Racial Issues Developed in L.A.

During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s Los Angeles also became deeply racially divided. As the metropolis and economy expanded, Mexican and African American populations grew in great numbers, but were concentrated in the hardest and lowest-paying jobs.

Chinese immigrants were more successful in developing small businesses, and Japanese immigrants were most successful of all, especially in wholesaling and retailing of agricultural crops and produce.

All minorities suffered discrimination, however, and were increasingly segregated in specific residential areas near the core of the city.

During the Great Depression, the national economic disaster of the 1930s, thousands of Mexicans were “repatriated,” meaning deported back to Mexico.

Many white Californians had long harbored resentment against the successful Japanese and Japanese Americans.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 became an opportunity to vent these hatreds.

Over the course of 1942 all persons of Japanese descent in the region were rounded up and transported to concentration camps, euphemistically called relocation centers, located far inland.

Of the approximately 120,000 American people of Japanese descent interned during the war, fully 40,000 were taken from Los Angeles County.

Wartime stress in Los Angeles also led to the notorious Zoot Suit Riot of 1943, a week-long clash between white, off-duty U.S. sailors and Mexican American youths identified by the distinctive suits they wore. Over the course of the riots, the sailors beat and harassed Mexicans and Mexican Americans while local authorities looked the other way.

The African American community grew from just 75,000 in 1940 to almost 250,000 in 1950, and nearly 500,000 by 1960. During this period black people were not permitted to live in more than a handful of neighborhoods, notably South Central Los Angeles and Watts.