44 settlers founded Los Angeles in 1781.  Their group included 26 people of African descent, who established the city as an outpost in Spanish-held California.  Before and after the United States took control of California in 1840, people of African descent were treated as citizens.  That noteworthy racial climate made Los Angeles attractive to fugitive slaves.  But since jobs were scarce, African Americans like most others were mostly transient.  Black population in Los Angeles would not grow substantially until the 1880’s.

    Nevertheless, Los Angeles’ first Black newspaper, the California Eagle, encouraged African Americans to move here for a better life.  Many heard the call.  Between 1870 and 1910 African Americans grew from 100 to 7,500.  During this time Biddy Mason, founder of the first surviving African American church in Los Angeles, landowner and prosperous businesswoman, made her famous cross-country trek to Los Angeles.

    Though small in number, African Americans organized in response to discrimination and segregation that emerged as more white Southerners arrived.  Black leaders formed the Los Angeles Forum to help newcomers deal with new housing covenants that restricted access to parts of town and local Klu Klux Klan activity.  African Americans also entered politics.  Frederick Roberts became the first African American in the California State Assembly; he served from 1919 to 1933.

    As housing discrimination took root in the region, African Americans created their own business along Central Avenue. From the 1930s onwards, LA jazz thrived on the Strip. Artists and movie stars such as Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Dexter Gordon and many, many others could be found playing frequently and patronizing the Dunbar Hotel.  Black Los Angeles flourished during World War II as African Americans flocked to Los Angeles to work in the defense plants. African American population exceeded 450,000 by 1960.

    Though African Americans escaped that Southern brand of racial bigotry, job and housing discrimination and frequent police brutality in Los Angeles stirred resentment. In 1965, Watts district exploded when pent up economic despair was ignited by police brutality. As the first major riot during the modern Civil Rights Movement, it sparked national studies and caused many Americans to reexamine the pace of interracial progress. In that political climate, a retired police officer and city councilman, Tom Bradley, became the first Black mayor of Los Angeles in 1973.

    During the 1970s and 1980s, Bradley opened city employment and contracts. Housing discrimination was greatly reduced. Bradley personally pushed for the building of the multi-million dollar Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall. During his 20-year administration, Bradley oversaw an unprecedented economic boom in the region. Despite noble efforts, economic prosperity in the form of manufacturing jobs fled the Black community.  Much of the black middleclass, no longer constrained by housing discrimination and fed up with drug abuse and gang activity, moved to suburban communities like Long Beach, Carson, Pasadena, Moreno Valley and Riverside.

    In 1991, a year before the Rodney King Verdict there were large, peaceful protests Downtown organized by First AME Church, Danny Bakewell and other activists. Their calm resolve targeted the hearing on a Korean American shop owner for the shooting death of Latasha Harlins. Repeatedly airing on local TV, nothing in the shop owner’s security videotape indicated that the shop owner’s life was jeopardized. Nor did the videotape segment on TV indicate that Latasha stole or threw anything at the shop owner. The videotape segment was only one piece of evidence about the unfolding event, but its repeated broadcast created an icon for the systemic mistreatment of Black Angelinos. So when the judge’s decision, be it right or wrong, sentenced the shop owner to probation, it sent a powerful message throughout the Black community, “Black Life Is Not Valued.” That verdict created the undercurrent for the later riot.

    Add chronic unemployment, police brutality in the Black community, and a police chief who flaunted his defiance of Mayor Bradley, you could easily predict that the Rodney King Verdict would trigger chaos. At first, the April 1992 event began as an uprising in South-Central LA. People threw trashcans and bottles as police cars raced out of the community. It quickly escalated into multi-racial conflagrations of African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans and Latino Americans. Each united in their sense of despair and wanton disregard for peace and property. Each divided in their sense of what represented a real solution to the problem.

    Despite lives lost and damage, some good did occur. Los Angeles got two Black police chiefs. A major police abuse scandal was proven in public, something that would have been impossible before the riot. Police are better trained to be sensitive to multicultural LA. Nearly all the burned out South-Central Los Angeles (renamed “South Los Angles”) businesses have been replaced, some look better than ever, including the corner of Florence & Normandy where it started. Yes, even the Hip-Hop movement, to a limited extent, has helped race relations by raising the blinds on urban culture to many suburbanites. Nevertheless, more progress in LA’s Black community depends on expanding service jobs, small business investment and retail attractions for Black middleclass shoppers and visitors.