Book chronicles black life in L.A. over 227 years

When he arrived at UCLA in 2001, Darnell Hunt had some pressing questions. What research had been done on the history of the black community in Los Angeles? And how did the community evolve into what it is today?

 

As the new director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, Hunt assumed there’d be an embarrassment of riches on the subject. Volumes upon volumes exploring the deep heritage of African American life in Los Angeles.

 

But then he began digging around. 

 

“I was surprised to see that there hadn’t been one major volume that dealt comprehensively with the contemporary complexities of black life in the city, connecting them to the region’s interesting history,” recalled Hunt, a professor of sociology. “As the most prominent research unit focused on African Americans in the region, we knew that we would have to take up the challenge of producing such a volume.”

 

Eight years later, Hunt and his colleagues at the center have done exactly that with “Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities (NYU Press, 2010).” Co-edited by Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramon, assistant director for research at the Bunche Center for African American Studies, the book spans from 1781, when the city of Los Angeles was founded by a group of settlers with African roots, to the rise of Los Angeles’ Karen Bass to Speaker of the California Assembly — the first black woman in America to lead a state legislature.

 

“The tip of the iceberg conceals so much,” said Hunt of the material. “There was so much we discovered once we started to look beneath the waters. You take a place like Leimert Park, which most people would describe as the cultural center of black Los Angeles. Trying to figure out how it came to be that place gave me a respect for the city’s history and how history is made. And how it’s relevant to the present.”

 

Although the book won’t be published until next spring, the center recently released “Black Los Angeles: A Preview,” a research report exploring some of the issues covered in the book. “We felt that in anticipation of the volume being released in April, this would be a good time to put out a preview,” said Hunt.

 

Before a word was even written, Hunt put together a series of working groups at UCLA. He didn’t just bring in the usual collection of scholars, graduate students and academics to weigh in on the book’s content. He also invited people from the community who had their own memorable experiences and history to share.   

 

“We didn’t want to do this ivory tower exercise,” said Hunt. “The goal was to do something we felt would have an impact on the community that would be empowering, to gain a better understanding of where it is and where it needs to go. It seemed presumptuous for us to sit here in Westwood and make those decisions ourselves. So very early on we decided to reach out.” 

 

Early on they also decided to build the book around five major themes:  communities and neighborhoods, religious life, political participation, cultural production and social justice. To illustrate the themes, Hunt did something else unconventional. He asked a range of scholars to contribute essays on those themes.

 

“We felt that dealing with something as complex as black Los Angeles requires a variety of different insights and perspectives,” he said. “You need psychologists, you need people in political science, you need people in popular culture.”

 

After eight years of working on the book, Hunt, a native of Washington, D.C., has his own stories to tell now about the city he calls home. “L.A. is relatively new. Yet there’s so much we don’t know about. So being able to uncover that and explore that from a number of viewpoints was eye-opening to me. I have a much better appreciation for what’s going on in Los Angeles.”