Tag Archives: African Americans

Countdown to Watts

Posted on August 6, 2007 by lmharnisch

  Aug. 5, 1957 Los Angeles In eight years (the headline above is from The Times, Aug. 12, 1965), Los Angeles will explode in the Watts riots and many people will wonder how it happened. Here’s part of the answer. … Continue reading →

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Countdown to Watts

Posted on July 25, 2007 by lmharnisch

July 25, 1957Los Angeles To The Times, a class-action suit accusing the Los Angeles Police Department of brutality simply wasn’t newsworthy. The Mirror did a bit better: a few paragraphs on Page 12. And these were juicy stories: A Baptist … Continue reading →

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A question of leadership

Posted on July 21, 2007 by lmharnisch

July 18-Aug. 1, 1957Los Angeles In the summer of 1957, eight years before the Watts riots, the Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly newspaper serving the black community, published a three-part series by Stanley Robertson titled: “Does Los Angeles Have a … Continue reading →

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What happened on Dunsmuir

Posted on July 20, 2007 by lmharnisch

These appear to be four rather ordinary West Adams district homes from the late 1920s and early ’30s and in many ways they are. Photographs by Larry Harnisch Los Angeles Times This is 2435 S. Dunsmuir Ave. This is 2308 … Continue reading →

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Aerospace crashes

Posted on July 17, 2007 by lmharnisch

  July 17, 1957 Los Angeles With the cancellation of the Navaho cruise missile program, North American Aviation made plans to lay off 15,600 employees, nearly a third of the workforce at its plant in Downey. Efforts were made to … Continue reading →

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Exodus

Posted on June 21, 2007 by lmharnisch

  June 21, 1957 Los Angeles If there was ever a headline that said: "Do Not Read Me," it would be "Chain-Reaction Tithing Adopted by Methodists." The real news, buried down in the story, is that the Southern California-Arizona Conference … Continue reading →

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Architectural Ramblings

Posted on May 13, 2007 by lmharnisch

  May 13, 1957 Los Angeles Nobody knows who Frederick M. Roberts is these days, at least not at Fred Roberts Park at 48th and Honduras streets in South Los Angeles. I’d never heard of him, so I drove down … Continue reading →

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No blacks allowed

Posted on May 8, 2007 by lmharnisch

  May 9, 1957 Austin, Texas Texas State Rep. Joe Chapman is no opera lover, especially when the cast includes an African American in the lead. He wants soprano Barbara Louise Smith out of the university production of Henry Purcell’s … Continue reading →

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