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Office of Historic Resources and Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles Announce Project to Identify and Protect African American Historic Places in City

Office of Historic Resources and Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles Announce Project to Identify and Protect African American Historic Places in City

By goodblacknews on April 7, 2021

[St. Elmo Village, est. 1969. Photo: Elizabeth Daniels, © J. Paul Getty Trust. St. Elmo Village, an artists’ enclave of ten Craftsman bungalows in a colorful garden setting, was founded by artists Roderick and Rozell Sykes as a place where children and adults could explore their creativity.]

Getty and the City of Los Angeles recently announced the Los Angeles African American Historic Places Project, which plans to identify, protect and celebrate African American heritage within the city.

Despite comprehensive efforts over the years to record Los Angeles’ historic places, the city’s historic designation programs, by their own estimation, do not yet reflect the depth and breadth of African American history. Just over three percent of the city’s 1,200 designated local landmarks are linked to African American heritage.

Over the next three years, the project will work with local communities and cultural institutions to more fully recognize and understand African American experiences in Los Angeles. The work aims to identify and help preserve the places that best represent these stories and work with communities to develop creative approaches that meet their own aims for placemaking, identity, and empowerment.

As the African American population of such areas as West Adams and Jefferson Park began growing in the 1940s, new Black churches were founded. One of the most influential was Holman United Methodist, which commissioned architect Kenneth Nels Lind to design this sanctuary in 1958.

The project is led by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Office of Historic Resources (OHR) within Los Angeles’ Department of City Planning, which is responsible for the management of historic resources within the city. A community engagement program will create a space for meaningful input and local partnerships, drawing upon community-based knowledge of lesser-known histories.

“Historic preservation is about the acknowledgment and elevation of places and stories. The point of this work is to make sure that the stories and places of African Americans in Los Angeles are more present and complete than previously,” says Tim Whalen, John E. and Louise Bryson Director at the Getty Conservation Institute. “The work is also about making sure that preservation methods are examined for systemic bias. It’s ultimately about equity.”

Before embarking on this project, Getty and the city convened a virtual roundtable composed of a group of national and local thought leaders with experience in urban planning, historic preservation, African American history, and/or grassroots and community organizing.

Their discussions of diversity and inclusion in preservation policy helped shape the initiative and its goals. In particular, their input shed light on existing processes and practices that perpetuate biases in how places are recognized and protected, and helped expose current preservation policies that prevent the conservation of places of importance to Black communities.

“This project will illuminate overlooked narratives and historic places important to Los Angeles and our nation that deserve protection and recognition,” says Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a member of the project’s initial thought leader round table meeting.

“Through public and private partnership, the Getty and City of Los Angeles can model broader reform in the U.S. preservation field and can work proactively at the local government and city levels to grow pathways for equitable interpretation and community-driven preservation.”

This project will include research to rethink and potentially expand the heritage preservation toolkit. This involves examining how current historic preservation and planning processes and policies may be reinforcing systemic racism. It will also work to bring new and improved processes that address injustices and bring greater inclusion and diversity to historic preservation practices.

Barber shops, such as Magnificent Brothers—in operation in the Crenshaw district since 1970— could be found eligible for listing based on their social significance to the community.

The initial phase of this project will also provide a framework for identifying and evaluating properties relating to African American history in Los Angeles. In 2018 OHR completed a framework for identifying African American heritage in the city, drawing upon nine themes that included civil rights, deed restriction and segregation, religion and spirituality, social clubs and organizations, and visual arts. The project will include deeper citywide community engagement around this framework and allow for the report’s potential expansion.

“As the largest planning department in the United States, City Planning is uniquely positioned to chart a course for a more fair, equitable, and just Los Angeles for future generations, in part, through cultural heritage and education,” says Vince Bertoni, director of planning for the City of Los Angeles. “We are excited to highlight this broader range of values and history that better represents our diverse city.”

In addition to rethinking the preservation toolkit, the project will include official historic designation of a number of African American historic places by the city. The work of the project will also extend beyond traditional preservation tools to address the development of broader cultural preservation strategies with selected historically Black communities.

The project will also provide opportunities for emerging history, preservation and planning professionals through dedicated paid internships. Additionally, Getty and OHR will soon launch a search for a consultant project leader to further develop, manage, and implement the work of this project, under the guidance of a soon-to-be-established local advisory committee representing key stakeholders in the city’s African American communities.

“The history of Los Angeles is incomplete without recognition of the African American individuals and institutions that shaped the economic, cultural and civic narrative of the region,” says Susan D. Anderson, history curator and program manager at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and a member of the project’s initial thought leader round table meeting. “This important project will expand how heritage is defined and will provide an opportunity to work with local communities and residents to unearth stories that are vital to our understanding of the place we call home.”

The City of Los Angeles and the Getty Conservation Institute have worked together for nearly two decades on local heritage projects. Their joint efforts include SurveyLA, a citywide survey of historic places that was conducted from 2010 through 2017. SurveyLA  covered the entire City of Los Angeles—over 880,000 legal parcels in an area of almost 500 square miles—and identified resources dating from approximately 1865 to 1980. The data from SurveyLA was used to create HistoricPlacesLA, a website launched in 2015 that allows the public to explore these places.

Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building designed by Paul Williams

The announcement follows the Getty Research Institute and the USC School of Architecture’s recent joint acquisition of the archives of Paul R. Williams, one of the most significant African American architects of the 20th century. Several Williams buildings are already designated historic landmarks in Los Angeles, including the 28th Street YMCA and Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company.

The new initiative also builds upon the work of City Planning, in establishing the Office of Racial Justice, Equity, and Transformative Planning in 2020 in response to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Executive Order No. 27 on Racial Equity in City Government. Through the office, City Planning is comprehensively confronting how land use policies and zoning practices have reinforced racial segregation, environmental injustice, and poor health outcomes.

FEATURE: Meet the Women Who Have Made #BlackLivesMatter the Most Crucial Political Movement Today

By goodblacknews on November 10, 2015
Shamell Bell, left, Melina Abdullah and Povi-Tamu Bryant are key leaders of "leaderless" Black Lives Matter.
Shamell Bell, left, Melina Abdullah and Povi-Tamu Bryant are key leaders of “leaderless” Black Lives Matter. (Photo by Shane Lopes)

There was a time when Melina Abdullah wanted to be the next Maxine Waters.

A year or two ago, I recognized that those middle-class aspirations are done,” Abdullah says now, in the soothing voice of a therapist or guidance counselor. “You can’t go in and yell at people or camp in front of the mayor’s house and go, ‘Now I’m running for office.’ I had to make peace with that.”
Abdullah lives in a three-bedroom house in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles with her three children. She drives a Volvo. She’s a tenured professor and chairs the Pan-African Studies department at Cal State Los Angeles. She’s a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first black sorority. She was appointed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to the county’s Human Relations Commission. Abdullah, in other words, has more than a toe in the American middle class.
But Abdullah, who was born in East Oakland and whose dad was a union organizer and self-proclaimed Trotskyist, has chosen to immerse herself in the black working class and its struggles.
She’s not unlike most of the Black Lives Matter leaders — college-educated, middle-class black women who felt compelled to fight against police violence directed at the black community. “Our degrees won’t save us, our middle-class status won’t save us,” she says. “Who’s being killed? Andrew Joseph in Tampa, Florida. His parents are college-educated, middle-class people. Trayvon Martin was killed in a gated community. Aiyana Jones, 7 years old, sleeping on her grandmother’s couch. I have two little girls. How can you sit back? That’s how a lot of us feel. We’re really facing wartime conditions.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah is a tenured professor and chairs the Pan-African Studies department at Cal State L.A.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah is a tenured professor and chairs the Pan-African Studies department at Cal State L.A. (Photo by Shane Lopes)

In a nation where black women are still stuck at the bottom of the power structure, Black Lives Matter is the only major national protest movement to be led by them in modern times. It has in the past two years become the most prominent left-wing movement in the country, a persistent topic on the national news and in both Democratic and Republican presidential debates.
The Black Lives Matter movement also could end up having a significant impact on local, state and national elections — which might be cause for concern among politicians like, say, Mayor Eric Garcetti.
The national organization founded by three black women — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi — takes its cue from the local chapters; the L.A. chapter, in which Abdullah is a key figure, was among the first.

The elements of Black Lives Matters’s DNA — young, female, gay-friendly, artsy — set it apart from every previous civil rights movement.

Although the group prides itself on its leaderlessness, Abdullah is one of five or so black women who, having helped start the L.A. chapter, now serve as its chief organizers. Nearly all are rooted in academia or performance art — or both. Their rhetoric leans toward the highbrow, their tactics toward the theatrical.
“We’re fighting against white supremacist patriarchal society,” says Shamell Bell. “That’s why you need black women to fight it.”
Bell, who’s been involved in Black Lives Matter from the beginning, is perhaps its prototypical organizer. A 31-year-old former professional dancer and former student of Abdullah’s, she’s currently a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA. In a movement that draws on each of its members’ gifts and abilities, Bell often leads street protest dances. While occupying the mayor’s front lawn, she taught a group of activists Jerkin’.
Cullors, 32, who coined the now-global hashtag #blacklivesmatter, is a performance artist who studied religion and philosophy at UCLA. When she was just 17, she joined the Bus Riders Union, a somewhat iconoclastic advocacy group in L.A. that pushes for more funding for the bus system and less funding for light rail.
A distinctly working-class nonprofit, the Bus Riders Union was Cullors’ entry into political organizing. She later started Dignity and Power Now, a coalition that fought brutality by sheriff’s deputies who work inside the county jails.

Cullors grew up in 1990s Pacoima, a low-income northeast San Fernando Valley neighborhood, during the height of the federal war on drugs that disproportionately imprisoned thousands of minorities. Cullors’ father and brother were in and out of prison for most of her adult life.

Patrisse Cullors coined the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.
Black Live Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors coined the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. (photo via laweekly.com)

“That really shaped my understanding of what it meant to be black in this city,” Cullors says. “I had a lot of anger. And I was clear that I wanted to do something about it.”
In Los Angeles, Black Lives Matter has emerged as Mayor Eric Garcetti’s fiercest antagonist. Garcetti was elected without much support in the black community, which backed Wendy Greuel. But Garcetti will almost surely need the backing of black voters should he run for higher office, as is widely assumed.
“Whether he’s running for governor or U.S. senator, the political calculus that his consultants are going to use is that the black vote in Los Angeles can put him over the top,” says Dermot Givens, a political consultant. “Which is why he has to do everything he can to solve this situation.”
Garcetti, who appears galled by this vocal new opposition from the left, has dealt with Black Lives Matter rather clumsily.
After 25-year-old Ezell Ford, who’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was shot to death in August 2014 by LAPD officers in South L.A., the group camped out on the front lawn of the mayoral mansion in Hancock Park. Garcetti made the news, along with Black Lives Matter, when he was caught on video trying to sneak away in a black Suburban SUV.
Bizarrely, when the well-to-do, Encino-raised Garcetti finally met with these black leaders in July, he at one point started speaking to them in Spanish. In the eyes of the organizers, it was as if he saw all minorities as the same and dealt with them accordingly.
“[Garcetti] does a really good job at tokenizing people,” says Black Lives Matter co-founder Cullors. “He does a really good job placating. But he doesn’t actually do the work that it takes to change the culture and change policies that are anti-black.”
“There’s been a shift in politics in the black community,” says Givens, who argues that Black Lives Matter has not so much caused this shift as it has reacted to it. “And the mayor is playing old-school politics. He’s surrounding himself with old-school black people who have no idea what’s going on.”
The origin of Black Lives Matter dates to July 13, 2013, when George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida.

Los Angeles Police Commission Votes 3-1 to Approve Policy on LAPD Body Cameras

By goodblacknews on April 28, 2015
la-2415984-me-1216-lapd-body-cameras-mwy-0306-jpg-20150204
LAPD Officer Jin Oh displays video from a body camera. Some residents have raised privacy and civil liberties questions about the use of the devices. (Photo: Marcus Yam/ latimes.com)
The Los Angeles Police Commission voted Tuesday to approve a policy for equipping officers with body cameras, moving the LAPD a step closer to becoming the nation’s largest law enforcement agency to adopt the widespread use of the devices.
The 3-1 vote occurred after a sometimes-heated discussion over whether officers should be allowed to review video from the cameras before writing reports or giving statements to investigators following serious force incidents.
Civil libertarians opposed allowing officers to review the footage, though LAPD officials said investigators may prevent officers from looking at the video following force incidents that might result in a criminal investigation of the officers.

Los Angeles to Buy 7,000 Body Cameras for Police Officers

By goodblacknews on December 16, 2014

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Tuesday that the city would purchase 7,000 body cameras for police officers in an effort to increase transparency.
Body cameras for officers have become a major issue in the wake of the shooting of unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer and the conflicting accounts of what happened.
At a news conference, Garcetti said the cameras “are not a panacea, but they are a critical part of the formula. They’re a great step forward.”
“The trust between a community and its police department can be eroded in a single moment,” Garcetti said. “Trust is built on transparency.”
Advocates say the cameras will be a valuable tool for the department. The ability to record audio and video of police encounters with the public, they say, could help guard against officer misconduct and clear cops falsely accused of wrongdoing.
Steve Soboroff, president of the Police Commission, has spent months raising private money to outfit officers with on-body cameras. He said the mayor’s plan would supplement the contract the LAPD was already negotiating with the camera vendor, eventually bringing more cameras to officers on the streets.
Screen Shot 2014-12-16 at 8.29.06 PMMore than $1 million raised through private donations will help pay for the cameras, thus avoiding City Hall budget constraints.
Soboroff called the mayor’s plan a “very big deal,” saying the LAPD’s use of the cameras could set a precedent for law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Earlier this year, the LAPD began a pilot program, testing different types of body cameras. Officers spent 90 days trying out camera equipment while department officials gathered input from the inspector general, the American Civil Liberties Union and other law enforcement agencies that have implemented the technology.
article by Richard Winton and Kate Mather via latimes.com