My maternal grandmother Olivia Duffy never intended to live in Los Angeles; her arrival in the city was the result of a merciful instance of deus ex machina. A high school graduate without the means to attend college in her home state of Louisiana, but who had heard stories of black communities flourishing in Oakland, California, she joined a childhood friend in stuffing her belongings into the back of a car. They drove west from Oakdale in the summer of 1945, but their timing was off. The journey ended up being belated, and by the time they crossed into California, America had dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The tragedies on the other side of the Pacific signaled the end of both the war and the wartime economic boom that had drawn so many African American migrants to California. They flocked to Oakland’s shipyards and transformed themselves into crucial elements of the American war effort; in the process, these migrants transformed Oakland into a stronghold of African American political activism and culture. All that turned out to be of little consequence for my grandmother. Olivia and her friend had been taking their time nearly 400 miles south […]

Click here to view original web page at lithub.com