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History
and Identity
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Every community has
a story to tell about how it came to be. That history is celebrated at
community events, taught in textbooks, and memorialized in monuments and
museums. This story about the founding of Los Angeles is taken from the
Los Angeles County website... click
here for more
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Membership
and Community
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In 1848, California
became a part of the United States as a result of a war with Mexico. Many
Americans saw the new territory as proof of the nation's "manifest
destiny." The phrase, coined in 1845, referred to a belief that the
mission of the United States was to rule all of North America from "sea
to shining sea..." click
here for more
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Race
and Racism
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In the 1870s the first
trains rolled into Los Angeles. In the decade that followed, the city's
population grew almost sixfold, from about 11,000 people in 1880 to over
60,000 by 1890. During that boom, one Los Angeles resident noted, "Here
were 40,000 or 50,000 people suddenly gathered together from all parts
of the Union, in utter ignorance of one another's previous history..."click
here for more
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Challenging
"Stereotypes, Rumor, and Fear"
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In reflecting on the
divisions that mark American communities, sociologist David Schoem writes:
The effort it
takes for us to know so little about one another across racial and ethnic
groups is truly remarkable. That we can live so closely together, that
our lives can be so intertwined socially, economically, and politically,
and that we can spend so many years of study in grade school and even
in higher education and yet still manage to be ignorant of one another
is clear testimony to the deep-seated roots of this human and national
tragedy..." click
here for more
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The
Cries of the Unheard
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Author Ralph Ellison wrote that as an African American "I am invisible…
simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see
sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded
by mirrors of hard, distorting glass..." click
here for more
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"Squeezed
Between Black and White"
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year 1965 was a significant one in American history. It was the year that
"civil disturbances" in Los Angeles shocked the nation. It was
also the year that Congress passed a new immigration law that changed the
face of the nation and the city of Los Angeles. The law it replaced favored
immigrants from Western Europe over those from other parts of the world.
It literally cut off all immigration from Asia and Africa. The new law-an
outcome of the Civil Rights Movement-ended that discrimination by establishing
a system that gave preferences to refugees from all parts of the world,
people with relatives in the United States, and workers with needed skills...
click here for
more |
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Conflict
in the Promised Land
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the year 2000 Los Angeles was the most ethnically diverse city in the world.
Nearly 45 percent of its population was of Latino descent; about 13 percent
Asian; a little over 9 percent African American; and the remaining 32 percent
white. Those numbers tell just a part of the story... click
here for more |
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Riots,
Then and Now
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the "Los Angeles riots" of 1965 and 1992 began with the arrest
of an African American. Distrust between the police and blacks have been
a part of life in Los Angeles-and the nation-for generations. In an 1992
interview with Anna Deavere Smith, Stanley K. Sheinbaum, the former president
of the Los Angeles Police Commission, recalled meeting with young gang members
just a week or two before the violence in Los Angeles erupted... click
here for more |
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Remembering
the "Los Angeles Riots"
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In
1997, journalist Richard Rodriguez imagined Los Angeles in 2042, 50 years
after the "Los Angeles riots" of 1992.
What do I remember
of those days in 1992? I remember standing on a rooftop along Sunset
Boulevard and seeing the southern horizon filled with smoke. Some terrible
excitement, some evil thrill, made me shiver at the destruction..."
click
here for more
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