LA Times Today: Explaining L.A. - Behind these names, you’ll find stories of our city’s Black history
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Oh, sure, now Los Angeles is a liberal city and a diverse one.
But before the Civil War, half of L.A.‘s residents were Southerners. In L.A.’s 1860 presidential vote, Abraham Lincoln came in third. During the Civil War, someone hoisted the Confederate flag over the central plaza. Had secession been put to a vote, Southern California would probably have joined the Confederacy.
And to think that only 80 years before, L.A. was founded by 44 people, more than half of whom were at least part Black.
So for Black History Month, a couple of stories: an enslaved woman who in 1856 acquired a new life and a new name.
She talked her way to freedom from a “master†who planned to drag her whole family out of the free state of California to the slave state of Texas.
Bridget, called “Biddy,†was brought here as a slave in 1851. California was a free state, and free Black families here may have told her that. And in December 1855, the same free Black people may have tipped off the sheriff about the white man hiding 13 slaves near Santa Monica Canyon and planning a getaway to Texas.
So one night, sheriffs and some free Black men thundered down on the hideout with court writs and the force to back them up. And Biddy found herself telling her story in Judge Benjamin Hayes’ chambers – in chambers, because California law banned people of color from giving evidence openly against white people.
Now the judge, like his L.A. townsmen, was a Southern sympathizer. But the law was the law, and in California, Biddy and her family were, as the judge wrote, “entitled to their freedom and are free forever.â€
Biddy had had no last name but gave herself one – Mason – and with her earnings as a midwife and nurse, parlayed $250 savings into a real estate empire that made Biddy Mason one of L.A.’s richest – and most generous-spirited -- women. Her story is told at the Biddy Mason Memorial Park in downtown L.A., the nucleus of her property empire.
There are other memorials with new names: Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, below downtown LA, renamed from Santa Barbara Avenue on MLK Day in 1983.
Running parallel to MLK Boulevard is Jefferson Boulevard, and all roads do lead to L.A.: Frederick Madison Roberts, a great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, became the first Black member of the California Legislature.
In 2018, part of Rodeo Road in Baldwin Hills / Crenshaw was renamed Barack Obama Boulevard. A year before, part of the 134 Freeway overlooking Obama’s early alma mater, Occidental College, also got his name.
Some places were way overdue for renaming. The original name of a peak between Malibu and Agoura was so offensive that in 1964 it was “cleaned up†to Negrohead Mountain.
In 2009, it got the name it should have had all along, for John Ballard, a contemporary of Biddy Mason’s and another real estate whisperer. As a Black man of property, Ballard was nudged out of central L.A. to his homesteaded acres in the mountains. Even there, someone tried to burn him out.
It all really makes you wonder why it’s called “history†when it’s still everywhere around us. Instead, maybe they should call it “here, story!â€
But before the Civil War, half of L.A.‘s residents were Southerners. In L.A.’s 1860 presidential vote, Abraham Lincoln came in third. During the Civil War, someone hoisted the Confederate flag over the central plaza. Had secession been put to a vote, Southern California would probably have joined the Confederacy.
And to think that only 80 years before, L.A. was founded by 44 people, more than half of whom were at least part Black.
So for Black History Month, a couple of stories: an enslaved woman who in 1856 acquired a new life and a new name.
She talked her way to freedom from a “master†who planned to drag her whole family out of the free state of California to the slave state of Texas.
Bridget, called “Biddy,†was brought here as a slave in 1851. California was a free state, and free Black families here may have told her that. And in December 1855, the same free Black people may have tipped off the sheriff about the white man hiding 13 slaves near Santa Monica Canyon and planning a getaway to Texas.
So one night, sheriffs and some free Black men thundered down on the hideout with court writs and the force to back them up. And Biddy found herself telling her story in Judge Benjamin Hayes’ chambers – in chambers, because California law banned people of color from giving evidence openly against white people.
Now the judge, like his L.A. townsmen, was a Southern sympathizer. But the law was the law, and in California, Biddy and her family were, as the judge wrote, “entitled to their freedom and are free forever.â€
Biddy had had no last name but gave herself one – Mason – and with her earnings as a midwife and nurse, parlayed $250 savings into a real estate empire that made Biddy Mason one of L.A.’s richest – and most generous-spirited -- women. Her story is told at the Biddy Mason Memorial Park in downtown L.A., the nucleus of her property empire.
There are other memorials with new names: Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, below downtown LA, renamed from Santa Barbara Avenue on MLK Day in 1983.
Running parallel to MLK Boulevard is Jefferson Boulevard, and all roads do lead to L.A.: Frederick Madison Roberts, a great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, became the first Black member of the California Legislature.
In 2018, part of Rodeo Road in Baldwin Hills / Crenshaw was renamed Barack Obama Boulevard. A year before, part of the 134 Freeway overlooking Obama’s early alma mater, Occidental College, also got his name.
Some places were way overdue for renaming. The original name of a peak between Malibu and Agoura was so offensive that in 1964 it was “cleaned up†to Negrohead Mountain.
In 2009, it got the name it should have had all along, for John Ballard, a contemporary of Biddy Mason’s and another real estate whisperer. As a Black man of property, Ballard was nudged out of central L.A. to his homesteaded acres in the mountains. Even there, someone tried to burn him out.
It all really makes you wonder why it’s called “history†when it’s still everywhere around us. Instead, maybe they should call it “here, story!â€
