In 1922, historian Carey McWilliams arrived to Los Angeles from Colorado via the Southern Pacific railroad. His first home in the city was in the area that, in the year 2000, was designated as the Little Armenia section of East Hollywood. As McWilliams tells it in his Southern California: An Island on the Land (1946):
“My dear uncle--the kindest man I have ever known--met me at the old Southern Pacific station…and drove me out Sunset Boulevard to the white-stucco six-unit flat he owned near the corner of Normandie and Sunset.”
Today, Southern California remains relevant for its candid look at the racial relations underlying L.A.’s history since the city’s founding. Note the book’s following excerpt on L.A. County and the state’s record-breaking deadliness just three years after being placed under U.S. jurisdiction (1850):
“In 1853, California had more murders than the rest of the United States, and Los Angeles had more than the rest of California. In a five-year period, 1849-1854, Californians invested $6,000,000 in bowie knives and pistols, and during this period the state reported 2,400 murders, 1,400 suicides, [and] ‘10,000 other miserable deaths.’”
When one considers that the same year California entered “the union,” its first legislators passed the 1850 California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which outlawed Native Californians from testifying in court against whites while also legalizing their indentured servitude and forced removal from ancestral homelands, it’s clear just how such an “arms race” led only to more fatalities. It’s also telling of how L.A. and the Golden State’s racial hierarchies were literally embedded into law at the outset of their tenure for U.S. markets and government, only for still too many residents here to have little to no familiarity with.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Making A Neighborhood to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.