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Black life in Los Angeles is understudied, historically overlooked

By Darnell M. Hunt

This month, of course, is Black History Month — our annual celebration of African-American contributions to U.S. life, culture and politics. But when noted black historian Carter G. Woodson established Black History Week in 1926 (it became Black History Month in 1976, the nation’s bicentenary), these contributions were not being taught in America’s educational institutions.

Instead, the historical record was fashioned to show that the only meaningful contributors to our nation’s history were white, the only meaningful cultures European. Woodson decried this “miseducation” of blacks. “When you control a man’s thinking,” he famously noted, “you don’t have to worry about his actions.”

Since the late 1960s, black student activists have challenged the relative absence of black history from standard curricula at America’s mainstream colleges and universities, demanding curricula more relevant to black experiences. The result has been the establishment of black studies departments and programs at reluctant, traditionally white campuses from coast to coast. 

In Los Angeles, two UCLA students (both members of the Black Panther Party) were shot and killed during a 1969 meeting in which competing factions fought over who would serve as the first director of the campus’ new Center for Afro-American Studies. Much was at stake, and the center — which was renamed in 2003 after black scholar, activist, Nobel Prize winner and UCLA alumnus Ralph J. Bunche — has made important strides in the aftermath of this tragedy.  Not only has the Bunche center successfully worked to increase the legitimacy of African- American studies on the UCLA campus for the past 37 years, it also has served the broader community as a black “think tank” of sorts.

Through our latest research initiative, the Black Los Angeles Project, my colleagues and I at the Bunche center are working with community representatives to gain a better understanding of black life in Los Angeles, which has been understudied relative to African-American communities in other important cities like Chicago or New York. Because Los Angeles is so large and its million or so African Americans are a relatively small portion (about 11%) of the county’s population, most people outside of Los Angeles probably do not think of the city as having a meaningful black presence. 

While statistical studies such as “The State of Black Los Angeles” recently released by the Los Angeles Urban League and United Way of Greater Los Angeles are important contributions to our knowledge about life in our city, they are not sufficient. For example, what do we do with data showing that blacks have the highest degree of civic engagement among racial groups in the city, while residing at or near the bottom in terms of economics, housing, health, education and criminal justice?

To borrow Woodson’s phrase, we have been “miseducated” about not just the history of Black Los Angeles but also about the meaning of the present and about possibilities for the future. Only by considering the complexity and richness that is Black Los Angeles can we hope to place today’s often distressing statistics in a constructive, empowering context.

Hunt, a professor of sociology, directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.