OCTOBER

With quiet tenacity, Tom Bradley, grandson of slaves, overcame the twin bonds of poverty and racism to become Los Angeles’ first African American mayor, a post he held for an unprecedented five terms. During his tenure, from 1973 to 1993, the city changed from a white-dominated collection of suburbs into one of the most diverse metropolises in the world and a major center of international trade and culture. Wielding power based in a coalition he built of liberal whites, blacks, labor and business, Bradley opened City Hall to women and minorities, erected the downtown skyscrapers of Bunker Hill, expanded the city’s port and main airport and presided over the hugely successful 1984 Summer Olympic Games. At Bradley’s funeral, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, shown here presenting the flag that covered the former mayor’s coffin to his widow, Ethel, and their daughters, hailed Bradley, the first black LAPD officer to attain the rank of lieutenant, as one of the department’s “pathfinders and the pioneers of yesteryear. . . . There would not be a Chief Bernard Parks today if there had not been a Tom Bradley.”