Black Los Angeles: Antiblackness, Resistance, and Solidarity

Catalog description

This course examines the formation, transformation, and ongoing struggles of Black life in Los Angeles from the city’s early development in the nineteenth century to the present. Grounded in historical analysis, ethnography, and community-based activism, this course explores how antiblackness has shaped urban space, labor systems, policing, carcerality, housing, education, and cultural production, and the ways that Black Angelenos have continuously organized, resisted, and built solidarities in response. This course centers the lived experiences of Black Angelenos while highlighting coalition building with LatinX, Asian American, LGBTQ, and others. Students will engage with local organizations and activist frameworks to understand how scholarship and community organizing intersect in struggles over housing, policing, environmental justice, labor, and cultural memory. By situating Black Los Angeles within broader frameworks of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, migration, and the African diaspora, this course also emphasizes Los Angeles as a key site for understanding antiblackness and transformative resistance in the United States.