Los Angeles is recognized as a temperate paradise with expansive seashores and mountain vistas, a booming luxurious housing industry, and the house of glamorous Hollywood. in the course of the first half the 20 th century, la used to be additionally obvious as a mecca for either African american citizens and a gentle movement of migrants from round the state and the area, remodeling l. a. into one of many world’s such a lot diversified towns. the town has develop into a multicultural maze during which many now worry that the political clout of the region’s huge black inhabitants has been misplaced. still, the dream of a higher existence lives on for black Angelenos this present day, regardless of the cruel social and fiscal stipulations many confront.

Black Los Angeles is the fruits of a groundbreaking examine undertaking from the Ralph J. Bunche middle for African American stories at UCLA that offers an in-depth research of the historic and modern contours of black lifestyles in l. a.. in response to cutting edge learn, the unique essays are multi-disciplinary in strategy and complete in scope, connecting the dots among the city’s racial previous, current, and destiny. via old and modern anecdotes, oral histories, maps, images, illustrations, and demographic information, we see that Black la is and has constantly been an area of profound contradictions. simply as l. a. has come to represent the complexities of the early twenty-first-century urban, so too has Black la come to embrace the complicated realities of race in so-called “colorblind” times.

Contributors: Melina Abdullah, Alex Alonso, Dionne Bennett, Joshua Bloom, Edna Bonacich, Scot Brown, Reginald Chapple, Lola Smallwood Cuevas, Andrew Deener, Regina Freer, Jooyoung Lee, Mignon R. Moore, Lanita Morris, Neva Pemberton, Steven C. Pitts, Carrie Petrucci, Gwendelyn Rivera, Paul Robinson, M. Belinda Tucker, Paul Von Blum, Mary Weaver, Sonya Winton, and Nancy Wang Yuen.