Black Los Angeles

Los Angeles is well-known as a temperate paradise with expansive beaches and mountain vistas, a booming luxury housing market, and the home of glamorous Hollywood. During the first half of the twentieth century, LA was also seen as a mecca for both African Americans and a steady stream of migrants from around the country and the world, transforming LA into one of the world's most diverse cities. The city has become a multicultural maze in which many now fear that the political clout of the region's large black population has been lost. Nonetheless, the dream of a better life lives on for black Angelenos today, despite the often harsh social and economic conditions many confront. "Black Los Angeles" is the culmination of a groundbreaking research project from the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA that presents an in-depth analysis of the historical and contemporary contours of black life in Los Angeles. Based on innovative research, the original essays are multi-disciplinary in approach and comprehensive in scope, connecting the dots between the city's racial past, present, and future. Through historical and contemporary anecdotes, oral histories, maps, photographs, illustrations, and demographic data, we see that Black LA is and has always been a space of profound contradictions. Just as LA has come to symbolize the complexities of the early 21st century city, so too has Black LA come to embody the complex realities of race in so-called 'colour-blind' times.