Great Black Way L.a. in the 1940s and the Lost African-american Renaissance

9781586485214

1586485210

In the 1940s, when FDR opened up the defense industry to black workers, it inspired a massive wave of black migration to a small area of Los Angeles along Central Avenue-and an explosion of arts, culture, and politics. In a neighborhood densely packed with black musicians, independent labels and after-hours spots, rhythm and blues was spawned. Chester Himes fathered the black detective novel and a noir sensibility. Black comics took off minstrel blackface once and for all and addressed audiences directly with socially-tinged humor. And, this book argues, the civil rights movement got its start, as the strategy of building mass movements and giving power to ghetto dwellers gained favor in opposition to the top-down strategies of the NAACP and the Urban League. Harlem's Renaissance had been driven by the intellectual elite. In L.A., a new sense of black identity arose from street level. But when the moment was over, many hopes and lives were swept away with it. Book jacket.