Los Angeles Black History

04/28/2024

The mythical Black Queen Califia.(Khalifa)!!!

According to her story, California was where only Black women lived. Gold was the only metal and pearls were as common as rocks.

These women were the most powerful beings on earth. When Cortez reached California, searching for this mythical queen, her influence over him was so overwhelming that he paid tribute to Queen Califia by naming the state after her.

California literally means, “the land where Black women live."

It’s documented that of the 44 people who founded Los Angeles, 26 were of African descent. What is amazing (and not taught in California schools) is the majority of the founders of San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego were of African descent, or that Orange County, Beverly Hills, LaJolla and Malibu were settled and once owned by people of African descent.

04/07/2024

The Rev. Dr. Cecil L. "Chip" Murray, who used his tenure at one of Los Angeles' oldest churches to uplift the predominantly Black neighborhoods of South Los Angeles following one of the country's worst race riots, has died.

01/19/2024

One of the most well-known black architects, Paul Revere Williams’ 50-year career and over 2,000-designed homes has played a major role in shaping Southern California’s signature architectural style. His work is distinguished by a mix of styles and types, from hotels and restaurants to churches and hospitals. Williams studied architecture at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design and trained at several prominent Los Angeles firms before starting his own practice. He became the first black member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923.
Also known as the “architect to the stars”, Williams designed the homes for an array of celebrity clients, including Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra and Barron Hilton. He defined the spaces that comprise the aesthetic of “Hollywood glamour”, which spread across the country.
Williams is also the mind behind the iconic, space-aged Theme Building at the Los Angeles International Airport. Despite the countless barriers Williams faced due to the color of his skin, he remained steadfast and determined as an architect. He even learned how to draw upside down so he could position himself across the table from white clients who were uncomfortable sitting next to him when reviewing plans. In 2017, Williams was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal.

01/15/2024

Albert Baumann’s pharmacy, 1928, at the Hotel Somerville (later the Dunbar Hotel).



UCLA library special collections

01/15/2024

Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company office, 1948, at 4261 S. Central Ave.



UCLA library collections

08/21/2023

The Center for Oral History Research’s special website documents more than a dozen business owners’ stories of success, challenges and perspectives on history.

08/21/2023

As if becoming L.A.’s first Black City Council member wasn’t hard enough, Tom Bradley then became the city’s first Black mayor since we joined the United States back in 1850. Like Figuratively every politician, he had missteps in his career but during his 20 year term the city saw a period of relative peace and prosperity as he pulled the city out of the 70s and set it on the glossy track towards whatever it is we are now. His mayoral career was spurred on as a result of the Watts Uprising and the hope of what we could be as a city but was ultimately brought down as a result of Rodney King and what happened in 1992 when we realized we hadn’t come as far as we thought.

08/21/2023

Paul R. Williams, L.A.’s First Black Architect

You might not know his face but you definitely know his facade. Paul Revere Williams grew up as an orphan wandering the streets of downtown L.A., drawing pictures of the buildings he saw in a notebook. In direct defiance of being told nobody would ever hire a Black architect, he worked his way to becoming the first Black architect west of the Mississippi. Some of his works you definitely know are the Theme Building at LAX, the L.A. County Courthouse, Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and the homes of Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, and Lucille Ball.

08/21/2023

Using materials from her partner’s construction business, the ambitious Lovie Yancey built a three-stool hamburger stand in Jefferson Park in 1947 known as Mr. Fatburger (after she broke up with the Mr. in her life she removed the Mr. from the title). More locations opened and by the 70s, the Beverly Hills Fatburger was being frequented by celebs like Redd Foxx, James Brown and Ray Charles. Yancey worked tirelessly, pulling 16-hour shifts to ensure quality control in the kitchen and in 1986, the astounding success of the Fatburger franchise allowed her to establish a $1.7 million endowment at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte for research into sickle-cell anemia.

08/21/2023

Hollywood has always had a representation problem. Like, Figuratively always. That’s why Noble and George Johnson started the Lincoln Motion Picture Company in 1916 as the first all-Black production company. They focused on dispelling the racist, offensive and harmful stereotypes mainstream cinema was putting forward of Black people by putting out movies made by and for Black people. They only lasted long enough to make five such pictures but they paved a road towards fair representation that we are still paving today.

08/21/2023

If Central Avenue used to be the main cultural artery of Black Los Angeles, then the Dunbar Hotel was its beating cultural heart. We hope that metaphor works because we don’t know anatomy that well, but two people who did were John and Vada Somerville: the first two Black people to graduate from USC who also happened to be married. They opened the Dunbar (then Somerville Hotel) in 1928 at 4225 Central Avenue as a haven for Black tourists who were not welcome in most other hotels in the city. The hotel grew into the go-to for any Black celebrities passing through town ranging from Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington to Ray Charles and W.E.B Dubois who called it “a beautiful inn with soul.”

08/21/2023

Peter Biggs is one of the most confounding figures from Los Angeles history, because we know so little about him. An escaped slave from Virginia, Biggs came to L.A. and was not only the first Black man counted as a head-of-household on the 1847 census but was also the city’s first barber operating out of the Bella Union Hotel on Main Street. A complicated and contradictory man from what we do know, some of the most double-take-worthy parts of his story are that he was arrested for celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and that he was murdered by a waiter he was rude to.

08/21/2023

Samuel Marlowe, L.A.’s First Licensed Detective

Little is known and much is debated about Jamaican-born Samuel Benjamin Marlowe, but it is generally agreed that he was L.A.'s first licensed private detective. His involvement with the early days of Hollywood is hotly contested, but it is said to have ranged from cleaning up unseemly messes movie stars found themselves in late at night to keeping tabs on the girlfriends of Charlie Chaplin and Howard Hughes. But no part of his story is as debated as how big of a role he had, at least in name, in influencing two of the most iconic fictional characters Of The Last 30 Seconds: Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.

08/21/2023

The mother of Black L.A. as we know it was a woman named Bridget Biddy Mason. Five years after being brought to SoCal as the slave of a Southern Mormon, she found out slavery was illegal in California and immediately sued the hell out of him, winning her freedom in 1856 and becoming the first Black woman to own land in Los Angeles. She also co-founded L.A.’s first Black church, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1872, which became the cornerstone of the city’s first Black neighborhood “Brick Block.”

08/21/2023

One of the most frequently overlooked details of the early days of L.A. is that over half of the original non-native settlers of the city were of direct or mixed African ancestry. In 1781, the first group of the so-called Pobladores departed Mexico ('New Spain'G at the time) for the four-month journey to establish a new home in what is now downtown Los Angeles. Of the 44 men, women, and children who battled land, sea, disease, and just a really long commute to get here, 26 of them were of direct or mixed African ancestry.

08/21/2023

CHARLOTTA AMANDA SPEARS BASS – FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN NEWSPAPER WOMAN

Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass – Was the first woman to own and operate a newspaper in Los Angeles. She was also the first African American woman to own and operate a newspaper in California and the United States. She published the California Eagle in Los Angeles from 1912 until 1951.

Charlotta was born in South Carolina in 1874. In 1910 she moved to Los Angeles where she worked for the California Eagle by selling subscriptions of the newspaper. When the owner of the paper died in 1912, Charlotta took over as Editor and later as the owner when she purchased the paper at auction for fifty dollars. Besides containing various news stories, the paper’s original concept was to assist new migrants in Los Angeles with housing, jobs (especially those African Americans fleeing the deep south). Charlotta’s husband, Joseph Bass, was later named the editor until his death in 1934.

Charlotta was also a political activist in Los Angeles in the 1940s, promoting multiethnic politics and civil rights among, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans. Charlotta died in 1969 at the age of 95.

08/21/2023

GEORGIA ANN ROBINSON – FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN APPOINTED TO THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT (LAPD), AND ONE OF THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN POLICE OFFICERS IN THE UNITED STATES (1919)

Georgia was born in 1879 in Louisiana where her parents died when she was very young. She was later raised by her older sister and then at a Catholic convent. At eighteen she moved to Kansas and became a governess. She later met her husband Morgan Robinson and moved to Los Angeles.

In 1916, when the LAPD was in desperate need of officers due to the lack of men because of World War I, they began to recruit women. Georgia was recruited by the department first as a volunteer, and then three years later as the first African American woman to become a full-time police officer, which also made her the first African American woman police officer in the U.S. At the time of her appointment, there were only four other female LAPD officers.

Her first assignment was working as a jail matron, and then on juvenile and homicide cases. Her career ended abruptly in 1928 after suffering a serious head injury while trying to break up a fight between inmates. The injury caused her to lose her eyesight and forced her into early retirement. She died in 1961.

08/21/2023

Robert Stewart was among the first Black officers hired by the LAPD. He spent 11 years on the force before he was unjustly terminated, according to the Los Angeles Police Commission.

08/21/2023

MIRIAM MATTHEWS – FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMAN (CREDENTIALED) TO BE HIRED BY THE LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY (LAPL).

Miriam was born in Florida and moved to the Los Angeles area when she was two years old. After graduating from Los Angeles High School, she attended UCLA and later transferred to Berkeley where she received a degree in Spanish and a certificate in Library Science before being hired by the Los Angeles Public Library. Realizing the lack of resources regarding African American History at the library, she was an integral part of collecting African American history resources for the library. From 1949 to 1960 she served as regional librarian for LAPL and supervised twelve branches in Los Angeles. Miriam died in 2003.

08/21/2023

SAM HASKINS (1846-1895) – LOS ANGELES’ FIRST BLACK FIREFIGHTER

Sometimes history can be a discovery that happens completely by accident. That is exactly what happened when Joe Walker, a crime analyst from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD), was researching the genealogy of someone else who died the same year as Sam Haskins. He found an article about Haskins that indicated he died while in the line of duty as a firefighter in 1895. For years, Los Angeles had always recognized George Bright as the first Black firefighter who was appointed in 1897. But this article about Sam Haskins death in 1895, was two years before George Bright become a firefighter. After further research it was found that Sam became a firefighter in 1888 (assigned to engine company No. 2), making him the first Black Firefighter in Los Angeles and California.

Sam Haskins was born into slavery in Virginia in 1846. Haskins moved to Los Angeles around 1880 and became a member of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) as a “call fireman” (part-time, on-call basis). Because a call fireman was not a full-time job, Haskins also worked as a porter at the Union Depot Hotel.

Not only was Haskins a pioneer of his time as being the “First”, he was also unfortunately the first firefighter to die in the line of duty. The Los Angeles Herald described this about Haskins death on November 19, 1895:

“An alarm was rung at 5:55 p. m., and two minutes later the engine and hook and ladder wagon were tearing along over the paving stones and car tracks. Sam Haskins, the Herculean colored fireman, jumped to his place on the engine but, owing to the roughness of the pavement, the numerous car tracks, the rapidly drawn engine was so unsteady that the unfortunate fireman lost his balance, flung his arms about wildly for a moment, then fell between the left hind wheel and the boiler and was crushed to death. The engine was stopped at once, but it was fully ten minutes before the wheel was taken off and the mangled and dying man removed. Drs. Choate and McCarthy were summoned, and under their direction, the dying man was carried to the engine house, where he was placed upon a mattress. Efforts were made to revive him, but he died about five minutes after he was removed from the engine.”

02/26/2023

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in 1919 in Cairo, GA and died in 1972 in Stamford, CT. He went to college at the University of California, Los Angeles. He played major league baseball from 1947 to 1956 as 2nd and 3rd baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, appeared in the 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956 World Series, was selected 6 times as an All-Star, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

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Jackie Robinson is famous for breaking baseball's color line and starting the integration of Organized Baseball. Robinson was a multi-sport star and the only person in the history of UCLA athletics to letter in four different sports. In addition to playing baseball, he was a leading running back in football, a top scorer in basketball, and an excellent sprinter and long-jumper.

Robinson's older brother, Mack, finished second to Jesse Owens in the 200m in the 1936 Olympics, and it's likely that Jackie would have been an Olympian except for the cancellation of the 1940 games. After leaving UCLA a few credits short of graduation, Robinson joined the US Army to serve in the Second World War. While training at Fort Hood, TX, Robinson refused to move to the back of a bus when a white woman demanded that he do so. Even though Army regulations specifically backed him, Robinson was court-martialed for insubordination. He was acquitted, but was still unfairly branded as a racial agitator.

The Army found a pretext to give him an honorable discharge soon afterward. Following his discharge, Robinson signed with the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs for the 1945 season. He was a successful shortstop for the Monarchs and was named to the East-West All-Star game. While playing for the Monarchs, he was scouted by Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who intended to sign top African American players to break the color line. Rickey picked Robinson as the best candidate, and signed him to great publicity after the 1945 season.

Rather than send Robinson straight to the majors, Rickey decided to have him spend one year in the minors. Rickey's exact reasoning for doing so is unclear, but it was probably with the idea that Robinson could win support of his right to play in the majors by succeeding in the minors. If so, his hopes were dashed. While Robinson did his part, winning the 1946 International League MVP playing for the Montreal Royals, the hoped-for support did not materialize. Rickey went ahead anyway, naming Robinson the Dodgers' starting first baseman for the 1947 season.

Despite threats of strike by teammates and opponents alike, Robinson proved himself, batting .297, leading the league with 29 stolen bases, and winning the newly created BBWAA Rookie of the Year Award. He also was was voted Rookie of the Year by The Sporting News (which had opposed integration). The BBWAA Award was officially named for Jackie Robinson in 1997. In 1949, he won the NL batting title and was named the NL MVP.

Following the 1956 season, the Dodgers attempted to trade Robinson to the New York Giants, but Robinson refused to report to his new team and retired instead. Following his playing career, Robinson served as Vice President of Chock Full O'Nuts, a coffee chain that made a point of hiring African Americans, and on the board of directors of the NAACP. He remained active in civil rights and politics until late in his life.

He was elected to the International League Hall of Fame in 1960, and the MLB Hall of Fame in 1962 in his first year of eligibility. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 2003, only the second baseball player to receive the award. His number 42 has been retired across baseball in tribute to his career accomplishments.

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11/19/2022

10/03/2022

African Americans have fought in military conflicts since colonial days. However, the Buffalo Soldiers, comprised of former slaves, freemen and Black Civil War soldiers, were the first to serve during peacetime.

Shortly after the Civil War, Congress authorized the formation of the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry Regiments: Six all Black peacetime units. Later the four infantry regiments were merged into the 24th and 25th Infantries

Once the Westward movement had begun, prominent among those blazing treacherous trails of the Wild West were the Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S. Army. These African Americans were charged with and responsible for escorting settlers, cattle herds, and railroad crews. The 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments also conducted campaigns against American Indian tribes on a western frontier that extended from Montana in the Northwest to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in the Southwest.

Throughout the era of the Indian Wars, approximately twenty percent of the U.S. Cavalry troopers were Black, and they fought over 177 engagements. The combat prowess, bravery, tenaciousness, and looks on the battlefield, inspired the Indians to call them Buffalo Soldiers. The name symbolized the Native American’s respect for the Buffalo Soldiers’ bravery and valor. Buffalo Soldiers, down through the years, have worn the name with pride.

At least 18 Medals of Honor were presented to Buffalo Soldiers during the Western Campaigns. Similarly, 23 African Americans received the nation’s highest military award during the Civil War.

Buffalo Soldiers participated in many other military campaigns: The Spanish American War, The Philippine Insurrection, The Mexican Expedition, World War I, World War II, and the Korean Police Action.

Much have changed since the days of the Buffalo Soldiers, including the integration of all-military servicemen and women. However, the story of the Buffalo Soldiers remains one of unsurpassed courage and patriotism and will be forever a significant part of the history of America.

The exhibition “For Race and Country: Buffalo Soldiers in California” shines a light on the surprising history of all-Black US Army regiments whose members—b...

10/03/2022

Founded in 1977, the California African American Museum has a long and rich history. The first African American museum of art, history, and culture fully supported by a state, CAAM was the direct result of a sustained, multiyear campaign of activism undertaken by visionary founders and community members. Its creation was an early and tangible recognition by the State of California of the critically important role African Americans have played in the American West’s cultural, economic, and political development.

CAAM began formal operations in 1981 and was initially housed in temporary quarters. Longtime arts advocate Aurelia Brooks was the Museum’s first director, and the first object acquired for CAAM’s permanent collection was a magnificent bronze bust by Richmond Barthé of civil rights activist Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1984, CAAM moved to its permanent home in Exposition Park, just south of Downtown Los Angeles: a 44,000-square-foot facility designed by African American architects Jack Haywood and Vince Proby. The new facility’s inaugural exhibition was The Black Olympians 1904-1984, curated by CAAM's History Curator Lonnie Bunch, who became the Founding Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and is now Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The exhibition debuted in July 1984 just as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad were opening in Los Angeles.

Today, CAAM sits among the many major institutions transforming Exposition Park and South Los Angeles, including the California Science Center, the Natural History Museum, and the forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

The Museum’s permanent collection houses 5,000 objects that span landscape painting and portraiture, modern and contemporary art, historical objects and print materials, and mixed-media artworks. Though the collection emphasizes objects pertinent to California and the American West, it also houses a growing collection of artworks from the African diaspora as well as important works by African Americans from across the United States.

10/03/2022

Paul Revere Williams was an American architect based in Los Angeles, California. He practiced mostly in Southern California and designed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lon Chaney, Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Correll. He also designed many public and private buildings.

Williams came from a family of middle-class Memphis residents: Chester Stanley and Lila Wright Williams. They migrated to Los Angeles in 1893 with their son, Chester, to start a fruit business, but were not successful. Paul was born in Los Angeles on February 18, 1894. His father died in 1896 from tuberculosis and his mother two years later from the same illness, leaving the boys in foster care. He was eventually adopted by C.I. Clarkson and his wife. Williams was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect with Wilbur Cook, Jr. He studied architectural engineering from 1916 to 1919 at the University of Southern California, where he earned his degree, designing several residential buildings while a student there. Williams became a certified architect in California in 1921 and the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi.

Williams won an architectural competition at age 25, and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down." This skill was developed because in the 1920s many of his white clients felt uncomfortable sitting directly next to a Black man. He learned to draft upside down so that he could sit across the desk from his clients who would see his drafts right-side-up.

Struggling to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920.
From 1921 through 1924, Williams worked for Los Angeles architect John C. Austin, eventually becoming chief draftsman, before establishing his own office.

In 1923, Williams became the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
In 1939, he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Beverly Hills (now headquarters of the Paradigm Talent Agency).

At one point in his career Williams became interested in prefabricated structures. He worked together with Wallace Neff to design experimental Airform structures which were small homes that only took a few days to construct using simple materials.

A. Quincy Jones (1913–79) was an architect who is claimed to have hired Williams and later collaborated with him on projects in Palm Springs, including the Palm Springs Tennis Club (1947) and the Town & Country (1948) and Romanoff's on the Rocks (1948) restaurants.

Lockheed and Guerdon Industries recruited Williams to design a concept for a car-alternative travel system in Las Vegas. He developed the idea of a monorail-like system called the Skylift Magi-Cab that would bring people to and from McCarran Airport and the city center.

During World War II, Williams worked for the Navy Department as an architect.
During his career Williams designed over 2,000 buildings.

10/03/2022

Perle Yvonne Watson was born on October 5, 1932, in Los Angeles as the only child of James A. Watson and the former Lola Moore.

After first attending a public school, she was sent to a model school for exceptional children. At Manual Arts High School, she was a member of the debate team and served as vice president of the Latin Club her junior year and girls' vice president in her senior year.
Burke attended the University of California, Berkeley from 1949 to 1951 before receiving a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1953. She subsequently earned a J.D. degree from the University of Southern California Law School in 1956. Burke is one of the first black women to be admitted to the University of Southern California Law School.

Her first entry into the world of politics was when she worked as a volunteer for the reelection of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. She was elected to the California State Assembly in 1966, representing Los Angeles' 63rd District (1966–1972). Many of her early legislative efforts centered around juvenile issues and limiting garnishment of wages.

She served as vice-chairperson of the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She was the first African American and the first woman of color to hold that position and presided for about fourteen hours when the chair left the convention on its last day.

That same year, she was elected to the first of three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.

10/03/2022

The Compton Cowboys are a group of friends from childhood who use horseback riding and equestrian culture to provide a positive influence on inner-city youth, and to combat negative stereotypes about African Americans in the Los Angeles-area city of Compton.

This close group of friends first met each other in the late 1990s through the Compton Jr. Posse, a non-profit organization in Richland Farms. The Jr. Posse introduced the group to the equestrian lifestyle and horseback riding.
The Jr. Posse was founded in Compton by Mayisha Akbar in a semi-rural area of the city, where the organization has been home to African American horseback riders since the 1980s.

Many of the members of the Compton Cowboys found their way into the Jr. Posse through information and encouragement from friends and family members, and through interacting with horse-riders they had seen in their neighborhoods.

Compton was a rough neighborhood, and they found horse riding to be a positive alternative to other paths common in the area. Gang violence and drugs were not an uncommon route for kids to find themselves in. The Cowboys found an interest and lifestyle that had a positive effect on them and others in the community they came across.

10/03/2022

In 1970, there were 763,000 African Americans in Los Angeles. They were the second largest minority group after the then estimated 815,000 Mexican Americans.
Los Angeles had the west coast's largest black population. Between 1975 and 1980, 96,833 blacks moved to Los Angeles while 73,316 blacks left Los Angeles. Over 5,000 of the blacks moved to the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario area. About 2,000 to 5,000 blacks moved to the Anaheim-Santa Ana-Garden Grove area.

James H. Johnson, a University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) associate professor of geography, stated that due to affordable housing, blacks tend to choose "what is called the balance of the counties" or cities neutral to the existing major cities. In the Inland Empire, blacks tended to move to Rialto instead of Riverside and San Bernardino.

Of the blacks who left the City of Los Angeles between 1975 and 1980 who moved away from the Los Angeles area, over 5,000 moved to the Oakland, California area, about 2,000–5,000 went to San Diego, about 1,000–2,000 went to Sacramento, and about 1,000 to 2,000 went to San Jose, California.
About 500 to 1,000 blacks moved to Fresno, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, Simi Valley, and Ventura. Johnson stated that the areas from Fresno to Ventura are "areas that traditionally blacks haven't settled in". Many blacks leaving Los Angeles who also California moved to cities in the U.S. South, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Little Rock, New Orleans, and San Antonio. Other cities receiving LA blacks include Chicago, New York City, and Las Vegas.