5. Building the Civil Rights Movement in Los Angeles

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-168
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement

Assimilative Tendencies and Curricular Crosscurrents

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Gleason
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
National Organizations ◽  
American Society ◽  
Zoot Suit

Besides its massive impact on the institutional side of Catholic higher education, World War II affected the thinking of Catholic educators. We have already touched upon this dimension in noting how the war and postwar growth required them to expand their horizons and redouble their efforts in research, fundraising, and administration generally. Here we look more closely at how Catholics were affected by the great ideological revival of democracy that accompanied the war. This kind of influence was sometimes explicitly noted by Catholic leaders, as when Archbishop Richard Gushing of Boston called attention to the “neo-democratic mentality of returning servicemen and the university-age generation generally”; others recognized that it created problems since the Catholic church was so widely perceived as incompatible with democracy and “the American way of life.” We shall postpone examination of controversies stemming from this source to the next chapter, turning our attention in this one to the assimilative tendencies reflected in Catholics’ new appreciation for liberal democratic values, and to the major curricular concerns of the era which were also affected by the war. In no area did the democratic revival have a more profound long range effect than in the impetus it lent to the movement for racial equality and civil rights for African Americans. The publication in 1944 of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma marked an epoch in national understanding of what the book’s subtitle called “the Negro problem and modern democracy.” Myrdal himself stressed the importance of the wartime context, which made it impossible to ignore racial discrimination at home while waging war against Nazi racism. At the same time, increasing black militance, the massive migration of African Americans to northern industrial centers, and above all the great Detroit race riot of 1943—reinforced by the anti-Mexican “Zoot Suit” riots in Los Angeles the same summer—suddenly made the improvement of race relations an imperative for American society as a whole. By the end of the war, no fewer than 123 national organizations were working actively to “reduce intergroup tensions,” and the civil rights movement began a steady advance that led directly to the great judicial and political victories it won in the fifties and sixties.

The Chicano Movement: Mexican American History and the Struggle for Equality

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Carlos Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
School Students ◽  
Mexican American History ◽  
Mass Protest ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract The Chicano/Chicana movement was a product of the global eruption that took place in 1968. A critical understanding of this movement requires that it be put into a historical context and theoretical framework of an indigenous people who were internally colonized by the expanding us Empire after the end of the us-Mexico War of 1846-48. Violent and nonviolent struggles took place prior to the 1960s over the issues of land, social justice, and civil rights. The first nonviolent and largest Mexican American mass protest in us history occurred in the Spring of 1968 in East Los Angeles, California, where over ten thousand Chicano high school students walked out of their inferior and racist barrio high schools. The student walkouts ignited the emergence of the Chicano civil rights movement. The movement’s positive contributions and failures will be discussed. Discussion will conclude with a critical analysis of Mexican American struggles in the present age of “Trumpism”.

scholarly journals “A Down Brother”: Earvin “Magic” Johnson and the Quest for Retail Justice in Los Angeles

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Bryant Simon
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
National Brands ◽  
State Action ◽  
Movie Theaters ◽  
South Central ◽  
Long Line ◽  
South Central Los Angeles

“A Down Brother,” looks at the role Earvin “Magic” Johnson played in the redevelopment of South Central Los Angeles in the wake 1992 civic unrest. Johnson famously teamed up with several multi-national brands to build a series of movie theaters, coffee shops, and restaurants in the area. While his business moves have been well chronicled, almost no one has taken seriously his ideas. Johnson claimed that recycling black dollars, not state action, was the best way to rebuild. His actions placed him in a long line of nationalist-tinged race men. But more than that, they reflected the thinking of many South Central residents, who themselves adhered in the wake of the riots to a broad, and sometimes vague, set of nationalist ideas. In the end, Johnson’s schemes didn’t rebuild South Central, and he eventually walked away from the area, raising questions about in his particular notion of black capitalist development with its reliance on service jobs and outside dollars. Yet, Johnson’s very popularity and the popularity of his ideas highlight the enduring importance of nationalist ideas in California’s Long Civil Rights Movement.

Setting the Record Straight

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-105
Author(s):  
Jennifer Mandel
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Fair Employment ◽  
Newspaper Writing ◽  
The Cost

Almena Davis Lomax is best remembered as the publisher of the Los Angeles Tribune, an African American newspaper. Writing was her chosen vehicle for a lifetime mission of racial justice. At the cost of hardship to herself and her children, she was an independent-minded participant in the Civil Rights movement and a crusader for fair employment. She pursued a career as a writer with equal determination.

On the Use of Force

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (2) ◽  
pp. 471-477
Author(s):  
Chester Himes ◽  
Diego A. Millan
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chester Himes ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race

In the mid-1960s, the United States witnessed increasing social unrest: students led protests against the Vietnam war, and many black Americans expressed disillusionment over piecemeal gains of the civil rights movement. Whereas history remembers the antiwar rallies mostly as protests, official records often code black demonstrations in Boston, Cleveland, Buffalo, and the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles as riots. In response to two so-called riots in Newark, New Jersey, in July 1967, Chester Himes wrote “On the Use of Force” for the 24 July 1967 issue of the weekly Gaullist magazine Le nouveau Candide, where it was published in French translation (French version). The essay, never before published in English, offers timely thoughts concerning police brutality and is sure to be valuable for Himes scholarship, the story of black Americans in Europe, and the history of race and violence.

‘Do our lives matter?’ Music, poetry, and Freedom School

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-267
Author(s):  
Amy Shimshon-Santo
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Development ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
National Network ◽  
Freedom Schools

This article presents synergies between arts education, political consciousness raising, and leadership development for youth, and suggests roles for the arts in community organizing for personal and social change. Arts education is seen as a strategy to unleash creativity, affirm cultural assets, cultivate multiple literacies, critique oppressive social practices, and ignite freedoms. Rooted in the US civil rights movement of the 1960s, Freedom Schools became a national network committed to youth development. The case study, set in the Freedom School of South Los Angeles, introduces readers to geographical, cultural, and institutional contexts for the work; outlines a critical methodology for participatory action research; and shares transformational autoethnographies of teaching and learning in arts education classrooms. It is grounded in intersectional feminist methodologies, and is aimed at educators, artists, urbanists, and cultural studies practitioners. The work invested in youth voice and professional development of novice teachers by activating creativity and intergenerational mentorship to reimagine alternative futures. Short term project outcomes are conveyed, alongside longer-term implications for systemic change that values the lives of black and brown youth, families, and communities.

Fade In, Crossroads

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Black And White

Fade In, Crossroads is a history of the relations between southerners and motion pictures from the silent era to midcentury. In providing a narrative of the South’s contributions to the film medium from the late nineteenth century through the golden age of Hollywood, it considers the many southerners who worked as inventors, executives, filmmakers, screenwriters, performers, and critics during this period. It explores early production centers within the South as well as the effects of the migration of millions of black and white southerners beyond the region to such destinations as Los Angeles, where they made inroads in the growing film industry. It is also the story of how the rise and fall of the American film industry coincided with the rise and fall of the South’s most important modern product and export—Jim Crow segregation. This work looks at important southern historical legacies on film: the Civil War film tradition (which includes the two most successful films of all time, The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind); the notorious tradition of lynching films during an era of prolific lynching in the South; and the remarkable race film industry, whose independent African American filmmakers forged an important cinematic tradition in response to the racial limitations of both the South and Hollywood. It also examines the activities of southern censorship officials, who utilized the medium in the service of Jim Crow, and traces the influence of film on future Civil Rights Movement figures.

Unification and Its Discontents

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Brian Kovalesky
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School District ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
The State ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
City Schools

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

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