The Los Angeles City Council this month designated the Tom & Ethel Bradley House and the former California Eagle newspaper building as historic landmarks. It comes as the city aims to identify more of its African American history. The designations began with recommendations from the African American Places LA Project .
The city of Los Angeles and the Getty Conservation Institute teamed a few years ago to identify sites that represent the city's African American history. According to Ken Bernstein, principal city planner for Los Angeles, only 4% of the city's more than 1,280 landmarks are black. “That clearly does not equitably encompass the richness and diversity of the African American experience,” said Bernstein.
He says that became apparent during the racial unrest of 2020 involving the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. He says those events spawned conversations about the city's planning process, and how it could be more intentional about capturing the stories of "all communities," including African American history. "Traditional approaches to historic preservation have largely been about designating buildings around architectural review, but we need to go beyond that and broaden how we think about heritage, both the physical and intangible," says Bernstein.
The AAHPLA project so far has identified four sites that were selected by a 15-member advisory committee. They were chosen based on a diversity of themes that reflect different aspects of African America.