Book Notes

(from the California HISTORIAN)

Bound for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America

By Douglas Flamming

University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2005
467 pages, 40 black and white photographs, 5 maps
hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 0-520-23919-9

Reviewed by Ann Shea, Librarian
California African American Museum, Los Angeles

Los Angeles — a city from heaven. That is how the city
was described by black migrants of the early 20th century in letters to the folks back home in the South. But was Los Angeles truly a heavenly paradise or a city of racial strife?

Douglas Flamming, Associate Professor of History at the Georgia Institute of Technology, vividly relates the trials and tribulations faced by black migrants to the West, and Los Angeles in particular, in the first half of the 20th century. He skillfully takes the reader from the post-Civil War era through Jim Crow, the Depression and the period leading up to World War II. He describes the developing black community and the rising black middle class in Los Angeles.

Professor Flamming relates the stories of the movers and shakers of the era, such as Charlotta Spears Bass of California Eagle newspaper fame and Frederick Robertson, elected to the California State Assembly from the 74th District in 1918, who were in the forefront in the fight for racial equality.

Housing, education, employment and the role that Central Avenue played in the history of black Los Angeles are also covered in detail.

Professor Flamming has written a history that is well documented, with the skill of a novelist.