing bill, black Angelenos would
suffer the effects of the post Shelley regime well into
the 1970s. This spatial geography of the post WWII Los
Angeles African American community would profoundly
impact the political landscape of the 1960s laying the
ground-work for the emergence of black politicians into
the local and state governments.
81
Chapter 3
Does My Vote Matter? The Spatial Politics of Race in Los Angeles 1950 – 1965
The electoral politics of black Los Angeles is of
particular note because of its relative power and
impact. Black Los Angeles entered WWII with a number of
substantive and vibrant political organizations and yet
unlike their brethren in Chicago, Philadelphia and other
northern cities, they could not penetrate local elected
political power structures. Yet by the spring of 1965
representation of black elected officials in Los Angeles
had proportionately out-paced all other northern urban
black communities.
99
As historian Leon Litwack argues in his award
winning work Been In the Storm So Long, Southern black
migrants to the urban north retained cultural continuity
in those institutions and places be it churches, front
porches or street corners. As noted earlier in the
chapter on housing, the population of Blacks in pre War
II Los Angeles was relatively small at 64,000 in 1940 in
comparison to other urban north destinations, with New

99
John Kramer "The Election of Blacks to City Councils: A 1970
Status Report and a Prolegomenon." Journal of Black Studies 1(4,
1971): 443 - 476.
82
York having a population of 458,000 Blacks residents in
at the high end.
100
The informal politics of early twentieth century
black Los Angeles reflected the sensibilities of the
population and was dominated by the black press, in
particular Charlotta Bass and the California Eagle, the
Forum, (an organization of black social and economic
elites who gathered every week at Eighth and Wall) and
mainstream black institutions such as Greek letter
organizations, ministers of black churches, the NAACP,
the Urban League and black business owners, who
organized under the name of the Black Business
Council.
101
The pre WWII politics of black Los Angeles
can be described as having a small town middle class
ethos. The ethos an ideology of uplift and hope
permeated the tightly wound network of religious, social
and economic elites. Uplift ideology as defined by
historian Kevin Gaines, “describes African American’
struggles against culturally dominant views of national
identity and social order positing the United States as

100
Keith Edison Collins Black Los Angeles: The Maturing of the
Ghetto, 1940-1950, (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO, 1975).
101
Douglas Flamming Bound for freedom : Black Los Angeles in Jim
Crow America Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. pg.
115
83
a ‘white man’s country.”
102
The tight knit network of
political, social and economic elites sought to maintain
the relatively positive standing of blacks as a “model
minority” in early Los Angeles and to avoid the legal
and social isolation of the Mexican, Chinese and
Japanese communities.
103
The percentage of Africans Americans in the city,
on average 5.5% of the total population through the
1930s, certainly impacted the expectations of access to
public office. Limited to one assembly seat in the
state legislature for all of the pre WWII era black
political life was expressed in social and economic
activism in addition to seeking public office.
The influx of migrants coupled with the Shelly v.
Kraemer decision which ended the legal enforcement of
racially restrictive covenants afforded the black middle
and professional class the possibility of housing in the
west (West Adams, Baldwin Hills); removed from the
working class and poor manual laborers who migrated to
Los Angeles in the post WWII era. The population doubled

102
Kevin K. Gaines Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics,
and Culture in the Twentieth Century Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1996. pg. 24
103
Scott Tadao Kurashige Transforming Los Angeles: Black and Japanese
American struggles for racial equality in the 20th century,
(University of California, Los Angeles, 2000).
84
during the war and then grew 111%, between the years
1950 – 1960. The black population of the city reached
its height in 1962 with blacks making up nearly 13.5% of
the population.
104
The contrast in the size of the African American
community pre WWII versus post WWII had profound
implications not only for the spatial configurations of
black neighborhoods but also the politics of black
communities. Post WWII the influx of large numbers of
working class semi – skilled migrants in the residential
and labor markets of Los Angeles changed the political
landscape. The transparent efforts of the Los Angeles
City Council to gerrymander council districts preventing
black pluralities are clearer by the late 1950s as the
population exceed 10% of the city’s total. Though
candidates on the whole were drawn from the burgeoning
educated middle and professional classes the range of
political ideologies, party affiliations and bases of
support suggests a democracy in black political life.
However, to understand post-WWII black Los Angeles
it is vital to examine the community not as a 60 square

104
Susan Anderson "A City Called Heaven: Black Enchantment and
Despair in Los Angeles" The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at
the End of the Twentieth Century. Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja:
Berkeley, (University of California Press, 1998) 336 - 364.
85
block contiguous whole but as a series of discrete
neighborhoods. This is especially true of the Watts
community, which due to the loss of manufacturing sector
labor, inadequate transportation plus dilapidated
private and disproportionate placement of public housing
by 1965 left it a neighborhood devoid of jobs and hope.
During his first term in office (1961 – 1964), City of
Los Angeles Mayor Samuel “Sam” Yorty paid lip service to
improving the conditions of Watts. As Yorty continued
to support the practices of the police department and
its controversial Chief of Police William Parker
political, social and religious leaders of the black
community, particularly in the heavily policed Watts
neighborhoods, grew disenchanted with his
administration. In response, Yorty exploited the
divisions in the community by providing plum roles to
black officials such as City Councilman Billy Mills, in
return for support during his re-election campaign of
1965.
With local newly elected black officials focused
largely on solidifying their political position vis-à-
vis the larger Democratic political structure and to be
fair, with many of the issues facing Watts largely
86
beyond the scope of their power and influence, appeals
by Watts residents for substantive changes went largely
unheeded. In post New Deal America only the federal
government held the necessary resources and breadth to
address the myriad of issues facing the community. This
potential transformation arrived in the package of
programs that would come to be known as “The War on
Poverty.”
Successful re apportionment efforts through the
1960s and the establishment during the progressive era
of district voting for the Los Angeles city council
reinforced fragmentation as opposed to centralization
amongst the black electorate. Thus the appointment of
Central Avenue music promoter Gilbert Lindsay to
represent the ninth district in the city council in 1963
is the story of the efforts of the black neighborhoods
adjacent to this business and cultural hub of black Los
Angeles. Similarly, the election of the activist Billy
Mills from the Watts community and the moderate ex Los
Angeles Police Department office Tom Bradley from the
Westside reflect at least the political sensibilities of
the majority of black residents in these districts
during the mid 1960s. These were not unsubstantial
87
gains in that these elected officials proportionately
out paced all other northern urban black communities.
105
Further, the political sensibilities of these
communities, embodied in the politics of these
officials, represent the divergent identities and
narratives of black experience(s) in the urban north.
In this chapter I argue that the uplift ideology of
Black Angelenos elites, which, dominated black political
action of the early twentieth century, was overwhelmed
by the demographic and economic changes of post WWII Los
Angeles.
Pre WWII California Politics
The Los Angeles Forum should be the center of any
study of pre – WWII political life in Black Los Angeles.
Established February 1, 1902 in the basement of the
First African Methodist Episcopalian Church, its
membership epitomized Gaines’ uplift ideology.
Combining debate, philanthropy and political
organization the society which originally was for men
only, grew to embrace a range of causes. With donations
to charity in excess of $3,300 by 1931 and funds for

105
John Kramer "The Election of Blacks to City Councils: A 1970
Status Report and a Prolegomenon." Journal of Black Studies 1(4,
1971): 443 - 476.
88
legal defense, education and missionary work The Forum
engaged women, the working class, business
entrepreneurs, religious leaders and poor in debates on
the future of the black community.
106
Reflecting the
range of political thought embraced by the organization
the president of the organization in 1930 was Claude V.
Pitts, a Socialist who ran twice for a seat on the
California State Assembly.
107
The importance of this Los
Angeles group was clear when one of its own became the
first African American elected to the California State
Assembly, Fred Roberts.
Roberts was born on September 14, 1879 in
Chillicothe, Ohio. He was the son of Andrew Jackson
Roberts and Ellen Wayles Hemings, the granddaughter of
Sally Hemings. At the age of six years old, Roberts
moved with his family to Los Angeles, where his father
established the first black-owned mortuary in the area.
The younger Roberts attended Los Angeles High School,
becoming the first African American graduate of that
school.

106
The California Eagle Los Angeles Negro Directory and Who's Who Los
Angeles: The California Eagle Publishing Co., 1931.
107
Ibid.:
89
His education continued at the University of
Southern California where he majored in pre-law, but he
graduated from Colorado College. He also attended the
Barnes-Worsham School of Embalming and Mortuary Science,
eventually taking over his father's mortuary business,
re – named called A.J. Roberts & Son. He edited the
Colorado Springs Light in 1908 and returned to Los
Angeles four years later to take over the New Age
newspaper, which he edited until 1948. Roberts’s life of
public service included work as principal of Mound Bayou
Normal and Industrial Institute in Mississippi and from
1907 – 1909 he was appointed as deputy assessor for El
Paso County, Colorado.
108
In 1918, Roberts was elected to the California
State Assembly as a Republican in a hard fought
campaign. His chief rival regularly spewed racial slurs
against him distributing buttons to voters declaring,
“My Opponent is a Nigger” but Roberts nonetheless
prevailed.
109
While in office Roberts sponsored
legislation to improve public education and proposed

108
Ibid.:
109
Susan Anderson "Rivers of Water in a Dry Place - Early Black
Participation in California Politics" Racial and Ethnic Politics in
California. Bryan O. Jackson and Michael B. Preston: Berkeley,
(Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California
Berkeley, 1998).
90
several civil rights measures. Roberts was not
considered a particularly progressive legislator. C.L.
Dellums, a local and national leader in the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters and Civil Rights based in
Oakland, California considered him, ”a typical Negro
Republican, he was not going to rock the boat too
much.”
110
The legislator would serve in the State Assembly
until 1934 when he was defeated by another African
American candidate, Augustus F. Hawkins, a Democrat.
Roberts disappeared as a significant figure in electoral
politics for the Los Angeles region, though he twice ran
for office attempting to win a Congressional seat in
1946 he largely disappears.
In contrast with his assessment of, Dellums said of
Gus Hawkins, “When Gus got in we got somebody we felt
would sink the boat if necessary.”
111
The grandson of a
British explorer and the son of a pharmacist Augustus
Freeman (Gus) Hawkins was born in Shreveport, Caddo
Parish, La., August 31, 1907. The family moved to Los

110
C.L. Dellums "International President of the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters and Civil Rights Leader".Joyce Henderson.
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley 1973).
111
Ibid.
91
Angeles in 1918 where Gus graduated from Jefferson High
School in 1926 and went on to the new Westwood campus of
the University of California at Los Angeles, taking a
Bachelors degree in economics in 1931. Hawkins followed
the path of many young black elites, attending the Law
School of the University of Southern California in 1932;
Hawkins career in electoral politics began during the
End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign of Upton
Sinclair a period which had a profound impact on his
work in the legislature and later the Congress.
112
With
one in four Angelenos on relief and receiving an average
of four and a half dollars a month, the Depression hit
the California economy particularly hard. In semi –
retirement from his muckraking writing most famously
published in the groundbreaking work The Jungle and
three failed runs as a Socialist for elected office in
California (US Senate, 1922; Governor, 1926 and 1930)
Sinclair noted that “old people dying of starvation” and
“hundreds of thousands driven from their homes” and
feared that the National Recovery Act of Franklin D.
Roosevelt was too little to stem the tide. Registering

112
Greg Mitchell "Upton Sinclair's Epic Campaign for Governor of
California: The Treacherous Frontiers of Electoral Politics."
Working Papers Magazine 91982): 28 - 36.
92
on September 1, 1933 in Beverly Hills as a Democrat
Sinclair crafted a grass roots campaign deploying End
Poverty League offices throughout the state. Operating
under a motto of the “Twelve Principles of EPIC”
Sinclair sponsored a platform, which combined socialist,
and progressive ideas proposing a network of government
funded social services.
113
Upton Sinclair won the
Democratic primary by 150,000 votes while the slate of
Assembly candidates, which included a young Gus Hawkins
who won 27 out of 30 possible slots in Los Angeles
County.
In the general election of 1934 Hawkins won,
replacing the only black California Assemblyman
Frederick Roberts, Hawkins would serve in the state
assembly as the only elected representative of black
Angelenos until the early 1960s.
The mid 1930s were the depth of the Great
Depression in the nation with blacks streaming to Los
Angeles in search of economic opportunity.
Geographically, with the opening of the Somerville
(later re- named the Dunbar) hotel in 1928 at 42
nd
and
Central the commercial and residential heart of black

113
Ibid.
93
Los Angeles migrated south form 12
th
and Central. Store
front churches, barbershops, law offices, the offices of
the California Eagle, Golden State Mutual Life and other
businesses clustered around the Avenue. The openness of
the early days of The Forum had largely waned by the
late 1930s with a growing desire by the elites to both
acculturate the growing number of new arrivals to the
city and control the public debate. The negative side of
the close political, social and economic relationships
of the pre WWII elites was the power to influence and
limit the dissemination of views considered contrary to
uplift ideology.
The ability of a small group of elites to dictate
the political aspirations and pathways for a racial
group in a growing metropolis was accomplished largely
because its internal debates were ignored by the
mainstream press. Though the California Eagle, the
Liberator, and the Los Angeles Sentinel extensively
covered the black community, the internal debates of
uplift ideology were largely unknown outside of black
Los Angeles. “During the long period from 1892 to the
Supreme Court’s school desegregation case of 1954, there
was almost no coverage of blacks in the Los Angeles
94
press, less than 1 percent of the total news in the Los
Angeles Times and the Herald – Examiner and its
predecessor papers was normally devoted to blacks.
114
As a result dissent could be squashed or ignored
depending upon the inclinations of this select group.
Comprised of the leadership of the largest churches,
such as Dr. Thomas Lee Griffiths Sr. of Second Baptist
Church, and Charlotta and Joseph Bass, Gus Hawkins,
reflecting on the political leadership of early
twentieth century black Los Angeles said in an
interview,
The Second Baptist [Church] was the church
most often used so that anyone who opposed any
of these leaders--The newspaper editor of the
California Eagle at that time, The Basses
[Charlotta A. and Joseph B.] for example. So
if you had a meeting and you did not have
these people represented but you had people
who, in effect, criticized them for some of
their activity, that became a meeting, which
had to be broken up or in some way
controlled.
115
The demographic shift in the composition of black
migrants to Los Angeles, a larger concentration of semi

114
Paula B. Johnson, David O. Sears and John B. Mc Conahay "Black
Invisibility, the Press and the Los Angeles Riot." The American
Journal of Sociology 76(4, 1971): 698 - 721.
115
Clyde Woods "Black Leadership in Los Angeles: Augustus F.
Hawkins". Department of Special Collections, Young Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles 1992).
95
– skilled and un skilled laborers drawn by the WWII and
post war boom in defense related employment changed the
political terrain and influenced the direction of post
WWII black politics.
Mid Twentieth Century Black Political Leadership
“Every ten years it’s a new city. So persons who
were prominent 10 years ago are forgotten because the
new migrants never heard of them.”
116
Lawyer and Civil
Rights Activist Loren Miller uttered these words in
describing what he saw as the flaws of black political
leadership in Los Angeles at mid – century. Certainly
the interwoven network of elites debating the events of
the day, honing their oratorical skills and garnering
political support could no longer define black Los
Angeles. As the Forum closed its doors in 1942 and the
Elks Lounge at Vernon and Central took its place, albeit
briefly in the late 40s as a gathering place, the
landscape of Los Angeles no longer lent itself to this
exclusive dialogue.
117
This transition begun in the war
years and which accelerated through the 1950s has been
largely told from the perspective of the Tom Bradley

116
Loren Miller as quoted in R.J. Smith The Great BlackWay: L.A. in
the 1940s and the Lost African American Renaissance New York:
PublicAffairs, 2006.
117
Ibid.:
96
coalition for Mayor. As described by Tom Bradley during
an oral history conducted by Lawrence DeGraf,
the natural development which occurred was as
the influx of new residents came to Los
Angeles, that they occupied the older sections
of town, and those that formerly lived there
moved west, and this resulted in a sort of
vacuum for leadership…There was no established
leadership, no long term or grass roots kind
of stability in the community and this has
presented one of the difficulties of
organizing and molding and shaping of the
community.
118
The analysis, supported by Raphael Sonenshein in
his seminal work on black political life, Politics in
Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles, argues
that the seedbed of the Bradley multi – racial coalition
occurred in the early 1960s in the 10
th
council manic
district. Middle class blacks and Jewish progressives
found common ground from their political isolation
rising up to defeat Mayor Samuel Yorty in 1973 forever
changing Los Angeles politics.
The political landscape was far more complicated
than a Westside/Central split with no long standing
political leaders. Early twentieth century social and
political elites remained an important part of the

118
Tom Bradley as quoted in Raphael J Sonenshein Politics in Black
and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993.
97
political landscape through the 1950s. By the 1940s
political leadership derived less from grassroots
political activism but more so from access, particularly
employment. According to Hawkins,
The political leadership was primarily built
around the one who controls the employment of
the railways, streetcars, and so forth...It
was cleaning the cars, primarily things like
that. Well, Pop Saunders was a big Republican
who controlled that. The man who controlled
the employment of janitors in the public
buildings there--in the [Los Angeles] County
Hall of Justice, [Los Angeles] County Hall of
Records, and so on--was a fellow by the name
of [L.G.] Robinson. He controlled them.
Those who controlled employment with the
utilities, the gas company and the other
companies, who were able to employ a number of
individuals, all of these people were the real
leadership.
119
As head of the janitorial department for the County of
Los Angeles, L.G. Robinson served a critical role in
controlling access to civil service employment.
Robinson migrated from Georgia in 1906 and began working
for the County as a janitor in 1906 rising to head of

119
Augustus F. Interviewee Hawkins, Carlos Vásquez, Los Angeles
Interviewer. Corp Author: University of California, Program Oral
History and Program State Government Oral History Oral history
interview with Augustus F. Hawkins oral history transcript, 1988 :
United States congressman, 1963-1991, California state assemblyman,
1935-1962: 1988.
98
the department in 1912.
120
During his thirty year tenure
in the County Robinson utilized his access to employment
and white political leaders to grant ambitious young
men, such as Gilbert Lindsay access to the corridors of
power. Robinson was truly an extraordinary man, and
reflects the complexities of class and status within and
external to black Los Angeles. Concurrent to his work
as a janitor Robinson was president of the Angelus
Funeral Home (one of the largest mortuaries on the West
Coast), a director of the Liberty Building and Loan
Association and on the executive boards of both the
N.A.A.C.P. and the Y.M.C.A.
121
As Douglas Flamming describes in his recent book,
by the 1940s blacks were increasingly the racial other
in Los Angeles isolated geographically, socially,
economically and certainly political from the burgeoning
metropolis. For new arrivals who doubled the black
population in the city between 1940 – 46 Robinson’s
network of social and political connections placed him
in a position of power and influence in the city.

120
"L.G. Robinson Will Be Hailed for 36 - Year Work" California
Eagle, October 22,1942.
121
The California Eagle Los Angeles Negro Directory and Who's Who
Los Angeles: The California Eagle Publishing Co., 1931.
99
The power of elites like Robinson was evident at
the street level for blacks searching for employment in
Los Angeles. Edward “Abie” Robinson was born in 1915 in
New Orleans and arrived in 1921 with his mother to
attend school. With his mother a single parent working
long hours as a domestic at the Elms Hotel in Downtown
Los Angeles, young Eddie wandered the streets selling
newspapers and cutting classes. His first brush with
the elite network was at the 28
th
street YMCA in 1928
when he attended their summer camp. It was there that
he came in close proximity to black men of wealth and
influence and realized that he wanted “a share of what
they had.”
122
The experience impacted young Robinson and
he later enrolled at Los Angeles City College in 1936,
knowing that he had to go to college to get a job that
paid money. When he completed his studies he looked
around and there were only entry-level positions, with
the best jobs working as a custodian, hospital worker,
shoeshine boy, or the post office. To get one of those
jobs, Robinson said, you had to be born into those jobs,
meaning that your father or a relative who worked at
that job. The civil service examination had a question,

122
Edward Robinson "Life in Los Angeles, Work at the California
Eagle".Christopher Jimenez y West.Robinson Home.(October 18 1998).
100
asked the applicant’s racial identity, which he
understood would hurt his chances of passing the exam.
With the help of the social network, and a referral from
L.G. Robinson, Abie was amongst the first of six blacks
to work in the County Hospital as a kitchen helper,
dishwasher, paying $65/month.
123
In a 1967 survey of attitudes toward community
organizations, The Los Angeles chapter of the Urban
League ranked as the most influential group in the black
community.
124
From its inception in June 1921 the
organization actively worked in the community to deliver
services and support. As a charter member of the Los
Angeles Community Chest leaders of the Urban League were
connected with city, county and non – profit leaders in
the region. The stability of its leadership first and
foremost provided the Urban League relationships that
were sustained and nurtured over time. The head of the
league from 1931 – 51 was Floyd C. Covington. Covington
was an example of the inter – connected leadership of
the early twentieth century whose influence continued
during and after WWII. Born, March 29
th
, 1903 in

123
Ibid.
124
Beeman Collidge Patterson The Politics of Recognition: Negro
Politics in Los Angeles 1960-1963 Los Angeles, (University of
California, Los Angeles, 1967).
101
Colorado Springs, Colorado as a young man he was taken
in by the Reverend and Mrs. J.L. Craw after the death of
his mother. Floyd demonstrated promise early at
Broadway High School and by the completion of his A.B.
at Washburn College he earned a fellowship through the
Urban League, receiving at Masters degree from the
University of Pittsburgh in 1928. In August of 1928 he
was selected Industrial Secretary of the Los Angeles
Urban League and by February of 1930 he was membership
and employment secretary of the 28
th
Street Branch of the
Young Men’s Christian Association.
125
These experiences
would serve him well as he took the Urban League on a
public relations campaign serving as an outspoken critic
of dilapidated housing and racially restrictive
covenants that negatively impacted larger segments of
the black population.
126
Dr. John Somerville’s push for political office is
an additional reinforcement of the push for a coalition
amongst African American elites to obtain political
office. Somerville’s career constitutes the strongest
connection to the political leadership of pre – WWII

125
The California Eagle Los Angeles Negro Directory and Who's Who Los
Angeles: The California Eagle Publishing Co., 1931.
126
"Institute Discusses Main Problems Facing Negroes" California
Eagle, July 5,1956.
102
black Los Angeles. In 1928, the local chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People first meeting was in his home and as the first
black graduate of the University of Southern California
Dental School his successful practice on Central Avenue
afforded him political influence. Though he would lose
ownership of the re – named Dunbar hotel in 1932 due to
the stock market crash, Somerville and his wife Vada
(also a U.S.C. dental school graduate) built a number of
commercial and private buildings offering blacks much-
needed public accommodations at a time of Jim Crow.
127
After declaring his candidacy for the tenth council
district “More than 100 women, constituting the
organizing committee of the women's division of the
Somerville for Council Campaign, held an organization
meeting Saturday, January 17, 1953 at the Golden State
Cafeteria.”
128
Though African Americans had run for elected office
through the 1940s including such influential figures as
Clayton Russell of People’s Independent Church and
Charlotta Bass of the California Eagle their efforts

127
Los Angeles Negro Directory and Who's Who. (Los Angeles, The
California Eagle Publishing Co., 1931).
128
"Women Organize for Dr. Somerville" California Eagle, January
22,1953.
103
generated no successful candidacies, as blacks comprised
little more than 6% of the city’s population. Even with
the Los Angeles City government divided into council
districts they did not constitute a large enough
political base on their own to hope to gain office.
Expectations increased with the election of Ed Roybal to
the 9
th
district seat of the Los Angeles City Council in
1949.
129
In a district with 45% Whites, 34% Latinos, 15%
African American and 6% other Roybal and Jewish Labor
organizers formed the Community Service Organization,
which focused on grass roots voter registration
campaign. Roybal’s victory offered a scenario by which
African Americans while not in a voting majority could
utilize a multi – racial coalition to gain political
office. Further, with the rapid increase in the
population a fair and equitable re – districting in 1951
would offer one or possibly two city council seats with
an additional Assembly district beyond that held by
Hawkins. The apportionment of 1951, controlled by a
mostly White State Assembly and City Council isolated
and limited black political aspirations.

129
Fernando Javier Guerra Ethnic Politics in Los Angeles: The
Emergence of Black, Jewish, Latino and Asian Officeholders, 1960-
1989, (THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1990).
104
“At the time of the 1951 redistricting, the
majority of Los Angeles Negro population was
concentrated in three areas of the city -- the immediate
Westside, Central, and Southside. The 1951
apportionment resulted in these three areas being
isolated in the three different congressional districts.
The Central area, predominately Negro, was located in
the 26th; the Southside was placed mostly in the 23rd,
with a small southwest section in the 17th. The
Westside section was placed mostly in the 15th.”
130
Joining Dr. Somerville in declaring his candidacy
for a city council seat was Reverend E. W. Rakestraw,
pastor of Wesley Methodist Church (140 E. 47th place)
filing for election in the eighth council district to
replace Kenneth Hahn.”
131
In April 1953 both Reverend Rakestraw and John
Somerville lost in the Democratic primary. The vote was
particularly close for Somerville as he was barely nosed

130
Beeman Collidge Patterson The Politics of Recognition: Negro
Politics in Los Angeles 1960-1963 Los Angeles, (University of
California, Los Angeles, 1967).
131
"File for Education and Council Seats" California Eagle, January
15,1953.
105
out losing by a small margin of 700 votes of more than
13,000.
132
Though there was never a question that Hawkins was
a more than competent legislator often championing bills
that curtailed discrimination in public accommodations,
his record of supporting other black candidates was
mixed at best. “The Hawkins record in the state
legislature is an excellent one on many scores. It has
included support of most, if not all, of the legislation
that has benefited Negroes in the past 20 years in the
field of housing, labor; education and social security.
But there is no blinking the fact that Mr. Hawkins has
been woefully derelict in heading up movements that
promise integration of other Negroes in city, state or
federal government. In the Somerville campaign Mr.
Hawkins did not lift a finger to help. He didn't help
Rev. Rakestraw”
133
It is here perhaps where the
generalized criticism of a fractured black leadership
emanates. Though Hawkins was by 1948 one of two blacks
who held state wide office, after Bryon Rumford joined
him in the Assembly as a Democrat from Oakland,

132
"Negro Vote Light; Candidates Lose" California Eagle, April
9,1953.
133
"New Leadership" Ibid., April 16.
106
criticism from the pages of the California Eagle did not
remain solely focused on him. “However, the Democratic
party here in California can't solve all of its problems
as far as the Negro voter is concerned...Negroes aren't
going to, and should not, be content with two
Assemblymen--both from predominantly Negro areas. ...And
to put the matter bluntly, the Democratic Party in this
state is still in the patronizing stage as far as
Negroes are concerned. There is too much of deciding,
what is 'good for' Negroes and too little of making
Negro Democrats active participants in party
decisions.”
134
The editorial of the Eagle reflected a general
expectation of black elites that blacks would be elected
to political office at the city, county and federal
levels. By the mid 1950s as the black population in Los
Angeles increased to almost 9% of the city, Hawkins
remained the only elected representative of the
community. The urgency to generate support from Gus
Hawkins to move the Democratic Party of California
derived from a series of events which seemed to re –

134
"L.A. Second to Detroit in NAACP Memberships" California Eagle,
August 9,1956, "Lindsay Chosen Community Leader" California Eagle,
November 15,1956.
107
enforce the belief that political leaders were brazenly
working to dilute black influence. Take the candidacies
of one person, George L. Thomas.
George L. Thomas in his role as director of the Los
Angeles County Conference on Community Relations served
on the front lines of black leaders forging multi –
racial coalitions. The Conference was a progressive
coalition of Black, Jewish, Mexican and Labor leaders
working on issues of social and racial justice. His
dynamic personality and broad-based political support
made him an ideal candidate for political office.
George L. Thomas declared his candidacy for the 10
th
district in 1955 and with his work on the County
Conference encouraged other prominent black civic
leaders to endorse his candidacy. Mrs. Betty Hill, the
influential public affairs chairman of the Women's
Political Study Club of California, announced that after
hearing Thomas discuss the city's problems and what he
hoped to do as city councilman, he had received the
unanimous endorsement of their club.
135
On April 5, 1955
in the original count Thomas won by a small margin of 50
votes in the Democratic primary for the 10
th
city council

135
"Lomax, Thomas Launch Campaign" California Eagle, February
10,1955.
108
district. However, in a hotly contested recount on
April 15
th
, so heated that Mayor Norris Poulson slapped
Thomas’s campaign manager in the face, Thomas lost his
bid for a place on the May 31 ballot by the tiny margin
of only 17 votes.
136
Attempts to gain electoral office for him continued
in the 1956 campaign with George Thomas head of the Los
Angeles County Conference on Community Relations. Thomas
continued work to establish his role as a regional
leader. In early 1956 he convened a major conference of
west coast leaders on civil rights, including Lewis
Watts from the Seattle Urban League and John A. Buggs of
the Los Angeles County Committee on Human Relations.
137
Thomas focused his attention on a statewide office
declaring his candidacy for the 63
rd
Assembly District.
Once again he was able to generate a wide base of
support receiving the nod from the Democratic council of
the 63rd Assembly District as the official Democratic
candidate from that district.”
138
And hoping to cajole
Hawkins and the Democratic Party into providing a broad

136
"Mayor Hits Thomas Manager Slaps His Face; Thomas Loses in Recount
of Votes" California Eagle, April 21,1955.
137
"Institute Discusses Main Problems Facing Negroes" California
Eagle, July 5,1956.
138
"Thomas Wins Demo Backing for Assembly" California Eagle, March
1,1956.
109
base of support for the Thomas candidacy, the California
Eagle pushed again in its editorial for an endorsement
from Hawkins and the state wide Democratic Party, “…we
wonder why Assemblyman Augustus F. Hawkins doesn't
bestir himself and get his party on the right track.
Gus has been in the assembly for 20 years now, simply
because he lives in a district where Negro voters are in
the majority. Despite his merit and his great talents
he would never have been elected had he happened to live
in another part of the city. If Mr. Hawkins will speak
out right now and tell 'liberals' and 'labor' the facts
of life he can assure their endorsement for a Negro in
the 63rd.”
139
However, before the Thomas candidacy had gathered
any momentum Los Angeles City Councilman Don Allen
declared his candidacy for the 63
rd
Assembly District,
receiving the endorsement of the state wide Democratic
Party. In 1956 African Americans constituted 38% of the
registered voters of the district. Many in the black
community hoped that with Thomas’ background leading a
regional multi – racial organization that he would pull
sufficient votes from other racial groups to get

139
"What About It, Gus?" California Eagle, February 2,1956.
110
elected. But as the Eagle pointed out, as matters
stood, Negroes couldn’t win either Democratic or
Republican party support or nominations in those
districts where the Negro population is not in the
majority or close to it.
140
When Thomas lost once again
in a close vote in the primary hope turned to a possible
appointment to the 7
th
district city council seat that
Don Allen had vacated. This was not to be the case as
James C. Corman was appointed to complete Allen’s term.
In 1956 the Los Angeles City Council continued its
long years of industrious gerrymandering the council
districts.
141
In late 1956 and taking affect on January
1, 1957 the seventh council district, which once cut
across the heart of the city from Alameda on the east to
Leimert Park on the west, between Adams and Vernon
avenues, was moved to the San Fernando Valley. Voters
who lived in the old Seventh were juggled into new
districts with most of them winding up in the Ninth
District, represented by Edward Roybal, and the 12th
District, represented by Ransom Callicott. Others were
divided up between the 10th and 8th districts,

140
"Don Allen's Mistake" California Eagle, January 26,1956.
141
"City Council Vacancy" California Eagle, September 20,1956.
111
represented by Charles Navarro and Gordon Hahn,
respectively.
142
Re – Apportionment and the Committee for Representative
Government
At the state level blacks maintained the 62
nd
seat
held by Gus Hawkins but were once again frustrated in
their attempt to exit the Democratic primaries in the
significantly but not majority black 55
th
and 63
rd
Assembly districts.
However, the black population by 1960 was now 11% of
the city population and remained concentrated in the
Central and South Central areas of Los Angeles. In the
1960 campaign there was a wide range of candidates for
the assembly primaries in 55
th
, 62
nd
, 63
rd
and 65
th
districts. In the 62
nd
incumbent Gus Hawkins was
virtually guaranteed the Democratic nomination running
against an unknown and in the 63
rd
district no black
registered to run in the Democratic primary but Vince
Monroe Townsend, an attorney ran on the Republican
ballot. In the 65
th
with the powerful Jesse Unruh as an
incumbent, no black ran in the Democratic primary but in
1960 Mrs. Eloise M. Walton, a school teacher ran for the

142
"Council Re-Districts, Shifts Negro Vote" California Eagle,
November 8,1956.
112
Republican nomination. Mrs. Walton, a native of Alabama,
had been a resident of Los Angeles for past 18 years.
Her candidacy exemplifies the frustration of blacks in
gaining support from the Democratic Party for elected
office. A strong candidate based upon her credentials,
she held a Bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee and was
active in local organizations including the Cosmopolitan
Republican Voters Club, the NAACP, Urban League and the
YWCA.
143
While Herman Hill, Clarence Bell and 'Champ'
Sturvdent were trying to win in the 55th.”
144
Hill, a
registered Democrat, was engaged in the public relations
business. A graduate of the University of Southern
California, he had served on the 1950 County Grand Jury,
and as the West Coast editor of the Pittsburgh Courier
for 12 years. He had also been the assistant publicity
director of the Los Angeles Angels baseball club in
1955. Hill was a member of the Board of Directors of
the Southern Area Boys Club.
145
Rev. F. Douglass Ferrell,

143
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Miller statements)" United
States Commission on Civil Rights, United States Government Printing
Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 245 - 261.
144
"Negroes Seek Assembly Posts in 4 Districts" California Eagle,
June 2,1960.
145
United States Commission on Civil Rights "Hearings before the
United States Commission on Civil Rights (Barnes and Hodge
statements)" United States Commission on Civil Rights, United States
113
pastor of Tabernacle of Faith Baptist Church and vice-
chairmen of the Herman Hill Campaign Committee was among
the leading community leaders of Watts lending Hill
their support.
And though two black candidates, Ben Perry and
Vince Monroe Townsend, were nominated by the GOP for the
55
th
and 63
rd
they faced a significantly uphill battle in
the general election in overwhelmingly Democratic
districts. The dilemma of this domination by the
Democratic Party of black political loyalty left many
questioning the long-term benefit of running strong
black candidates as Democratic candidates. As the Eagle
in its editorial pages warned through the 1950s the
Democratic Party at the state, and county level provided
little support to black candidates. This coupled with
gerrymandering of council districts at the city level
left African Americans with the same level of political
representation, Gus Hawkins, in 1960 as they had in
1940.
Attempting to force a response by the Democratic
Party The Eagle increasingly began to support black
Republican candidates for Assembly office when the

Government Printing Office:Los Angeles, (January 25, 1960) 207 -
240.
114
Democratic Party could not nominate blacks from
districts where they were in or near the majority.
Though not advocating a wide scale retreat from the
Democrats the June 16
th
editorial argued that blacks not
be “too faithful” particularly when the Democrats seemed
unable to get black candidates into the general
election.
146
Partially in anticipation of the upcoming re –
apportionment in 1961 and partially due to the rapid
expansion in population, a 111% increase in black
population in the City of Los Angeles from 1950 to 1960,
black aspirations for electoral office increased in
energy. As an article in the Eagle trumpeted,
“California is going to get several new congressmen in
1960 and those gains are going to require sweeping re-
districting in the Los Angeles area...We can't assume
that congressional lines will follow a common sense
pattern unless we keep a careful watch on the state
assemblymen and senators who will draw the lines.”
147
With another re – apportionment period approaching
community leaders including Wendell Green, Editor of the
Los Angeles Sentinel, Perry Parks, the newly formed

146
"Don't Be Too Faithful" California Eagle, June 16,1960.
147
"Want a Congressman?" California Eagle, November 5,1959.
115
Committee for Representative Government (CRG) research
director and columnist Leon Washington utilized the 1960
census date to come up with a 4 – 2 plan. The plan
sought to create four Assembly Districts 62
nd
, 63
rd
, 55
th
and 66
th
and two Congressional Districts with blacks in
or near a majority in all.
148
When the Assembly Committee
on Elections and Reapportionment met at the state
building in Los Angeles on December 16, 1960, the CRG
presented its plan. A key element of the CRG strategy
was to craft district boundaries linking areas with
constituents that shared the same social and economic
backgrounds. Though race was a factor in the
formulation CRG argued that is was just one of several
variables that defined the district boundaries.
149
The plan had a fatal flaw. It carved up large
portions of the 65
th
Assembly district whose
representative was the powerful speaker of the Assembly
Jess Unruh. Unruh was a complicated man who was
alternately loved, hated, despised and feared by his
colleagues in the Assembly. Gus Hawkins said of Unruh,

148
Beeman Collidge Patterson The Politics of Recognition: Negro
Politics in Los Angeles 1960-1963 Los Angeles, (University of
California, Los Angeles, 1967).
149
Beeman Collidge Patterson The Politics of Recognition: Negro
Politics in Los Angeles 1960-1963 Los Angeles, (University of
California, Los Angeles, 1967).
116
He was what I would call a ward heel
politician who saw a great opportunity of
using his position in Sacramento to control a
large bloc of votes...In terms of minorities,
he could see that minorities who were then
becoming interested in running for office
would need a large amount of money to get
elected. So he approached every prospect for
an office--assemblymen in this instance--with
the idea that I'll back you and elect you.'
And if you belonged to him, you were in his
pocket,.I was never, as I say, in his machine,
because the idea of a machine being able to
dominate--...No, I never had a machine
myself..
150
Although Hawkins in this 1992 interview for the historic
record suggested a distance from Unruh, other
information suggests a more complicated relationship.
The Assembly, heavily influenced by Unruh to protect his
65
th
seat, rejected the 4 – 2 proposal of the CRG and
decided upon one largely Black Congressional District
combining the 55
th
and newly formed 53
rd
. Unruh then not
only supported Hawkins for the Congressional seat, but
helped to win election for his aide Mervyn Dymally into
the Assembly from the seat vacated by Hawkins. Dymally
who ran for the 53
rd
, formally the 62nd district,

150
Clyde Woods "Black Leadership in Los Angeles: Augustus F.
Hawkins". Department of Special Collections, Young Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles 1992).
117
exemplified the changing face of black Los Angeles.
151
An immigrant, Dymally was a native of Trinidad in the
British West Indies. He was a college graduate and a
political worker who had chaired the 53rd assembly
district democratic council, was a member Los Angeles
City Board of Education, and had been the Treasurer for
Californians for Kennedy 1960 campaign. Dymally had
built his own base of of young black leaders, mostly
migrants who named themselves the "Leadership Caucus"
152
He was opposed in 1962 by Mrs. Sadie E. Brewer, a
member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Central
Committee. Mrs. Brewer was a native of Alabama, an
executive member of the NAACP, the Urban League, YWCA,
the Heart Foundation and the Red Cross.”
153
In the newly created 55
th,
the former Vice Chair of
Herbert Hill’s campaign, F. Douglass Ferrell declared,
his candidacy for office. In the important 1963
elections a range of blacks applied for the city council
seats for the eighth, ninth and tenth city council
district seats. “The four Negroes in the 8th District

151
62nd Assembly District Council (1961). Mervyn Dymally running for
53rd assembly seat.
152
Ibid.
153
"Sadie Brewer Joins Hopefuls in 53rd A.D." California Eagle,
February 1,1962.
118
council race are Atty. Billy Mills; Adam Burton, an
accountant; Leon Harrison, well known mortician and
Atty. Everette Porter.”
154
Blacks would gain one or two of these positions and
achieve representation in the April 1963 election.
Roybal's vacated district contained the largest
concentration of Latinos at the time, and was the only
potential Latino district. By appointing a Black,
Gilbert Lindsay, Latinos were excluded from the Council.
The other two Blacks to join Lindsay on the Council were
Tom Bradley and Billy Mills.
155
South Central had produced in 1965 three very
different black city councilmen: Tom Bradley from the
Westside, Gilbert Lindsay from Central Avenue and Billy
Mills from the Watts district. While each represented
various neighborhoods of black Angelenos none was
overtly liberal in their politics and paid lip service
to the poor neighborhoods of Watts.
Southern migrants, particularly those who lived in
Watts, gravitated toward informal political leadership

154
"Two Good Appointments" Ibid., May 14,1953.
155
Fernando Javier Guerra and Dwaine Marvick
"Ethnic Officeholders and Party Activists in Los Angeles County"
Minorities in the Post - Industrial City Los Angeles (University of
California, Los Angeles, 1986)
119
(community activist and ad – hoc groups) because they
held out hope for immediate results. The concerted
efforts of the 4 – 2 plan produced only limited results
and working and middle class blacks sought leadership
from a traditional source, the church. There was a
significant shift in black church leadership between the
years 1960 and 1965 with southerners taking over the
pastor ship of First A.M.E with H.H. Brookins and the
leadership of Second Baptist Church placed in the able
hands of Martin Luther King Jr. confidante Thomas
Kilgore. Brookins arrived in Los Angeles with a
background as an activist pastor often at odds with his
more conservative congregation and prompted by King
Kilgore in 1964 would open a West Coast branch of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
By 1965 the neighborhoods of black Los Angeles by
the 1960s were re – distributed into a Westside typified
by middle class and professionals, a working class core
in Central Avenue and Avalon and a pre – dominantly poor
enclave in Watts. With the majority of black Angelenos
having migrated to the city over a twenty year period
from 1940 to 1960 and despite significant electoral
gains for the black community as a whole in Los Angles
120
the community of Watts was disconnected from both the
electoral process and lacked institutions with which to
engage the informal political realm. As one report on
the riots indicated, “the Negro leaders were ineffective
in stopping the riots because the rioters considered any
middle-class Negroes as 'Uncle Toms' toadying to the
white people and afraid to lose their positions with
'Whitey.'”156

156
Frederick J. Hacker M.D. "What the McCone Commission Didn't See"
Los Angeles (University of Southern California,
121
Chapter 4
Watts: A Reconsideration
The sun rose on the Los Angeles basin the morning
of August 12, 1965, with an eerie calm. A routine
traffic stop and arrest of one Marquette Frye the
previous evening escalated into a heated confrontation
between the police and a group of black residents.
Conflict between the black community and the various
police agencies (City of Los Angeles, California Highway
Patrol, Los Angeles County Sheriff) was not uncommon,
particularly in Watts with its concentration of public
housing, high unemployment and crumbling infrastructure.
A year earlier on July 31, 1964 police chased and shot
fatally wounded a burglary suspect on the corner of 103
rd
and Grape Street just across from the public housing
project Jordan Downs. Residents emptied out of the
complex assuming that once again white police officers
had gunned down a black motorist.
157
Los Angeles from 1950
– 1960 experienced a 111% growth in its black population

157
It was this incident that had led the South Central Welfare
Planning Council to set up the Task Force Committee for the
Prevention of Riots. The committee had met several times and
solicited the cooperation of the police department, which had not
been forthcoming. It was not, Chief Parker believed, the business
of the police to engage in sociology; Robert Conot Rivers Of Blood,
Years of Darkness New York: Bantam Books, 1967.
122
as African Americans streamed to the land of
possibility. The pre war boosterism of the imagineers
bore fruit but of a bitter nature for those post WWII,
largely working class migrants into the region.
Nationally, the on going struggle of the Civil Rights
revolution and the signing of both the Civil Rights
(1964) and Voting Rights Acts (1965) ratcheted
expectations of access and opportunity. Locally, the
frustration of limited economic opportunities coupled
with the racially charged campaign to repeal a state law
guaranteeing fair housing in the Spring of 1964 and a
battle over the local distribution over federal poverty
funds left many blacks feeling geographically,
economically and politically isolated. These factors
coupled with rumors, though false, that during the
traffic stop and subsequent action on the evening of
August 11, 1965 the police had beaten a pregnant woman,
there was a concern that the unrest of the evening
before might spill into a second day.
Leaders in the black community expressed concerns
of widespread violence in South Central Los Angeles
repeatedly. State Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally was quoted
in the black press in late 1964 suggesting that the
123
Negro community in Los Angeles, 'can blow up at any
time.'
158
Field representatives of the Los Angeles County
Commission on Human Relations, begun in 1947 after a
series of racial incidents at South Central Los Angeles
schools including the burning of black students in
effigy at Fremont High School, contacted the director,
John Buggs. In a series of early morning phone calls
they warned him that community of Watts where the arrest
took place was still boiling from the events of the
previous night. In an attempt to diffuse the growing
unrest Buggs had his staff contacted community members
and called city hall and the police department to gather
a meeting in the community at 1:30 in the afternoon.
Though his proposal to send mostly African American Los
Angeles Police Department officers into the community
that evening was rejected, police and political
officials agreed to listen to the grievances of the
community. By 1:30 in the afternoon local print and
broadcast media, elected officials and community members
gathered at the community center in Athens Park. Before
Buggs could approach the podium calling the meeting to
order a woman stood up and shouted,"…Who’s getting all

158
"Los Angeles 'Powder Keg'" California Eagle, July 30,1964.
124
that poverty money, big deal politicians sittin' up
there in city hall making $10,000, $15,000 a year, and
the poor peoples supposed to be gettin' a $1.25 an hour,
and they won't even let us have that! Who's puttin' them
moneys in their pockets, thats' what we wants to
know!”
159
Despite repeated attempts by Buggs to maintain
calm this opening salvo set the tone for the rest of the
meeting and into the night of Thursday August 12
th
, as
sporadic looting grew to incorporate most of Watts and
then the whole of the black ghetto of Los Angeles.
This chapter is an examination of the underlying
causes of the six days of property damage, violence and
state sanctioned paramilitary intervention that is known
as the “Watts Riots.”
160
I will argue that while the
underlying causes of this social unrest; employment

159
Robert Conot Rivers Of Blood, Years of Darkness New York: Bantam
Books, 1967.
160
The choice to use the term “Watts Riots” is problematic for a
number of reasons. First, contemporary newspaper coverage
identified the events initially as the “Los Angeles “Riots” in
recognition that while the initial events occurred within the
boundaries of the Watts community much if not all of the property
damage and loss of life which occurred from August 12th – 19
th
1965
took place in the City of Los Angeles. Second, various terms from
“Revolt” “Revolution” “Insurgency” to “Rebellion” have been used by
social scientists to community activists to describe the events.
Each carries a plethora of political and social connotations and any
choices frame the work within a certain political trajectory. I
will use “Riots” in quotation marks not as a concession to standard
practice but rather as a political statement that the debates over
the events of those six August days in Los Angeles are still up for
debate.
125
discrimination, housing segregation and racialized
policing over time heightened frustration in the black
communities of Los Angeles, a significant contributing
factor was a battle between community based
organizations, and the state, both local and federal,
over the control and distribution of War on Poverty
funds.
161
I will first examine various theories of urban
rioting isolating the variables most relevant to the
events in Los Angeles. From there I will move to a
brief of the early Watts community framing the issues,
which contributed to its spatial and economic isolation.
The chapter will continue with a narrative of the
Economic Opportunity Act and then a chronology of events
in the spring of 1965 detailing the players and the
struggle for power over the distribution of poverty
funds.
URBAN RIOTING THEORY
Short-term (less than one day) and/or extended
periods (more than two days) of destruction of property
and or loss of life due to unrest were not unique to Los
Angeles in the post- WWII America. To the contrary most

161
The “War on Poverty” was the name designated by the
administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963 – 68) for a
broad range of policy initiatives addressing issues of poverty in
the United States.
126
urban northern areas: Chicago, Illinois; St. Louis,
Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, D.C.;
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Bedford - Stuyvesant
(New York) exploded due to pent up tensions of black
communities which were subject to dilapidated housing,
unemployment, and crime.
162
As the Civil Rights
Revolution passed from a focus on the legal dismantling
of Jim Crow segregation in the American South to the
layered social and economic issues of the north, urban
rioting increased.
The conditions of urban north black communities
during the post World War II era precipitated a wealth
of critical re–examination of the issues regarding urban
ghettoes. After the Watts Riots the conservative-
leaning book-length analysis, Anarchy suggested that the
most important reasons for the riots lay in the approach
of Negro leadership which needed “… An approach with a

162
The catalyst for the Detroit Riots of 1943 was lack of employment
for black in WWII defense related industry for a more in depth
analysis of the background issues see: Thomas J. Sugrue The Origins
of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.In many ways New York
foreshadowed the events of August 1965 Los Angeles with community
activists responding with violence when rebuffed from the political
process. For an in depth analysis see: Allen J. Matusow The
Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s New
York: Harper & Row, 1984. For more specific references to the riot
conditions of each city see Joseph Boskin "A History of Urban Racial
Conflicts in the Twentieth Century" Riots In The City: An Addendum
to the McCone Commission Report. Audrey Rawitscher: Los Angeles,
(National Association of Social Workers, 1967) 1 - 19.
127
little less 'gimme' and a lot more give.”
163
While the
Socialist Party predictably identified the causes of the
uprising as, “…constant abuse by the police, symbol of
the white power structure, and the prevailing
unemployment that continued generation after
generation.”
164
The most heavily politicized
battlegrounds for urban unrest tended to be the
officially commissioned post-riot studies. Commission
reports serving as the definitive analysis of urban
rioting dates to the 1919 Chicago Race Riots.
Sociologists from the University of Chicago applied
their urban ecology theory, in an effort to explain why
the city exploded in racial violence. The analysis with
its emphasis on a spatially contiguous black ghetto
infested by mostly illiterate southern migrants ill
prepared for the complexities of modern urban northern
life served as the beginning point for analysis of urban
riots in black communities for the next 50 years.
165
Written largely by the young African American secretary
of the commission, Charles Johnson, The Chicago

163
Frank Harding and Ed Anarchy, Los Angeles Los Angeles: Kimtex
Corp., 1965.
164
Della Rossa Why Watts Exploded: How the Ghetto Fought Back Los
Angeles: Los Angeles Local, Socialist Workers Party, May 1966.
165
Robert Ezra Park, Ernest Watson Burgess, Roderick Duncan Mckenzie
and Louis Wirth The City Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1925.
128
commission report was the model for the framers of the
post-Watts commission.
Admitting in the executive summary that, ”much of
what it had to say about the causes and remedies [of the
riots] was not new” the official account of the Watts
Riots, the McCone commission report reflected the
Chicago School “ecological theory” model which analyzed
urban industrial landscapes as treacherous environments
that rewarded those with the social and adaptive skills
to succeed (Whites) and harshly penalized those (African
Americans) who entered the competitive life of the city
with very real handicaps: He lacked education, training
and experience…”
166
From its release in 1966 the McCone
report was widely criticized for its emphasis on the
“lawlessness” of black rioters and avoiding the issues
(police misconduct, crumbling infrastructure and
political disempowerment) which in interview after
interview were the main concerns of Watts residents.
The report went so far as to address this issue stating
that they found little evidence to support the “extreme

166
McCone Commission report! : complete and unabridged report by the
Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riot ; plus, One hundred
four shocking photos of the most terrifying riot in history. Corp
Author(s): California.; Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles
Riots. ; Report Los Angeles, Calif.: Kimtex Corporation, 1965.
129
and emotional” statements of Negro witnesses. Buried in
the report and away from the highly politicized summary
report, commission staff managed to insert an analysis,
which captured the sentiments of the community, ”Looking
back, we can also see that there was a series of
aggravating events in the twelve months prior to the
riots. Publicity given to the glowing promise of the
Federal poverty program was paralleled by reports of
controversy and bickering over the mechanism to handle
the program here in Los Angeles, and when the project
did arrive, they did not live up to their press
notices...In addition, many Negroes here felt and were
encouraged to feel they had been affronted by the
passage of Proposition 14.”
167
While the intent of the
report was a continuation of status quo analysis of
urban rioting the dissonance between the evidence and
the summary report of the McCone report had the
unintended consequence of being the comparative of
further research on urban rioting. By the fall of 1967
the report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil

167
John A. Mccone and Corp Author California Governor's Commission on
the Los Angeles Riots McCone Commission report! : complete and
unabridged report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles
Riot ; plus one hundred four shocking photos of the most terrifying
riot in history Los Angeles: Kimtex, 1965.
130
Disorders was concluding that the most fundamental cause
of urban unrest was, “…the racial attitude and behavior
of white Americans toward black Americans...White racism
is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture
which has been accumulating in our cities since the end
of World War II.
168
Clearly the number and intensity of rioting in
urban northern cities forced scholars to broaden their
analysis of urban disorders to include variables beyond
social and cultural competencies. Urban researchers
dismissed the conclusions of the McCone report,” It is
by now well documented that the principal agent
provocateur of urban disorder is the mood of the ghetto
- not communists, hoodlums, recent migrants, or
Muslims.
169
The analysis of the underlying cause of urban
rioting grew to incorporate a wider range of variables.
The theories suggest that black unrest arose from a host
of political (Riot Ideology, Political Institutions,
Rising Expectations) spatial (Hyper–Ethnic Succession,

168
United States Kerner Commission Report of the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders New York: E.P. Dutton & Company
Incorporated, 1968.
169
David O. Sears and John B. Mcconahay "Racial Socialization,
Comparison Levels, and the Watts Riot." The Journal of Social Issues
26(1, 1970): 121 - 139.
131
Social Disorganizations) or social (Absolute
Deprivation) conditions that were endemic to post-WWII
black ghettoes. While no one theory can hope to fully
capture the complex social issues of urban unrest,
assumptions, which are based on flawed or missing data,
will result in a problematic conclusion. Thus, while
each theory in its own way has been invaluable in
forwarding our understanding of urban unrest by relying
upon a presumption of a spatially static black community
(i.e., a ghetto) the analysis overlooks important
elements of black urban life.
An overly broad approach to the urban unrest of the
1960s has eviscerated a careful examination of the
spatial dimensions that contributed to urban poverty and
violence. As Edward Soja argues in his work Postmodern
Geographies, actual human geography (i.e. how and where
people live and how these social spaces are constructed,
demolished and then reconstructed), “is a competitive
arena for struggles over social production and
reproduction.”
170
By the mid-1960s the social and spatial
practices of the state (federal, county and city
government) changes in capital production (the

170
Edward W. Soja Postmodern Geograpies: The Reassertion of Space in
Critical Social Theory New York: Verso, 1989.
132
automation of manufacturing) and class antagonisms by
middle class blacks left Watts effectively isolated from
the rest of the city. However, in the case of Watts,
beyond the specific configuration of black Los Angeles,
what elevated the events in Watts, California, of August
1965 from other situations of socio-political unrest
such as Bedford – Stuyvesant, Detroit, or Chicago into a
national tragedy?
REGIONAL SPATIAL ARGUMENT
As historian Quintard Taylor argues in his work In
Search of the Racial Frontier, black migrants to the
cities of the West and in particular Southern California
brought with them expectations of a promised land.
171
Dating to the late nineteenth century Southern
California boosterism generally and in the black press
particularly framed Los Angeles as a space of unlimited
opportunities for blacks with minimal racial antagonism.
As Edward “Abie” Robinson, a circulation manager and

171
The “Promised Land” has important biblical and historical
implications within African American culture. As largely members of
protestant congregations blacks would be familiar with the Old
Testament story of God’s promise of a land for his people. In
addition, through the early nineteenth century black slaves seeking
to escape from bondage viewed the north as a promised land devoid of
legal chattel slavery. Nicholas Lehman in his work Promised Land
took the phrase and approached the black migration from the rural
south to mostly Chicago. Quintard Taylor In Search of the Racial
Frontier: African Americans in the American West 1528 - 1990 New
York: WW Norton and Company, 1998.
133
writer for the black newspaper The California Eagle,
stated in an interview, he and his mother migrated from
New Orleans to Los Angeles looking for a better life.
172
The growth of the defense-related manufacturing
employment base in Southern California during WWII and
through the Cold War would seem to offer validation of
this as a promising space for African American laborers
and was a critical factor in making Los Angeles a
primary destination for these migrants.
173
However, for the majority of post WWII black migrants it
would not be the growing middle class areas of Santa
Barbara with their faux craftsmen, neat lawns and new
cars, nor even the sometimes crowded housing around
Central and Avalon. Here at the western boundary of the
continental United States their migration for a better
life would find conditions similar to those in South
Chicago, East St. Louis and other ghettoes of the urban
north. And as the spring of 1965 wound it’s way to the
summer and the heightened expectations generated by the
War on Poverty slipped into the incessant and

172
Interview with Edward “Abie” Robinson October 19, 1999, at his
home in South Central Los Angeles.
173
Los Angeles City Planning Department 1956 map of Los Angeles,
adapted by author
134
incomprehensible squabbling of politicos the community
exploded.
Employment Shapes the Black Ghetto
Though urban living contributed to the fracturing
of ethnic and racial communities the spatial dimension
of the schism in post-WWII black Los Angeles was of
note. By 1960 there were nearly 340,000 blacks in Los
Angeles and they constituted nearly 13.5% of the total
population. While the majority of blacks living in Los
Angeles had migrated to the city between the years 1940
and 1960, their migration to the Southern California
region had slowed to a trickle by the mid 1950s, as new
black residents were not moving from other states but
from other parts of the Long Beach – Los Angeles SMSA.
174
More than 50% of black Angelenos from 1955 – 1965
did not live in the same house as they had in the
previous five years; almost 40% of those who had moved
did so from some other part of Southern California. In
other words, what was occurring in the late 1950s

174
SMSA is the Census Bureau’s Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area
and in 1960 included both Los Angeles and Orange County. Division of
Labor Statistics and Research "NEGROES AND MEXICAN AMERICANS IN
SOUTH AND EAST LOS ANGELES" San Francisco (Division of Fair
Employment Practices, 1966)
135
through the mid 1960s was the internal shifting in the
greater Southern California community of blacks in
search of limited housing options in close proximity to
an increasingly shrinking manufacturing base.
Residential churning, a pattern typical of post WWII
America, took on a particular dimension amongst blacks
largely due to changes in manufacturing. By the mid
1950s American industrial output increased at record
levels largely through the development of technology.
As corporations were spending 15 – 20% of their annual
operating budget on research and development they began
to implement more efficient line operations. The
increasing mechanization and automation of industries
such as airplane, automobile and ship manufacturing hit
particularly hard on manual laborers. Black workers who
already disproportionately filled the ranks of the
laboring class and who more often than not were recently
hired migrants were now the first released. As Paul
Bullock of the Institute for Industrial Relations at the
University of California Los Angeles wrote in his report
of 1962, the decimation of the manufacturing base of
South and East Los Angeles was felt most acutely in
136
these now predominately poor communities.
175
And,
because of racial discrimination--coupled with a lack of
education and training--once they were laid off it was
unlikely that they would find future employment as
manual laborers. Again, because of the concentration of
black manual laborers in the Watts community these
profound shifts in the American manufacturing sector had
catastrophic consequences. As the graph indicates while
the median family income for the rest of the nation
increased almost 12% during the period 1959 – 1965 in
the Watts area it declined by 7.5% resulting in 42% of
families living below the poverty level.
176
The sum affect of racial discrimination in the
public and private housing sector changes in the means
of production in manufacturing, combined with the
internal churning of black institutions, left Watts
spatially isolated not only from the larger Los Angeles
community but from other black Angelenos. Because at
the same time as the black community of Los Angeles
became a contiguous 60 square block whole it was by 1965

175
Paul Bullock "Impact of Automation on Minorities" Los Angeles
(Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California at Los
Angeles, 1962)
176
Division of Labor Statistics and Research "NEGROES AND MEXICAN
AMERICANS IN SOUTH AND EAST LOS ANGELES" San Francisco (Division of
Fair Employment Practices, 1966)
137
fractured by class into distinct neighborhoods. While
blacks on the Westside of Los Angeles and even into
Central Avenue lived in conditions relative to their
counterparts around the nation decent circumstances,
this was not the case in Watts. And with little
prospect for employment given their skill level, hope
and opportunity would have to come from another source.
That hope, at least, would be in the guise of the War on
Poverty.
The National Commission on Civic Disorders
Commission report and the definitive historical work on
the Watts Rebellion by Gerald Horne, The Fire This Time,
identify the underlying causes of the events of August
1965 could be found in a host of socio-political
conditions that pre dated the passage of the Economic
Opportunity Act of 1964.
177
An analysis of local
newspaper coverage coupled with an examination of
contemporary text, reports and oral histories suggest
that frustration amongst black Angelenos regarding the
deliberation over the delivery of poverty funds
contributed by exacerbating a sense of hopelessness and
helplessness to change conditions on the ground.

177
Gerald Horne Fire this time : the Watts Uprising and the 1960s
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.
138
agencies may have served as alternatives to the local
machine and clubs for leadership selection and
recruitment among urban blacks.
178
War on Poverty Background
The conditions of Watts neighborhoods were not
unique to Los Angeles. Black youth in Detroit, Chicago,
Philadelphia and other cities of the urban north sought
legal and extralegal solutions and forms of expression
to their isolation and marginalization. The response by
the federal government during the 1950s was to either
ignore the problem, attribute it to communist influence
or criminalize the behavior of youth in general and
minority youth in particular. Rather than seek reform or
rehabilitation, the federal government moved toward
solutions largely based upon theory and practice of two
Columbia professors of Social Work, Lloyd Olin and
Richard Cloward.
Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky offered an
alternative solution believing that the answer was
empowerment and the road led through city hall. By
organizing for political action, socially and

178
Robert C Smith "The Changing Shape of Urban Black Politics: 1960
- 1970." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 439(Urban Black Politics, 1978): 16 - 28.
139
economically marginalized communities could affect local
decisions over the distribution of city services,
development and channel destructive energy into
constructive change. In the model, local community
organizers politicized and organized their neighbors to
appeal, demand and protest at the doorstep of local
officials. Alinsky’s model’s success was two fold:
first his ability to re engage youth and to bring them
into the political process was unique, and second the
ability to exact changes from the Daley political
machine in Chicago suggested the possibility of
promising results in other urban environments. For
these reasons the model caught the attention of the Ford
Foundation, which funded a “Grey Areas” program, with
five pilot projects in 1958.
The plan caught the attention of the Kennedy
administration who provided federal seed money in 1961
with the passage of the Juvenile Delinquency Act of
1961. A total of $3.7 million was awarded in grants
under the demonstration program. Of this, $1.9 million
was awarded to the Mobilization for Youth program in New
York's Lower East Side. This represented about 18% of
the total cost of this major demonstration project.
140
Nine smaller grants were made to committees around the
country to assist them in the program development phase
of a demonstration project. Cities receiving these
grants were: Cleveland, New Haven, Philadelphia,
Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and
the Harlem area of New York City, and Washington, D.C.
179
The legislation provided seed money in New York, Los
Angeles and 10 other urban areas to create local
agencies addressing criminal behavior among youth. In
Los Angeles the seed money from 1961 established the
Youth Opportunity Board (YOB), an intra-governmental
board-representing city, county, and state institutions.
Funded in part by a $252,906.00 grant from the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and
partially by contributions from its member organizations
(The County and City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles City
and County Schools and the State of California).
180
This
was a partially funded mandate, which meant that for the
dispersal of funds local communities would need to match
the federal dollars with real or in-kind funds and

179
Hackett David L. Report of Recent Activities. Arthur J (Special
Advisor Rendon, Los Angeles, Committee on Juvenille Delinquency and
Youth Crime). Washington D.C., President's Committee on Juvenille
Delinquency and Youth Crime,(August 27 1962)
180
Youth Opportunities Board "Fact Sheet #1" Los Angeles (Youth
Opportunities Board, 1963)
141
develop an agency focused around issues of juvenile
delinquency.
181
The Board was designed to provide an
inter-agency approach to solving the complicated
problems faced by you in the urban society of Los
Angeles and it was set up because of national and local
concerns over the large numbers of unemployed and out -
of - school youth and the rapidly increasing rates of
juvenile delinquency and youth crime.”
182
The YOB cut across usually competitive city and
state bureaucracies to form an institution that
potentially could revolutionize the delivery of social
service. From 1962 through 1965 the YOB focused
primarily on service-- while initially charged with
addressing issues employment and job training and by
1963 re- conceptualized their mission as one of research
and preparation. After holding meetings through late
1962 into early 1963 the members of the board decided
that it was their responsibility “foremost to safeguard
the integrity of the planning process itself.”
183
Further
they re-designed the Board to include a Joint Power
Committee, with one representative from each member

181
Ibid.
182
Ibid.
183
Youth Opportunities Board "Informational Statement" Los Angeles
(Youth Opportunities Board, 1962)
142
organization and secondly created a Community Agency
Advisory Committee incorporating agencies “which operate
or have intimate relationship to programs serving
unemployed, out-of –school, delinquent or otherwise
troubled youth.” A few of the member agencies in 1963
included the Boys’ Club of America, Los Angeles Urban
League, the Council of Mexican-American Affairs and the
Japanese-American Community Services. Robert Goe,
Special Assistant to Mayor Sam Yorty and his
representative to the Youth Opportunity Board reported a
meeting with officials from the Ford Foundation and
Richard Boone.
184
What the YOB lacked in actual
implementation it made up for in research and design.
By engaging community organizations and implementing a
carefully articulated program of program design it
adhered both to the Federal mandate of HEW to create a
local agency and to the Alinsky model by including local
community agencies. Where it fell critically short was
by not including non-mainstream organizations or local
community organizations as part of its community
advisory committee. While elected politicians such as
Augustus Hawkins and community organizations like the

184
Youth Opportunity Board "Minutes of meeting between Henry Goe and
Ford Foundation" Los Angeles (Youth Opportunity Board, 1962)
143
Urban League were engaged with issues of concern toward
a broad swath, the difficult and seemingly intractable
difficulties of Watts seemed beyond even their concerted
efforts. Yet, it was a neighborhood in Chicago, with
very similar conditions to the Watts community where the
Alinsky model had succeeded.
The success of the Grey Areas project in creating
self-standing and locally governed community-based
organizations was not being replicated at the federal
level. To the frustration of Kennedy administration
officials who had worked with Alinksy, most of the funds
allocated by HEW earmarked as juvenile delinquency funds
were serving as seed money for the creating an
infrastructure of local agencies. These agencies with
the Los Angeles YOB celebrated as a national success,
deviated most clearly from the Alinsky model by offering
limited opportunity for participation and governance by
the poor.
185
The assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963
and the subsequent ascension of Lyndon B. Johnson
significantly altered the equation of the Juvenile
Delinquency Act. The goal was to declare a War on

185
Youth Opportunities Board "Fact Sheet #1" Los Angeles (Youth
Opportunities Board, 1963)
144
Poverty and the vehicle was the Economic Opportunity
Act.
Johnson and the War on Poverty
The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 contained a
series of title programs with the goal of if not
eradicating, at a minimum of mitigating the affects of
poverty in the nation. Each of the title areas focused
on a different component of the “War” ranging from
manpower training to early childhood education and
gratis legal representation. While each tackled a
critical area none were by design geared toward a
fundamental restructuring of the social and political
fabric of American life, except for Title II. At its
core Title II was a social and academic experiment with
the explicit goal of empowering poor communities to take
charge of their neighborhoods. A subsection of Title II
called for the creation of local boards with
programmatic oversight over the budgeting distribution
of federal poverty funds. Further, it directed that in
the formation of these boards that all efforts were made
to create the “maximum feasible participation” of those
most affected by the distribution of these funds:
residents of poor communities.
145
Former Alinsky organizer and OEO official Richard
Boone said, “he pushed hard for Title II, the community
action component of the Equal Opportunity Act to include
a clause calling for the “Maximum Feasible
Participation” of community members in the local
distribution of poverty funds.”
186
Boone argued to the
design committee of the act that the reason that the
Alinsky model was effective in Chicago was because it
not only provided resources but empowered poor
communities by engaging them in the decisions that would
affect their neighborhoods. The maximum feasible
participation clause, whose implication was not
understood by the majority of the design committee nor
Congress, passed as part of the larger Equal Opportunity
Act of 1964. The fight now became how to interpret and
implement “Maximum Feasible Participation.”
By the spring of 1965 the federal government
through the Office of Economic Opportunity labored to
interpret the words of Title II in the on the grounds of
the local political world. Funds were allocated to
either create a new infrastructure of poverty boards or

186
Interview with Richard T. Boone, Santa Barbara, California,
Richard T. Boone home(June 7, 1999)
146
to re–configure existing structures with the new
“maximum feasible participation” mandate. The result was
chaotic, as politically powerful local politicos
resisted attempts by the federal government to dictate
the terms of fund allocation and worked to diffuse the
inclusion and power of poor residents. In Los Angeles
this battle was largely one of symbolic meaning: the
city had received $5,730,709 for fiscal year 1964 and
was slotted for a four - fold increase to almost $22
million in 1965.
187
By the spring of 1965 interested
parties had coalesced into four discernable groupings.
First, in the middle of a spring 1965 campaign for
re–election City of Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty invested
political capital into the Youth Opportunity Board. A
multi-agency organization formed in 1961 with seed money
from the federal government to research youth
delinquency and laid the groundwork for local poverty
eradication. Second, Augustus Hawkins, who had served
for almost 30 years in the California state assembly and
senate as a representative of black Los Angeles, had won
election of the US Congress in 1964, and who, despite
his status as a freshman Congressman, was selected to

187
"Yorty and Shriver Dispute Over Riots" New York Times, August
17,1965.
147
service on the House oversight committee for the newly
created Office of Economic Opportunity. Seizing the
moment, Hawkins held a series of forums in Los Angeles
through the spring of 1965 extolling the virtues of the
War on Poverty. While on one hand he worked to organize
black residents to participate in the poverty program he
continued his modus operandi to insure community
participation also translated into support for his
personal and political ambitions. Third, middle class
community-based organizations with a heavy emphasis on
black church leaders were involved. Under the auspices
of the Anti-Poverty Association and its leader Bishop
H.H. Brookins of the politically influential First
African Methodist Episcopalian church (F.A.M.E.) the ad
– hoc collective conducted a running battle with Yorty
to change the configuration of the Youth Opportunity
Board to give blacks a voting majority. The association
positioned itself as the authoritative voice of the
African American Los Angeles community, in spite of the
obvious schisms among local black elected official and
church leaders. Fourth, though many Watts residents
expressed objections to the isolation and desolation of
the neighborhood, the Watts Action Committee articulated
148
and almost prescient understanding of the coming
conflict. As early as the fall of 1964 the committee
published a series of articles in The Liberator a New
York-based Black Nationalist magazine contrasting
mainstream representations of boomtown black Los Angeles
and the crumbling infrastructure of the Watts
neighborhoods.
Through the spring of 1965 these groupings
struggled over the interpretation of the federal mandate
and how much or little the Youth Opportunity Board
should extend itself to include community members.
The spring of 1965
As a contemporary report from the Institute of
Industrial Relations at the University of California,
Los Angeles, suggests, the community action program of
the OEO was “designed to counter the anomie and
alienation of the poor” by requiring the maximum
feasible participation of poor communities. What
occurred in fact was a struggle for control amongst
local politicians, bureaucrats, so called black
community leaders and the poor.
188

188
Paul Bullock. "Fighting Poverty: The View from Watts" Nineteenth
Annual Winter Meeting Industrial Relations Research Association,
Institute for Industrial Relations. 1966)
149
From Los Angles Mayor Sam Yorty perspective, the
Youth Opportunity Board was “ a model organization” in
its implementation of the mandate of the HEW grant and
was already in complete compliance with the new OEO
requirements. With a Community Agency Advisory Board
with representation from all of the racial and ethnic
minorities in the city, Yorty believed the Youth
Opportunity Board received input from throughout the
city of Los Angeles. The Mayor proclaimed in a speech
before the executive board of the American Jewish
Committee in February of 1965 that his administration
had been, “in the fight against poverty since he took
office in 1961.”
189
That coupled with the acclaim that
YOB received from HEW allowed Yorty to assure his voting
constituents, particularly those in the increasingly
important and largely white San Fernando Valley that the
city was in the forefront in confronting issues of
poverty.
In the Black community of Los Angeles the fissures
of ideology evident in the various approached of elected
officials, leaders of social organizations and church
leaders was clear in the poverty fight. There was a

189
"Yorty Claims Leadership in Poverty Fight" California Eagle,
February 25,1965.
150
significant shift in black church leadership between the
years 1960 and 1965 with southerners taking over the
pastor ship of First A.M.E with H.H. Brookins, and the
leadership of Second Baptist Church placed in the able
hands of Martin Luther King Jr. confidante Thomas
Kilgore. Brookins arrived in Los Angeles with a
background as an activist pastor often at odds with his
more conservative congregation, and prompted by King,
Reverend Kilgore in 1964 would open a West Coast branch
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As
head of one the oldest African American congregations in
the city Brookins led efforts in 1964 to improve
community relations with the police.
190
For the middle class and black elected officials
the Anti - Poverty Association was another forum that
offered the opportunity to break through the white-
dominated political leadership of Los Angeles. In
comparison for the members of the Watts Action Committee
(WAC) maximum feasible participation meant organic
leadership from the community. Members and sympathizers
of the committee felt that neither the YOB nor the Anti
– Poverty Association had knowledge of the issues that

190
Adler Patricia Rae Watts: From Suburb to Black Ghetto Los Angeles,
(University of Southern California, 1977).
151
faced the community. In January of 1965 WAC “released
for distribution its booklet 'Watts versus the War on
Poverty' which outlined community problems and possible
solutions. ...The booklet called for massive retraining
programs for the over 1000 unemployed workers in Watts
and a rebuilding program for areas with large amounts of
dilapidated housing.
191
WAC leaders Bob Stewart and Richard Price
questioned the “personal agenda” of leaders in the Anti
– Poverty Association suggesting that their fight was
only tangentially in the interests of Watts community
members.
192
Holding community meetings at Will Rogers
Park throughout the spring and into the summer of 1965
the Watts Action Committee as the group had named
itself, considered itself a representative spokesperson
for the people of the community. It was the consensus of
individual opinions and feeling that administrative
operation of the Economic Opportunity Act was not in the
best interest of the community. “If the purpose of the
Act is to help the people of the community, then it must
have representatives of the community serving in

191
"Watts Attacks Poverty" Los Angeles Sentinel, January 14,1965.
192
Richard Price and Bob Stewart "Watts: Politics of Poverty."
Liberator V(9, 1965): 7 - 9.
152
administrative and advisory positions.”
193
Writing in
the journal Liberator Stewart and Price expressed a
discontent with leaders outside of Watts attempting to
represent themselves as the voice of the community, “The
people living in the Watts and South Los Angeles areas
do not need to be constantly reminded that they are
poor, unemployed ill-housed and economically deprived
and culturally disadvantaged. We are tired of cotton
candy and puffed wheat we want meat and potatoes. We
know the untruths that have been spoken about us all the
way back to Washington, depicting us as a people without
a desire to improve...and we intend to speak aloud now
the things we have been saying to each other - we intend
for this to be the beginning of the end of the neglect
of Watts.
194
In Washington Gus Hawkins newly elected to US
Congress in 1964 after more than thirty years in the
California State legislature understood the War on
Poverty as an opportunity to deliver federal funds to
his constituents. In his words,” What we wanted to do
was to have an agency in the city of Los Angeles to

193
"Watts Leaders Claim: Outsiders Runnning War on Poverty" Los
Angeles Sentinel, May 27,1965.
194
Richard Price and Bob Stewart "Rebellion Wihtout Ideology."
Liberator 5(9, 1965): 4 - 7.
153
receive the money and to administer the programs. You
had to have that to get the money and the expertise,
technical assistance, and resources of the OEO. But Los
Angeles was slow. It just did not have an agency to do
that, because Yorty was fighting over the appointment of
his people to the agency, and the whole thing was
blocked. We held hearings, including one in the Watts
area, Will Rogers [Memorial] Park. The whole intent was
to get Los Angeles to adopt an anti-poverty agency in
order to fully participate in the War on Poverty.”
195
The mayoral election of 1965 was in no small part a
referendum on Samuel Yorty, his ability to manage the on
– going troubles of the black ghetto while maintaining a
base that had grown to include the burgeoning bedroom
communities of the San Fernando Valley. Though
community police relations were certainly of concern the
response was largely handled by the Los Angeles Police
Department and Chief of Police William H. Parker. The
shift in the public debate on the “ghetto” largely
revolved around the “War on Poverty.”

195
Augustus F. Interviewee Hawkins, Clyde Woods, Los Angeles
Interviewer. Corp Author: University of California and Program Oral
History Black leadership in Los Angeles oral history transcript,
1992 : Augustus F. Hawkins Los Angeles: Oral History Program
University of California Los Angeles, 1995.
154
With the prodding of local community activists and
the threat of “Gus” Hawkins to hold public hearings in
response to lackluster efforts by Los Angeles city
officials to address the issue of community
representation, the OEO declared it would withhold funds
from city of Los Angeles until community members were
not merely represented but comprised a voting majority
on the board. After winning re – election in April of
1965 with a coalition of black middle class
conservatives in Central Los Angeles and middle and
working class white communities in San Pedro and the
Valley, Yorty declared a mandate and took unilateral
action to pre- empt the OEO. He first expanded the
social service agency to allow for increased leadership
then appointed Black city councilman Billy G. Mills and
finally instituted a name change.
In a letter dated May 21, 1965 to the Los Angeles
City Council Yorty wrote that because the program had
been kept free of political pressures and influence it
was the most effective end poverty program in the
nation. He responded to critics who called for an
expansion of the board that this would result in
increased not decreased criticism. As an alternative he
155
offered to amend the Joint Powers Agreement so as to
involve individuals who can appropriately represent not
only the poor but also all of the community most
affected by the expenditure of federal funds under the
Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 by 1. Changing the name
of the Youth Opportunities Board to the Economic and
Youth Opportunities Agency and 2. That the current
agreement be amended to permit each (of the five) to
appoint one additional member to the Board, bringing the
total membership to 9.
196
In response the Watts Action
Committee held a community meeting in Will Rogers Park
on Sunday May 16, 1965 to discuss issues of poverty
funds and community representation.
197
Both leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and
federal officials joined the political battle with Los
Angeles serving as a proxy of the larger struggle to
implement community action programs in on other cities.
Vice-President Hubert Humphrey entered the fray sending
a letter to Sam Yorty on May 25
th
reminding the city of
the “maximum feasible participation” clause of the
community action program and encouraging a dialogue with

196
Samuel William Yorty. City Council Members of the City of Los
Angeles. Los Angeles,(April 23 1965)
197
"Community Meeting" Los Angeles Sentinel, May 27,1965.
156
local activists. Yorty’s response in a letter dated May
28, 1965 acknowledged receipt of Humphrey’s
correspondence but, expressed, “frustration and disgust
with the confusing directives from the OEO.”
198
By late
June with it clear that the Mayor was unwilling to budge
on demands for a dialogue Brookins suggested an
alternative plan. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., head
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the
face of the Civil Rights Movement visited Los Angeles on
July 15th to support the local fight over poverty funds.
The Anti – Poverty Association held a public forum on
July 15
th
to coincide with King’s visit and bring
pressure on Yorty. More than a thousand crowded into the
same auditorium at Will Rogers Park for the second round
of poverty hearings called by Gus Hawkins. Speakers
included Odis T. Ireland chairman of the Watts Labor
Community Action Coalition, Paul Schrade, United Auto
Workers and Rev. H. H. Brookins.
199
Brookins in his
opening statement said, ”You don’t know anything about
poverty if you live in Bel Air or Beverly Hills, I don't
care what you came out of, if you don't live in poverty
now you can't understand it.” Brookins announced a plan

198
Samuel Yorty. OEO. Hubert H. Humphrey. Los Angeles,(May 28 1965)
199
"Views on Poverty Aired" Los Angeles Sentinel, August 12,1965.
157
for an expanded 32-member board with community
representatives elected with the poor ultimately
comprising a voting majority.
In an afternoon session City Councilman Billy G.
Mills the newly appointed City representative on Youth
Opportunities Board stressed his belief that the poverty
program must be kept under the control of elected office
holders. He stated that “The compromise agreement has
been accepted by the City Council and the County
Superintendent of Schools, and two of the five members
of the joint powers YOB…this 19 man is a compromise
between those people who wanted a 32 man board and those
who favored a five man board.' Mills added.
200
The
conference ended with a massive protest at Los Angeles
City Hall, which included a range of progressive whites,
leaders of mainstream organizations such as Dr. H.
Claude Hudson of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, Los Angeles Sentinel
Publisher Leon Washington and F.A.M.E. pastor and head
of the Anti – Poverty Association H.H. Brookins.
201

200
"32-Member Poverty Board Backed by King" Los Angeles Sentinel,
July 15,1965.
201
"Poverty Fights Escalated" Los Angeles Sentinel, June 10,1965.
158
The pressure on the City of Los Angeles as the convener
of the Joint Powers Agreement to allow for community
oversight of the Youth Opportunities Board increased as
the Los Angeles County community action program was
initiated in July of 1965. Utilizing OEO funds Los
Angeles County initiated NAPP - the Neighborhood Adult
Participation Project in June of 1965. Directed by
longtime community activist and former head of the
Avalon-Carver community center Mrs. Opal Jones NAPP
combined social service delivery with community
organizing that followed the Alinsky model.
202
Operating
under the umbrella of the YOB opening of 13 NAPP
offices, none in the City of Los Angeles, rather than
presenting a local model of a potentially successful
compromise hardened the positions of the Anti – Poverty
Association and the Mayor.
In a telegram sent July 29, 1965 H.H. Brookins
demanded a meeting with Mayor Sam Yorty within 48 hours
of receipt of the correspondence to begin a dialogue.
203
Yorty responded the same day stating that the
“administrative structure was approved by all agencies

202
"Total Grass-roots Approach" Los Angeles Sentinel, July 15,1965.
203
Reverend H. H. Brookins. Mayor Samuel W Yorty. Los Angeles,
Western Union,(July 28 1965)
159
of the Joint Power Agreement” and referred Brookins to
contact the chairperson of a mayoral community action
committee.
204
On the evening of Wednesday August 11, 1965, during the
detention and later arrest by California Highway Patrol
officer Lee W. Minikus of Marquette Fry, a crowd
gathered. Patrolman Minikus called for back up as first
bottles and then rocks were thrown to prevent him from
handcuffing Mr. Fry. Los Angeles Police Department and
other highway patrolmen responded the crowd grew more
raucous until officers in an attempt to remove Mr. Fry
from the scene pushed their way into the crowd and the
confrontation quickly engulfed the block, then community
of Watts and finally for over six days with the loss of
thirty four lives, 1032 persons injured, with 600
buildings damaged, and over 200 completely destroyed.
205
On September 18, 1965 Reverend H.H. Brookins,
delivered a speech to the Fresno chapter of the
California Democratic Club on the aftermath of the Watts
Riots.
206
In his speech “Watts Close Up – A Lesson for

204
Samuel William Yorty. City Council Members of the City of Los
Angeles. Los Angeles,(April 23 1965)
205
Robert Conot Rivers Of Blood, Years of Darkness New York: Bantam
Books, 1967.
206
Traditionally the African American protestant church has served
the role as not only a spiritual congregation but social service
160
Other Cities,” Brookins told the audience that it did
not surprise him that a black community had suffered
from an extended spate of racial violence, the Bedford
Stuyvesant community of New York was still recovering
from the urban unrest of the summer of 1964. What was
most disturbing for him was the fundamental belief that
it would never happen in California and especially in
Los Angeles. However, he noted two happenings of the
previous nine months, which sent clear signals that the
community (read “non-blacks”) had turned firmly against
the Negro population, this first being the passage of
Proposition 14.
207
The second issue being that for the
previous nine months funds from the Anti Poverty
program, which in his words represented the first “real
concrete hope the (the black community) had had in

agency. This was especially true for black migrant communities to
the urban north during the twentieth century. With the post World
War II black Los Angeles community comprised mostly of recent
migrants FAME became an important institution in creating community
links,. For an in depth look at the contemporary church see Brent
Alan Wood First African Methodist Episcopal Church and Its Social
Intervention in South Central Los Angeles, (University of Southern
California, 1997).
207
Proposition 14 passed in 1964 was a referendum which repealed the
Hawkins, Rumford housing act of 1960. Amongst the elements of the
Rumford housing act the most contentious was a guarantee to enforce
non discriminatory practices in the development, construction and
selling of private real estate. Major Southern California
developers including Fritz Burns were the primary backers of the
proposition and its passage allowed for the on – going ghettoization
of black communities in California. This is reviewed in more detail
in my chapter on housing.
161
years.”
208
He went on to say that the responsibility for
this lay squarely at the foot of the Mayor of Los
Angeles and that community members had come to use a
bitter joke in calling the Anti – Poverty initiative the
“War Against the Poor.”
At one level the battle of the spring of 1965 was
one of federalism as the federal state attempted to
impose a project, community action programs, that
intentionally bypassed locally elected officials to
create a board of community representatives who would
independently decide the distribution of federal funds.
As Sargent Shriver head of the Office for Economic
Opportunity wrote in response to a request from Senator
George Murphy on the controversy leading up to Watts,”
The commitment to achieve adequate representation of the
private agencies, minority groups, and the poor in Los
Angeles' anti-poverty programs was, of course, the
crucial prerequisite to our giving final approval to an
expanded Los Angeles community action program.”
209

208
H.H. Brookins. "Watts Close Up - A Lesson For Other Cities"
California Democratic Council, Fresno, California. (September 18,
1965)
209
Sargent Shriver. Senator George Murphy (D) California. Washington
D.C., Office of Economic Opportunity: Reply Memorandum,(September 9
1965)
162
It was equally insightful into the political
factions that emerged from the shifting demographics of
the black community. The neighborhoods of black Los
Angeles by the 1960s were re – distributed into a
Westside typified by middle-class and professionals, a
working class core in Central Avenue and Avalon and a
pre – dominantly poor enclave in Watts. With the
majority of black Angelenos having migrated to the city
over a twenty-year period from 1940 to 1960 and despite
significant electoral gains for the black community as a
whole in Los Angles, the community of Watts was
disconnected from both the electoral process and lacked
institutions with which to engage the informal political
realm. As one report on the riots indicated, “the Negro
leaders were ineffective in stopping the riots because
the rioters considered any middle-class Negroes as Uncle
Toms toadying to the white people and afraid to lose
their positions with Whitey.'”
210

210
Frederick J. Hacker M.D. "What the McCone Commission Didn't See"
Los Angeles (University of Southern California,
163
Conclusion/Epilogue
African American migrants moving to Los Angeles in
the early twentieth century would find it to be a
welcoming environment. As Jim Crow laws and racially
segregated housing and employment increased in the city
blacks were confined to dense, spatially contiguous
neighborhoods that evolved into a black ghetto by the
post WWII period. The black ghetto of Los Angeles took
on added national and international significance as the
term “South Central” evolved over the twentieth century
to take on layered meanings.
The phrase “South Central Los Angeles” evokes a
litany of associations for most people, but the litany
is different for those who have lived or worked in South
Central and those who only know it from news accounts
and representations in popular culture. A common
element in many of the meanings attributed to South
Central is a dynamic quality – it is a place of dramatic
change and watershed events, both positive and negative.
For the families who populated the southern reaches of
the Los Angeles basin in the 20
th
century, it was a place
of economic opportunity and, for the many African
Americans who resided there, an escape from the Jim Crow
164
south. For those from outside South Central who watched
as violence erupted in 1965 and 1992, and who have been
bombarded with stories of drive-by shootings and gang
injunctions, it was a place that symbolized everything
that had gone wrong with the American experiment in
pluralism. “South Central Los Angeles” is a subject that
can be sensationalized, but we mean to proceed from
data, not drama, and to work toward a reasoned
understanding of the place. By dwelling on the material
reality of South Central I mean to dial down the
rhetoric, to provide tools for comprehending the
development of this city within a city that is home to
nearly half a million people, and to juxtapose that
material reality against the media images that are
powerful in their emotional resonance but limited in the
scope of what they portray about the place and the
people who live there.
The Los Angeles Times columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan
noted how the movie business, since 1990, “Has profited
nicely from an urban conceit – I call it
‘ghettotainment’ – built almost exclusively on
165
[negative] images of South Central LA.”
211
The
widespread distribution of unsavory images has created
an imagined South Central that does not coincide
substantially with the people and places of the actual
South Central, at least not to any significant degree of
overlap between the real lives of South Central
residents and the fictional lives of all those boys and
girls in the ‘hood.
212
One result of this pejorative
repetition is that “South Central” as a metaphor has
broken free of tangible experience and become a widely
understood indicator of urban dysfunction. A trenchant
example appeared recently in the English newspaper, The
Guardian, in an article about the malaise afflicting
multiracial working-
213
class communities in France. The
author, an English journalist, interviewed several young

211
Erin Aubry Kaplan, “The Antidote to ‘ghettotainment’?” Los
Angeles Times, July 26, 2006.
212
This phenomenon of separation between lived and represented space
has been discussed for nearly a generation by social scientists and
cultural studies scholars, who describe it as “imagined worlds,”
“symbolic landscapes,” “hyperspace,” or other like terms. It is
often observed in connection with the negative cultural construction
of urban places, not just South Central. For some of the more
fundamental interpretations, see Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and
Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture and
Society 7 (June 1990): 295-310; Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson,
“Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference,”
Cultural Anthropology 7 (Feb. 1992): 6-23; and Yi-Fu Tuan, “Language
and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach,” Annals
of the Association of American Geographers 81(Dec. 1991): 684-696.
166
people, including “Joey,” described as: “A large black
kid who looks as if he would be more at home in South
Central LA than in this cold, bleak stadium at the heart
of one of the most bourgeois districts in Paris.”
214
When an English writer invokes that frame of reference
to discuss disaffected, violence-prone young people in
France, there can be little doubt that “South Central”
has become a nearly universal codeword for danger and
youth of color.
There is no commonly accepted understanding of what
constitutes South Central because metaphorical geography
cannot be drawn on a map. It is often assumed,
incorrectly, that the term arose as a rhetorical
extension of Central Avenue, or South Central Avenue,
the economic, institutional and cultural core of African
American Los Angeles in the first half of the 20
th
century. The origins and use of the term are revealing
subjects in themselves, but for introductory purposes it
is sufficient to say that apart from movies and popular
culture, South Central has generally been construed as
the territory within the city of Los Angeles that lies
south of approximately Jefferson Boulevard. In the

214
Andrew Hussey, “Le temps modernes,” The Observer, April 2, 2006.
167
context of Aubry Kaplan’s “ghettotainment,” South
Central would probably include Compton, an independently
chartered municipality that is mostly surrounded by
unincorporated county territory and does not even share
a border with the city of Los Angeles. It would
probably include Watts as well, not least because of the
unfortunate attachment of the name “Watts” to the
uprising of 1965, but Watts has an independent identity
too. It was a separate city until its annexation by the
city of Los Angeles in 1925, and it still has its own
newspaper and community institutions such as the Watts
Labor and Community Action Committee. Watts and Compton
get lumped into South Central when the subjects under
discussion are poverty and social breakdown. Rather
than propose a more concrete geography for South
Central, I have chosen to be as territorially expansive
as the cultural representations of the place. Instead
of sparring over location, the power of those
representations and resolve to tether them to the
ground, to put them into dialogue with the real
geography by observing the everyday life, both past and
present, in the places that have been portrayed in
168
movies, music, journalism and television as the negation
of the American dream.
The racially restrictive deed covenants that
prohibited Blacks, Mexicans, Jews and other
“undesirables” from living in many areas of Los Angeles
were not applied to many working-class districts. Boyle
Heights on the east side was an amalgam of people of
color and other non-elites. From its initial settlement
Watts had been a multiracial community, with Mexicans,
Japanese and African Americans sharing space with recent
immigrants from Sweden as well as migrants from the
southern and mid-western states. In the Furlong Tract,
around Central and 51
st
Street, African Americans,
Germans, Italians and Mexicans all lived in the same
neighborhood.
215
Thus while major concentrations of black population
as well as black-owned businesses and cultural venues
contributed specific African American identity to places
like Central Avenue, black people also resided in small
pockets throughout the southern part of the city. In the

215
Mark Wild, Street Meeting: Multiethnic Neighborhoods in Early
Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005) incorporates much of the recent scholarship on
residential patterns in 20
th
century Los Angeles; see esp. 31-34, 96-
99 (Furlong Tract).
169
middle third of the 20
th
century, this dispersed and
intermingled pattern of black residency prevented the
formation of any rock-solid association forming between
black people and the region that was only then coming to
be known as South Central Los Angeles. The term “South
Central” to describe the working -class residential
neighborhoods of southern Los Angeles arose in the 1950s
out of the prosaic needs of utilities and government
agencies to manage their operations. It was not
originally coded for race, but that meaning and others
would be layered onto the geographic template in the
decades to come.
The Connotative Geographies of South Central Los Angeles
There is no universally accepted boundary for the
place, or more precisely, places, that became known as
South Central Los Angeles. Even in the context of
material functions, those human activities that depend
on pipes, wires, and buildings, different boundaries
appear in various institutional contexts. To judge from
the use of “South Central” in the Los Angeles Times, the
term only came into common usage in the early 1950s.
There was no need for it prior to that, because much of
the southern part of the basin was still undeveloped.
170
Only in the postwar boom did the area fill in
sufficiently to acquire a collective regional identity
and to require that public officials take the region as
a whole into account in organizing their activities.
The Los Angeles Recreation and Park Department
designated a “south-central district” as early as 1950
under its policy of dividing the city into regional
operating units in order to manage playgrounds and
swimming pools.
216
The Department of Water and Power
split up the city into water districts, including, by
1951, “south-central Los Angeles.”
217
The Department of
Public Works partitioned the vast territory of Los
Angeles into different spatial units for such functions
as street lighting and trash collection. In addition to
its “south-central district,” Public Works had another
one it called “north-central,” but “north-central” never
migrated from the realm of public administration to
enter the popular consciousness the way “south-central”
did.
218
The city’s Bureau of Music and the School
Department also had their own versions of a South

216
Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1950, September 20, 1957.
217
Los Angeles Times, March 20, 1951.
218
Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1956, January 2, 1957.
171
Central District.
219
These uses of “south central” all
had in common their origin as a designation of certain
territory for the purpose of efficiently managing public
functions. The term was not laden with meaning beyond
the bureaucratic and the geographic. But all these uses
of the term did not refer to the same geography: the
various departments each drew their own lines on the map
to define “south central” according to the layout of
their distinctive array of facilities. The term thus
had an indeterminate quality from the start. It was a
geographical marker with several different geographies
that could be associated with it. This fuzziness helps
account for the subsequent elasticity of the term, its
facile adaptation to many different metaphoric uses, and
the difficulty in pinning down exactly which blocks and
streets fall into the category of South Central.
The term South Central became inextricably
associated with African American people during the
reapportionment struggles that followed the 1960 census.
The drawing of state Assembly districts and U.S.
Congressional districts has always been a politically
charged process as the parties seek to preserve and

219
Los Angeles Times, September 16, 1954, January 18, 1959.
172
expand their own electoral strengths and incumbents look
after their own interests and those of their followers.
The growth of the black population in Los Angeles to
some 400,000 people in 1960, their traditional under-
representation in legislative bodies, and the
intensifying struggles for civil rights in the early
1960s all contributed a distinctive racial aspect to the
apportionment process at that time. A group of
activists led by Wendell Green, editor of the Los
Angeles Sentinel, claimed that apportionment had always
split the black population into ineffective voting
blocs, with the result that there had never been more
than one black representative in the state Assembly.
Green and his allies claimed that the reapportionment
plan created “a Jim Crow district in south-central Los
Angeles” and argued for at least four Assembly seats and
two Congressional seats in the area. In reporting on
this dispute, the writers and editors of the Los Angeles
Times started to use “south central” as a convenient way
to denote those places of significant black
registration. Even then, the Times usually took
sufficient care to note in its stories the actual racial
distribution. In discussing the Assembly district
173
covering South Gate, for example, the Times’ political
writer Robert Blanchard noted that “the ratio of Negro
to non-Negro population runs somewhat about 60% to 40%.”
Such scrupulous qualifications, however, are the stuff
of editorial meetings more than popular perception. The
utility of the phrase “south central” was also probably
based to some degree on the vernacular use of the term
as a polite way to signal that the subject under
discussion was black people. For all these reasons, by
1963 “south central” was an unmistakable marker for
race, and when Mayor Sam Yorty vetoed certain
expenditures for “south central,” everyone knew which
people would be denied the expansion of city services.
220
The third era of meaning for South Central began
with the Watts Riots of 1965, when danger and violence
were layered onto the existing meanings of indeterminate
geography and a strong association with people of color.
The tremendous power of this connotation is indicated by
its frequency. From its first mention in 1950 through
August 11, 1965, the first day of the riots, the term
“South Central Los Angeles” appeared in the Los Angeles

220
Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1961, May 23, 1961 (both quotations),
August 6, 1961, October 13, 1961, February 11, 1962, April 26, 1962,
May 3, 1962, August 15, 1963
174
Times a total of 35 times, including all the uses by
city agencies and all the mentions in connection with
the apportionment battles described above. From August
11, 1965 through December 31, 1985, the term was
mentioned 4,922 times.
221
This was the period and the
mode of reference that cemented the negative reputation
of South Central.
On average, “South Central Los Angeles” appeared in
the city’s leading newspaper two out of every three days
for more than 20 years. Many of those mentions did not
reflect discretion by journalists, but rather the
straight reporting of events that involved organizations
that adopted the name. For instance, the South Central
Los Angeles Improvement Association was a group of
politicians and community leaders who banded together to
promote investment in the area. When the Times reported
on their work, there was no option but to use the name
of the organization. But many other uses were a matter
of convenience or choice, a way to locate the facts of a
story within a recognizable geographic framework.

221
These frequencies were obtained by using the ProQuest database of
the historical Los Angeles Times, available online through the Los
Angeles Public Library website. Besides the date ranges and the
search rubric of “South Central Los Angeles,” the parameters were
also set to yield only articles, excluding advertisements,
obituaries, business notices, and other types of announcements.
175
Deindustrialization and disinvestment took a dreadful
toll on south Los Angeles in this period, and there was
no shortage of horrifying stories to tell about the
impoverished neighborhoods of South Central.
222
Up to this point, “South Central” was a designation
conferred by bureaucrats, politicians and the media.
The fourth era of meaning for “South Central” began in
the late 1980s, when cultural production from within the
area began to deploy the term as a symbol of defiance.
Hip-hop artists and filmmakers adopted the negative
connotations and turned them around, as if to say: I am
formidable because I am a product of South Central.
Starting with the 1988 album Straight Outta Compton, by
the seminal west coast rap group NWA, South Central
became a crucial part of a “hardened Black masculinity,
which has become a significant commodity in contemporary
culture,” according to cultural studies scholar Todd
Boyd. Over the next five years, a series of bestselling
albums from the various members of NWA and their
spinoffs, as well as the popular films Boyz n the Hood

222
Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from
the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003), 169-197, provides a detailed history of the
economic changes of the 1960s and 1970s and their effects on south
LA.
176
(1991) and Menace II Society (1993), offered scathing
and often grisly accounts of life in South Central.
Consumers of this powerful imagery absorbed indelible
impressions of the place and, according to Boyd, “The
media presentation of these areas [became] a substitute
for the actual experience of having been there.”
223
That
is the imagery that informed the Guardian reporter’s
assertion that the young African-Frenchman seemed to
belong in South Central rather than Paris.
Many people in South Central appreciate the
formidable challenge of overcoming the reputation of the
place when South Central is globally deployed as a
synonym for gangs, violence, drugs and people of color.
A group of activists and politicians decided recently
that as one step in changing the reputation of the
place, they would change the name, from South Central
Los Angeles to South Los Angeles. They suffered some
ridicule for focusing on the image of the place rather
than addressing the genuine issues connected with that
image, but they had a valid point in stressing the
importance of perception. Naming does confer power,

223
Todd Boyd, Am I Black Enough for You: Popular Culture from the
‘Hood and Beyond (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997),
quotations on 63, 68.
177
especially in shaping the opinions of those who do not
live in South Central. Perhaps a fifth era is dawning
in the connotations associated with the area south of
Jefferson Boulevard.
224
Nevertheless if there is a
moment that solidified South Central as an area of
violence it was the Watts Rebellion of 1965.

224
Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2003, April 10, 2003, April 14,
2003.
178
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Zubrinsky, Camille Leslie ""I Have Always Wanted to Have a Neighbor,
Just Like You ... ": Race and Residential Segregation in the City of
Angels (Los Angeles, California)." DAI 57(02A, 1996): 325.
Maps
# 1 Adapted by author from (Adler, Patricia Rae Watts: From
Suburb to Black Ghetto 1977)
# 2 (1956)
# 3 (1943)
# 4 (1943)
Interviews
187
Richard T. Boone
Edward “Abie” Hoffman
Cecil Ferguson
Richard Dunn
Periodicals
California Eagle, 1949 – 1964
Los Angeles Sentinel, 1964 – 1965
New York Times, 1954; 1965
Archives
University of California, Los Angeles
Special Collections
Augustus “Gus” Hawkins Papers
Tom Bradley Mayoral papers
California Democratic Council
Ed Royball collection
American Civil Liberties Union
California State University, Los Angeles
Special Collections
Mervyn Dymally papers
Ed Royball council papers
California State University,Northridge
Special Collections
California African American Political Institute
Southern California Social Sciences Research Library
Charlotta Bass Papers
California Eagle
Los Angeles Sentinel
Los Angeles City Archives
Samuel “Sam” Yorty Mayoral papers
Gilbert Lindsay City Council papers
Tom Bradley City Council papers

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Asset Metadata

Creator Jimenez y West, Christopher D. (author)

Core Title More than my color: race, space and politics in black Los Angeles, 1940 - 1968

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publication Date 08/07/2007

Defense Date 05/09/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Black,Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,politics,Urban,Watts Riots

Place Name California (states), Los Angeles (city or populated place), Los Angeles (counties), USA (countries)

Language English

Advisor Ethington, Philip J. (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Sanchez, George J. (committee member)

Creator Email cwest@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m764

Unique identifier UC161266

Identifier etd-JimenezyWest-20070807 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-540674 (legacy record id),usctheses-m764 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-JimenezyWest-20070807.pdf

Dmrecord 540674

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Jimenez y West, Christopher D.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu