Los Angeles History and Culture in Library Special Collections

Oral history interviews with individuals who were involved in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles.

Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Chair of San Francisco State College’s Department of Education.

Staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California.

Legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

McGrath was a political activist who first became known for her work with the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, working to overturn the racist convictions of Mexican American youth in the Sleepy Lagoon trial in 1942. See also Alice McGrath Oral Histories.

McWilliams was a writer, lawyer, journalist, lecturer, activist, and editor of The Nation.

McWilliams was a writer, lawyer, journalist, lecturer, activist, and editor of The Nation.

McWilliams was a writer, lawyer, journalist, lecturer, activist, and editor of The Nation.

The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee (first known as the Citizens’Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth) was organized in October 1942 in response to the indictment of 22 young men for murder. It includes photographs, correspondence, publicity materials, radio scripts, petitions, scrapbooks of news clippings, and trial transcripts.

The collection consists of manuscripts, correspondence, notes, photographs, and printed material related to his career as a Los Angeles City councilman. As city councilman, he was an advocate for equal rights, particularly on issues facing the local Latino community, and was opposed to the displacement of the Mexican American community called Chavez Ravine by Dodger Stadium.

Lesson plans for Grade 6-12 using digitized materials from the Edward Ross Roybal papers.

Reverend Vahac Mardirosian has been a major advocate of Mexican-American educational reforms in Los Angeles and San Diego school districts since the early 1960s.

The Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association is an association that was formed by Latino employees of Los Angeles County in 1969.

Rosalío Muñoz is a Chicano journalist and activist who has been a longtime member of the Communist Party.

Oral history interviews with individuals who were involved in environmental activism in the Los Angeles area from the 1970s through the early 2000s.

Green was an environmental activist and founder of Heal the Bay, a nonprofit organization devoted to restoring the water quality of Santa Monica Bay.

Harris was an environmental activist who focused primarily on issues of water management and coastal protection.

Oral history interviews with organizers and rank-and-file who were involved with the Service Employees International Union’s Justice for Janitors campaign.

Healey organized agricultural workers in the Imperial Valley in the 1930s and later went on to serve as the long-time chair of the Communist Party in Southern California.

Materials dealing with the studio strike of 1945 and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada (IATSE).

The Tourism Industry Development Council (TIDC), later changed to Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), was founded in 1993 by Maria Elena Durazo, then president of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 11, Tom Walsh, HERE Local 814, Father Dick Gillette, Episcopal Church, Kent Wong, UCLA Labor Center, and Madeline Janis-Aparicio, Executive Director, to address conditions in the Los Angeles tourism industry, a large generator of low wage jobs and poverty in Los Angeles. The collection consists of correspondence, LAANE campaign ephemera, an extensive press clippings files representing LAANE activities and/or events of tangential interest to the organization, photographs, a small amount of files documenting administrative activities, and a small number of fundraising event publications and programs and reports and research prepared by/for LAANE.

Noel was a labor activist and advocate for women’s rights in the early twentieth century.

A selection of images is available online.

Yoneda was a labor activist and union organizer.