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Little, that is, until the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. chapter 2 The Great Migration and the Changing Face of Los Angeles Today there can be no question that Los Angeles is destined to be one of the great centers of Negro life in America. Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land, 1946 World War II initiated a fundamentally new era in African American life and history. The deepening labor shortage, coupled with the rising demand for defense production, forced employers to reconsider, often reluctantly, their exclusive preference for white male labor.

Johnson, a sociologist trained at the University of Chicago and director of the National Urban League’s Department of Research and Investigations, conducted a survey of 456 manufacturing firms in Los Angeles County to determine the extent of employment possibilities for African Americans. Johnson found that many firms refused to hire blacks on the grounds that they simply had never done so before; Los Angeles manufacturing had emerged during an era of labor surplus, and the need to A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N S I N P R E WA R L O S A N G E L E S 25 hire blacks had never arisen.

W]e were close, the Japanese, the Asians . . going to school brought everyone together. ’” 40 Legendary jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus grew up in prewar Watts and remembered (in the third person) his days at Jordan High School: “So finally Charles gassed his hair straight and ran around with the other mongrels, the few Japanese, Mexicans, Jews and Greeks at Jordan High. ” 41 Certainly, multiracial interaction was not always harmonious. Mingus, whose mother was light skinned, also remembered the animosity toward Mexicans his father instilled in him: “During these discussions Mama would look in the mirror and say how often she was taken for a Mexican because of her freckles, her thin chiseled nose and tiny feet.