L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present

Josh Sides

Published by University of California Press 2003

L.A. City Limits

African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present

Josh Sides

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520939868

Overview
Contents

About this book

In 1964 an Urban League survey ranked Los Angeles as the most desirable city for African Americans to live in. In 1965 the city burst into flames during one of the worst race riots in the nation's history. How the city came to such a pass—embodying both the best and worst of what urban America offered black migrants from the South—is the story told for the first time in this history of modern black Los Angeles. A clear-eyed and compelling look at black struggles for equality in L.A.'s neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces from the Great Depression to our day, L.A. City Limits critically refocuses the ongoing debate about the origins of America's racial and urban crisis.

Challenging previous analysts' near-exclusive focus on northern "rust-belt" cities devastated by de-industrialization, Josh Sides asserts that the cities to which black southerners migrated profoundly affected how they fared. He shows how L.A.'s diverse racial composition, dispersive geography, and dynamic postwar economy often created opportunities—and limits—quite different from those encountered by blacks in the urban North.

Author / Editor information

Sides Josh :

Josh Sides is Assistant Professor of History at Cal Poly Pomona.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. African Americans in Prewar Los Angeles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2. The Great Migration and the Changing Face of Los Angeles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
3. The Window of Opportunity: Black Work in Industrial Los Angeles, 1941–1964 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
4. Race and Housing in Postwar Los Angeles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
5. Building the Civil Rights Movement in Los Angeles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
6. Black Community Transformation in the 1960s and 1970s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Maps Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 302

eBook

Published: January 27, 2004
ISBN: 9780520939868