by Pebbla Wallace, LACHS Board Member

In February Los Angeles (and the United States) celebrates Black History Month.  In doing so, the LACHS would like to recognize some of our historical pioneers, and the major contributions they have made to the City of Angels.

by Pebbla Wallace, LACHS Board Member

Robert William Stewart (1850-1931) – the forgotten story of first African American police officer in California serving at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)

Watch the recorded presentation Photography of Los Angeles Transit Construction - with Ken Karagozian and guest speaker Richard McLane

Watch the recorded presentations with two of our 2022 LACHS Scholarship recipients:

Militant Machismo: Hypermasculinity & The Brown Berets
Hector Gamboa

The San Diego Blood Sisters: Highlighting Queer Women’s Activism During the AIDS Epidemic
Zachery Roethlisberger

Watch the recorded presentations with two of our 2022 LACHS Scholarship recipients:

It’s Complicated: Cross Purpose Politics and Reassessing Community in New Deal Era Whittier
Christopher Empett

Shared Experiences and Regional Kinship Webs: Mid-Twentieth Century New Mexico, México, and Los Angeles
Jerry Sisneros

Watch the recorded presentation Hollywood’s Trains & Trolleys with Marc Wanamaker

It was around 10 a.m. on January 14, 1938, when Harry Raymond went out to his garage in Boyle Heights, turned the key on the ignition of his car and his engine bolted out of the hood of his car, filling Harry’s body with 186 pieces of shrapnel. The explosion was loud enough to hear throughout the neighborhood. Harry was rushed to the hospital where he received 100 stitches and was treated for multiple fractures and chest punctures.

On July 14, 1930, Frank Keaton entered Department 39 in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom for a civil case between The First National Bank, and Hollywood film producer David O. Selznick. On the stand was banker Motley Flint. Keaton listened in the spectator’s section to Motley’s testimony, and once he finished and stepped down from the witness stand, Keaton shot him three times with his .38 Smith & Wesson – Flint fell dead! What angered Mr. Keaton, and brought him so far to the edge that he would shoot Motley Flint dead? The Answer is “The Julian Pete Swindle”.

by Pebbla Wallace, LACHS Board Member

The most famous courtroom television drama in the history of courtroom dramas will always remain, in the opinion of this writer, the series Perry Mason, which starred Raymond Burr from 1957-1974. Although the drama depicted a fictional criminal defense attorney who won almost every case, what you may not know is that the character was based on a real-life criminal defense attorney name Earl Rogers who practiced in Los Angeles from 1897 to 1918.