The clout that counts

Over the last 30 years, while L.A.’s Latinos have swelled from 18.5% of the city’s population to 46.5%, the percentage of African Americans has declined from 17% to 11.2%. This dramatic demographic shift has sparked a lot of anxious talk about whether the historic civic and political influence of African Americans in Los Angeles will disappear, a casualty of rising Latino political clout.

This view of the world was trotted out again during the June primary to pick a successor for Juanita Millender-McDonald, a black member of Congress who died of cancer in April. An African American has represented the 37th Congressional District, which includes most of Long Beach, Carson and Compton, for more than 25 years. But because the demographics of the district have been changing in recent years and Latinos now substantially outnumber blacks, some political observers speculated that this time voters might elect a Latino.

But it didn’t happen. Laura Richardson, a black assemblywoman, won.

This experience should have suggested that the anxiety about waning black clout may be a bit overwrought because, when it comes to African American influence, numbers are deceiving. From the day that they first settled in the city, blacks have always been outnumbered by whites and other minorities. At the end of the 19th century, for instance, they made up just 1% of the city’s population, and even when their numbers peaked in the mid-20th century, there were still fewer blacks than there were whites or Latinos. Yet that has not stopped them from gaining and holding local political office as well as influencing civic culture. The black community first gained clout in Los Angeles politics during the 19th century campaigns against slavery and against early California civil statutes that prohibited people of color from testifying in court, attending public schools or voting. According to Lawrence de Graaf, a history professor emeritus at Cal State Fullerton, “more than any other racial minority, [African Americans] used traditional political organizations to gain publicity and leverage.”

Black L.A. business owner Robert Owen and others helped lead an antislavery movement that ultimately led to freedom for a slave woman in Los Angeles named Biddy Mason and her family. In the landmark 1856 court case in L.A. District Court, Judge Benjamin Hayes ruled that Mason and her relatives, who had been brought to the free state of California by their Mormon owner, were “entitled to their freedom and are free forever.” Mason went on to buy property, build a fortune and become a philanthropist and founder of the First AME Church.

After the Civil War and the passage of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, newly enfranchised black voters in L.A. became a swing bloc in municipal elections, a role they continue to hold. At the end of the 19th century, pressure from the State Convention of the Colored Citizens of California, a chapter of the pro-abolition National Colored Convention, led to the repeal of many discriminatory state laws. Although black leaders in 1870 still had to challenge the city registrar for attempting to prevent the 25 black men eligible to vote from participating in that year’s election, by 1911, the city’s 3,000 black male voters helped provide the 3,500-vote margin of victory in California’s referendum on women’s suffrage.

Far more important to the rise of black political influence than bloc voting is coalition building. Because there were generally not enough black voters to win outright majorities, African American politicians have had to make common cause with white voters and with other racial and ethnic minorities to win political office. It’s a skill that dates to at least 1918, when Frederick M. Roberts, a newspaper publisher, mortuary owner and community leader, became the first African American in the West to be elected to state office. At the time, blacks made up not quite 3% of L.A.’s population. The largest concentration was in the then-74th Assembly District, which included Central Avenue, but even there, according to historian Douglas Flamming, fewer than 20% of the district’s voters were black. To win the Assembly seat, Roberts courted white Republican and Progressive Party voters, building what was probably the first multiethnic political coalition in Los Angeles.

Sixteen years later, at the height of the Depression and during Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California campaign, Augustus Hawkins, an African American Democrat, successfully ran for Roberts’ seat, assembling a voter coalition of blacks, whites, union members and the social reformers of L.A.’s “Utopian Society.” Along with Byron Rumford, the first Northern California black to be elected to the Legislature, Hawkins transformed the state’s fair-housing and employment laws before becoming the first African American elected to Congress from the West. (This year, he celebrated his 100th birthday; he is the oldest-living former congressman.)

The importance of coalition building to electoral success was not lost on the trio of black politicians -- Gilbert Lindsay, Billy Mills and Tom Bradley -- who were elected to the L.A. City Council in 1963. Bradley’s coalition-building skills, which helped propel him into the mayor’s office in 1973, are legendary in local politics. But few know how crucial they were to his earlier victory in the 10th Councilmanic District, which at the time was only one-third African American.

Since those 1963 victories, African Americans have steadily held on to three, or 20%, of the City Council’s 15 seats, though they now make up just 11% of the city’s population, according to Raphael Sonenshein, a Cal State Fullerton political scientist. Blacks also have been a crucial swing vote, especially in the two most recent mayoral elections.

Two recent reports point to other reasons why African Americans, despite their small numbers, have retained political and civic influence in the city. One, a 2005 report by the Urban League and the United Way, points out that, in Los Angeles, “blacks and whites are more politically active than Asians or Latinos, including making contributions to political campaigns, working as volunteers or contacting elected officials.” The other report, commissioned by the state’s Legislative Black Caucus and released this year, suggests that black civic participation -- measured by membership in unions and in the armed services and by fluency in English -- is higher than that of whites.

Another important factor in blacks’ political influence in L.A. is the intricate network of institutions and associations, along with numerous black newspapers, that motivate, amplify and unify all the political activity around such core social-justice issues as police brutality, housing and job discrimination and civil and voting rights.

Some of these organizations -- such as the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the Los Angeles Forum, an influential black town hall -- have survived for generations. Others -- such as the Committee for Representative Government, which fought racial barriers to being elected to the City Council in the early 1960s -- arose during moments of political urgency and waned when the issue that sparked them peaked.

Bradley’s early political career owed much to this network of support. It depended heavily on the leadership of H.H. Brookins, pastor of the First AME Church; the Committee for Representative Government and grass-roots activism that led to a community convention that nominated him to run for the City Council. Black opposition to Bradley stood little chance of succeeding in the face of the sentiment, expressed by the Los Angeles Sentinel in 1962, that if “some misguided member of our community [splits] the Negro vote, we should run over him with a steamroller.”

As Los Angeles continues to diversify along ethnic and racial lines, with no group as yet holding an absolute majority and with neighborhoods becoming increasingly heterogeneous, it is urgent that we learn and apply the lessons of 150 years of African American civic and political activism. Perhaps the most important of these lessons is that it is not numbers alone that have produced political victories. Rather, those victories have come as a result of leadership and a long-term commitment to the social-justice issues -- from the battle against slavery to the fights for civil rights and political participation -- that have successfully brought African Americans into the political process.