Oral Histories
Oakwood Video Project: Activists in the African American Community of Venice, California
- Topic:
- African American HistoryCommunity HistorySocial MovementsCommunity Activism
- Abstract:
- These interviews were conducted by UCLA professor Karen Brodkin as part of a research project about gentrification in Venice and the challenges it posed for Venice's longstanding African American community of Oakwood. As activists pointed out, Oakwood was the only place inCalifornia where African Americans owned property near the beach. The African American activists who had been interviewed were working in a variety of ways to preserve their community in the face of aggressive building code enforcement and police harassment of young people, which they understood as the cutting edge of displacement and gentrification. This series of interviews is not part of the Center for Oral History Research's collections but can be accessed at UCLA Library's Department of Special Collections.