Each Man Made a Contribution to L.A.

What a classic dialogue Karen Hudson’s two grandfathers must have carried on over the years of their friendship and shared patriarchy (“A Legend Restored,” Aug. 8). H. Claude Hudson, the dentist-lawyer and civil rights activist whose assertiveness and confrontive style made him a hero among Los Angeles blacks in the first half of this century. Paul R. Williams, the gifted architect who was deferential to a fault, accommodating white clients to such an extent that he learned to draw renderings upside-down so he could sit across the table rather than next to them.

I learned of Claude Hudson while doing research for a master’s thesis on the way in which the founding fathers of my town kept it all white with a land condemnation in the 1920s. Hudson was once jailed for daring to use the beach.

Williams has left architectural monuments all over our Southern California landscape and in his quieter way proved to all but the most ignorant that a man must be judged by his ability and not his skin color. I like to think that Karen’s other grandfather left a few monuments of his own. We may or may not be there yet, but we seem to be approaching the time when the only relevant color consideration in determining where we live is whether we have enough of that green stuff to swing the deal.

--BOB BRIGHAM

Manhattan Beach