This series documents long-term and multigenerational business ownership in the black community through oral history interviews with owners of businesses located in Los Angeles County. The title is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, whic...
Biographical Note:
Owner of A+ Moving and former owner of Robert Taylor Furniture in Los Angeles.
This is a series of interviews with people who were involved with the High Potential Program (HPP) at UCLA between 1968 and 1971. Although the HPP was one of the earliest efforts to broaden admissions criteria and recruit historically underrepresented students, the archival sources that have been...
Biographical Note:
Counselor for the UCLA High Potential Program and associate director for the UCLA American Indian Studies Center.
This series documents efforts to secure quality education for Black students in the Los Angeles area in the years 1950-2000. This includes the issues of integration/desegregation, increasing the numbers of Black teachers and administrators and the struggle against discriminatory hiring practice...
Biographical Note:
First African-American superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. University of California, Los Angeles coordinator of education-related research.
The interviews in the series Arts in Corrections: Interviews with Participants in California Department of Corrections' Institutional Arts Program document the stories of formerly incarcerated artists, professional artists, and administrators who participated in the Arts-in-Corrections program. A...
Biographical Note:
Writer, poet, educator, and founding Artistic Director of the Poetic Justice Project.
These interviews document the lives and contributions of Filipino-American activists in Los Angeles in the Filipino-American identity movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. This project was generously supported by Arcadia funds.
Biographical Note:
Filipino American activist. Member of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles. Attorney for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
This series documents long-term and multigenerational business ownership in the black community through oral history interviews with owners of businesses located in Los Angeles County. The title is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, whic...
The purpose of this series is to document the social justice activism of the Mexican American generation and to explore family and community life in war-time Los Angeles. Individuals selected for this series resided in Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s and began their civic participation pri...
Biographical Note:
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives for southeastern Los Angeles County and organizer for the United Automobile Workers union. The United States ambassador to UNESCO, and special assistant to the president for Hispanic affairs.
The interviews in this series document the ideological transformation of the Chicana and Chicano generation in Los Angeles. Dissatisfied with their position in U.S. society, Chicana and Chicano activists built a civil rights movement from the ground up. Interviewees were selected based on their e...
Biographical Note:
Chicano movement activist, member of the Los Angeles County Mexican American Education Committee. Founding member of the Latin American Civic Association. Involved in the creation of a Chicano studies department at California State University, Northridge.
This series documents the Justice for Janitors movement in Los Angeles from the 1980s through the early 2000s. Justice for Janitors is a labor organization of the Service Employees International Union that has historically sought to improve the working conditions and bargaining power of workers ...
Biographical Note:
Immigrant from Guatemala. Involved in the Service Employees International Union’s Justice for Janitors campaign.
Interviews in this series preserve the recollections of selected individuals in Los Angeles who were affected by the Hollywood blacklist during the Joseph R. McCarthy-J. Edgar Hoover era.
Biographical Note:
Son of the screen and television writer Dalton Trumbo, who was one of the Hollywood Ten, who were imprisoned and blacklisted in the post-World War II Hollywood blacklist.
The Many Branches, One Root series traces the histories and practices of a range of Buddhist traditions and communities in the greater Los Angeles area. Beginning in the early twentieth century, a succession of Buddhist traditions have put down roots in Los Angeles, each one providing spiritual s...
Biographical Note:
Immigrant from Vietnam and student of Chinese Chan Buddhist Master Hsuan Hua. Founder and teacher of the Compassionate Service Society.
Purpose Served: An Oral History of the Exemplary Life of Arthur Ashe, 1943-1993 is an initiative of the Arthur Ashe Legacy Fund (AALF) at UCLA and is funded by AALF and by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. By launching an oral history project to document and capture the firsthand recollections of ...
Biographical Note:
Interviewed because of connection to tennis player Arthur Ashe. Teammate of Ashe on the Charles Sumner High School boys team.
The interviews in the series American Indian Relocation Project document the experience of American Indians who came to Los Angeles as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' urban relocation program in the 1950s and 1960s. The initial interviews were conducted by students in Professor Peter Nabok...
Biographical Note:
Cherokee. Came to Los Angeles as part of the American Indian Relocation.
The interviews in the series American Indian Relocation Project document the experience of American Indians who came to Los Angeles as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' urban relocation program in the 1950s and 1960s. The initial interviews were conducted by students in Professor Peter Nabok...
Biographical Note:
Kiowa. Came to Los Angeles as part of the American Indian Relocation.
The South Asian Women in Los Angeles series documents the lives of a number of women who are first generation South Asian immigrants and who lived or currently live in the greater Los Angeles area. This project was generously supported by Arcadia funds.
In 1980, the late Eugene Fingerhut, a congregant at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center (PJTC) and a professor of American history at California State University, Los Angeles began interviewing elderly congregants with a focus on the history of the Pasadena Jewish community prior to World War I...
Biographical Note:
Congregant of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center.
This is a series of interviews with people who were involved with the High Potential Program (HPP) at UCLA between 1968 and 1971. Although the HPP was one of the earliest efforts to broaden admissions criteria and recruit historically underrepresented students, the archival sources that have been...
Biographical Note:
One of the leaders of the 1968 walkouts in East Los Angeles. During time at UCLA, was a student in the UCLA High Potential Program.
The South Asian Women in Los Angeles series documents the lives of a number of women who are first generation South Asian immigrants and who lived or currently live in the greater Los Angeles area. This project was generously supported by Arcadia funds.
Biographical Note:
Immigrant from India. Discusses experiences as a refugee.
Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness is a collection of interviews with over seventy individuals living in the U.S. and Canada whose family history, occupation, art practice, or activism have brought them into direct contact with illness experience and disability relate...
Biographical Note:
Experiences Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). Community organizer and lesbian, feminist activist.
The interviews in the series African American Artists of Los Angeles document significant African American Artists and others in the Los Angeles metropolitan area who have worked to expand exhibition opportunities and public support for African American visual culture. The series was made possibl...
Biographical Note:
African American artist. Founder of the organization Art West Associated.
This series of interviews was undertaken in collaboration with the Art Directors Guild. Its aim is to document the lives and work of Guild members and staff who have made a significant contribution to film and television history. Interviews capture the work of title artists, set designers, art di...
Biographical Note:
Production designer and art director. Art Directors Guild (ADG) past president and founding co-chair of the ADG Research Library/Archive, the ADG Designer Apprenticeship, Portfolio Review Programs, and the ADG Film Society.
This series includes interviews with African Americans who were involved in Los Angeles politics from the 1940s to the present day. In addition to African American politicians, it includes individuals who could speak to the political history and influence of the black community in Los Angeles. Th...
Biographical Note:
Member of the Los Angeles City Council from 1991 to 2001.
The series documents environmental activism in the Los Angeles area from the 1970s through to the present day. The majority of interviews are with either founders or knowledgeable participants in major regional environmental organizations. Represented groups embody a wide range of issues, includi...
Biographical Note:
Member of Concerned Neighbors in Action. Plaintiff in Stringfellow v. Concerned Neighbors in Action, an environmental case related to the Stringfellow Acid Pits in Jurupa Valley, California.
This series of interviews was undertaken in collaboration with the Art Directors Guild. Its aim is to document the lives and work of Guild members and staff who have made a significant contribution to film and television history. Interviews capture the work of title artists, set designers, art di...
Biographical Note:
Set designer, production designer, and Eagle Rock Historical Society archivist.
The series documents affordable housing activism in the Los Angeles area with particular attention to the work of community development corporations. Additional interviews document the work of social justice activists whose work concerns both the low income housing crisis in the city as well as ...
Biographical Note:
Executive director of the Little Tokyo Service Center and founder of the Asian Pacific Community Fund.
Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness is a collection of interviews with over seventy individuals living in the U.S. and Canada whose family history, occupation, art practice, or activism have brought them into direct contact with illness experience and disability relate...
Biographical Note:
Interviewed for the UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness series. Experiences Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) and asthma. Home health aide and participant in Master Gardener program.
This series includes interviews with prominent Los Angeles-based visual artists and other members of the art establishment whose careers span the period from the 1920s through the 1970s. It documents the art community of the pre-World War II period and the rise of Los Angeles as a nationally rec...
Biographical Note:
Printmaker, tapestry designer, and painter. Founder of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop.
This series of interviews documents the work of costumers in the film and television industries in Los Angeles. The interviews preserve a dimension of Hollywood history and Los Angeles history that has been under-documented to date.
Biographical Note:
Costumer who worked on the movies Harold and Maude, The Sting, Raging Bull, Mommie Dearest, Hook, Seabiscuit, Walk the Line, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Also created costumes for television movies and series, including Star Trek: The Original Series, the Missio...
The interviews in the series Arts in Corrections: Interviews with Participants in California Department of Corrections' Institutional Arts Program document the stories of formerly incarcerated artists, professional artists, and administrators who participated in the Arts-in-Corrections program. A...
Biographical Note:
Writer and actor with the Poetic Justice Project. Former member of the Arts-in-Corrections program while incarcerated.
The Traditional Asian Arts in Southern California series focuses on both immigrants and second- or third-generation Asian Americans who have continued East Asian or Southeast Asian musical, dance, and performance traditions in Southern California. Some preserved their art form by adhering to the...
Biographical Note:
Balinese dancer and musician. Faculty member in world music performance and Indonesian music and dance.
The interviews in the series American Indian Presence in Southern California: Those Who Came survey some of the diversity of tribes and experiences of American Indians who have immigrated to the urban area. Over 205,000 American Indians live in Southern California, almost 73,000 of them in Los An...
Biographical Note:
Member of the Lakota Sicangu band, born and raised on a reservation in South Dakota.
These interviews with African American musicians provide details about the narrators' background, training, influences, and musical choices and discuss their contributions, and connections to the music of black Los Angeles. The series was a collaborative project of the UCLA Center for Oral Histor...
Biographical Note:
Prairie View A. & M and California State University, Los Angeles professor of music. Organist of African American hymnal music.
Purpose Served: An Oral History of the Exemplary Life of Arthur Ashe, 1943-1993 is an initiative of the Arthur Ashe Legacy Fund (AALF) at UCLA and is funded by AALF and by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. By launching an oral history project to document and capture the firsthand recollections of ...
Biographical Note:
Interviewed because of connection to tennis player Arthur Ashe. Participated with Ashe in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at UCLA from 1963 to 1967.
Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness is a collection of interviews with over seventy individuals living in the U.S. and Canada whose family history, occupation, art practice, or activism have brought them into direct contact with illness experience and disability relate...
Biographical Note:
Interviewed for the UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness series. Experiences Chronic Lyme Disease, Electromagnetic Field (EMF) Sensitivity, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). Disabled adoptee from El Salvador and writer.
This series documents long-term and multigenerational business ownership in the black community through oral history interviews with owners of businesses located in Los Angeles County. The title is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, whic...
Biographical Note:
Owner of Antique Stove Heaven, a Los Angeles antique stove repair business that opened in the late 1970s.
The series documents environmental activism in the Los Angeles area from the 1970s through to the present day. The majority of interviews are with either founders or knowledgeable participants in major regional environmental organizations. Represented groups embody a wide range of issues, includi...
Biographical Note:
Artist and environmental activist, executive director of 18th Street Arts Complex, and founding member of performance groups Earth Water Air Los Angeles (EWALA) and FrogWorks. Involved in protests against Playa Vista land development at the Ballona Wetlands.
Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness is a collection of interviews with over seventy individuals living in the U.S. and Canada whose family history, occupation, art practice, or activism have brought them into direct contact with illness experience and disability relate...
Biographical Note:
Interviewed for the UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness series. Founder of Base Coat Nail Salon, a non-toxic nail salon. Partners with California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative.
The series documents environmental activism in the Los Angeles area from the 1970s through to the present day. The majority of interviews are with either founders or knowledgeable participants in major regional environmental organizations. Represented groups embody a wide range of issues, includi...
Biographical Note:
Co-coordinator of the Campaign against Utility Service Exploitation (CAUSE) and other public interest campaigns focusing on water in Southern California.
The Narratives of Justice oral history series documents issues related to the criminal justice system in California through interviews with a variety of people who seek to reform that system. It includes interviews with individuals who provide services to at-risk youth; individuals engaged in com...
Biographical Note:
Creative writer and a case manager at InsideOut Writers, an organization that serves at-risk youth through using creative writing as a catalyst for personal transformation.
The Suburban Chinatown series focuses on political and business leaders in the San Gabriel Valley who came to the U.S. in the post-1965 wave of Asian immigration after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system based on national origins. The series was undertaken as a ...
Biographical Note:
Immigrant from Taiwan. Librarian for the Los Angeles Unified School District and chair of the Performing Arts Foundation for Asian Americans.
The Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM), founded in Los Angeles by Edith and Frank Wyle, grew out of The Egg and The Eye, a commercial art gallery/restaurant devoted to international contemporary craft and folk art—and (in the restaurant) omelettes. The gallery opened November 1, 1965 at 5814 Wilsh...
Biographical Note:
Craft and Folk Art Museum Co-Founder with Founding Director Edith R. Wyle. Co-Founder, The Egg and The Eye gallery, with Edith Wyle and Bette Chase. CAFAM Board Chair, 1975 – 1976; 1987 – 1995; 1996 – 1999; 2002 – 2008.
Chemical Entanglements: Oral Histories of Environmental Illness is a collection of interviews with over seventy individuals living in the U.S. and Canada whose family history, occupation, art practice, or activism have brought them into direct contact with illness experience and disability relate...
Biographical Note:
Interviewed for the UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s Oral Histories of Environmental Illness series. Visual effects illustrator living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).
This series of interviews looks back on Synanon, the first self-help residential community for drug rehabilitation in the United States, which was founded in Venice, California in 1959 and continued through the early 1990s. In the interviews the former residents speak from their own experience in...
Biographical Note:
Psychotherapist and California State University, Northridge professor of criminology and sociology. Associated with Synanon drug rehabilitation program.
In 1980, the late Eugene Fingerhut, a congregant at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center (PJTC) and a professor of American history at California State University, Los Angeles began interviewing elderly congregants with a focus on the history of the Pasadena Jewish community prior to World War I...
Biographical Note:
Congregant of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center. Los Angeles City council person and member of the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors.
The Many Branches, One Root series traces the histories and practices of a range of Buddhist traditions and communities in the greater Los Angeles area. Beginning in the early twentieth century, a succession of Buddhist traditions have put down roots in Los Angeles, each one providing spiritual s...
Biographical Note:
Shingon Buddhist monk. Leading teacher of mindfulness and a pioneer in studying the intersection of meditation and neuroscience.
The Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM), founded in Los Angeles by Edith and Frank Wyle, grew out of The Egg and The Eye, a commercial art gallery/restaurant devoted to international contemporary craft and folk art—and (in the restaurant) omelettes. The gallery opened November 1, 1965 at 5814 Wilsh...
Biographical Note:
Assistant and later Director, Craft and Folk Art Museum Festival of Masks, 1977-1986; Museum Special Events Coordinator, 1984; Coordinator of Exhibitions, 1985; Member, ArtTable board, 1985 – 1989.
The purpose of this series is to document the social justice activism of the Mexican American generation and to explore family and community life in war-time Los Angeles. Individuals selected for this series resided in Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s and began their civic participation pri...
Biographical Note:
Activist on educational issues and member of the Mexican American Education Committee. Member of One Stop Immigration, which provides legal services to immigrants.