Making Black Los Angeles

This work promises a history of the formation of the black community of Los Angeles before the Great Migration. Marne L. Campbell contends that the roles that black women played were crucial to this process. This thesis develops Willi Coleman's essay on the singular role of California's black women as founders (“African American Women and Community Development in California,” in Seeking El Dorado, ed. Lawrence B. de Graaf, Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, 2001, pp. 98–128). Campbell also claims that people of color in Los Angeles formed coalitions more often than they did in other communities—a statement not easy to prove. Analysis of the colonial Mexican and Californio years reveals how colonizers used the varying concept of race at different times. A vital part of the concept's history is that it provided the basis for the institutionalization of white supremacy after 1850; “vagrant” Native American men were subject to enslavement, and women were raped at will. Californios were robbed of their mining properties and extensive landholdings by the California Land Act of 1851 and the courts, and they experienced a catastrophic economic collapse. Blacks were prevented from voting, testifying in court when whites were involved, and attending schools with whites. In 1863 their status changed with state legislation and later the Reconstruction amendments, but then the racist regime moved on to discriminating against the Chinese, passing state legislation curtailing their rights and supporting congressional legislation halting their immigration

Colonialism · Criminology · Immigration · Legislation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Voting · White (mutation · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Race, History, and American Society

• Labour and the city

  Open Access•M Buckley•Geography Compass•2018

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