The Development of Leadership and Organization Building in
the Black Community of Los Angeles from 1900 Through World War II. By E.
Frederick Anderson. Saratoga, California: Century Twenty One Publishing, 1980.
Bibliography. Appendices. Table. 159 pages. $12.00.
Black Los Angeles: The Maturing of the Ghetto, 1940-1950. By
Keith E. Collins. Saratoga, California: Century Twenty One Publishing, 1980.
Bibliography. Appendices. Tables. 120 pages. $11.00.
Reviewed by Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., Associate Professor of
Afro-American Studies, San Diego State University, editor of In Search of the
Promised Land: Essays in Black Urban History (1981).
Black migration to California in the antebellum years was
drawn primarily to San Francisco and the gold country, but by 1900 Los Angeles
surpassed the northern metropolis in black population and has
never relinquished its primacy. The doctoral dissertations reviewed here narrate
several significant and little-documented chapters in the twentieth century
growth of the "City of Black Angels."
E. Frederick Anderson examines two community organizations
using the framework of social movement theory. The Los Angeles Forum was
organized in 1903 at a time when considerable black in-migration was taking
place. Lodges, women's aid and child care facilities were being funded at this
time, and black churches served both spiritual and secular needs. Yet there was
a need for a platform apart from the churches where issues could be freely
debated. The Forum was part lyceum, part town meeting, and a social equalizer
where anyone could air his ideas. During the peak of its influence in the Teens
and Twenties it exercised the "power of positive sanction" as black (and
occasional white) leaders sought its approval or came under its purview. Dealing
also in concrete issues, it promoted the
careers of the first black certificated female schoolteacher and first black
female physician in the city. Political issues like the Birth of a Nation film
controversy, Chinese labor exclusion, county government minority hiring
practices, restrictive covenants, and the election of California's first black
assemblyman were issues of concern. The Forum declined in the Thirties, and by
the time of its demise in 1942, a more militant and more issue specific
organization had taken its place.
The Los Angeles Negro Victory Committee was the creation of the Rev. Clayton
Russell and his People's Independent Church of Christ. The Committee
initially sought to gain employment in defense industries that
discriminated against black workers. Foot-dragging by the War Manpower
Commission and discrimination by the U.S. Employment Service galvanized a black
community already articulating the "Double V" call for simultaneous defeat of
international and domestic racism. Using mass action tactics the Victory
Committee first convinced the Employment Service to place black women in other
than janitorial and service positions in defense plants. Effectively utilizing
his weekly radio program, Rev. Russell subsequently led fights to gain job
training centers in Watts, motormen and conductor opportunities on the Los
Angeles Railway, and halt prejudice by the Navy and labor unions. These
activities brought the Committee's leadership into corporate boardrooms and
cabinet and congressional offices in Washington. For reasons not well explained
by Anderson, the Victory Committee was dying by 1945, hastened perhaps by Rev.
Russell's unsuccessful campaign for the Board of Supervisors.
Keith Collins' Black Los Angeles is a work of history
based on interviews with 450 Watts residents of the Forties, and some of the
best parts of the narrative cite the reminiscences of these individuals.
Especially interesting are details on employment experiences at the Long Beach
Naval Shipyard and various aircraft plants, including transportaton difficulties
to and from the job, employee relationships with other groups, and hazardous
conditions in the plants. Blacks coming from rural backgrounds experienced
disorientation with the fragmentation of families into several work locations
and a lack of time for common family meals and recreational activities.
Subsequent chapters on housing and social life are not as
useful; the author has not made diligent use of the local black press and
national black monthlies like Crisis and Opportunity, especially
for the period of post-war adjustments. Readers get no clear view of the scope
and successes of the local Urban League and the NAACP, and the Victory Committee
is not discussed at all. The full spectrum of social life is not
conveyed, and there is little correlation to social class differences. For
example, all churches are lumped together, with no distinction by class. Nor is
there much on the role of the churches in helping migrants adjust to urban life
and find housing and jobs.
Readers of these dissertations will have to wade through
prose typical of the genre, as well as embarrassing typographical errors. But
patience will be rewarded with interesting bits of social history which could
only have been gained through oral narratives. Historians of black urbanization
in the present century may profitably sift through these studies for examples of
indigenous organizations and group phenomena, but will have to supply their own
broader conceptualizations and generalizations.
