Historical Context of Boyle Heights

From the turn of the century through 1930, Los Angeles experienced the largest population boom of any American city. Thousands of nonwhite and foreign-born newcomers were forced to settle in East Los Angeles due to the combined segregation efforts by the local government and the real estate industry. By the 1920s, Boyle Heights had evolved into a working-class, multiethnic neighborhood far more diverse than any U.S. city; Mexicans, Japanese, African-Americans, Russian Molokans, Armenians, Italians, and the largest settlement of Jews west of Chicago lived and worked together side by side.

In the post-WWII era, the Jewish community moved out and the Mexican community immigrated in larger numbers. However, the people who remained or came into Boyle Heights in these years were committed to coalition building and preserving the neighborhood’s diversity and thus, fostered multiculturalism into the 1960s. In fact, Boyle Heights was one of the few neighborhoods in the history of the United States that strived to be truly multicultural. However, it was not impervious to discrimination, racism, and gang activity yet its occurrences were often mitigated by the prevailing atmosphere of acceptance for ethnic, racial, and religious differences.

From the late 1960s on, Boyle Heights became predominately Mexican and Mexican-American but has remained committed to political activism. The Walkouts of 1968, the Brown Berets, the United Farm Workers Union, and the Immigrant Rights Movement have made Boyle Heights one of the centers of Latino activism in California. However, Boyle Heights’ population is showing the first signs of shifting as Middle Eastern, Central American, and Asian immigrants arrive. Perhaps this neighborhood with a remarkable history will respond to these changes as it did in the past and once again embrace multiculturalism.