A History of African-Americans
in Boyle Heights

    The living presence of African-Americans in Boyle Heights can be traced back to the late 1800s, when this group first started moving into the Los Angeles area. The major influx of African-Americans into this community, however, all started in the 1920s. Before then, very few records have documentation of their existence in Boyle Heights or the rest of Los Angeles.

    During those times in the 1920s,

Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP

there were only 1,258 African-Americans in Boyle Heights. African-Americans were coming into Boyle Heights because of all the jobs that were created because of World War I. These jobs were in the new manufacturing and factory plants that were involved in the war effort. Most of the African-Americans were coming from the southern and midwestern regions of the United States. States such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia all contributed to this great migration for the African-Americans.

    The African-Americans, now in Boyle Heights, lived in the small area from Brooklyn in the north to Michigan in the south and from Evergreen Cemetery in the east to Mott Street in the west. They lived in this part of Los Angeles for many reasons: for one, the rent in this area was very inexpensive; the second reason was that they were not allowed to live in other areas of Los Angeles; and the last reason was that Boyle Heights was close to their jobs. They lived in Boyle Heights until the 1930s when they moved even closer to their jobs in downtown Los Angeles.

    They moved to the Central Avenue district that became the largest African-American community in the West. Another reason for their relocation was

Map of African-Americans in Boyle Heights

because the rent was even more inexpensive than the Boyle Heights area. After a few years, the African-American population decided to move again. The reason why the African-Americans moved out of the Central Avenue district of Los Angeles and into the southwest region of Los Angeles was because, after a while, the African-Americans had trouble finding jobs because of the prejudice that the white employers had. These employers started hiring primarily Mexicans because they thought that Mexicans were better employees because they worked harder and for less money. The African-Americans, now mainly unemployed, found refuge in the southwest of Los Angeles where their presence was being increasingly tolerated. Ever since then, the African-American population in Los Angeles has been spreading out into more and more areas of Los Angeles.

    Unlike the Jews, the Japanese, and the Russians, the African-Americans have left very few historical sites that prove their presence in Boyle Heights. What can be said about the African-Americans is that their lives in Boyle Heights must not have been too comfortable because of all the racism and prejudice that there was against them by the other racial groups in Boyle Heights. This, in turn, did not let the African-Americans settle down in Boyle Heights. That is why there is very little documentation of their presence in Boyle Heights.