Research Guides: Los Angeles History and Culture in Library Special Collections: Los Angeles Communities

Resources and Search Strategies

Special Collections’ holdings contain a variety of materials that document the histories of Los Angeles’s varied communities. These materials include personal papers, records of organizations, government records, collections of photographs, oral histories, and various kinds of ephemera.

Finding aids for materials on Los Angeles communities can be found in the Online Archive of California. Abstracts of oral histories, and often transcripts and audio recordings are available online: UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.

African American History

See UCLA Library Special Collections' Subject Guide for African American Studies.

Asian American History

See UCLA Library Special Collections' Subject Guide for Asian American Studies.

Jewish History

Harriet Rochlin Collection of Photographs of Western Jewish Life (Collection 441)
These photographs, some of which date back to the mid-nineteenth century were collected by writer Harriet Rochlin to illustrate articles she wrote on Jews in the western United States.
Harriet Rochlin Collection of Western Jewish History (Collection 1689)
This collection contains materials documenting Jewish individuals, families, businesses, and groups in the western United States.

Latina and Latino History

See UCLA Library Special Collections’ Subject Guide for Chicana and Chicano Studies.

LGBT History

Harry Hay Oral History
Founder of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights organization and Radical Faeries, a gay spiritual movement.
Mazer Lesbian Archives
A selection of resources from Los Angeles' June Mazer Lesbian Archives can be found on line at this site. In addition, a search for the term “Mazer” in the Online Archive of California will yield a number of collections that came to Special Collections as part of the holdings of the Mazer Archives.
Morris Kight Papers (Collection 354)
Kight was a Los Angeles gay activist whose work extended from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Paul Monette Papers (Collection 1707)
Monette was a novelist and poet who wrote extensively on gay themes and particularly about the devastating effects of the AIDS epidemic.

Native American History

American Indian History
The UCLA Center for Oral History Research has conducted a number of oral histories in Native American communities in Los Angeles with a particular focus on Indians who came to Los Angeles under the Bureau of Indian Affairs' urban relocation program in the 1950s and 1960s.