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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

1966 Kwanzaa Created by Ron Karenga

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-griffin-kwanzaa-20181223-story.html- LA Times opinion written in 2018 about the controversies of Kwanzaa's origin, founder Ron Karenga.

"I decided that hating Karenga’s crimes didn’t mean abandoning the good he accomplished. The US Organization’s 1960s petition for Black Studies courses in U.S. colleges and universities is one reason those classes existed for me to take in college. His emphasis on Ujamaa, cooperative economics (the fourth principle of Kwanzaa), is why I “buy black” whenever possible.

Kwanzaa calls on African Americans to see one another and uplift one another, something we particularly need right now. It beckons us to the heights of our humanity, petitioning us to imagine ourselves and our communities in ways white American culture cannot and will not. We need to acknowledge Karenga’s full story, but it shouldn’t tarnish the value and beauty of the holiday that promotes collective action for the collective good."

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4. 1960 Lunch Counter Sit Ins (Woolworths) Sit-In Begins Blair, Richmond, McCain and McNeil planned their protest carefully, and enlisted the help of a local white businessman, Ralph Johns, to put their plan into action. On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats. Police arrived on the scene but were unable to take action due to the lack of provocation. By that time, Johns had already alerted the local media, who had arrived in full force to cover the events on television. The Greensboro Four stayed put until the store closed, then returned the next day with more students from local colleges.
6. 1961- Freedom Riders - Attack in Anniston On Sunday, May 14, 1961—Mother's Day—scores of angry white people blocked a Greyhound bus carrying black and white passengers through rural Alabama. The attackers pelted the vehicle with rocks and bricks, slashed tires, smashed windows with pipes and axes and lobbed a firebomb through a broken window. As smoke and flames filled the bus, the mob barricaded the door. "Burn them alive," somebody cried out. "Fry the goddamn niggers." An exploding fuel tank and warning shots from arriving state troopers forced the rabble back and allowed the riders to escape the inferno. Even then some were pummeled with baseball bats as they fled. A few hours later, black and white passengers on a Trailways bus were beaten bloody after they entered whites-only waiting rooms and restaurants at bus terminals in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama.
8. 1962 LAPD attack a Black Muslim Temple, killing Ronald Stokes April 27: An altercation leads to police entering the Los Angeles Temple and killing its unarmed secretary, Ronald Stokes. "They're going to pay for it," Malcolm declares, and goes to Los Angeles to eulogize Stokes at a funeral attended by 2,000 people. He says the police shot "innocent unarmed Black men in cold blood" and urges action. But Elijah Muhammad resists calls for an aggressive response. An all-white coroner's jury deliberates about Stokes' killing for 23 minutes and terms it "justifiable homicide." By contrast, 14 Nation of Islam members are indicted for assault in the incident and 11 are found guilty. Later this year, Malcolm confirms that Elijah Muhammad has engaged in repeated adultery and had children with at least three of his young secretaries. "I felt almost out of my mind," Malcolm says. Herbert Muhammad asks Muhammad Speaks to minimize coverage of Malcolm X.
10. 1963 Congress passed the Equal Pay Act - the Equal Pay Act was signed by President Kennedy with the intention of ending gender-based pay discrimination.
12. 1963 Congress passed the Equal Pay Act - the Equal Pay Act was signed by President Kennedy with the intention of ending gender-based pay discrimination.
13. 1964 - 1965 Free Speech Movement “The Free Speech Movement was the first revolt of the 1960s to bring to a college campus the mass civil disobedience tactics pioneered in the civil rights movement. Those tactics, most notably the sit-in, would give students unprecedented leverage to make demands on university administrators, setting the stage for mass student protests against the Vietnam War.” – Robert Cohen, author of Freedom’s Orator
14. January 23, 1964: Poll Taxes Banned
16. 1965 The Watts Riots On Wednesday, 11 August 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old black man, was arrested for drunk driving on the edge of Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. The ensuing struggle during his arrest sparked off 6 days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, nearly 4,000 arrests, and the destruction of property valued at $40 million. On 17 August 1965, Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the riots. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his growing conviction that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) should move north and lead a movement to address the growing problems facing black people in the nation’s urban areas. Frye had been drinking and was driving with his brother, Ronald, in the car, when the two were pulled over two blocks from their home. While Marquette was being arrested, Ronald retrieved their mother from her house. When Mrs. Frye saw her son being forcibly arrested, she fought with the arresting officers, tearing one officer’s shirt. An officer then struck Marquette’s head with his nightstick, and all three of the Fryes were arrested.
17. 1965 Watts Renaissance
18. 1965 - 1975 Chicano Movement Key years were 1965-1975 - In the 1960s, a radicalized Mexican-American movement began pushing for a new identification. The Chicano Movement, aka El Movimiento, advocated social and political empowerment through a chicanismo or cultural nationalism. As the activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales declared in a 1967 poem, “La raza! / Méjicano! / Español! / Latino! / Chicano! / Or whatever I call myself, / I look the same.”
19. 1965 Sister Mary Corita (Sister Mary Corita in 1965, courtesy of the Corita Art Center.) Worked from a studio at Immaculate Heart College. "LA's most famous artist in the 1960s, her prints became increasingly political, which led L.A.'s famously right wing cardinal, Francis McIntyre, to order her either to confine herself to traditional religious duties or to renounce her vows. She left the order in 1968, followed by most of the rest of the sisters at the college. " - Set the Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties
23. 1966 March from Delano to the state capital Striking workers are subjected to physical and verbal attacks throughout their peaceful demonstrations, and on March 16, the Senate Sub-Committee on Migratory Labor held hearings in Delano. March 17, the morning following the hearings, Cesar Chavez sets out with 100 farm workers to begin his pilgrimage to the San Joaquin Valley. After 25 days, their numbers swell from hundreds, to an army of thousands.
24. 1966 Stokely Carmichael defines "black power" at the University of California's Greek Theatre in Berkeley
25. 1968 MLK Assassination Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil rights advances for African Americans. His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among Black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era.
28. March 1968 Sal Castro with walkout students at Lincoln High School Image courtesy of LA Times Photographic Archive, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. Set the Night on Fire: "Castro, a high school teacher long active in liberal and Mexican-American causes, was a key force in organizing student walkouts to protest school conditions in East L.A. The "Blowouts", as they were soon called, were genesis events in the emergence of a new, militant "Chicano" identity.
29. November 5, 1968: Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman ever elected to Congress.
30. 1969 Woodstock
31. 1969 People's Park People’s Park (UC Berkeley) was born in a spirit of optimism in April and May 1969 after thousands of students, activists and community members transformed a university-owned muddy parking lot into an open, inviting green park. The builders of the park were determined to create a space controlled by the community, not by a conservative university that had a history of squelching free speech. The site has been a contested space ever since then.
32. 1969 Black Panther LA Headquarters SWAT Raid
33. Angela Davis - UCLA hired her to teach in the philosophy department in 1969. After the four-hour LAPD attack on the Black Panther headquarters in South Central (1969), Angela Davis led a protest march to LA city hall and spoke from the front steps.
34. 1969 UCLA philosophy department hired Angela Davis
36. 1969 John Huggins and Bunchy Carter, two LA Black Panthers, murdered on campus at UCLA

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Photographed by Harry Adams (from CSUN digital archives).Ron Karenga (left), also known as Maulana Ndabezith Karenga or Roland McKinley Everett, sits next to Hakim Jamal. Karenga is known for creating the first Pan-African holiday, Kwanzaa, in 1966. Hakim Jamal was cousin of Malcolm X and co-founder of the organization "US," a group promoting African-American cultural unity. https://digital-collections.csun.edu/digital/collection/Bradley/id/3554
https://dailybruin.com/2019/01/17/throwback-thursday-fifty-year-anniversary-of-bunchy-carter-john-huggins-shooting - The two Black Panther leaders were members of the Black Student Union, as well as a part of the High Potential Program, a program meant to increase opportunities in higher education for minority students. Tension between the Black Panthers and the US Organization was at the heart of the shooting. The US Organization and the Panthers were, at the time, vying for control of black student organizations at the collegiate and high school level. Simultaneously, the FBI was attempting to stoke tensions between the two groups through efforts that included its largely illegal surveillance program, COINTELPRO. In January 1969, the two groups backed different individuals for the role of director of the newly created Afro-American Center, now known as the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. The US Organization put forward a black psychologist with minimal background in academia as its choice. Chancellor Charles Young initially was willing to accept the choice, until a dispute arose over salary. Then, BSU announced it had reservations and wanted a different candidate, one with both an academic background and commitment to the black community. On Friday, Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 BSU members met in Campbell Hall to talk about the qualifications for the director. After the adjournment of the meeting, Harold “Tuwala” Jones entered the room and Huggins confronted him about the harassment of a fellow Panther. As a fight broke out between the two, Carter tried to intervene. Then Claude “Chuchessa” Hubert came in and shot Huggins in the back. Huggins, who was armed, fired a couple of shots back as he fell, wounded. Carter attempted to find cover behind a chair but was also shot by Hubert. “Chuchessa shot through the chair and killed him instantly,” recalled J. Daniel Johnson, a student who was present in the room, in 2008. In seconds, it was all over and two men were dead. After the shooting, university police worked in 12-hour shifts until Wednesday, Jan. 22. Police issued a bulletin announcing George Stiner and Larry Stiner as suspects, after witnesses had identified them at the scene of the shooting. George Stiner, who was also a BSU member and a part of the High Potential program, surrendered to police on Monday afternoon. His younger brother Larry surrendered later that night. The brothers eventually received life sentences based on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Hubert, the suspected murderer of the two men, was never caught. In its private communications, the FBI reacted to the murders with some satisfaction. “It would appear that the above activity will even further split the factions of the US Group and the BPP,” reads a memo from an FBI special agent in charge office in San Diego dated Jan. 20. Chancellor Young issued two statements following the incident. “Personally we are deeply grieved by the death of these two young men who were our students,” his first statement said. “The tragic events of last Friday have in no way diminished our resolve to offer broader educational opportunities on this campus,” he added in the second statement. Reactions from campus members were generally somber. “They were doing well, they were capable and potential leaders … it was a terrible thing,” said Thomas Robischon, a faculty advisor to the High Potential Program. Unsurprisingly, most students the Bruin reached out to, especially black students, did not want to speak to the paper so soon after the shooting. According to the an article from Jan. 21, white students largely wanted to keep themselves out of the matter, with their reaction being summed up by student Mike Shatzkin, in quintessential 60s fashion: “It’s none of my dad-gummed business.” Huggins’ body was sent to his family in New Haven, Connecticut, while the funeral for Carter was held on Jan. 24. Among those in attendance were James Baldwin and Kathleen Cleaver. The campus community quickly recovered following the incident, with BSU resuming meetings on Jan. 31. The High Potential Program resumed classes on the Tuesday after the shooting. Half a century later, the program still lives on. UCLA consolidated it with the Educational Opportunity Program in 1971 to create the Academic Advancement Program. The AAP currently serves over 5,000 students from underrepresented groups at UCLA. And Campbell Hall still serves as the hub for this program. But for years after the shooting, there was no marking or sign to denote that such an incident had taken place in Campbell Hall. But the shooting hasn’t completely dropped out of the student body’s collective memory. Since 1999, family and friends of Carter and Huggins, and other students have gathered annually at Campbell Hall to remember the two. In 2010, students hung a plaque in front of Room 1201 in honor of them. And students have called regularly for Campbell Hall to be renamed Carter-Huggins Hall. So far, UCLA administration has ignored such requests. After all, they were just activists, not rich megadonors filling UCLA’s coffers. So for now, the stone in front of Campbell Hall will continue to memorialize Carter and Huggins. -