Quotes from Donald Bogle

Her eyes lit up when she mentioned the grand thoroughfare Central Avenue, where black nightclubs flourished and where the Dunbar Hotel, home to the black elite, stood like a mighty fortress.

When Los Angeles was founded in 1781—as a city of angels—by a group of eleven families, it seemed to throw out a welcome mat to people of color. After all, of that founding group—forty-four men, women, and children—twenty-six were of African descent, black or "black Spaniards," as they were sometimes called.