Du Bois described Los Angeles in 1913 as a "wonderful place" because it was less subjected to racial discrimination due to its population being small and the ongoing tensions between Anglos and Mexicans.
Blacks were mostly confined along the South Central corridor, Watts, and small enclaves in Venice and Pacoima, which received far fewer services than other areas of the city.
[3][4] After World War II, the city's black population grew from 63,774 in 1940 to 170,000 a decade later as many continued to flee from the South for better opportunities.
The Supreme Court banned the legal enforcement of race-oriented restrictive covenants in the Shelley v. Kraemer case (1948), yet black home ownership declined severely[4] during this period.
[3] In 1992, a jury in suburban Simi Valley acquitted white Los Angeles police officers involved in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King, the year before.
After four days of rioting, more than 50 deaths, and billions of dollars of property losses, mostly in the Central City, the California Army National Guard, federal troops, and the local and state police finally regained control.
Since the 1980s, more middle class black families have left the central core of Los Angeles to settle in other California municipalities or out of state.
[16] As of 2010, in the world, except for the respective home countries, Los Angeles County has the largest populations of Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Korean, Sri Lankan, and Thai people.
The great majority came from Guangdong Province in southeastern China, seeking a fortune in Gum Saan ("Gold Mountain"), the Chinese name for America.
[20] Labor unions blamed Chinese for lowering the wages and living standards of Anglo workers, and for being ruled by violent secret societies known as "tongs."
While the Los Angeles Star went so far to call the massacre "a glorious victory", others fretted about the city's racist and violent image.
"[21] The city of Los Angeles is home to one of the largest communities of Filipinos abroad, boasting a population of nearly 150,000 people both foreign-born and multi-generational.
[25][26] The labor vacuum created by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was filled by Japanese workers and, by 1910, the settlement known as "Little Tokyo" had risen next to Chinatown.
[32] More recently, L.A.'s Koreatown has been perceived to have experienced declining political power secondary to re-districting[33] and an increased crime rate,[34] prompting an exodus of Koreans from the area.
There is also a large white population in South Bay, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Bel Aire, Malibu, and some sections of the San Gabriel Valley.
Dutch dairy farms were primarily located in suburban areas surrounding Los Angeles, such as Chino, Artesia, Bellflower and Hynes.
While distinct cultural enclaves have diminished over time, it is noteworthy that approximately fifty percent of all Dutch immigrants arriving in California since World War II continue to do so.
[66] At the same time, the city celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1931 with a grand "fiesta de Los Angeles" featuring a blond "reina" in historic ranchera costume.
[3] During World War II, hostility toward Mexican-Americans took a different form, as local newspapers portrayed Chicano youths, who sometimes called themselves "pachucos", as barely civilized gangsters.
Anglo servicemen attacked young Chicanos dressed in the pachuco uniform of the day: long coats with wide shoulders and pleated, high-waisted, pegged pants, or zoot suits.
In 1943, twenty-two young Chicanos were convicted of a murder of another youth at a party held at a swimming hole southeast of Los Angeles known as the "sleepy lagoon" on a warm night in August 1942; they were eventually freed after an appeal that demonstrated both their innocence and the racism of the judge conducting the trial.
[21] Hispanics are concentrated in San Gabriel Valley suburbs like El Monte, Baldwin Park, Irwindale, and West Covina.
Beginning in the 1970s, large waves of Armenian immigration to Los Angeles took place, as a result of the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War[77] As of the 1990 U.S. census, the Los Angeles area had 20,000 Israelis, making up 17% of the total number of Israelis in the United States.
[81] The history of Rivertown, aka "Frogtown", a late 19th century enclave of French immigrants in downtown Los Angeles.
[87] Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, the Byzantine-Latino Quarter, Historic Filipinotown, Little Saigon, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Little Bangladesh, Little Moscow (in Hollywood), Little Tokyo, Croatian Place and Via Italia in San Pedro, several Koreatowns, Tehrangeles in West Los Angeles, the Chinese enclaves in the San Gabriel Valley and Thai Town provide examples of the polyglot multicultural character of Los Angeles.
Historically, there was limited immigration to Los Angeles from Europe through the ports of San Pedro, Long Beach, and Venice.
In the first half of the 20th century there were British, Irish, Italian, Greek, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, German, Portuguese, and Armenian neighborhoods in Bunker Hill (in what is now the Civic Center of Los Angeles) and in Boyle/Lincoln Heights.
[101] In the 1870s Mormons from Utah were recruited to settle in the Los Angeles basin and San Bernardino and contributed to the development of its local economy.
In the 1930s thousands of Okies and other displaced rural whites from the Dust Bowl-struck Great Plains and Southern United States settled down in the Arroyo Seco and Elysian Park neighborhoods.
Since World War II (1945 onward) most whites in these neighborhoods have relocated to other parts of the city (i.e. the San Fernando Valley and Westwood, Los Angeles), nearby suburbs including Santa Clarita, the Orange Coast, Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda, Norco and Simi Valley and other parts of Southern California.