History of Los Angeles

This article develops the history of Los Angeles , California.

Chronological history

The Amerindian time

One found on the Île Santa Rosa of the Chanel Islands of California the remainders of the Arlington Springs Man , going back to 10000 to 13000 years before Jesus-Christ, which are among the oldest human bones of America. They show that the area of Los Angeles has been inhabited for this time. Among the principal tribes Amerindian born which lived there, one counts that of the Tongva or Gabrieliños, distributed in all the area, the Tataviam, installed in the northern part of the Vallée of San Fernando - from where their name of Fernandeños -, the Cahuillas and the Chumash. Tongva and Chumash are then the two principal groups. They have also present on the islands of the coast, which makes develop important a maritime Commerce between insular and continental communities. The Anthropologue S regard the technique of construction of ships used by these people as the best among all the tribes of North America. The tribes of California of the south trade with people as distant as the Piutes from the Vallée of Owens, located at 320 kilometers inside the grounds.

At the time of the arrival of the Spanish missionaries at the 18th century, approximately 5000 members of the tribe of Tongva were divided in the area on 31 villages.

From 1769 to 1875

Although the Spanish began the conquest of the Mexico in 1519, they did not launch forwarding in the Alta California (High California) before 1769, when the explorer Gaspar de Portolà reaches this part of the area. In 1771 the Spaniards returned and founded the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel, one of the eight missions established by the Franciscains in California of the South.

The September 4th 1781, 44 pobladores , recruited north of Mexico to help to reinforce Spanish control on high California, founded the city. Only two of these colonists were Spanish: the remainder had primarily African roots or Indian. The small town accepted the name El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina of los Ángeles of Porciúncula , “the town of Notre Dame Reine of the Angels of the small portion”. Located on the Los Angeles To rivet, the village became a center for the breeding of bovines ( ranching ).

The independence of Mexico in 1821 changed the life in Los Angeles little, even if it allowed the secularization of the missions: their properties were shared between the rancheros .

In 1842, a shepherd discovered Or in the Canyon of Placerita, just apart from the limits of the city, that which caused a Gold rush minor. In the following decades, mining became an important industry. The local mountains are always covered with abandoned mines and the prospectors always seek gold in the Rivière San Gabriel.

The ideology of the Destinée proclamation reaches California at the time of the américano-Mexican Guerre (1846-1848). The June 18th 1846, an small group of Yankees drew up the flag of California and declared independence compared to Mexico. American troops quickly took the control of the Presidio of Monterey and San Francisco and declared the conquest finished. In the south of California, the Mexicans pushed back for a time the American troops, but Los Angeles ends up falling under the attacks from the Lieutenant-colonel John C. Frémont. The United States and Mexico signed the treaty of capitulation to the master key of Cahuenga, the January 13rd 1847.

The April 4th 1850, with 1 734 inhabitants, Los Angeles became officially a city. At the same time, the former landowners started to lose their grounds. Summoned by the courts of the United States to prove their rights, ten percent of the owners of bona fide of the county of Los Angeles had to leave their grounds and were reduced to the Banqueroute. Luckiest of the rancheros lost their statute of californios and were absorbed in other communities, according to their financial condition and the color of their skin.

In 1860, the city had exceeded the 5 000 inhabitants

Other Mexican residents resisted the new capacities anglo while delivering themselves to the banditism against the gringos. In 1856, Juan Flores threatened California of the South of a massive Mexican revolt. It was hung in Los Angeles in front of a crowd of 3 000 people. Tiburcio Vasquez, become legendary among its contemporaries for its exploits against Anglos, was captured so that one thinks of being Western Hollywood today. The gangster was condemned for two murders by a jury to San Jose in 1874; he was hung in 1875.

Los Angeles extends 1875 - 1905

The railway of the Southern Pacific ( Southern Pacific Railroad ) arrived in 1876. Oil was discovered by Edward L. Doheny in 1892, close to the current site of the Dodger Stadium. Los Angeles became an oil production center at the beginning of the 20th century (in 1923, the area produced a quarter of the worldwide production). In spite of these assets which doped its economic growth, Los Angeles was always a city smaller and less important than San Francisco.

The Angeleno S decided to modify their geography in order to compete with San Francisco with its ports, stations of trains, banks and factories. Harrison Gray Otis, founder and owner of the Los Angeles Times , as well as a number of partners undertook to reorganize the south of California by creating a port with San Pedro with a federal financing.

That put them in bad relations with Collis P. Huntington, president of the Souther Pacific Railroad Company and one of “Large the Four” industrialists of California, which supported a port with Santa Monica. The efforts for San Pedro carried it and work started in 1899 for finished in 1910. Otis Chandler and its allies amended the law of the State in 1909 making it possible Los Angeles to absorb San Pedro and Wilmington.

The installation of the aqueduct of Los Angeles

In order to soutenur the population growth (in 1900, the population had exceeded the 100 000 inhabitants) and to answer the challenges to come, one put oneself at seeks new sources of water for the metropolis. To 400 km in the North-East of Los Angeles, in the County of Inyo, close to the border with the Nevada, in the desert area of the Owens valley, the Rivière Owens ran. It represented a permanent fresh water flow nourished by the snow melt of the Sierra Nevada which finished in a salted lake.

Between 1899 and 1903, Harrison Gray Otis and its successor, his son-in-law Harry Chandler, successfully directed efforts to repurchase cheap grounds with the edges of Los Angeles in the Vallée of San Fernando. They took then the control of the Owens river and construirent a Aqueduc, mainly conceived by William Mulholland to bring the water of the valley of Owens through the mountains and the desert to the valley of San Fernando. J.B. Lippencott, of the United States Reclamation Service (which also secretly received wages of the town of Los Angeles) succeeds in persuading the farmers of the valley of Owens and the water companies to join their interests and to leave the rights to water on 800 km ² of grounds at this place to Fred Eden, the agent of Lippencott and former mayor of Los Angeles. Eden resigned then of the Complaint Service, was engaged by the Office of the Water of Los Angeles as assistant with William Mulholland, chief of the office, and gave all the charts, field studies and measurements of flows developed by the service at the city.

In July 1905, the Los Angeles Times started to inform the voters of Los Angeles which the county would be quickly dry unless they vote for the bond issue for the construction of an aqueduct bringing water since the Owens river. Conditions of artificial dryness were created when water was sent in the sewers to reduce the pressure on water reserves and the inhabitants did not have the right to sprinkle their lawns and gardens. The day of the election, the inhabitants of Los Angeles voted for an bond issue of 22,5 million dollars to build the aqueduct and to finance the other costs of the project. With this money, the city bought the ground that Eden had acquired farmers of the valley of Owens. Mulholland then started to build what was at the time the longest aqueduct of the world.

1914-1940: birth and development of the cinema in Hollywood

It is during the First World War that the cinema takes its rise in Hollywood: since 1913, the large realizers like C.B. Demille or Jesse Lasky join Los Angeles. The war weakens the European cinema and makes it possible Hollywood to become “Mecque world of the cinema”. Quickly, Hollywood attracts actors and technicians and large companies are constituted: the Warner Brothers Studios are created in 1923 in Hollywood. In the Years 1930, the Subway-Goldwyn-Mayer becomes the largest production company of Hollywood: its studios extend on 35 000 hectares and employ 6 000 people. It produces the many traditional ones, among which Grand Hotel or the series of the Tarzan and made Greta Garbo and of Joan Crawford of the stars. The Oscars are created at the end of the years 1920. The Grande Depression affects Hollywwod as from 1933.

Los Angeles during and right after the Second world war 1941 - 1950

During the Second world war, Los Angeles became a production center of planes, weapons and ammunition. Thousands of Afro-American S and White of the south migrated there to take uses of factory.

In 1950, Los Angeles had become an industrial and financial giant created by the production for the war and the migration. Los Angeles assembled more cars than any other city of the USA with share Detroit, made more tires than any other city with share Akron (Ohio), made more pieces of furniture than Grand Rapids, and bent more clothing than any other city with share New York. In addition, it was the national capital for the production of films, programs radio and, a few years later, of programs of Télévision. Construction was a sector in exponential growth whereas houses were built on model in suburbs expanding constant, the whole financed by generosities of the Federal Housing Administration (created like part of the program of the New Deal ).

Los Angeles continued to extend, in particular with the development of the valley of San Fernando and the construction of the highways, started in the Années 1940. Los Angeles became a city built around the car, with all the social, political problems and of health which this dependence can produce.

The “Suburbanisation” of the city

The urban development of the city became a notable specificity of the city, and the rate/rhythm of the expansion accelerated in the first decades of the 20th century. The Valley of San Fernando, sometimes named “the suburbs of America”, became a favorite site of construction, and the city started to grow beyond its roots towards the ocean and is.

The fifty last years (1950 - 2000)

During the fifty last years, Los Angeles knew strong a Désindustrialisation. The last automobile factory was closed in the Années 1990; the factories of tires and steel were delocalized before. The majority of the agricultural activities and breeding which always thrived in the Années 1950 are moved in the neighbouring counties and the industry of the piece of furniture moved with the Mexico and other countries where the wages are weaker. Aerospace industry was strongly reduced at the end of the Cold war or moved in States in which the taxes are weaker; cinema industry found places less expensive for the production of films, television programs or publicities elsewhere in the United States or the Canada. Although Los Angeles is always a major center for the clothes industry and the texile, the city became much more dependant on the service sector.

These macroeconomic changes caused important social changes. Although unemployment was reduced to Los Angeles in the years 1990, the lately created jobs were especially uses with low wages, often occupied by the recent immigrants; some suggested that the number of poor families would have increased by 36% to 43% of the population of the county of Los Angeles at that time. At the same time, the number of immigrants of Mexico, from Central America and Latin America returned Los Angeles a city “mainly minority” which will be soon mainly Hispanic.

One attends an ethnic recombining recently: thus, the district of Watts, formerly primarily black, is now rather latino. Comton, apart from the town of Los Angeles, but in the county of Los Angeles, and which gained a certain celebrity through the Musique rap of N.W.A. and other groups, is also more and more latino. Although the community latino of the city before was primarily centered on Los Angeles East, it extends now on all the city. The valley of San Fernando, a white bastion in the Years 1960 and provides the votes making it possible Sam Yorty to beat the first election run by Tom Bradley, is now as varied ethniquement as the remainder of the city on other side of the hills of Hollywood.

Instead of feeling nearer, however, the opposite seems to be produced. At the end of the XXe century, some of the suburbs started to feel excluded from the policy options of the megapole, causing a movement of secession in the valley of San Fernando and others weaker in San Pedro and Hollywood. The referendums aiming at separating the cities were rejected by the voters in November 2002.

However, the majority of these problems do not feel so hard in the life of Los Angeles, making finally City of the Angels a place where it makes good things in life, any modern relativity considered.

History set of themes of Los Angeles

Afro-Americans and Los Angeles

Although Los Angeles is the only major city of the United States to be rested by colonists primarily of African roots, the city had only 2 100 Afro-Americans in his census of 1900; in 1920, they were approximately 15 000. In 1910, the city had the rate more raised possession of houses by the Blacks of the country, with 36% of the residents Afro-Americans having their own house. That made say to W.E.B. Dubois in 1913 that nowhere in the " United States; the negros are not so well and magnificiently logés."

That changed in the Années 1920, when racial restrictions for housing, originally intended for Asian, Mexicains and Jewish, were applied to the Blacks. The Blacks were confined with the district of Watts, Los Angeles and the other communities in the south of Los Angeles ( South Central Los Angeles ), which received much less services than the remainder of the city.

This policy led to problems of housing in the Years 1940 whereas the growth of the industry of defense brought more and more Afro-Americans in the city. The efforts to offer a system of public housing were rejected like communist inspiration in the Années 1950.

Watts had also a level of chronically raised unemployment, and not of agency of assistance to the looking for a job; three lines of bus, but not of line carrying out towards the major centers of employment. Its schools were below the average and the hospital nearest at two hours to bus. Watts was a small center of poverty in a city where the black population had multiplied by ten between 1950 and 1965.

The riots of Watts of 1965 surprised nevertheless the authorities. The riots started with a minor incident of police force and lasted four days. Thirty-four people were killed and thousand thirty-four wounded at a cost of forty million dollars in damage and plundering. So much of stores were burned on the 103e street which people called it the alley of coal.

Although the city and the county took some measurements to improve the lack of social services for the black community after the riots of Watts - most visible being the construction of a hospital of county for the community -, for the majority the things nothing but did worsen during the twenty-five years following the riots. Disindustrialization caused the closing of the factories of vehicles, tires, steel and naval construction, which deprived Los Angeles of well paid industrial employment which had opened to the workers Afro-Américains and Latinos. At the same time, the drug trafficking and the gangs had reached critical levels. The police force of Los Angeles, which had followed a military model since the mode of Chief Parker in the Années 1950, had become more hated even by the minorities than it was supposed to protect and be useful.

All that caused the events of 1992: after a jury of suburbs in the valley of Simi, in the county of Ventura, discharged the police officers who had beaten Rodney King the previous year. After four days of riots, more than fifty died, and billion dollars of damage, the national guard and the police force ended up taking again control. It remains to be seen whether he occurred since a change or if this situation is intended to reproduce.

Mexicans, Pachucos, Chicanos and Latinos in Los Angeles

A continuous migration of Mexicans towards California between 1910 and 1930 increased the Mexican populations and chicanos of Los Angeles until about 200 000 people. In 1930, the United States started to expel them, off-setting more than one half-million of Mexicans and Chicanos of California and 13.332 of the county of Los Angeles in the Années 1930. At that time, the city celebrated its hundred-fiftieth birthday in 1931 with a “fiesta of Los Angeles”, including a fair reina in a traditional costume ranchero.

During Second world war, hostility towards Americans of origin Mexican took form different, whereas the local newspapers introduced the Chicanos young people, who named themselves sometimes pachucos , like hardly civilized gangsters. Anglo soldiers attacked Chicanos young people equipped in the usual behavior for pachuco with the time: long coats with broad shoulders and high pants, in 1943. Twenty-two Chicanos young people were condemned for murder on another young person in a festival organized to the south-east of Los Angeles in a place known under the name of Sleepy Lagoon (" lagoon endormi") in one night of August 1942; they were finally released after a call which showed at the same time their innocence and the racism of the judge having led the lawsuit.

The community latino of Los Angeles was largely excluded until the Années 1990, when the reorganization of the districts of the city leads to the election of members latino to the council of the city for the first time since the Années 1950, and with the first members latino of the Office of the Supervisors of the county of Los Angeles since its creation. With the enormous growth of the community latino, primarily due to Mexican immigration, but also of Central America and south, it is now the greatest ethnos group of Los Angeles. Although Antonio Villaraigosa lost the election for the town hall in 2001, the political directors latino should probably be with the foreground in the decades to come.

The Asian ones in Los Angeles

Less than one century after the creation of Los Angeles, Chinatown was a very active community, near to the deposit of suburban trains. Thousands of Chinese came to north from California in the Années 1850, at the beginning to join the Gold rush then to take part in the construction of the railway lines. They started to move towards the south as the transcontinental railroad connected Los Angeles with the remainder of the country.

Later, the Chinese workers who had helped to build the aqueduct to the Owens river and worked in the fields of the valley of San Joaquin spent their winters in an enclave ethniquement separated from Los Angeles. In 1872, eleven years before the vote of the Act of exclusion of the Chinese of 1882, Chinese Exclusion Act , a violent anti-Chinese demonstration occurred in Chinatown, killing out of the Chinese residents and plundering the shops and restaurants.

The lack of workers caused by the Chinese Exclusion Act was filled by workers Japan board and, in 1910, the known site from now on under the name of “Little Tokyo” appeared close to Chinatown. At the beginning of the First World War, much of Japanese farmers had sufficiently saved to buy or rent grounds of culture of fruits or vegetables in peripheral zones like Gardena, Beverly Hills or San Gabriel.

During the years between the two world wars, the asio-American community of Los Angeles included also small groups of Korean-Americans and Filipinos, the latter filling the vacuum according to the exclusion of the Japanese in 1924.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States authorized the evacuation and the imprisonment in concentration camps of all the alive Japanese in California, whatever was their citizenship. The Japanese of the south of California were to present themselves to temporary barraquements located at the Racecourse Santa Anita with Arcadia, in the south of Pasadena. Almost 20 000 of the 93 000 Américano-Japanese of the State were confined in these districts before being moved inside in camps of internment.

Since the Second world war, the immigration of Asia and the Pacific was reduced considerably. The flow of immigrants from the Filipino , the Korea, Taiwan, HongKong, the Pacific Islands and the Southeast Asia led to the development of enclaves like Koreatown in the center town, a Kampuchean community with Long Beach, Samoans with Compton, Hawaiian Gardens and Wilmington, a community Thai with Hollywood, Vietnameses with Chinatown and Garden Grove in the county of Orange, Chinese in Monterey Park and of the sectors of the valley of San Gabriel.

Los Angeles and the principle open shop

At the same time as the Los Angeles Times was enthusiastic for the expansion of the city, it also tried to transform the city into a city without trade union of workers or city Open shop . The farmers of fruits and commercial local which had been opposed to the Grève of Pullman in 1894 formed then the Association of the merchants and manufacturers ( Merchants and Manufacturers , M&M) to support the countryside antisyndicats Los Angeles Times .

The trade union of California, concentrated on San Francisco, had largely been unaware of Los Angeles during years. That changed into 1907, however, when the American Federation of Labor ( American Federation off Labor , AFL) decided to fight the city open shop of “Otis Town”, the paroxysm of this fight was on October 1st 1910 when a bomb destroys a good part of the factory of publication of the Los Angeles Times .

The authorities condemned for this attack John and James McNamara, both in relation to the Trade union of the workers of iron ( Iron Workers Union ); the lawyer Clarence Darrow, who had previously defended successfully Big Bill Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone in Idaho, represented them.

At the time when the McNamara brothers awaited their lawsuit, Los Angeles prepared for an election for the town hall. Job Harriman, candidate on the socialist list, disputed the candidate of the Establishment.

The countryside of Harriman, however, was based on the declared innocence of McNamara. But defense was in difficulty: the charge had not only the proof of the complicity of McNamara, but had trapped Darrow in a naive attempt to corrupt one of sworn. February 1st 1911, four days before the election, McNamara agreed to plead guilty in exchange of a custodial sentence. The Los Angeles Times accompanied its article on the subject with a photograph faked by Samuel Gompers trampling an American flag. Harriman undergoes a heavy defeat.

The countryside for the open shop continued victory in victory, but not without opposition of the workers. In 1923, the trade union of the Industrial Workers off the World had made a considerable progress with the action of the Docker S of San Pedro, where 3 000 men left their work in protest. With the support of the Los Angeles Times , a special team, the “Wobbly squad” was formed within the department of police force of Los Angeles and stopped workers so much burdens some that the prisons of the city were soon full.

Some 1 200 dockers were locked up in a corral behind a special palisade in Griffith Park. The Los Angeles Times writes in approval that “the palisades and the forced labor are good remedies for the terrorism of IWW”. The public meetings became illegal in San Pedro, Sinclair Lewis was stopped in Liberty Hill in San Pedro to have read the first ten amendments of the constitution of the USA on the private property one to support strike, and abusive arrests took place with the meetings of trade unions. The strike finished after members of the Ku Klux Klan and American legion (American Legion) off gathered in the hall of the trade union International Workers the World and attacked men, women and children present. The strike failed.

Los Angeles developed another industry at the beginning of the 20th century, when the film producers of the east coast moved there. These new employers were also préocuppés by the trade unions and other social movements: during the countryside of Upton Sinclair for Gouverneur of California with his movement “Let us stop with poverty in California” ( End Poverty in California , EPIC), Louis B. Mayer changed the studios MGM of Culver City into semi-official general headquarter of the countryside organized against EPIC. Produced MGM of false interviews in the information projected with the cinema with actors with a Russian accent expressing their enthusiasm for EPIC, with videos presenting of the beggars blottis to the borders of California waiting until Sinclair is elected to enter and benefit from the money of the taxes of the State to live with their hook. Sinclair lost the elections.

Los Angeles developed also another industry in the years preceding the Second world war: the industry of clothing. At the beginning primarily of regional nature, like sport clothing, industry ends up becoming the second vestimentary production center of the United States.

The trade unions started to progress in the organization of these workers when the New Deal arrived in the Années 1930. There was even more progress during the war, when Los Angeles became even more important.

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