Coloring Pages

Ignacio “Nacho” Nava (1976–2019) was a community leader, an event producer, and LGBTQIA activist, most notable for being one of the founders of Mustache Mondays, an inclusive, intersectional and multicultural LGBTQIA night club event hosted in downtown Los Angeles. Mustache Mondays became internationally well known event that mixed the diversity of the club music--electronic dance, R&B, cumbias, hip hop, etc. and drew in famous artists such as Diplo, Dj Rashad, Yoko Ono and Florence Welch. The nightclub proudly represented a more diverse gay club scene, including people of color, nonbinary, gender-fluid and more. Nava also dedicated his time and energy in supporting the LGBTQIA community: curating film screenings, underground events, and community fundraisers for disasters, as well as the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.

Hashem Ahmad Alshilleh (1945–2021) was a community leader for Southern California Muslims. Alshilleh was knowledgeable about death customs for Muslims and volunteered his time preparing bodies of loved ones throughout the Southland, sometimes as far as San Diego and Victorville. Alshilleh, as a teenage refugee from Palestine living in Jordan, had to bury his father after Alshilleh’s father died and no one was available to prepare the body according to tradition. After that experience, Alshilleh took it upon himself to donate his time and help family members prepare bodies to be buried according to tradition, first in Jordan, then in New York and finally in the Riverside area starting in 1993. In January 2021, Alshilleh lost his life to COVID-19. Alshilleh is pictured here at the Wadi-e-Hussain Cemetery, a Muslim Cemetery, in Pomona, California.

Daniel Joseph Fiduccia (1956–2001) and Barbara Faye Waxman Fiduccia (1955–2001) were both disability activists and are known for their persistence in handling adversity. Daniel, as a young cancer survivor, had a disabling spinal curvature and a weakened immune system. After graduating from Stanford University and working at the university paper, Daniel became a paralegal and fiercely fought for the rights of cancer survivors and people with disabilities. Babara was an extremely stylish and beautiful woman who used a ventilator and a wheelchair. She strongly advocated for reproductive rights for disabled people and increased access for standard reproductive health services for people with disabilities. Federal health limits for Medicare and Medicaid limit the income that people with disabilities receive in order to qualify for services. The couple, who wanted to marry, were forced to decide between marriage and vital health services and instead decided to advocate on Capitol Hill to change the federal limits. The federal government did not change the limits, but allowed for states to grant waivers by the mid-1990s. The couple married in July 1996.

The Ed Roberts Campus, named for esteemed independent living and disability rights advocate Ed Roberts, opened in November of 2010 (long after the deaths of the Fiduccias) and is located in Berkeley, California on top of the Ashby BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Station. The Campus is a nonprofit corporation that joins together organizations to build universally-designed, transit-orientated spaces that include fully accessible meeting rooms, fitness center, and seven partner organizations, including the Center for Independent Living, founded in 1972.

Helen Liu Fong (1927–2005) was an architect and interior designer known for her bold color choices and development of the Googie architecture movement. Googie architecture was a futurist trend that started in Southern California and took its theme from car culture and space travel and applied it into architecture from the 1940s into the 1970s. Fong was born and grew up in Chinatown, LOs angeles and early on as a child decided to become an architect. Fong, after graduation from UCLA and UC Berkeley, joined the architecture of Eugene Choy as a secretary. Two years later, she began doing architecture work for Arnet and Davis. Fong’s attention to detail allowed for integration between interiors and exteriors with brightly colored walls, textiles, space age shapes, etc. She is pictured here in front of Pann’s Coffee Shop, one of her best-known works.

Julia Bogany (Gabrielino-Tongva) (1948–2021) was a community leader, an educator, a tribal elder, a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother. Bogany worked to bring awareness and recognition for the Tongva; the Gabrielino/Tongva Tribe is recognized by the state of California but lacks federal recognition and thus federal funding. Bogany was passionate about educating the Tongva community on traditional arts, crafts, language and culture and also served as a consultant for educators, trained teachers and school boards to create and revise curriculum that reflected the history of California and California Native communities.

Los Angeles State Historic Park was formed in 2006 in a 32 acre open space with a long and storied history. The park is located in the known territory of the Tongva people. After the 1781 founding of Los Angeles, the pueblo founders used Native Americans to build an irrigation ditch, called the Zanja Madre, to bring river water to the area. In 1875, the area became the Southern Pacific Railroud’s train stop. In 2001, while doing archeological digs in the park, a five-foot section of the historical Zanja Madre irrigation canal was found as well as evidence of the communities of that time period.

Edward Howard (c.1957 – 2020) was a community leader, a homeless advocate and organizer for Skid Row, centrally located in Los Angeles. Skid Row is historically since the 1930s, a low income community that is disenfranchised from mainstream society and deals with regular police harassment, partly because of the large population of unhoused people in the area. Howard through his advocacy for the community brought about a sense of community pride and political prowess in bringing changes to Skid Row. Howard was involved with Los Angeles Community Action Network, the Skid Row Community Improvement Coalition, the Skid Row Community Coalition and Black Lives Matter. Through these organizations, he was able to bring employment training opportunities for the community, outdoor film screenings, a 24-hour, community-run laundry, bathroom and shower centers.

Skid Row City Limits Mural (aka Skid Row Super Mural) is a mural of a map that shows the boundaries of Skid Row and was created and organized by Skid Row community actvist Jeff Page and help by the Winston Death Squad, as a community organized activity. The map boundaries designates the geographic limits of Skid Row and were taken from Jones vs. City of Los Angeles, a court case that barred nighttime homeless sweeps by police.

Rosary Castro-Olega (1956-2020) was the first healthcare worker to have died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County and was a mother of three daughters and a caring nurse. Castro-Olega already had a long and fulfilling career as a nurse for 37 years at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and is pictured in this coloring sheet in the Healing Garden located at the hospital. However, because she felt the strong call for help and the need of the community, Castro-Olega came out of retirement during the pandemic and returned back into nursing. Castro-Olega lived a very full life and in her brief retirement, traveled internationally. As a call to the inequities in hiring practices and the high-risk jobs (ICU and ER positions) offered to immigrants to the United States, the Atlantic Monthly reports that Filipinx nurses make up 4% of all nurses in the United States and that they make up 31.5% of the deaths of nurses in the United States from COVID-19.

Read the more in-depth explanation of the coloring page here. (LAPL blogpost)

Located in San Francisco's Tenderloin, Gene Compton's Cafeteria (informally known as Compton's Cafeteria), a 24-hour diner, was a community hangout and also the location of one of the earliest fights for LGBTQIA civil rights. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot happened in August 1966 when a transgender woman was harrassed by a police officer for cross-dressing. She refused to be arrested and the community joined together to protest and began to riot. This event is a less than well known milestone for both the LGBTQIA rights movement and San Francisco’s community history. Following the riot, positive changes began to occur within the Tenderloin and for its transgender community.

From left to right, Amanda St Jaymes (dates unknown) was a hotel manager and present at the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. Her eyewitness description of the event and the community helped bring light to the path-changing work happening in the Tenderloin during the late 1960s into the 1970s.

Elliott Blackstone (1924 – 2006) was an ally for the LGBTQIA community and a sergeant for the San Francisco Police Department. In 1962, he, as a pioneer of community policing, became the department’s liaison for the LGBTQIA community. He worked within the police department to change how LGBTQIA was policed by changing department policies and procedures.

Aleshia Brevard (1937 – 2017) was an author, model, actress, and professor of theater. Aleshia lived and worked in the Tenderloin during the period preceding the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. Brevard began transitioning to a woman in the early 1960s and after transition, lived a fulfilling life, not identifying as part of the transgender community until writing her memoirs.

Gabriel Avedis Injejikian (Armenian/American) (1930-2019) was an Armenian educator and community activist who fulfilled his lifelong dream of opening an Armenian day school to promote Armenian language, culture, and history in the United States. Injejikian worked tirelessly to this end, traveling extensively to raise funds. A native of Kessab, Syria, he earned his first degree from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. He immigrated to the States in 1953, received his Masters in Education in Michigan and teaching credentials from CSULA and UCLA. With funds bequeathed by Armenian American attorney Matthew Ferrahian, he established Holy Martyrs Ferrahian Armenian High School, the first Armenian day school in the US in 1964, serving as Principal until 1990. Never shying away from any role in the school, he was Principal, teacher, bus driver, and sometimes custodian. A lanky, gentle man with a sweet smile at the ready, he was a true visionary and one-man change agent who nurtured and profoundly and positively influenced generations of Armenian American students. He was passionate about everything he did, from his love of growing and nurturing fruit trees (he was an accomplished amateur tree surgeon) to looking towards the next project and never resting on his laurels. Well into his retirement, he advocated the idea of charter schools, and became one of the founders of the Ararat Charter School in Van Nuys (2010), and continued to serve on its Board until 2017. A fixture at April 24 Armenian Genocide recognition marches, he could be seen ticking away on his people counter in order to get an accurate number of people in attendance. He was a devoted husband for over 58 years to his wife Rose, and a loving father to his children Avo, Ara and Arpy, as well as his grandchildren. In his heart he considered all Armenians family.

Louise Leung Larson (1905 – 1988) was the first Chinese American woman and the first Chinese American reporter for a mainstream newspaper, writing for the Los Angeles Record, San Francisco News, Chicago Daily Times, Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, and the Los Angeles Daily News. Larson graduated from Los Angeles High School (pictured here) and attended USC, where she discovered she had a knack for journalism. She started out covering the court beat, including what was going on in Los Angeles courts, county jail and the coroner’s office. She is famously known for covering Al Capone’s 1931 tax-evasion trial and Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s 1942 8-month speaking tour, raising awareness of the Japanese invasion of China. Larson also covered celebrities, including Anna May Wong, Aimee Semple McPherson and Charlie Chaplin and wrote about Chinese American life. Larson’s father, Tom Leung, was a noted herbalist in Los Angeles and experienced racism and xenophobia typical of that time period, such as frequent police harassment. Along with her daughter Jane Leung Larson, Larson wrote Sweet Bamboo, a book that covers four generations of the Leung family. As a note for researchers, within her family and some early newspaper articles, Larson is referred to as Mamie Leung, Louise Leung, Louise Larson, or Mamie Leung Larson.

Jessica Orozco (1987 – 2018) was a Native ethnobotanist who was passionate in sharing and preserving Native American botanical wisdom. Orozco received education from San Francisco State University and Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, as part of Claremont Graduate University. Orozco was active in the Society of Ethnobiologyin promoting Native understanding and knowledge as it applies to land use and management. Orozco spent time throughout California and Arizona working with Native tribes. She worked among First Nation tribes, then did significant research on the history of the Tule River Tribe and at the time of her untimely death, she was the Range Scientist for the Hualapai Tribe and a Tribal Botanist for the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe at Pomona in California.

It is with great anguish that we write that Orozco’s life was stolen from her by a gunshot wound. According to the World Health Organization, it should be noted that it is estimated that 1 in 3 women suffer from a traumatic violent experience. Additionally, from a 2010 report from the United States Department of Justice survey on Native American domestic and sexual violence, 4 out 5 native adults experiences some form of violence. Additionally, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women from 2019, there is underreporting of these crimes, specifically those against indigenous women, and also that the rate of violence against indigenous women is significantly higher than the national average.

Marilyn Jorgenson Reece (1926 – 2004) was California’s first licensed female civil engineer and the designer of the I-405 / I-10 Interchange in Los Angeles. The groundbreaking interchange design was completed in 1964 and was used as an example for new freeway constructions throughout the world. The design allowed for high speed movement of cars by using curved shapes within the densely populated surrounding the intersection of Sepulveda and Olympic Boulevards. In 2007, Caltrans renamed the I-405 / I-10 freeway interchange as the Marilyn Jorgensen Reece Memorial Interchange. The pattern on Reece’s dress is a pattern made of the overhead view of the I-405 / I-10 Interchange.

In spite of the need for high speed connection in this sprawling metropolis, the building of freeways has always been fraught with community opposition, hundreds of churches, homeowner groups, and other community organizations rallied against the building of these freeways and entire neighborhoods were reconfigured through eminent domain, the power of the government to take away private property and convert it for public use.

Barbara Ann Drake (Gabrielino-Tongva) (1940 – 2020) was a Native American elder, mother, grandmother, and teacher. The Gabrielino-Tongva tribe is located in the Los Angeles basin. In her life’s work, Drake taught about the interconnection of all beings, using native plants as a lens to learn about Tongva culture and viewpoints. Drake started a community project called “Preserving Our Heritage” to help gather traditional native plants at a food bank for Native Elders. Drake helped create the Chia Café Collective that provided accessible harvesting sites for people and elders and to provide native plant food education to the Tongva community and the general public. Drake was an educator at area institutions throughout the Los Angeles basin about the Tongva community; she did work with the Autry Museum, Idyllwild Arts, and significantly at Pitzer College. The Tongva Living History Garden, located at the Chaffey Communities Cultural center was founded by Barbara Drake and tells the story of the Tongva experience through plants. Chia Cafe Collective has a published cookbook, Cooking the Native Way.

Miriam Matthews (1905 – 2003) is Los Angeles Public Library’s first African American Librarian and an activist in information access, raising awareness of the needs of the African American community and the history of African Americans to the greater community. Matthews received a BA and certificate in librarianship in UC Berkeley in 1927. Coming back to Los Angeles, she almost missed the examination date to become a librarian for LAPL because she was given the wrong examination date. Matthews passed the test and thrived in spite of barriers at LAPL – building references resources used by librarians throughout the nation, creating a landmark archival collection of early Los Angeles African American history and promoting to a regional library supervisor of 12 South Los Angeles library branches. Matthews is also known for her support of Black artists and she is well known for the co-founding of the Associated Artists Gallery. After her retirement at LAPL, Matthews worked on California heritage preservation projects that resulted in the Los Pobladores monument located in El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park Plaza. Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by a group of 11 families of Mexicans of African, white and indigenous backgrounds known as “Los Pobladores”. In 2004, in recognition of her trailblazing work, the Hyde Park Branch Library of LAPL was renamed in her honor.

Yiu Hai Seto Quon “Mama Quon” (1899 – 1999) was a Chinese-American restaurateur, chef, and community leader in Chinatown Los Angeles. There are two Chinatowns in this story. Los Angeles’ Chinatown was originally in the Olvera Street area, the oldest part of the city of Los Angeles; residents were forcibly evicted because of racism and civic development to build Union Station. As one of the first Chinese women to arrive in early Chinatown in 1922, her father-in-law ran one of the earliest local Chinese restaurants, located near modern day Union Station. In 1938, New Chinatown debuted. Mama Quon and her husband opened Grand Star Restaurant in 1946. The restaurant popularized Chinese food with American ingredients. Grand Star Restaurant morphed into a bar and jazz club and from the mid 90s to late 2000, was known for Firecracker, an inclusive underground hip-hop and jazz nightlife event. The Grand Star Jazz Club is currently closed during the current pandemic.

Dr. Patricia Bath (1942 – 2019) was an African American ophthalmologist, inventor of laser cataract surgery, advocate for communities of color and success in math and the sciences for girls. In research that Bath did in the 1970s, Bath realized that the rate of blindness between Blacks and whites was disproportionate. Upon further research, she discovered that among Blacks who were blind, a majority of them could have been prevented. Through this discovery, Bath started doing community ophthalmology, that focuses and expands on eye care to underserved populations. Originally based in New York City, Bath moved to work at UCLA and became the first African American surgeon at UCLA Medical Center, the first woman ophthalmologist on the faculty of UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute and later co-founded and chair of the King-Drew-UCLA Ophthalmology Residency Program. With her research, Bath became the first black female to hold a medical patent and held a total of five US patents for her inventions.

Bath is pictured inside UCLA’s Powell Library, one of the four original buildings on the original UCLA campus. Ray Bradbury wrote an early draft of Fahrenheit 451 on rented typewriters in this building. The ceiling that is pictured here is the work of Julian Ellsworth Garnsey, who also worked on the rotunda of the Central Library.

Yuri Kochiyama (1921 – 2014) is a grassroots human rights activist who was active in Black revolutionary politics and Asian American empowerment movements. Kochiyama was born and raised in San Pedro; after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kochiyama’s father, in spite of being ill, was immediately detained at Terminal Island Federal Prison until right before his death. When President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, her family and other people of Japanese descent throughout California were temporarily relocated to Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, pictured as the background to this coloring page. Her family was then sent to and spent the next few years at the Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Center in Arkansas. After the war, Kochiyama married and lived in New York City. Once there, she became involved in her community, first actively installing street lights and improving living conditions in Harlem. Then after meeting and becoming influenced by Malcolm X, she fought for Black civil rights and is famously pictured in Life magazine cradling Malcolm X’s head after his murder. In the 1980s she protested for reparations for Japanese American World War II internees, leading to President Reagan signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Johnny Rice (Prairie Band Potawatomi) (1938 – 2015) is a Native American surfboard shaping legend, known for introducing surfing to communities and supporting making boards for women and people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Rice was born in Santa Cruz and after moving to Manhattan Beach as a teenager, was introduced to the sport and learned the art of surfboard shaping. Rice honed his skills and became one of the first shapers to shift from carving boards out of balsa wood to using lighter polyurethane foam. Rice shared his love of surfing throughout the world; he brought his techniques to shaping surfboards in Brazil and introduced his love of surfing with the Washington State Quinault Nation.His surfboard company’s triangular logo is of a triangular wave, flanked with four colors: black, red, yellow and white, representing the Potawatomi concept of the four sacred directions.

Jefferson Lewis Edmonds (1852 – 1914) was born enslaved and once free, became a farmer, a politician, a real estate entrepreneur, political activist and founder & editor of The Liberator newspaper. The Liberator fearlessly advocated for improved social and economic conditions for the Black Angeleno community at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1912, Los Angeles City Attorney, John Shenk tacitly reinforced segregation in Los Angeles by stating that it was not extortion to charge different prices for people who were African American or white. Edmonds attacked the decision in print and used the pages of The Liberator to chronicle discrimination and hardship caused by the Shenk Rule. When John Shenk ran for mayor in 1913, Jefferson L. Edmonds, using The Liberator as his platform, urged African Americans to vote against Shenk. Shenk was ultimately defeated by a small margin. Pictured in this coloring page is Los Angeles City Hall between 1888–1928.

Mark Kostopoulos (1955–1992) was one of the founders of ACT UP/LA, an activist organization focused on improving AIDS healthcare services and spent his later years promoting national health care insurance. ACT UP/LA used non-violent direct action in order to draw attention to the plight of AIDS patients; these acts included sit-ins, protests, marches, etc. In early 1989, ACT/UP LA hosted a week-long vigil outside of LAC+USC Medical Center, to protest the lack of AIDS healthcare within the county health system. ACT/LA also protested at the LA County Board of Supervisors, demanding a creation of a dedicated AIDS unit at the hospital. In September 1989, a 20-bed unit was opened.

Aurelio José Barrera (1960–2020) was a photojournalist who advocated for local representation and documentation of communities of color in the media. Mainstream media before the 1980s had a bias in reporting these communities, only covering stories of crime, unrest, or other disturbances. In 1983, Barrera, as an intern, along with a group of veteran Times reporters, brainstormed and successfully pitched a groundbreaking series documenting Los Angeles’ Latino communities. For this coverage, the Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize. After his retirement, he started a one-man food delivery service to the homeless in his community of East Los Angeles.

Aristide “A.J.” Laurent (1941-2011) was a co-founder of the Los Angeles Advocate (later renamed as The Advocate) and an activist for LGBT (lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender) equality. On New Year’s 1967, the Black Cat Tavern, in Silver Lake at Sunset Junction, was a part of an LAPD raid for homosexuals. After arresting multiple same-sex couples, the cops began beating other patrons and bartenders, inciting riots at the bar. In the wake of this incident and the ever-present discrimination of LGBT people, Laurent took to publishing to unite and inform the gay community.

Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926–2012) was an architect who used her position to mentor and lift up other minorities in the architecture field. Sklarek should be noted for her multiple firsts as a black woman: first to graduate from Columbia University School of Architecture in 1950, first licensed architect in the state of New York in 1954, first licensed architect in California in 1962, and the first member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1959. She famously worked on the following local large-scale projects: California Mart (1963), the Pacific Design Center (1978), San Bernardino City Hall (1973), and Terminal One at LAX (1984).

Julius Levitt (1885-1952) was a community activist in Los Angeles and brought attention to the horrors of Nazism throughout the world. Levitt was the founding president of the Jewish Labor Committee of Los Angeles (JLC) in early 1935. On November 10, 1938, in Germany, SA paramilitary forces (the Nazi party’s protection forces), looted Jewish-owned stores, burned synagogues, and beat people in the streets. This event is known as Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass and was a precursor to the genocide of European Jews during World War II. In November 1938, as a protest to Kristallnacht, the JLC and other community organizations staged an interfaith march in Boyle Heights, down Brooklyn Avenue (now Cesar Chavez Avenue) – drawing 10,000 to 15,000 people – to honor its victims. The United States did not enter into World War II until after the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The building pictured is the Breed Street Shul, the center of Jewish community life in Boyle Heights from the 1920s through 1950s, when the Boyle Heights community makeup shifted during the postwar era.

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin (Metis/Turtle Mountain Chippewa) (1863-1952) was an advocate for Native American rights and women’s suffrage. In 1904, Baldwin was appointed as a clerk in the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA), an agency within the Department of the Interior. In 1912, at the age of 49, she enrolled at the Washington College of Law, becoming the first woman attorney of color to graduate from the school. She became active with the suffrage movement in Washington DC and marched with a group of other female lawyers in the 1913 Suffrage Parade. In 1949, she moved from DC to Los Angeles, where she died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1952.

From looking at voter registration records, no evidence was found of Baldwin voting. Native Americans were not automatically made United States citizens until 1924 with the Indian Citizenship Act. However, disenfranchisement of Native voters continued through the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and continues to this day with unavailable polling places and irregular mail service within the reservation system.

Frances Mary Albrier (1898-1987) was a labor and civil rights activist. As the granddaughter of formerly enslaved people, Albrier was a champion for voter rights, becoming active in the National Council of Negro Women and the Citizenship Education Project. In 1956, the Citizenship Education Project estimated it had contacted more than 15,000 people in the San Francisco area. Albrier was active in city politics, founded the East Bay Women’s Welfare Club to increase Black teachers working in Berkeley schools.

Clara Elizabeth Chan Lee (1886-1993) was the first Asian American woman to register to vote in the United States. Lee was also an activist within the Chinese American community, starting the Lü-Mei-Zhongguo Nüjie Zilihui—the Chinese Women’s Jeleab (Self-Reliance) Association--to help uplift Chinese American Women through education to acquire freedom, independence and respect. The group would do this work through education such as literacy classes and lessons in American sewing patterns.

Mildred Obarr Walizer (1874 - 1933) was an educator and Principal of the East San Pedro School on Terminal Island. Hired as an “Americanization” teacher in 1918 and charged with the assimilation of the mostly Japanese American student body, Walizer rejected the notion that her students required change. Walizer fostered an educational environment that allowed her students to embrace both their Japanese and American identities and celebrate them. In the thick of the Great Depression, Terminal Island parents raised funds to send Walizer on vacation to Japan in recognition of her altruism. When she passed, parents renamed the school in her honor.

Tsuru Yokozeki (1892 - 1981) was a prominent member of the Terminal Island community. Because of her fluency in both Japanese and English, she acted as a translator for the community. She and the community members of Terminal Island, during World War II, were relocated via Executive Order 9066. Tsuru was relocated to Granada Relocation Center, located in southeastern Colorado 140 miles east of Pueblo in September 1942 and left in September 1945. She passed away in Agana, Guam in November 1981.

Maria Guadalupe Evangelina de Lopez (1881-1977) was an instructor at UCLA and possibly the first Latina to teach at UCLA. Lopez was a speaker and a translator into Spanish of materials to help the California suffrage campaign. She is credited as the first person in the state of California to give speeches in support of women's suffrage in Spanish. She is pictured here in front of the Lopez-Lowther adobe.

Arnett Hartsfield (1918-2014) was an Army veteran and firefighter in the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD). After several years in the Army, Hartsfield joined the fire service and utilized his GI Bill to go back to school, attending both UCLA and USC. Despite prestigious college degrees, Hartsfield was still denied promotions in the LAFD and was forced to work in segregated firehouses before he worked to help integrate them in 1956. Following retirement, he served the African American Firefighter Museum’s historian and at age 92 was recognized for his work when he was named Honorary Fire Chief by the LAFD.

Manuela García (1867-1931) was a successful formally trained Los Angeles singer who intimately knew Spanish-language songs from the second half of the nineteenth century. Growing up in a musical family, the Garcías were frequent guests and performers at Charles Lummis dinner parties. Between 1904 to 1905, Lummis, with his deep interest in the Southwest, in documentation and preservation of culture, recorded 300 Mexican folk songs on wax cylinders and later published them in his 1923 book, Spanish Songs of Old California. Garcia, with her encyclopedic memory for music, recorded and sang from memory about 150 songs for Lummis’ project. In addition to singing for Lummis, García gave him her notebook containing the words to 149 songs. Her recordings, often accompanied by her brother Nacho on guitar, make up more than one third of the Spanish-language songs in Lummis' collection.

Side note: In 1905, Lummis took the position as City Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Tie Sing (date unknown - 1918) was a Chinese American known as the “Gourmet Chef of the Sierras”. Sing was the head chef for the US Geological Survey for 28 years and his reputation as a backcountry cook and his work feeding mapmakers was so legendary that Sing Peak in Yosemite was named after him in 1899. Because of the intense racial discrimination of the time, Asian Americans were limited in their job opportunities. As an immigrant, Sing first came to California looking for gold. When gold ran out and instead of building roads, Sing worked and excelled in outdoor cooking. Sing famously cooked for the Mather Mountain parties in 1915, which was a camping campaign to show politicians and industrialists the splendor of Yosemite and inspire their support for nature preservation efforts. The Mather Mountain Parties were so successful that the National Park Service was established through the Organic Act of 1916.

Pictured is John Ballard (c. 1830-1905) with his modern-day descendants on Ballard Mountain, located by Seminole Springs in the Santa Monica Mountains. John Ballard, a freed slave from Kentucky, arrived in Los Angeles in 1859 and became a successful business person. He was prominent in Los Angeles’s African American community and co-founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church of Los Angeles.

In the 1880s, Ballard became a homesteader in the Santa Monica Mountains. The area Ballard lived on was referred to by the US Geological Survey as N**head until the 1960s when the name was then changed to Negrohead. In 2010, after two years of campaigning, the official name of the mountain was changed on all maps to be Ballard Mountain.

Some noteworthy descendants of John Ballard include:

• Dr. Claudius Ballard - UC Berkeley medical school in 1913. Served in WWI as a First Lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corp. Croix de Guerre award.

• Reginald Ballard - During World War II, trained with the Tuskegee Airmen. Later, served as a Los Angeles firefighter, challenged the department’s segregation policies.

Photo reference of Ballard’s descendants are from an event by the Santa Monica Mountains Fund and is documented here: https://samofund.org/2018/02/13/ballard-mountain-event/

Mary Emily Foy (1862-1962) was the daughter of Samuel Calvert Foy and Lucinda (Pet) Macy Foy, both of whom came to Los Angeles in the 1850s. Foy was the first woman to serve as Los Angeles City Librarian (1880-1884), and was responsible for setting up the library's first catalog system. She is pictured here in front of Downey Block, where the Library was located when she was the City Librarian.

Following her tenure with the library, Foy attended the State Normal School (then located on the grounds where Central Library now stands), where she trained to become an educator, later teaching at Los Angeles High School, her alma mater. A tireless advocate for women's suffrage, Foy was a major figure in the California movement to give women the right to vote, serving as Vice President of the Political Equality League and Secretary of the Votes for Women Club. A lifelong Democrat, Foy was also President of the California Women's Democratic League, and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1916 and 1920. In 1934, she ran unsuccessfully for Congress in the 15th Congressional District. In later life, Foy strongly advocated for the preservation of Los Angeles history. Upon her death in 1962, Foy became the first (and only) woman to be laid in state at Los Angeles City Hall. In 2020, the Los Angeles Public Library commemorated Foy's accomplishments by installing a plaque in her honor in the Rotunda of Central Library.

Anita Andrade Castro (1907-1980) was born in the former Yugoslavia, immigrated to Argentina with her family as a child, and then to the United States as a teenager. While employed as a garment worker in Los Angeles, she witnessed substandard working conditions and rumblings to form a union grew louder and louder. In the early 1930s, Los Angeles was notoriously without unions and so the International Ladies Garment Workers Union sent Rose Pesotta from New York City to begin organizing workers. However, many of the women employed in Los Angeles were Mexican immigrants and only spoke Spanish, a language that Ukranian-American Pesotta did not speak. Castro stepped up, learned the tenets of union organization, and was instrumental in assisting Pesotta in organizing the Spanish speaking workers. Thus began a lifelong career of union activism, getting arrested over forty times, and demonstrating that workers rights are worth fighting for.

Raised in the Eastside, the young Boccalero was taught art by Sister Corita Kent at Immaculate Heart College in Los Feliz. She entered a Francisican order and continued her art education in Rome and at Temple University. She returned to East Los Angeles and opened the first iteration of Self-Help Graphics & Art in the garage behind the house she shared with her fellow nuns. Since 1970, Self-Help Graphics & Art has provided a foundation for Chicanx artists to express themselves and solidify their identities. Positioned within the community whose voice it helped amplify, Self-Help Graphics & Art continues to cultivate creative expression.

“It’s part of my philosophy. I feel part of the Chicano art movement is to make art accessible.” [quote source]

“We should have pride in our common identity . . . so we can then contribute to the [larger] society.” (quote source)

Helen Agcaoili Summers Brown (1915-2011), lifelong educator, founder of the Filipino American Library, and co-founder of the the Los Angeles chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society, enriched the Pilipinx/Philipine/Pinoy community for over seventy years.

Born in Manila, Philippines, she immigrated with her family to Los Angeles after completing high school. She first attended Pasadena City College and then UCLA, where she was the first-known Filipina woman to graduate from the university. She earned her undergraduate degree in 1937 and a Masters in Education in 1939. Brown became a third grade teacher for Los Angeles Unified School District and retired in 1974. During World War II, she also served as a welder in Boilermakers Union, Local 92.

Upon retiring from teaching, she began the process of organizing her personal collection of Pilipinx books, pamphlets, photographs, artifacts - over 6,000 items in total. In 1985, she was granted space in the basement of the Filipino Christian Church and founded the Pilipino American Reading Room and Library. After securing a larger location in 2000, the library moved to Temple Street and changed its name to the Filipino-American Library where it served the community for over another decade. Upon closing, its collections were distributed to the Echo Park branch of the Los Angeles Public Library and USC Libraries.

Ah-Wane-U Sharon (Oneida/Onyota'a:ka) (c.1867-1935) was a businesswoman, leader, and uplifter of the Native American community in 1920s-30s Los Angeles. In 1924, she founded the Wigwam Club of America in Los Angeles, initially formed to serve the needs of disabled Native American soldiers which later expanded to also serving families and young people. A guiding principle of the club was to provide pathways into middle-class, western society while still retaining one’s Native American roots. The Wigwam Club’s lasting contribution was the 1928 founding of an annual inter-tribal celebration of Native American culture, the Indian Day Pow Wow held in Sycamore Grove Park. The event regularly drew thousands of attendees and Native American artists from around the nation were featured.

Ah-wane-u’s presence in the Los Angeles business community appears as early as 1920 when she is listed as having a license to sell real estate. In 1928, she organized an annual bazaar that sold Native American goods and artwork whose proceeds benefited the Wigwam Club’s charitable actions. She opened a permanent thrift store in 1929 to further facilitate fundraising efforts. In addition to her role as club and business leader, Ah-Wane-U Sharon was also a public speaker who gave a talk on Native American spiritual beliefs on Easter Sunday 1930 at the Prometheus Lodge in Los Angeles.

Learn More:

Reimagining Indian Country (LAPL link)

Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles Storymap - Indigenous Urbanity in 1910s-30s Los Angeles (UCLA)

"Lewis MacAdams (1944-2020) was a poet, journalist, and visionary advocate for the revitalization of the Los Angeles River. In 1986, he launched a crusade to restore the wetlands of the river and increase public access. His organization, the Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR) continues to promote river clean-up, education, and nature conservation."

https://folar.org/2020/04/21/folar-founder-lewis-macadams-passes-away/