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A small house in Fullerton proved an unlikely site in the fight against housing discrimination when white neighbors sued Alex Bernal for buying it.
Along with Bruce's Beach, there was supposed to be the Pacific Beach Club. Black people built a beach club in 1920s Huntington Beach, but it was burned down before it ever opened.
Corporate paternalism and Mexican American resilience are both evident in this model company town for naranjeros.
Behind what used to be Santa Ana City Hall is a parking lot and lofts that was once the location of Orange County's largest Chinatown — until the city council ordered it burned down.
California's smallest land grant and oldest family home, the Rios Adobe, is a rare Orange County space of Native American persistence in the face of widespread dispossession.
Privatization, racism and resistance shape who has access to Orange County's land and wealth.
Many Latinos know that Cinco de Mayo is about the 1862 Battle and that it's not celebrated in Mexico, but it's widely believed to have been created by Anglos in the late 20th century. In reality, celebrating Cinco de Mayo started right here in California by Mexican Americans 160 years ago.
In 1942, Executive Order 9066 required all people of Japanese Ancestry to move to incarceration camps. The hardships from the forced relocation endured well after their return from the camps. After being uprooted from their homes, Japanese Americans had to rebuild. Many moved to the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles where the built a thriving community with Japanese owned businesses and organizations that provided social services, educated Asian youth, and fought for their civil rights.
Today, the Crenshaw district of South Los Angeles is known as a predominantly Black neighborhood, while Japanese Americans are most commonly associated with Little Tokyo, Sawtelle, Torrance and Gardena. But after World War II, Crenshaw had the largest concentration of Japanese Americans in the continental United States.
Photographers from the Dick Whittington Studio offer a unique vantage point on the commercial development of Los Angeles and the transformation of major streets like Crenshaw Boulevard.
At Grace Pastries, the cake was king; a symbolic reward that came as a result of the Japanese American communities' hard-earned post-war successes. Within a decade of its opening, Grace Pastries had the highest name recognition of any bakery in Los Angeles and continues to leave a lasting impression.
Kazuo K. Inouye of Kashu Realty was a second-generation Japanese American who made it his business to populate racially restricted Los Angeles neighborhoods with Angelenos of color, thus shaping the culture of the city block by block, for generations to come.