Points of Pride

Los Angeles is perceived as a city that buries its own history, where monuments crumble from earthquakes and freeways gouge through old neighborhoods.

But the city has its crusaders for history, some raised here, some transplants curious about what’s hidden under the city’s layers of stucco. Among the preservationists is Our Authors Study Club, the organization that spearheaded Los Angeles’ first observance of Black History Week in 1949 and has remained the keeper of the flame. The club will lead a tour of historic spots for African American Angelenos on Saturday, just as it has for 30 years.

“A lot of people who are on this [tour] committee are Angelenos who grew up here, so they give personal insights into the history,” said Joyce Sumbi, the group’s recording secretary.

Emma Pullen, who moved from North Carolina to Los Angeles 21 years ago at age 26, similarly has thrown herself into local African American history. She works as a researcher with the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research on its South-Central project, which is tracing the history and demographic shifts of that region. She also just produced the short documentary “Marching Into the Millennium,” an overview of black Angeleno history, for the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. Not everyone realizes the value in their own memories, Pullen said. She interviewed people who lived near Central Avenue in the 1940s, for instance. “And I was telling them things,” she said.

To prevent the memories of neighborhoods, businesses and clubs from fading along with buildings themselves, groups such as the African American Tourism and Hospitality Council work to draw attention to what remains. James Burks, who is chairman of the council, said that tours of historic African American sites aren’t just interesting to the tourists.

“What tourism does is give a sense of perspective to the people who live in those areas,” Burks said. “It says to them that they should be proud of where they live, and know it’s important.”

Sprinkled throughout L.A.’s urban sprawl are some points of particular historic interest that might make a timely tour during February, Black History Month:

El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park

Los Angeles’ first black community was within the first pueblo here. In February 1781, 44 people set out from Spanish Colonial Mexico to establish a pueblo between the missions in San Gabriel and Santa Barbara. More than half of them--26--were of African descent. Their ancestors were some of the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Africans brought to New Spain by the Spanish as slaves and laborers in the 1500s and 1600s. By 1700, most were free subjects of New Spain, integrated with the local Indian tribes and mestizo population, and helped to colonize Alta (North) California.

A plaque near the gazebo in El Pueblo de Los Angeles pays tribute to those 11 families that arrived here Sept. 4, 1781, and lists their names, age and race. While the plaque is a small thing, it’s telling to Sumbi. “If people really thought about that,” she said, “Los Angeles has been multicultural from the very beginning.”

* El Pueblo de Los Angeles, 622 N. Main St. (213) 628-1274.

Biddy Mason Park

Born into slavery in Georgia, Biddy Mason was brought to San Bernardino by her master, Robert Marion Smith, in 1851 and continued to work for him as a slave despite the fact that California was a free state. When Smith tried to take Mason and her family back to Texas in 1855, where slavery was still legal, she sued Smith. A ruling freed Mason and her family, and they settled in Los Angeles.

Mason worked as a midwife and invested $250--10 years’ worth of savings--in two plots of land on Spring Street, between 3rd and 4th streets. When the area became part of the city’s financial district, she became wealthy, letting out office buildings on the property. In 1871, she founded the First African Methodist Episcopal church--which is still one of the city’s most prominent congregations--in her living room.

The park, near the site of her original homestead, contains an 8-by-81-foot tableau that traces the events of her remarkable life.

* Biddy Mason Park, Broadway Spring Center, 333 S. Spring St. Closes at 9 p.m. (213) 626-2099.

African American Firefighter Museum

Fire Station No. 30 was one of only two stations in the city where African Americans were allowed to work during the first half of the century. After the U.S. Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional in 1954, other public agencies, including the Fire Department, were forced to desegregate. The black firefighters, whose numbers had been limited by the fact that they could only work at two stations, were spread throughout the city, often only one to a station.

In December 1997, Fire Station No. 30 was turned into a museum honoring those men and their predecessors in the department. Much of the material on display came from Arnett Hartsfield, a retired firefighter, professor and attorney who carefully recorded the experiences of African Americans during the integration of the city’s Fire Department in his book “The Old Stentorians.” Other Stentorians--members of an organization for black firefighters--have contributed photos and uniforms as well.

* African American Firefighter Museum, 1401 S. Central Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 744-1730. Open Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; and the second and fourth Sundays of each month, 1 to 4 p.m.

The Lincoln Theatre

Starting in the 1920s, the Lincoln Theatre was the preeminent venue for African American entertainment in the West. Theater productions, swing music, films and comedians were all presented at the Lincoln, which is now the Crouch Temple Church of God in Christ.

When 17-year-old Clora Bryant arrived in Los Angeles in 1945, the Lincoln made a big impression. “Coming from the South, it was quite impressive to me, especially because it was in the black neighborhood,” said Bryant, 71, who went on to play trumpet in clubs up and down Central Avenue. “I’d seen big marquees and things back East, but to see one in our neighborhood that was big and flashy. . . . When you went inside, there was an aura and a feeling. . . . I felt like I was part of that area and I was part of that theater.”

* The Lincoln Theatre, 23rd Street and South Central Avenue.

The California Eagle

Under editor Charlotta Bass, the California Eagle crusaded for voting rights and the end of Jim Crow laws, covered the lives of African Americans largely ignored by the other daily newspapers and exposed the plans of the Ku Klux Klan. After the Eagle reported in 1925 that the KKK was trying to influence the government of Watts, which had not yet been incorporated into Los Angeles, the Klan sued for libel. After losing, eight Klansmen tried to intimidate Bass at her office one night. They retreated after she pulled a gun out of her desk. Today that two-story brick building holds an appliance store.

Bass, who came to Los Angeles in 1910, practiced what her weekly paper preached. She took over the Advocate, renaming it the California Eagle, in 1912 and the paper lasted until 1964. She was a labor activist and after she sold the newspaper in 1951, she ran for Congress and later for vice president on the Progressive Party ticket.

* The California Eagle office, 4071-4075 S. Central Ave. (now an appliance store).

Ralph Bunche House

Years before he was a diplomat and Nobel laureate, Ralph Bunche was a student at John Adams Junior High School and Jefferson High School. The small frame house is where Bunche lived with his family until he graduated from UCLA in 1927. Vacant, boarded up and marred by graffiti, the house sits behind a chain-link fence begging for rehabilitation.

Bunche taught political science at Howard University from 1928 to 1940 and earned his doctorate from Harvard in 1934. He later went to work for the State Department and then the United Nations, advising members on issues related to African colonialism. In 1950 his efforts as part of the U.N. Palestine Commission earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, making him the first African American to be so honored.

* Ralph Bunche House, 1221 E. 40th Place.

Dunbar Hotel

In the 1920s, dentist John Alexander Somerville was denied a room at a hotel in San Francisco because he was black. In 1928, he built his own hotel on Central Avenue at 42nd Street, determined to give blacks a high-quality place to stay in Los Angeles.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, Somerville lost the hotel, which was bought by the Lincoln Hotel Co. and renamed after the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Located next door to the now-gone Club Alabam and near other clubs, the Dunbar was the home-away-from-home for countless jazz notables, including Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Some of their names are still visible on the directory of residents at the front door. The refurbished building and the block to the south are the most enduring reminders of this corridor a half-century earlier. In the lobby is “Pride and Perseverance,” a display about Central Avenue in its heyday.

“You gotta go there and feel the ghosts of those jazz artists who played there and who slept there,” said Burks of the African American Tourism and Hospitality Council, who is also director of William Grant Still Art Center. “Everything Walter Mosley wrote in his books you can feel in the hotel.”

* Dunbar Hotel, 4225 S. Central Ave. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on weekends for specific events. (323) 234-7882.

Sugar Hill/West Adams district

Starting in the 1930s, the West Adams district was home to many of Los Angeles’ middle- and upper-class African Americans. Among the Hollywood set who lived there were actresses Louise Beavers, Butterfly McQueen and Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel.

The neighborhood had been predominantly white until the Depression, when many residents were forced to sell their homes. In an effort to keep blacks out, restrictive covenants were attached to property deeds, forbidding blacks to own or inhabit homes there. In 1943, a group of white homeowners actually tried to remove about 30 black families from the neighborhood, including the three famed actresses of the day. But such covenants--which covered huge portions of the city--were deemed unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 and outlawed completely five years later. A few years after that, Sugar Hill--as West Adams was also known--was unceremoniously split in half by the Santa Monica Freeway construction. Many of the impressive homes remain, however, in the areas just north and south of the freeway.

* West Adams/Sugar Hill, between Western and Normandie avenues, Washington and Adams boulevards. Hattie McDaniel’s house, 2203 S. Harvard Blvd. Butterfly McQueen’s house, 2215 S. Harvard Blvd. Louise Beavers’ house, 2219 S. Hobart Blvd.

Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co.

The Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building is as significant for the business inside as is the structure itself. In 1925, William Nickerson Jr., Norman O. Houston and George A. Beavers started an insurance company in a few upstairs rooms in an office building along Central Avenue. Their clients were African Americans, who were forced to pay punitively high premiums by other, white-owned companies, or deemed uninsurable altogether.

The large, modern building at Western Avenue and Adams Boulevard is testimony to their success. Noted black architect Paul Revere Williams--who also designed the Hollywood YMCA, Chasen’s restaurant and numerous stars’ homes--designed the building.

During office hours, visitors can see some of the company’s art; Golden State Mutual has a nearly unrivaled collection of African American art, including works by painters Charles White, Barnette Honeywood and Hughie Lee-Smith and painter-sculptor Elizabeth Catlett. Two large murals from 1949 by Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston depict the history of blacks in California.

* Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co. building, 1999 W. Adams Blvd. (323) 731-1131.

Watts Labor Community Action Committee Center

Founded by Ted Watkins Sr. near the time of the Watts riots in 1965, the Watts Labor Community Action Committee worked with labor unions and the government to provide jobs and housing to residents of South-Central Los Angeles.

In a horrible irony, Watkins and his staff had to flee their headquarters in the spring of 1992, when rioters broke into the complex and burned its offices and part of the center. But the organization rebuilt and the center now holds a Civil Rights Museum in Phoenix Hall, which focuses on the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the events leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Also worth noting is the 16-foot “Mother of Humanity” bronze statue created by Nijel in 1995.

* Watts Labor Community Action Committee Building, 10954 S. Central Ave. Museum open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Suggested donation, $5; $3, students/seniors. (323) 563-5642.

Ted Watkins Memorial Park

Formerly Will Rogers Memorial Park, this oasis in the middle of Watts was renamed for Watkins after his death in 1994. Along the eastern side, at Success Avenue, is the Promenade of Prominence, which commemorates the achievements of local politicians, activists and others with marble plaques set into the sidewalk.

* Ted Watkins Memorial Park, 103rd Street and South Central Avenue.

Watts Towers

Built between 1921 and 1954 by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia, the three spiraling towers became a sort of visual symbol for the community of Watts when they emerged unscathed from the 1965 uprising.

Annexed by Los Angeles in 1926, Watts was the gateway for many of the city’s immigrants, including thousands of African Americans from the South and Texas driven west during the Depression. By 1950, more than 70% of Watts residents were black. Today, the area is more than half Latino.

The Watts Towers Art Center has a gallery, sponsors classes and even has a composer-in-residence. On Feb. 27 the new Cultural Crescent Amphitheater will be dedicated as well.

* Watts Towers and Art Center, 1727 E. 107th St. (323) 569-8181.

Leimert Park Village

Centered at 43rd Place and Degnan Boulevard, Leimert Park Village has since the 1970s emerged as the center of African American culture in Los Angeles. Coffeehouses, jazz clubs, art galleries and dance studios all thrive, and the area is the host for countless African American celebrations, from Kwanzaa to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. “It’s what Central Avenue used to be,” said Pullen, the historian and documentary filmmaker. “You have an artistic community that meets there all the time.”

* Leimert Park Village, along Degnan Boulevard north of Leimert Park.

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Historic African American Los Angeles

1. El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument

622 N. Main St.

2. Biddy Mason Timeline

333 S. Spring St.

3. African American Firefighter Museum

Formerly Fire Station 30

1401 S. Central Ave.

4. Lincoln Theatre

23rd Street and South Central Avenue

5. Former office of the California Eagle

4071 S. Central Ave. (now an appliance store)

6. Ralph Bunche House

1221 E. 40th Place

7. Dunbar Hotel

4225 S. Central Ave.

8. Sugar Hill/West Adams district

Between Western and Normandie; Washington and Adams

9. Golden State Mutual Life Insurance

1999 W. Adams Blvd.

10. Watts Labor Community Action Committee

10954 S. Central Ave.

11. Ted Watkins Memorial Park

(formerly Will Rogers Memorial Park) and Success Avenue on East side of Park

12. Watts Towers

1727 E. 107th St.

13. Leimert Park Village

Along Degan Boulevard north of 43rd Place

Learn About L.A.’s Black Landmarks

During Black History Month, several groups are offering tours of some sites mentioned in the cover story as well as other points of interest around Los Angeles.

* Our Authors Study Club leads a free six-hour tour of Historic Black Los Angeles on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. Seating is first-come, first-served. Departing from Golden State Mutual Life Insurance parking lot, 1999 W. Adams Blvd. (323) 295-0521.

* Our Authors Study Club sponsors a four-hour Children’s Art and History Tour of Black Los Angeles, Feb. 13, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Departing from Leimert Park. Free. Reservations required. (323) 299-0319.

* KEP Tours leads a four-hour Historical Black Los Angeles Tour on Feb. 20 at 10 a.m. departing from Leimert Park. $17.50; $15.50 ages 7 and under. Reservations required. (562) 461-9956.

* OASIS on Central Avenue holds lectures, panel discussions and demonstrations on history, jazz, theater and other subjects throughout February as part of its “Central Avenue and Its Black History” program. Call (323) 231-6220 for program information.