On November 28, 1866, Biddy Mason purchased two lots, bounded by Spring, Fort (now Broadway), 3rd and 4th Streets on the, then, outskirts of Los Angeles, for $250. Eighteen years later it was next to the city center.
Biddy Mason was brought to California as a slave in a wagon train. She petitioned for her freedom, and a judge granted it to her and her family in 1856. She and her family lived with Robert Owens, Sr., when she first moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter Ellen married Robert Owen's son Charles.
Bessie Coleman standing alongside a plane in a field. Next to her is an unidentified male pilot. Coleman is wearing a leather pilot's cap, goggles and a jacket. .
After his retirement from the military in 1906, Colonel Allen Allensworth founded the town of Allensworth in 1908, with the idea that African Americans could own property, learn, thrive, and live the American Dream. It was named by Lt. Colonel Allen Allensworth. It had a school system by 1910. With the death of Colonel Allensworth in 1914, the town experienced extreme losses, coupled with severe drought and decreased crop yields. Many residents left the area following World War I. The town was memorialized as a state park in 1974, and hosts events annually to preserve its history.
The unidentified couple in the foreground looks like Loren Miller, Jr. (wearing glasses and looking at pamphlet) and his first wife Anne M. Risher Miller. The event might be the NAACP banquet at which Loren Miller, Sr., spoke in October 1962.
Interior view of the Holman United Methodist Church -- a large, open space with light streaming through small, asymmetrical piercings in the thick wall and matching rectangular, sculptural pendant light fixtures. The church is filled to capacity with the pastor on the right curing a church service.
The Watts Riot, 1965, Los Angeles, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion, took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist on parole for robbery, was pulled over for reckless driving. A minor roadside argument broke out, and then escalated into a fight with police. The riots were blamed principally on police racism.
Pioneers (left to right): Royale Towns, Sadie Colbert, Melba Clark Whittaker, Harvey Earl, and Estella Earl, holding a copy of the book The Negro Trail-Blazers of California (probably the book by Delilah L. Beasley, published in 1919).
Exterior view of the Pio Pico Adobe house with a Spanish style gable on the left facade. The electrical pole on the right indicates that the photograph was probably taken after 1917, when electricity was being introduced to the Los Angeles area.
African American men holding picket signs on a street corner. Signs read "If good enough to fight together, why not to work together," "Jim Crow must Go!," "American youth wants Democracy [...]" One man holds a folded newspaper with partial headlines reading "[...]pper attacks [...] Lindenberg"