african american history month

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Gina Hemphill
Christina Rice, February 03, 2020

We have to wait until the summer of 2028 for Los Angeles to host the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad, but when we do, we will join Paris and London as only the third city to host the Summer Games three times, having previously done so in 1932 and famously, in 1984.


Nightclub at 42nd and Central Avenue, with Lucille and Edward on the right.
Photo Friends, May 15, 2019

Whether you want it hot or cool, swingin’ or slow, Dixieland or experimental, there’s jazz to fit your mood, mellow you out, pick you up. Jazz was born in New Orleans—the only place in the U.S. in the 1800s where slaves were allowed to own drums.


Five women pose in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1968
Photo Friends, February 20, 2019

Over 25 years ago, while organizing the photo collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, librarian Carolyn Kozo Cole found many photos that documented the city’s political and professional history—political rallies, building construction, front page stories—but few images showing the personal side of it


Collage of featured books on the map of United States
Diane Garcia, February 12, 2019

Black History Month is a time to remember the contributions that African Americans have left on our country and world. This year’s theme, Black Migrations, explores the impact the African diaspora has made around the globe.


Photographer Rolland J. Curtis and his mother, Mathilda Curtis. They are standing near a Delta Airlines plane, and she is wearing a corsage.
Photo Friends, May 24, 2018

Born in Louisiana in 1922, Rolland J. Curtis came to Los Angeles with his wife in 1946 after serving in the Marines during WWII.


Devil in a Blue Dress movie poster (1995)
Janice Batzdorff, February 26, 2018

They work in Watts, Chicago, Oakland, and Harlem, go on vacation in Provincetown, MA, and return home to Otis, South Carolina (pop. 5,000). They include an Ivy League professor, an ex-CIA agent, a volatile ex-cop, a journalist, a domestic worker, an attorney, a Ph.D.


portion of the front page of the liberator magazine
Neale Stokes, February 23, 2018

The Liberator is an early 20th-century Los Angeles African American newspaper, whose owner and editor, Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, was formerly enslaved and spent twenty years in bondage before Emancipation.


Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building
Kelly Wallace, February 22, 2018

In 1920s Los Angeles, insurance companies considered black Americans to be either uninsurable or extremely high risk. As a result, black people were routinely denied coverage or charged exorbitant premiums.


image
Christina Rice, February 18, 2018

Los Angeles has always been a city of rich cultural diversity, often serving as a beacon of prosperity for migrants and immigrants around the globe.


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