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Food in the Ciudad: Migration, Urban Development and LA’s Food Culture – 5/18/2007

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American food is nearly always identified in terms of a geographic location. When discussing food options, it is not unusual to simply list a group of ethnic or geographical names, i.e. “Chinese” or “Italian” or “Mexican”. Food in the United States is very often identified in terms of a particular point of origin, a city or state. Cities are at the core of these culinary variations: one decides between a New York-style pizza or a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, New England or Manhattan clam chowder (chowdah), Memphis or Kansas City style barbecue. But for as much as the city has meant to food, food has meant more to the city. Cities are the cultural hubs that nearly every ethnic group in the U.S. can connect with their own U.S. experience, and food is a way in which various groups have marked their space and defined their identity in urban settings, and has often been their most familiar export as they have become more and more a part of the American urban landscape. Food, through restaurants, marketing and the creation of local dishes, is how we maintain our links to the history of cities while at the same time mark changes and new developments. Demographic, economic, political and cultural shifts are all captured by these urban food cultures, while at the same time their legacy helps cities mark past events, past traditions and cultural ideals once held. Food in cities tells the story of those cities, and this can be seen in the way that the distributors of food in cities tell their own stories. While this paper could be written about any U.S. city, or indeed all of them, this essay will focus on the development of the urban food culture in Los Angeles, which is arguably the most diverse city in the United States and has had just as much, if not more impact, on the food culture of the rest of the nation as any other city. In studying the history of food and dining in Los Angeles, we come to understand the history of the city itself, and of the different component parts of which the city is comprised. And in that vein, we can study the development of LA’s urban food culture as a microchasm of urban food culture throughout the United States.

In order to discuss anything having to do with Los Angeles it is important to define “Los Angeles”. The City of Los Angeles proper is inadequate in almost any discussion of culture and history, as the City itself has taken on varying shapes, and so much of Los Angeles’ urban landscape is not within the municipal boundaries of the city itself. Los Angeles County is often times sufficient, but in this discussion it would limit discussions of the suburban development of areas such as Orange County and the Inland Empire. So, for the purposes of this writing, “Los Angeles” will be expanded to include not only Los Angeles and Orange counties, but also the counties of San Bernardino and Riverside. As of 2006, the Census Bureau estimates the population of this area to be roughly 16 million people[1], larger than all but three U.S. states. This region is probably the most diverse in the world in terms of the race, ethnicity, religion and national origin of the people within it, and includes sizeable populations of Armenians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mexican-Americans, Mexican nationals, African-Americans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Indians, Filipinos, Russians, Ukrainians, Ethiopians, Jews, Samoans, Tongans, Native Americans and a variety of other ethnic, religious, cultural and racial groups. Only New York City rivals the LA area in terms of cultural diversity. The foods to be found in this area are just as diverse, if not more so, than the population. In examining the foods brought into LA by these varying groups of immigrants and domestic migrants, we can get a clearer picture of the various histories that make up the larger history of Los Angeles.

One of the legacies of American industrial urbanization has been the effect, both positive and negative, on the culture and history of African-Americans. For centuries, both during slavery as well as for the first two generations after, the African-American tradition was very much a rural one. While many Southern cities like Birmingham, AL or Atlanta, GA did have sizeable Black populations, most Southern Black people (which at that time represented the overwhelming majority of African-Americans in the United States) still lived in the rural areas by the turn of the 20th Century, working often as sharecroppers or small farmers not far from the plantations where their parents and grandparents had been held in bondage before emancipation. Living in the rural South as slaves and later as poor sharecroppers oppressed by the South’s crippling Jim Crow segregation system and the systematic violence of groups like the KKK, African-Americans had developed a unique style of cuisine all their own, patterned out of necessity and utilizing themes found in traditional Southern (white Southern) cuisine.[2] By the early 20th Century, the Great Migration had begun and African-Americans began to move increasingly into cities, not only Southern centers like Memphis and New Orleans, but the industrial powerhouses of the North, such as Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York. As these African-Americans began to establish strong communities in these cities, they brought their traditional dishes with them. Urban life, however, modified the dining habits of African-Americans in the same way it did for many Americans moving from rural areas. With less cropland available to grow collards, okra, sweet potatoes and other Soul Food staples, the focus of Soul Food began to be on meat products, more easily available in most cities, especially Chicago, which was still at the time known for its massive stockyards. Soul Food and closely related Southern-style Barbecue began to thrive in urban Black neighborhoods, beginning in family kitchens and churches, and soon showing up in restaurants opened in these neighborhoods by Black entrepreneurs. In Los Angeles, this mass migration would not begin in earnest until the Great Depression, and would not rival anything seen in the Steel Belt (now the Rust Belt) until the World War II era, as African-Americans from all over the country came to LA either as members of the military or to work in the rapidly growing defense industry. This story is told on every menu printed by Long Beach-based Barbecue chain Lucille’s BBQ. On the menus, the story is told about Lucille, who learned to cook barbecue from her grandmother in the rural south, coming out West with her husband who was seeking work in the Long Beach Navy Yard, and opening up her own restaurant. The restaurant’s original location on 2nd and Argonne, in Belmont Shore, shows a picture of an African-American woman, ostensibly Lucille, standing outside the restaurant and selling jars of her barbecue sauce to passers-by. While in many ways a relevant and interesting story, the story of Lucille’s is somewhat exceptional, as Belmont Shore was then and remains a primarily white part of Long Beach, although its liberal atmosphere and high traffic has left Second Street as a popular destination for food tourists (a Lebanese restaurant, pizza parlor, Sushi bar and Chinese kitchen also sit in the area of 2nd and Argonne). Primarily, however, Soul Food and Barbecue restaurants became one of the primary markers of African-American urban space, catering to primarily Black customers in areas like Watts and South Central Los Angeles. In the context of urban decline in the 1960’s, coinciding with the Civil Rights movement and the rise of Black Nationalist groups, Los Angeles became the first major urban battlefield of the 60’s with the 1965 Watts Uprising that highlighted social problems in Watts, one of which was the dominance of white-owned businesses in what was then a nearly exclusive Black enclave. In the aftermath of the riots, white businesses that had not been burned down closed their doors and followed white residential movement into the suburbs (“white flight”), and those business locations were taken over by Black entrepreneurs in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. One of the most popular types of Black-owned businesses was the Soul Food restaurant, which allowed the African-American diner access to the traditional Soul Food dishes popular in Southern Black communities, items such as chitterlings (chitlins).[3] The 1970’s saw the beginning of Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, when Herb Hudson opened his first restaurant near the corner of Sunset and Gower in Hollywood[4], combining a Harlem favorite (a legendary chicken and waffles establishment in Harlem still stands on the corner of 125th and Frederick Douglass Ave) with the glitz and glamour of the Hollywood scene. Roscoe’s would eventually open locations in the Mid-City, Long Beach, Pasadena and South-Central LA as well, and the chain would become one of LA’s legendary establishments. It was also in the 1970’s that Mary McCallum-Stewart and her brother, Ventress McCallum, would open M&M Soul Food café, a restaurant specializing less in fried chicken and more in seafood, vegetables, and extremely traditional Soul Food items such as fried okra, collard greens and neckbone[5]. Between the two, Roscoe’s and M&M’s became the most popular sources for African-American cuisine in Los Angeles, and their appeal spread outside the Black community. Today it is not unusual to walk into one of Roscoe’s five locations and see a diverse crowd of patrons there to enjoy their chicken and waffles. The fast-food franchise model, which had already contributed to the rise of the hamburger, led to the rise of the drumstick. Fried chicken franchise chains such as Church’s, Popeye’s, Louisiana Fried Chicken, Golden Bird, and of course the venerable Kentucky Fried Chicken, began to spring up in every major city in the United States. And although KFC was as popular in the suburbs as it was in the inner-city, the smaller chains, such as Louisiana Fried Chicken, Popeye’s and Church’s, tended to limit their expansion in the LA area to those areas of the city with large African-American populations: South Central, Compton, Watts and Long Beach (and to a smaller extent, Pasadena and Altadena). By the early 1990’s, the fast-food fried chicken restaurant, along with the liquor store and check cashing establishment, was one of the prime markers of the Black ghetto in LA, as in much of the rest of the country. These establishments would transform again in the 1990’s, in an unusual way that will be discussed later.

Another immigrant history, one that until very recently was unique to a handful of cities (San Diego, San Francisco, Honolulu, Seattle, New York), is the history of Asian groups. Asian groups could be broken into individual sections discussing Cambodians, Vietnamese, Chinese and Koreans but in the interest of brevity we will blend all these varying groups under a single framework. Asian groups, beginning with the Chinese, have been a feature in California since the Gold Rush days, and have been part of the LA scene since the early 20th Century, if not earlier. Japanese presence in Los Angeles was also fairly common prior to the Second World War and the Japanese Internment period. Koreans began to move to Los Angeles wholesale in the 1950’s and 1960’s, becoming a major force in the city by the 1980’s.[6] At the conclusion of the Vietnam War, refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia also came to Southern California, the Vietnamese settling in Westminster and Alhambra, and the Cambodians in Long Beach. The 1980’s would be a period of major transition in the business culture of Los Angeles, as Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Thai and other Asian groups began to make serious investment in Los Angeles-area business. Patterns of business development began to surpass patterns of residency in terms of defining urban space in Los Angeles, and the businesses in many cases are restaurants or ethnic food markets. This has been played out very much in the development of Asian “neighborhoods” since the 1970’s. Koreatown, a part of LA’s Mid-City, is a small pocket of the city that is inhabited by a blend of Koreans, African-Americans and Latinos, yet Korean-owned businesses dominate the landscape, including Korean food restaurants and markets.[7] Thai town, on the eastern edge of Hollywood, and Cambodia town in Long Beach share similar stories. The story of Asian groups and food is not, however, limited to the growth of Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the city. As early as the 1970’s, Korean-Americans invested heavily in the inexpensive retail spaces available in primarily Black and Latino sections of South LA, Compton, Gardena and Inglewood[8]. As gang violence and crack-related crime soared in South Central Los Angeles soared during the middle 1980’s, tensions grew between the Korean business owners and their primarily Black and Latino customers.[9] Tensions between Korean business owners and local residents came to a head during the 1992 LA riots, during which many Korean-owned liquor stores and other businesses were burned or looted.[10] After the riots, efforts to rebuild South LA without problem liquor stores caused a sea change, as many Korean business owners reinvested in restaurants. This is most evident looking at the popular chicken chain Louisiana Fried Chicken, which has several locations throughout South LA, Compton, Inglewood, Hawthorne and Long Beach. In the 1990’s, Korean-Americans began to invest in the franchises, and in some cases added Chinese food to the menu, creating another unique restaurant alongside the combination burger stand/taco shop already dotting the LA landscape: the combination Soul Food/Asian cuisine restaurant. While still selling fried chicken, biscuits and red beans and rice, Louisiana Fried Chicken locations often offer fried rice, teriyaki chicken (which is neither Chinese nor Korean but is familiar to most American palates), sweet and sour pork and other Asian-type foods. Upon entering a Louisiana Fried Chicken/Chinese Fast Food establishment, a friend of mine from Atlanta remarked that “only in LA” is that even heard of. Asian-Americans have moved outside of traditionally Asian food establishments into other arenas as well, including doughnut shops and delivery pizza. Dean’s Pizza, a pizza place on the corner of 10th and Redondo in Long Beach, is owned by a family of Cambodian immigrants who offer not only the standard fare of pizza and chicken wings, but also sell Thai food and Chinese food, all for delivery. This willingness by Asian-American restaraunteurs to expand their menus to include various types of food has served to vastly heighten the diversity of food offerings available in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is known as a very diverse food city, as much as it is known as being a diverse city, overall. Los Angeles has contributed much to the food culture of the nation, including the rise of the fast-food hamburger, which will be discussed later. In terms of ethnic cuisine, however, perhaps no city and food have as close a symbiosis as Los Angeles and Mexican food. Greater Los Angeles, today, has a Mexican-American population that approaches four million[11], giving it a larger population of people with Mexican ancestry than nearly any city in Mexico itself (except of course Mexico City and perhaps Tijuana). Los Angeles has been the center of Chicano culture in the United States since the early 20th Century, and possibly before that. The city itself was founded as a Spanish Pueblo, and was a part of Mexico until ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The first major wave of Mexican immigration began in 1910, coinciding with the Mexican Civil War, and continued up until the beginning of the Great Depression. The Hispanic population of Los Angeles grew exponentially during this time.[12] This generation of immigrants, however, faced the efforts of Progressive-era reformers to “Americanize” them, an effort that largely included teaching them more “American” cooking and food ways, including preference of regular bread over tortillas and the abandonment of beans and rice.[13] Thus, Mexican food remained in the private sphere during the early half of the 20th century. What Mexican restaurants did exist during this era were generally meant to attract Anglos and other non-Hispanic persons not accustomed to Mexican food, the so-called “food tourists”. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, a second, and much larger, wave of Latin American immigration began, in response to worsening economic and political conditions in Mexico and other parts of Central America, as well as to improvements in conditions for Latinos north of the border after the Civil Rights era. This would be the era of the “Latinization” of the American city[14], and Los Angeles would be the major site of this change. Mexican food in the barrios of East LA and the Pico-Union left the private kitchen and came to the storefront and the street corner. Mexican restaurants opened all over the city beginning in the 1960’s and continuing as Hispanic populations grew all over Los Angeles county in cities such as Huntington Park, Pico Rivera, South Gate, Compton and Long Beach. Mexican food for retail sale took on many forms by the 1980’s. There was the sit-down, upscale Mexican restaurant marketed often towards the Anglo middle-class residents of the suburbs or even the wealthy Anglos in Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles[15], including popular chains such as Acapulco’s and El Torito. Meanwhile, local “mom & pop” storefront establishments sprung up in the blighted urban barrios of Boyle Heights, East LA and the crumbling industrial suburbs of South Gate and Huntington Park, marketed towards Mexican-American residents of the areas.[16] These areas of the city also became marked by the appearance of taco trucks, mobile restaurants selling tacos and burritos in the parking lots of businesses or on street corners near industrial parks; and tamale carts, operated usually as small family businesses or side-businesses and often without any kind of permits or documentation with the City or County. A third type of business can be found in areas like the Eastside of Long Beach or South Los Angeles, areas that are ethnic “borderlands” where Chicanos live alongside African Americans, Whites, Asians, Samoans and other groups. These stands often are similar to the stands opened up in areas like Boyle Heights, but also offer foods that are familiar to Anglos, African-Americans and others who may just get a craving for carne asada burrito or a cheese quesadilla. Furthermore, local businesses have changed to fit the rapid expansion of the Chicano population in the LA area. Local non-franchise burger stands, like Omega Drive-In or Fabulous Burger, have added burritos, tacos, quesadillas and even items like chorizo y huevos and menudo to the menu, and can therefore compete for business as Mexican restaurants AND burger joints at the same time. One such establishment even offers a pastrami burrito, a hybrid of the popular deli meat with the Mexican food staple. This “latinization” of food business in Los Angeles is not only evident in restaurants, but in grocery stores as well. Grocery stores in heavily Latino sections of Los Angeles have begun to stock products familiar to the Latin American consumer, and the “Hispanic Foods” category has found its way onto the isles of major chain markets such as Ralphs and Vons, as well as lower-priced supermarkets such as Superior and Food 4 Less that dominate LA’s less-affluent areas. Mexican supermarket chain Gigante has gone transnational, opening locations all over Los Angeles, while neighborhood butcher shops, groceries and bakeries have become panaderias and carnecieras. In no more obvious way is the transnational nature of LA and the people of LA evident than in the transnational nature of Mexican food, a food that is now as much a part of the city as the fast-food hamburger and more prevalent in LA’s food culture than the classic American hot dog.

But in no arena has Los Angeles had more impact on the national food culture than in that of the drive-thru burger stand or fast food restaurant. The burger stand was not an LA invention, by any means, as White Castle had been operating all over the East Coast and Midwest since as early as the 1920’s, but the fast-food drive through was about as LA as LA can get. In post-WWII Los Angeles, the car became king, faster and to more of a degree than in any other city in the nation. As suburban cities incorporated throughout the San Gabriel Valley and especially in Orange County, the mass-transit rail lines were demolished and the Interstate Highway system built new freeways in their place. Life in Los Angeles was centered on the motor vehicle, in a degree that is probably still not matched by any other U.S. city. This led to the arrival of the drive-through burger stand, pioneered early on by Carl’s Jr. founder Carl Karcher, and built into a national institution by Ray A. Kroc, who bought the rights to McDonald’s from it’s original San Bernardino founders (the McDonald brothers). The fast food industry spread from its Southern California roots across the country, becoming the most powerful force in the food industry by the beginning of the 1980’s.[17] Within Los Angeles, the fast food drive-thru far surpassed its origins in suburban Orange and San Bernardino Counties, and became a fixture in LA’s inner-cities as well. On Crenshaw Boulevard, regarded by many as the main artery of South LA and Inglewood and the center of LA’s Black community, the sight of a McDonalds is more common than that of a Soul Food kitchen. In fact, neither M&M Soul Food nor Roscoe’s has a Crenshaw Boulevard location, while McDonald’s has four locations along Crenshaw Boulevard between the I-10 and the I-105. The nature of fast food burgers as suburban food designed for eating in the car has also been left somewhat in the dust, as NYC’s Manhattan borough, which is known as one of the most driver-unfriendly pieces of America, has more McDonald’s per square mile than anywhere in the world.[18] The fast food industry has also “Americanized” or “whitewashed” traditional Mexican and Southern foods, with establishments like Taco Bell or Popeye’s Chicken n’ Biscuits (even though many fried chicken aficionados would say that Popeye’s is some of the best fried chicken you’ll ever eat). The American fast-food industry has led to dramatic changes in the agricultural industry and in the dining habits of Americans, and it is in this way that Los Angeles has possibly made its most dramatic effect on American culture.

Los Angeles’ food culture goes far beyond ethnic foods, fast food and the experiences of immigrants, domestic migrants, and fast-food entrepreneurs. Los Angeles has doughnut shops, hot dog stands, Italian restaurants, steakhouses, Indian food, Lebanese food and a host of other food options too numerous to discuss here. Recent interest in healthy eating has led to a rise in organic food markets and health-conscious food establishments in the peripheral areas of Los Angeles where the wealthy and middle class reside, while working class, ethnic LA is still gripped in the vice of fast food and ethnic food that is not always prepared with calorie counts and trans fat numbers in mind. Los Angeles has one of the most diverse populations in the world, yet also has one of the most segregated and stratified, and this is still exemplified by food choices. Large chain restaurants such as P.F. Chang’s or Outback Steakhouse have begun to reinvest in the city, but the process is slow and some parts of the city are still left out of the equation. While areas like Inglewood and Long Beach have been revitalized and food options have expanded to include more pricey sit-down restaurants and grocery stores carrying higher-quality meats and produce, areas such as Compton and Watts have not seen as much investment by these types of businesses. Restaurants and food markets continue to mark urban space, even as these spaces shift and change with the arrival of newcomers and the departure of tenured residents. What is clear is that food is very much connected to the culture and history of the city, and is part of the legacy of the city to the larger society, just as much as entertainment, commerce or industry.

Works Cited

AFC Enterprises, Inc. Popeye’s Chicken n’ Biscuits Official Website. 2008. http://www.popeyes.com.

Banks, Sandy. “Korean Merchants, Black Customers – Tensions Grow”. Los Angeles Times, 4/15/1985, Pg C1-C6

Light, Ivan and Bocancich, Edna. Immigrant Entrepeneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Another America. Directed by Michael Cho. 1996.

Davis, Mike. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City. London: Verso, 2000.

Ferrero, Sylvia. “Comida sin Par. Consumption of Mexican Food in Los Angeles: “Foodscapes” in a Transnational Consumer Society.” In Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies, by Warren and Scranton, Phillip eds. Belasco, 194-222. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Hansen, Barbara. “Yesterday, Table Scraps of South; Today, Soul Food of LA” Los Angeles Times, 3/27/1969, pg. N1

Harrell, Cassandra. Soul Food Advisor. 2006. http://soul-food-advisor.com.

Logan, John R., Wenquan Zhang, and Richard D. Alba. “Immigrant Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles.” American Sociological Review, April 2002: 299-322.

Riker, Barbara. “Chinese Cuisine Gains Popularity Via Nutrition, Ease of Preparation” Los Angeles Times, 6/18/1972, pg. WS10

Roscoe’s House of Chicken n’ Waffles. Roscoe’s House of Chicken n’ Waffles Official Website. http://www.roscoeschickenandwaffles.com.

Sanchez, George. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Harper Perennial, 2002.

Super Size Me. Directed by Morgan Spurlock. 2004.

United States Census Bureau. American Fact Finder. 2008. http://www.factfinder.census.gov.

Venni Mac’s M&M Soul Food Cafe. Venni Mac’s M&M Soul Food Cafe website. http://www.venimacsmm.com/index.html.
[1] www.factfinder.census.gov

[2] www.soul-food-advisor.com

[3] Hansen, Barbara. “Yesterday, Table Scraps of South, Today, Soul Food of LA” Los Angeles Times, 3/27/1969 N1

[4] www.rocoeschickenandwaffles.com

[5] www.venimacsmm.com

[6] (Light, Ivan and Bocancich, Edna. Immigrant Entrepeneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)

[7] (Logan, John R., Wenquan Zhang, and Alba, Richard D. “Immigrant Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles.”)

[8] (Light/Bocancich, 1988)

[9] (Banks, Sandy. “Korean Merchants, Black Customers – Tensions Grow”. Los Angeles Times, 4/15/1985, Pg C1-C6)

[10] (Cho, “Another America”, 1996)

[11] www.factfinder.census.gov

[12] Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Identity and Culture in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945, p. 90

[13] Sanchez, p. 102

[14] (Davis, Mike. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City. London: Verso, 2000.)

[15] (Ferrero, “Comida Sin Par. Consumption of Mexican Food in Los Angeles: ‘Foodcapes’ in a Transnational Consumer Society” 2002)

[16] (Ferrero, 2002)

[17] (Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Harper Perennial, 2002.)

[18] (Spurlock, “Super Size Me” 2004)

Fight the Power: Public Enemy and Radical Hip-Hop – 11/18/2007

Oct 17
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Hip Hop music and culture, today, is associated with its focus on material possessions, wealth, and the invention of new dances and catchy, ringtone-oriented beats. In the era of commercialized radio and cross-promotion, Hip-Hop rules as the ultimate advertising vehicle, pushing everything from fast food to hard liquor. It was not always so. Hip hop music and culture, like almost everything else, has gone through various phases over the past three decades, yet most Hip-Hop aficionados would insist that Hip-Hop’s “golden era” was the era between 1988 and 1997, the era when Hip-Hop was dangerous. One of the prime movers behind the era of dangerous, radical Hip-Hop music and the entrance of Hip-Hop into the political arena was Long Island-based Public Enemy (PE) In an era that featured the birth of West Coast Gangsta Rap, the nationwide crack epidemic, the LA Riots, and a renewed focus on inner-city problems as well as racial tension, Public Enemy was undoubtedly the most vocally and unabashedly political Hip-Hop act of the time. To better understand the work and legacy of PE, it is important to know their roots, as well as the roots of the music they made and the political issues they addressed.

Public Enemy’s influence on the world of Hip-Hop can’t be fully understood without first having an idea bout the origins and nature of Hip-Hop as a musical style as well as a vehicle for cultural expression. Hip-Hop was born in the South Bronx in the mid 1970’s, where early Hip-Hop DJ’s such as Afrika Baambata and Grandmaster Flash would set up turntables and speakers in the courtyards of large public housing projects and hold parties where they would mix and loop or “cut and scratch” popular funk, R&B, disco and rock records to create a repetitive, bass-heavy beat. While the DJ mixed the records, an individual called an MC would encourage the dancers over the microphone, often times speaking in time to the beat or rhyming his words. Hip hop clubs began to open in the Bronx and Harlem and soon the musical style began to spread to other Black communities outside of the greater New York City area.[1] Hip-Hop music became part of a three-part subculture for urban youth, especially Black and Latino youth: hip hop incorporated rap music, Hip-Hop dance forms such as “breaking” and “pop-locking”, as well as a visual art form: graffiti. Early rap lyrics seldom contained political messages (an exception would be 1981’s “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five), but instead focused on the dance party roots of the music. But by the mid-1980’s, life in urban Black communities was obviously not one of constant revelry: the crack epidemic had hit Black America, and hit it hard, and early attempts at urban renewal (after the urban blight of the 1970’s) had generally bypassed Black and Hispanic residential neighborhoods such as the South Bronx and South Central Los Angeles and favored wealthier residential neighborhoods and business districts. The stage was set for Hip-Hop to evolve into its next form: social commentary and protest music, and no group would symbolize this form more than Public Enemy.

Public Enemy, which began to form as early as 1982, was a collection of various individual parts that developed a lyrical, audio and visual image. Chuck D, the groups’ founder and primary lyricist, was a college-educated former DJ from Long Island (many group members hail from Roosevelt, NY or other parts of Nassau County on suburban Long Island), who was the core writer and philosophical head of the group. His longtime friend William Drayton, AKA Flavor Flav, joined the group as a co-lyricist, but became the hype man and comic relief of the group, adding an entertaining and showy nature to their music and stage performance. He added a comical dimension to not only the group’s sound (with his now-famous catchphrase “yyyeeeaaahhh boooyyyyyyy!”), but also to the visual aesthetic of the group with his large clocks around his neck (to let everybody know “what time it is”) and oversized sunglasses. To further add to the group’s visual aesthetic was the dance troupe/security force Security of the First World (S1W), who wore sunglasses and military-style uniforms onstage and in videos and performed military-style drill as part of their performance. Besides the intimidating appearance of S1W, they were also very closely affiliated with the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan. Finally, to complete the music aspect of PE, Chuck D (and Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin) brought in DJ Terminator X as the onstage mixer, as well as a team of in-studio beat producers known as the Bomb Squad. Terminator X and the Bomb Squad were the architects of PE’s signature sound, a complicated and aggressive sound unlike anything ever heard before in rap music, a sound that fit the group’s image and lyrics.[2] While the individual issues dealt with in PE’s lyrics are myriad (everything from Black nationalism to Rikki Lake), what PE represented, and what other rappers after PE began to represent, remained constant: it was a cultural expression of the rage and angst being felt by Black youth in the inner-city[3], and that rage was about to be released on an unsuspecting America.

In 1987, Public Enemy released their first album, entitled Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Featuring the single “Public Enemy No. 1″, the critically-acclaimed album was largely unnoticed by the record industry and the record-buying public, as well as all but the most underground radio DJ’s. Still, the politically-tinged lyrics and aggressive beats helped PE to solidify their image for their 1988 smash hit album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back. This album, regarded as not only PE’s greatest album but as one of the greatest rap albums of all time (according to Source, Vibe, Billboard, XXL and a variety of other music-related publications), was a complete breakthrough on both a musical as well as a political level. The record, taken in combination with the release of NWA’s masterpiece Str8 Outta Compton the same year, changed the face of Hip-Hop music and culture for the decade to come. The album included snippets of speeches by Black leaders such as Malcolm X or Louis Farrakhan mixed in between or inside of the songs, a trend that would be picked up by other rap groups throughout the 1990’s. It was here that PE solidified a political identity, best summarized by Greg Demitriadis:

Indeed, Chuck D and Flavor Flav wed a pro-black stance with Nation of

Islam ideology on ‘Party for your Right to Fight’ as well as on others, such as ‘Bring

the Noise’. Terms such as ‘devil’ and ‘Asiatic’ abound throughout, referencing

the intricate genesis beliefs preached by Nation founders W.D. Fard and Elijah

Muhammad. The Nation of Islam became a pronounced force in rap at this point

in time, its blend of militancy and pro-black ideology finding enthusiastic support

among many young Afro-Americans.[4]

The album included the hit “Rebel Without a Pause”, in which Chuck D outlined the rebel status of himself and his group. Problems within the Black community are addressed in the song “Night of the Living Baseheads”, in which he takes on the issues of drugs and drug-related violence, at the peak of the crack epidemic (crack was and still is often referred to as “base” or “base rocks”). The final track of the album, “Party for Your Right to Fight”, a play on the title of a popular Beastie Boys hit, focused on the role of the U.S. government in destroying or hindering organizations such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers (especially the latter), and advocates ideals of Black nationalism. Their affiliation with the Nation of Islam, however, often put them in a negative light in the media, especially after anti-Semitic comments made by S1W member Professor Griff (also PE’s “Minister of Information”) caused outrage in the music industry briefly in 1989, prompting Chuck D to fire Griff and make a public apology.[5] This connection to anti-Semitism and the other racial ideals of the Nation of Islam would draw some ire from even the most complimentary music critics:

Unfortunately, the Farrakhan material as well as the group’s

penchant for evoking the Nation of Islam’s bizarre racial myths-there are a

number of references on the album to “grafted devils”-provide a reminder

of PE’s occasional failure to distinguish nationalism from racism. And they

anticipate the group’s ugly flirtation with anti-Semitism, which no amount of

sympathetic critical ingenuity can excuse.[6]

In 1990, PE released Fear of a Black Planet, which included some of their greatest hits, including the anthem-like “Fight the Power”, a call to action that was also featured in the Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing. The song, which represents sort of an all purpose call to action and revolution, is among their most remembered and popular hits, and even made its way into the 2005 film Jarhead, about the 1990/1991 Gulf War. The album also featured a condemnation of 911 response times in inner-city neighborhoods (“911 Is a Joke”) and a call for unity among Black men (“Brothers Gonna Work it Out”). But probably most chilling and relevant was PE’s collaboration with former NWA member Ice Cube and rap legend Big Daddy Kane on “Burn Hollywood Burn”, in which Chuck D states “I smell a riot”. What’s interesting to note is that, at the time the album was made, the Rodney King incident had not yet occurred, and yet rappers such as Ice Cube were bringing attention to the issues of police brutality in Los Angeles. As we now know, this issue would be forced onto the national consciousness the following year, and the riots that Chuck D predicted would come along in April of 1992. The album would also represent the pinnacle of PE’s commercial success, outselling all their other albums before or since. Shortly after completion on Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy’s production team assisted in the production of Ice Cube’s first solo album: AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted,[7] which is among his angriest work.

In 1991, PE released Apocalypse ‘91…The Enemy Strikes Back, which included the hit “Can’t Trust It”, in which Chuck D takes on the legacy of slavery and oppression of African-Americans. In the same year the album was released, U.S. armed forces successfully expelled the Iraqi army from Kuwait, which dominated national newscasts until the war was replaced by a grainy homemade videotape of LAPD officers beating Rodney King. The album, interestingly enough, didn’t deal with either the war or the Rodney King beating (PE had finished working on the album when the King tape was released), but focused on a variety of issues, from alcohol abuse in the Black community to the refusal of the State of Arizona to recognize the Martin Luther King holiday. The album’s sales flagged somewhat, as buyers began to favor the angrier music coming from West Coast rappers like Ice Cube and Eazy-E. By 1993, after the release of Dr. Dre’s classic Tha Chronic, the West Coast held the Hip-Hop market in a chokehold, and the interest in politically-oriented rap gave way to an interest in the “gangsta” sound. In 1994, PE released Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, an album that enjoyed neither the positive reviews nor the chart-topping sales of their previous three efforts. As artists like Snoop Doggy Dogg, the Wu Tang Clan, and Outkast rose to stardom, PE had become a has-been. Chuck D would release a failed solo album in 1996, and PE would briefly return to the scene in 1998 with the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s movie He Got Game which was really another PE studio album. The album and the film both enjoyed moderate success, and the title song “He Got Game”, which featured a heavy sampling Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth” (“Stop hey, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s goin down”), made an impact both on the Billboard charts as well as on MTV and BET music video programs.[8]

Between 1999 and today, PE has released five more albums, none of which have enjoyed the commercial or critical success of their earlier work. The lyrical content has remained hardcore and political, although Chuck D seems much less angrier in his old age (the man is over fifty now). Chuck D has published two books, as well as a regular blog on PE’s website.[9] Chuck has also emerged as a supporter of file-sharing, a controversial stand that has drawn the ire of many around the music industry, notably Metallica.[10] Flavor Flav has found a new calling as a reality TV star, preparing for the third season of his reality TV hit, “Flavor of Love”. Public Enemy, still legendary among Hip-Hop purists and older fans (the over 30 crowd, generally), now occupies the same niche in the music world as do other politically-conscious rappers such as Dead Prez, with a dedicated, albeit small, cult following, and lost in the collective consciousness of the general public, who now prefer the boasting lyrics of artists like 50 Cent or the simple and catchy beats of Southern rappers. Still, the impact of their music on Hip-Hop, as well as on the political consciousness of Black youth as well as mainstream America, is undeniable.

Works Cited

Demitriadis, Greg. “Hip Hop: From Live Performance to Mediated Narrative.” Popular Music 15, no. 2 (May 1996): 179-194.

Tucker, Bruce. “Review: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back, by Public Enemy. 3 Feet High and Rising, by De La Soul.” American Music 10, no. 4 (1992): 496-499.

Official Public Enemy Website: www.publicenemy.com

Pareles, Jon. “Public Enemy Rap Group Reorganizes After Anti-Semitic Comments”

New York Times, August 11, 1989.

Watkins, Samuel Craig. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006

The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock n’ Roll. Artist Biography: Public Enemy.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. From www.rollingstone.com

R. Reese, “From The Fringe: The Hip Hop Culture and Ethnic Relations”. http://www.csupomona.edu/~rrreese/HIPHOP.HTML, 1998.

Patricia Rose, “Fear of a Black Planet: Rap Music and Black Cultural Politics in the 1990s,”.The Journal of Negro Education, 60, 3, Summer, 1991, 3
[1] Reese, 1998

[2] The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock n’ Roll

[3] Rose, 1991

[4] (Demitriadis 1996)

[5] (New York Times, 1989)

[6] (Tucker 1992)

[7] www.publicenemy.com

[8] The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock n’ Roll

[9] www.publicenemy.com

[10] Watkins, p. 112

Posted in Essays written for school
Tags: 1988, 1997, 50 Cent, 911 Is a Joke, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, anti-semitism, Apocalypse '91...The Enemy Strikes Back, BET, Big Daddy Kane, Black nationalism, Bomb Squad, Brooklyn, Buffalo Springfield, Burn Hollywood Burn, Cant Trust It, Chuck D, Dead Prez, Def Jam, DJ, Do the Right Thing, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Farrakhan, Fear of a Black Planet, Fight the Power, Flava Flav, Flavor of Love, Gangsta Rap, Gulf War, Harlem, He Got Game, Hip-hop, Ice Cube, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back, Jay-Z, Kanye West, LA Riots, Long Island, Metallica, Mobb Deep, MTV, Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, Nas, Nassau County, Nation Of Islam, New York, New York City, OutKast, Professor Griff, Public Enemy, racism, rap, Rebel Without a Pause, Rick Rubin, Rodney King, Roosevelt, S1W, Snoop Doggy Dogg, South Bronx, Spike Lee, Str8 Outta Compton, Terminator X, Tha Chronic, Tha Game, William Drayton, Wu-Tang Clan, Yo! Bum Rush the Show

Scars and the City: Vietnam Vets in Los Angeles, 1966-1992

Oct 17
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Vietnam veterans, more than any other generation of veterans in U.S. history, have publicly borne the physical and psychological scars of their experience in combat. While vets of World War II and Korea settled back into a growing U.S. economy and became the fathers of the Baby Boomers, the Baby Boomers themselves created a different generation of vets. In Los Angeles, these Vietnam veterans, members of the same generation that produced Hippies, Yippies, Black Panthers and “Yo Soy Joaquin”, fought a constant battle to integrate themselves into the rapidly evolving urban landscape of the Greater Los Angeles area. These veterans, their own bodies markers and reminders of a horrific war with a tragic end, shaped and helped define the city they came home to in a variety of ways. Indeed, as much as Mexican and Asian immigrants, or Black and White domestic migrants have shaped and defined the culture of Los Angeles, so have Vietnam vets. And Vietnam vets, as a group consisting of various separate component parts, have been shaped and marked both by their experiences in Southeast Asia as well as their experiences in the streets of Venice, Skid Row, Hollywood, Orange County and Compton. The story of Vietnam vets in Los Angeles begins in the steaming triple-canopy jungles, rice patties, villages and cities of Vietnam and moves to the glamorous beaches of Venice and Santa Monica, to the basement of the West Los Angeles VA Hospital, to the rugged streets of Skid Row as well as the riotous corner of Florence and Normandie in South Central L.A. The experiences of these vets are as much about Orange County as about Agent Orange, and as much about LAPD as about PTSD. This diverse group of individuals, almost as diverse as the city itself, took their unique experiences and the impact of those experiences on their bodies, and shared them with a city that continually redefined itself.

To best understand Vietnam veterans, one must first understand the Vietnam War and the generation that fought it. The war in Vietnam was not a phenomenon of the 60’s and 70’s, but had existed in some form or another since as early as the 1930’s. Vietnamese nationalists and communists had carried out an organized resistance against the French prior to World War II, and then had taken arms against Japanese occupiers during the war. After the war, the organized Vietnamese communist resistance led by Ho Chi Minh engaged in guerilla warfare against the French army, leading to the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the Geneva Accords creating two independent Vietnamese states: communist North Vietnam and the capitalist/republican Republic of Vietnam in the South. North Vietnam, under Ho, began support the activities of communist guerillas in the South (the Viet Cong) and sending North Vietnamese Army troops (mostly former members of his Vietminh army that had fought the French) and supplies south along the Ho Chi Minh trail that wound through the jungles and mountain passes of Laos and Cambodia. Beginning in 1956, the U.S. had sent advisors and small detachments of troops to support the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the South Vietnamese governments (between 1963 and 1967, a number of governments held power in the South). In 1965, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which U.S. naval vessels were (allegedly) attacked by the North Vietnamese Air Force, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the full-scale deployment of U.S. troops to Vietnam and began what is generally considered to be the Vietnam War for the United States. At the height of U.S. involvement, in 1969, over a half million U.S. troops were stationed in Vietnam. In Vietnam, Soldiers and Marines, roughly one-third of them draftees, served 12 or 13 month tours after abbreviated basic training, infantry training, and jungle warfare courses. In some cases, troops were trained in infantry tactics and jungle warfare by their forward units after arriving in Vietnam. The terrain and climate in the country was generally considered horrible for warfighting: dense jungles, vast rice patties, extensive rivers and wetlands, and steep mountains, broken up by dense urban centers such as Saigon and Hue. The war on the ground was generally a guerilla war, punctuated by brief periods of pitched battle when U.S. units engaged units of the North Vietnamese Army. Most of the time, however, U.S. forces patrolled the jungles and rice patties for days at a time, searching for members of the Viet Cong within the civilian populace, avoiding land mines and booby traps and watching for possible ambushes behind every tree and bush; all the while fighting sweltering jungle heat and driving monsoon rains. Unlike the Korean conflict or World War II, there was no distinct “front line”: U.S. forces operated wholly in South Vietnam, where every village could hide a Viet Cong sniper or a small unit of NVA regulars. The average fighting man in Vietnam was between 19 and 22 years of age, often away from home for the first time in his life. While in Vietnam, U.S. troops were not only exposed to the horrors of combat, but also experienced a wide range of other problems and issues. With the U.S. military having just integrated in 1949, during the height of the Civil Rights era, troops often faced racial discrimination and race-related violence in rear areas. Young U.S. troops were also exposed to the cheap, pure heroin available in Southeast Asia, as well as marijuana. According to the VA, approximately 8.7 million people served on active duty between 1964 and 1975, of which roughly 3.5 million served in the Southeast Asian Theatre. Nearly two million served in combat units (infantry, artillery, special forces, etc). Over the course of the war, roughly 58,000 U.S. troops were killed and roughly 300,000 wounded, half of whom required hospitalization. By the end of the 1960’s, as the United States was experiencing the tumult of urban riots, student protests, and moon landings, the first members of this wave of veterans began to wrap up their military service and return to civilian life. Many of them would end up in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, in the late 1960’s, was a tale of many cities. For our purposes, Los Angeles will be used to define the larger Greater Los Angeles area, which includes, naturally, the city of Los Angeles and it’s suburbs in Los Angeles county, as well as suburban Orange County; in later years it includes the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino Counties) and Ventura County. In 1970, as the larger bulk of Vietnam vets began to leave military service and re-enter civilian life, the U.S. Census counted the combined population of LA and Orange counties at roughly 8.5 million (compared to an estimated roughly 13 million in 2006), with another 1.5 million residents combined in Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties (compared with roughly 4.8 million in 2006).[1] While Los Angeles had experienced massive population growth and extensive suburbanization (especially in Orange County) in the years since the end of the Second World War, LA was just beginning to face the problems of smog, traffic congestion and overcrowding that have plagued it recent years. The median household income in both LA and Orange counties was comfortably above the national average, while housing remained relatively inexpensive (although costs would begin to rise during this time). The LA area was also home to numerous colleges, including numerous City Colleges, several California State University campuses, UCLA, USC, Pepperdine and Loyola-Marymount. Furthermore, Los Angeles, despite the 1965 Watts Riots and the violence surrounding the 1968 East Los Angeles Walkouts, held on to an image of Hollywood glamour. West Los Angeles, which seemed then (and today) to be in a different galaxy than East LA or Watts, was especially glamorous, and was the site of a large tract of land belonging to the Veteran’s Administration, which included the large VA Medical Center hospital, set overlooking Westwood and Santa Monica in a park-like atmosphere, surrounded by trees and foliage, a short distance from the expansive national cemetery. West LA, and the LA area in general, was a particular draw for Vietnam Vets, many of them finishing their active service at nearby installations, such as the Marine Corps bases at Camp Pendelton and El Toro. This attraction is best summarized by Gerald Nicosia:

In the late 1960’s and 1970’s, L.A. was still America’s dreamland. The sun shone every day (at least it was supposed to), and the smog wasn’t yet completely stifling, especially on the West Side, where the soft Pacific Ocean breeze kept life fresh and expansive. The West Side was the anything-goes boardwalk at Venice, obscenely healthy bodybuilders and sexy roller-skaters in bikinis that would shock your Midwestern aunt; it was the sunnyside-up optimism of affluent Santa Monica, the movie star psyche of tony Brentwood, and the perennial tan of Westwood with its incomparably glamorous campus, UCLA. Even the West Side VA, situated in a mile-long belt of lush greenery in Brentwood, was more like a country club than the usual piss and vinegar dungeons that passed for Veterans’ hospitals in most of America….No one could have designed a more perfect draw for the lovelorn, pain-weary guys just back from that flesh-tormenting hellhole in Southeast Asia. Here were legions of available, fun-loving girls, year-round outdoor living, cheap colleges, and plenty of things that eased the mortal burden, like swimming pools and rock concerts. [2]

The cheap colleges Nicosia referred to went out of their way to attract vets[3], and large numbers of vets began to enroll in local CSU and City College campuses by 1968 and local colleges began to court Vietnam vets and welcomed their presence initially.[4] Other Vietnam vets were attracted by the job opportunities available in the growing metropolis. Even as industrial jobs began to leave the city (and other cities throughout the country), veterans with combat experience or who had served as Military Police found jobs as police officers in Los Angeles or one of the many recently incorporated or growing suburbs. One example is the Torrance Police Department, which in 1968 swore in six new officers, five of which were vets.[5] Indeed, the Vietnam era also saw a glut of combat veterans enter law enforcement in the Los Angeles area, a trend already seen in the LAPD since the 1950’s, when the Department under Chief William H. Parker actively recruited combat veterans with roots in the Deep South in order to police the growing Black population of the South Central Avenue area.[6] This trend would play itself out in fascinating ways in the decades to come. Los Angeles would continue to attract Vietnam vets for many of the reasons described above. Vets would pour into Los Angeles at an alarming rate throughout the late 1960’s and 1970’s: by 1969 an article about veterans in the Los Angeles Times would state that 4,500 veterans per month were transitioning into Southern California[7], and by 1979 there would be roughly 981,000 Vietnam vets in the state.[8] But Los Angeles was not all it appeared to be, and the Vietnam vets were not quite prepared to return to the quiet life they sought there.

The Vietnam Veterans movement, much like the movements of the 60’s and 70’s (when most Vietnam Vets were coming of age), was a political movement that addressed a variety of veterans issues and included several component parts. As much of the nation was marginalizing Vietnam vets, the vets themselves began to force themselves into the spotlight in various ways in order to gain attention and force change. While the Vietnam veterans movement was probably most influential in the arenas of disabilities and compensation, it got its’ start much earlier, with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) organization. This organization got its’ start in 1967, building on the work of the Veterans for Peace in Vietnam organization (which consisted mostly of WWII and Korean War vets) and other similar organizations. Founded by Vietnam Vet Jan Berry in New York City, the group became a major player in the expansive antiwar movement in the late 60’s and early 70’s nationwide. A Los Angeles chapter of the organization sprang up under the leadership of Jim Boggio, and soon became “highly visible”.[9] By 1969, the chapter was the most active of the entire organization, participating in a variety of protest demonstrations and maintaining a high level of visibility.[10] Los Angeles’ movie star set would also lend a hand to VVAW and the antiwar movement when Jane Fonda, who met activist veteran Fred Gardner at a Malibu party, became involved with the antiwar movement nationwide, among her other activist pursuits.[11] The Vietnam Veterans movement also counted actor Donald Sutherland (of the “M*A*S*H” motion picture) among their various Hollywood supporters.[12] The abundance of vets attending junior colleges and state universities in Southern California became the base of the VVAW’s local membership, and the California chapters represented the most radical, militant wing of the group; and played a key role in VVAW’s dramatic “Dewey Canyon III” demonstration in Washington, DC.[13] The LA-area VVAW also lent one of the most long-lasting symbols of the movement: one Ron Kovic. Kovic, a former Marine, had been shot in Vietnam and was paralyzed. Despite his injury, or perhaps because of it, Kovic became a powerful force in the VVAW movement, both in Los Angeles and nationwide. Kovic was a fascinating character who used his body as much as his words as a weapon of protest: strapped to a chair, legs lifeless, forced to urinate in a bag, Kovic would demand that onlookers view his body as a visual display of the war’s effects. Once, while participating in a protest in front of Nixon headquarters on Wilshire, Kovic was dragged into police custody, his lifeless lower body beaten by Los Angeles police officers who threw him and other VVAW members into jail, calling them “communists” and “traitors”. One of these vicious officers later claimed to be a Vietnam vet himself.[14] This interplay between Veterans against the war, and politicized veterans in general, and law enforcement officers who were very frequently vets themselves, would also play itself out in a variety of ways in Los Angeles.

As time went on and more and more veterans returned from the war, the physical and psychological toll the war had taken on their bodies began to display itself within the city in various ways, and the people of the city began to notice. The initial love affair that the city had with vets, and that vets had with the city, began to run cold. By mid-1969, it began to be reported that thousands of Vietnam vets, sent to war without high school diplomas, were returning to Los Angeles and seeking employment instead of using their benefits to return to school.[15] Set against the backdrop of rapid de-industrialization, the employment prospects for this group of vets (many of them married or with children) seem quite meager. While this group of veterans was certainly drawn from all ethnic groups, in Los Angeles, Chicano and African-American populations were especially hard-hit by this trend. As a generation of young inner-city Los Angelinos, mostly Black or Hispanic, began to be shut out of the job market and choose gang activity, returning Vietnam vets in these communities became part of that trend and involved in that struggle. But this was by no means the greatest struggle veterans faced. The psychological scars carried by thousands of vets began to take their toll on the visible bodies of the veterans, and those bodies became a visible and unsettling part of the Los Angeles landscape:

It would take a bit of time before this Shangri-La revealed itself to be nine-tenths mirage, and by that time thousands of vets would be living homeless on the streets or in the boarded-up concessions on the old, condemned Venice pier, thousands more in prisons for drugs or for trying to make their boss or girlfriend listen to their woes at the point of a knife, some gone stark crazy to live as “tripwire vets” in commando posts up in the canyons, or others still, dead by their own device, driving off some ocean cliff in their car or dining on a whole bottleful of downers.[16]

As the “Vietnamization” policy of President Richard Nixon led to a marked reduction of troop levels by the early 1970’s, something started going on with Vietnam vets. In the summer of 1974, a young Vietnam vet took hostages at gunpoint in Griffith Park, prompting an LA Times article entitled “Vietnam Vets-How Many Time Bombs?”[17] In 1975, U.S. involvement officially ended in Vietnam and the last U.S. forces withdrew, ending the war and essentially handing victory to the Communists. As the war drew to a close, the nation, and the city, began to focus on the problems plaguing this new generation of combat vets. That year, a Times article focusing on vets in the context of the wars’ end developed the various facets of the problems that would began to plague vets as time went on. Among the myriad problems facing vets was a lack of opportunities in the job market, due to a lack of education as well as a negative stigma that began to be applied to veterans as incidents of violence, drug abuse and other problems began to very publicly manifest themselves across the city and across the nation. A study by a church group estimated that as many Vietnam vets had died of suicide and overdose as had been killed in the Vietnam War.[18] As Nicosia stated above, the mental scars borne by the Vietnam Vets began to express themselves in the actions of the vets’ bodies as the 1970’s came to an end. Many veterans began to have psychotic episodes, or turned to self-medicating through illegal drugs (heroin, cocaine) and alcohol as the VA failed to provide any diagnosis or relief for the growing psychological issues. These problems would continue for Vietnam vets for years to come. In 1981, six years after the end of the war, a Vietnam veteran drove his military-style jeep through the front door of the West LA Veterans’ Hospital, firing guns in the air and engaging in a brief standoff with police.[19] In another incident, in 1983, a Vietnam vet was convicted of assault after an attack on a Vietnamese-American college student in Fullerton the year prior; his defense was that he had been having a war-related flashback.[20]

A city, a nation, and a Veterans Administration were faced with a generation of vets that was displaying very serious problems, problems that someone would have to solve. But first they needed to identify the problems. Much of this early work would take place at the sprawling VA hospital in West Los Angeles (the area was considered Brentwood at the time, although Los Angelinos today would consider the VA Hospital as part of Westwood). Again, no one says it quite like Nicosia:

By the early 1970s, the casualties of this new war of attrition here at home began showing up in alarming numbers at the West Los Angeles VA in Brentwood. Fortunately, two extraordinary individuals on staff there picked up immediately on what was happening: a former psych officer in Vietnam who had a steel plate in his head from when he had nearly been blown away in a chopper crash, Floyd G “Shad” Meshad, and a top-notch adolescent psychiatrist named Leonard Neff. Well ahead of his time, Neff ran a ward just for Vietnam veterans at the Wadsworth VA Hospital in Brentwood, and Meshad was the social worker on the ward. [21]

The two men Nicosia introduces are possibly two of the most important figures in one of the most important battles fought by Vietnam vets, both nationally as well as locally in LA. The Los Angeles Veterans Hospital became central in the research and understanding of “Post-Vietnam Syndrome” or “Delayed Stress Syndrome”, as it was being called at the time. Indeed Neff, the psychiatrist, was instrumental in talking down the 1974 Griffith Park hostage taker,[22] and Meshad and he began some of the earliest work on identifying and solving the problems specific to Vietnam vets with the Vietnam Veterans Rehabilitation Unit, which the two of them ran from the basement of the West Los Angeles VA hospital. The unit became a major part of the growing Vietnam Veterans’ movement, and played a key role in the way the movement unfolded in Los Angeles.

Two of the primary issues facing veterans were, literally, body and mind. Aside from the obvious mental traumas inflicted on veterans, the war had also taken a toll on their bodies. Many veterans’ bodies displayed these scars in obvious ways: vets like Ron Kovic strapped to wheelchairs, paralyzed or legless, other veterans with burns and scars and prosthetic limbs. But some vets were beginning to show unusual symptoms, and cancer rates started to climb. By the early 80’s, the children of vets were being born with various defects. Connections began to be made between these strange symptoms and the chemical defoliant Agent Orange, used heavily in Vietnam to thin the dense vegetation to aid in visibility for ground troops. As well, throughout the 1970’s, psychologists and veterans fought to identify the source of the mental demons also plaguing Vietnam vets in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Veterans who suffered from these ailments, as well as those who suffered from wounds more easily connected with combat service (amputees and paraplegics who received their wounds in combat, for example) felt that the Veterans Administration was not adequately addressing their specific needs, touching off a new wave of protest, this time aimed directly at the VA and the federal government. Shortly after the 1981 incident described above (the vet who crashed a jeep into the lobby of the VA hospital), a group of vets began a “wait-in” in the same lobby. The vet who had perpetrated the rampage had been found dead in his home while on bail awaiting trial, apparently of suicide, prompting the group of veterans to take action, demanding better psychological care.[23] This “wait-in”, which evolved into a hunger strike lasting three weeks, prompted a panel of VA psychologists to look into the problem and report a few months later that the VA lacked adequate information with which to diagnose “Delayed Stress Syndrome” in Vietnam vets.[24] In December of 1981, two former Marines launched a protest hike from the San Fernando Valley to San Diego, seeking to draw attention to Veterans’ issues, specifically the problem with “delayed stress”, which one veteran claimed had made him unable to keep a job. By this time, the Sepulveda VA hospital had established an inpatient treatment program for Vietnam vets suffering from “delayed stress”, but the program was still new and had not begun to even scratch the surface of the problem.[25] By 1983, the LA Times was reporting a marked improvement in the care and consideration given to Vietnam vets, due in large part to the Veterans’ protests in Los Angeles and the work of Shad Meshad, who was now the Western regional director of the “operation outreach” vet centers, small sites established to allow veterans a place to seek psychological care and readjustment assistance.[26] By 1985, hundreds of Los Angeles-area vets were filing as part of a class-action lawsuit directed against the manufacturers of Agent Orange,[27] and “delayed-stress syndrome” had started being referred to as the familiar “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”. Vietnam veterans’ groups would continue to struggle to have PTSD and Agent Orange recognized and compensated by the Veterans Administration, suffering setbacks but ultimately winning. By the early 1990’s, both Agent Orange-related illness and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder were considered “service-connected” conditions, and extensive research had been done on both problems. Through the work of the Vietnam veterans in Los Angeles and around the nation throughout the 1980’s, conditions for future generations of vets were vastly improved.

But veterans were still a regular feature in the police blotter, appearing just as frequently in the newspaper for brutal attacks, rapes, and domestic violence arrests. In 1984, a Vietnam veteran from Colton was sentenced to death for the 1977 rape and murder of two women.[28] Another vet from Ventura County was sentenced to ten years in prison for the attempted murder of his wife.[29] In 1983, a Vietnam vet engaged in a standoff with police at an Anaheim hotel, in which he accused police of being agents of the CIA or other former Marines out to get him.[30] And while vets struggled to deal with life in the “concrete jungle” of Greater Los Angeles’ more crowded, urbanized spaces, the unique geography lent itself to another segment of the veteran population: the “tripwire” vets or “bush” vets, who chose to live solitary lives in camps in the canyons and hills that made up the periphery of the LA area.[31] As the homeless population of Los Angeles began to make its’ presence felt in West LA, larger numbers of veterans began to be counted amongst its’ ranks, especially on the West Side. In 1984, the same year of the Agent Orange settlement, Los Angeles hosted the Olympic Games, one of the city’s crowning achievements, and one of the most successful games to date. But the city’s success as an Olympic host belied the problems it would soon face, problems that would thrust Los Angeles into the national spotlight as the new face of urban blight in the United States. The 1980’s would not be kind to Los Angeles.

By the mid-1980’s, Los Angeles had evolved into its’ familiar shape. Most of the major skyscrapers now seen on the downtown skyline had been completed, along with the high-rise commercial structures of Westwood, Century City, Warner Center and the Mid-Wilshire district. Los Angeles had completed the transition from sleepy coastal town to booming, crowded metropolis. Los Angeles’ racial and class boundaries, the result of decades of restrictive covenants followed by red-lining and de-industrialization that immobilized the working class; were just as defined and entrenched in the 1980’s than at any prior point. South Central Los Angeles was overwhelmingly African-American, East Los Angeles and the “gateway cities” of the East Side were overwhelmingly Hispanic, while peripheral and coastal areas were nearly exclusively white.[32] Skid Row had become a clearly defined space for the city’s homeless, but the growing homeless population (a result of Regan Administration policies on mental health facilities) had expanded into Hollywood and the West Side. Large tracts of the city, built prior to the Great Depression, had fallen into disrepair, and every blank wall in the city seemed to be covered with graffiti, much of it marking the territory of the hundreds upon hundreds of street gangs filling inner-city Los Angeles. Barbed wire, or military-style concertina wire, now hung on nearly every freeway sign and commercial fence in the city. Large numbers of Southeast Asian immigrants had been placed in the LA area: Cambodians to Long Beach, Vietnamese to Alhambra and Westminster. For a veteran living in Los Angeles in the 1980’s, reminders of Vietnam were everywhere, unless that veteran could support a comfortable suburban lifestyle in the growing developments in southern Orange County, or that veteran decided to move into a canyon and become a “bush vet”. As the crack epidemic hit Los Angeles, the level of gang-related violence increased, and gangs began to move away from cheap revolvers and shotguns and utilize weapons such as the AK-47 assault rifle, the weapon of choice for the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong. As gangs stepped up the level of violence on the streets, the LAPD and LA County Sheriffs, along with other smaller departments (Long Beach PD, Inglewood PD, etc.) began to adopt more military-style tactics, tactics some even referred to as the “Vietnamization” of Los Angeles-area police in inner-city neighborhoods. Chief Daryl Gates of the LAPD declared “war” on street gangs in the city during “Operation Hammer”, which featured raids on houses, warrant sweeps, and mass arrests in targeted communities such as South Central or Watts. These raids often utilized a specially outfitted military-style armored vehicle equipped with a battering ram. Special units such as LAPD’s C.R.A.S.H. anti-gang unit and narcotics task forces operated almost with carte blanche in these communities, and allegations of police brutality, along with the death toll of gang warfare, began to mount as the 1990’s loomed around the corner.[33] In 1991, rapper Ice Cube would refer to L.A. as “the concrete Vietnam”, and that assertion was in many ways accurate. In a landscape of razor wire, a growing Southeast Asian presence, automatic weapons fire (the AK-47 makes a distinctive sound that is nearly impossible for a veteran to forget), and military-style policing, many veterans were brought back fifteen or twenty years. The parallels drawn between inner-city Los Angeles in the 1980’s and the Vietnam War experience are stunning.

The police would play a major role in the evolution of events in Los Angeles, and as discussed earlier, many of these police officers had spent time in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans made up a significant proportion of Los Angeles-area police officers, and probably about half or more of the area’s police forces had served in the military at some point. Many vets who had found jobs in law enforcement after returning from Vietnam in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s had, by the late 80’s, been promoted to watch commanders, sergeants, detectives and other higher ranking officers, and in many ways these officers set the tone for the execution of Gates’ “war” on gangs. Examining the tactics and terminology of the LAPD at this time (searching for gang members in the inner-city population was done in much the same way that troops searched for Viet Cong in Vietnamese villages, albeit somewhat more gently), the influence of combat-experienced officers is very evident. With a legacy of violent racial oppression already present in the LAPD (Gates’ mentor was notoriously racist LAPD Chief William H. Parker), the presence of scores of Vietnam vets in the LAPD may have contributed to the LAPD’s notorious brutality in the 1980’s. After years of beatings and abuses by LAPD officers, many of whom may have been veterans struggling with the rage associated with PTSD, Los Angeles finally had enough. In early 1991, shortly after the conclusion of the Gulf War (the first major military action by the U.S. since Vietnam), Los Angeles and the nation was transfixed by a grainy videotape of several LAPD officers beating an unarmed black man: Rodney King. A year later, the four officers were acquitted, launching several days of fierce rioting on the streets of Los Angeles. Los Angeles came full circle with Vietnam vets: in 1965, as the U.S. was becoming fully committed in Vietnam, Watts was nearly burned to the ground, and National Guard troops had to come to restore order. In 1992, shortly after U.S. troops returned from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the National Guard and Marine Corps were once again called into the streets of Los Angeles to suppress the riots. Vietnam vets, ironically, had contributed to an entire community with PTSD, as the LAPD had viciously oppressed the Black and Chicano communities of Los Angeles for years, and Los Angeles finally snapped.

But as much as Vietnam vets were part of this event, they were unnoticed, lost in a sea of other issues. Many Vietnam vets had blended into the society, those whose bodies did not bear the visible scars, or whose minds had not failed them. Vietnam vets became politicians, lawyers, businessmen, and teachers. In doing so, however, they left behind the two groups that remain most recognized in any discussion of Vietnam veterans: the disabled and the homeless. Today, the image is as much a part of the LA landscape as the US Bank building or the Hollywood sign: the homeless veteran, wearing his “Vietnam Vet” hat and olive-drab green jacket, holding a sign saying: HOMELESS DISABLED VET GOD BLESS. The image is part of our consciousness in regard to Vietnam vets, and constitutes much of our consciousness about the Vietnam War. According to a 1997 survey on the homeless population in Los Angeles, over 26% of homeless adults in LA were veterans.[34] In another survey conducted at the West Los Angeles VA, 46% of homeless veterans had served during the Vietnam era.[35] So out of a homeless population that has been estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000 roughly 4,000 to 6,000 are homeless Vietnam vets. While this only represents a tiny minority of all Vietnam vets in the Los Angeles area, this is by far the most visible group of Vietnam vets. Because these vets, more often than not, suffer from a severe mental illness or some type of substance abuse problem, their physical appearance often defies established norms. In the high-fashion culture of Los Angeles, especially the Westside, the sight of a homeless person, unshaved, filthy, wearing old, tattered clothes and talking to himself is at the least uncomfortable, if not somewhat embarrassing for many people. Veterans who have been wounded add to the unsettling body image, as the homeless body is twisted and scarred, often missing a leg or an arm, or paralyzed in a wheelchair. And because these scarred bodies occupy very public spaces in the city, they remain extremely visible. While the majority of the city’s homeless lived downtown in Skid Row until very recently, the growth of the homeless population in West Los Angeles and Hollywood throughout the 1980’s put this image in a place where it could not be ignored. No longer could one avoid the unsettling sight of a homeless, wounded and mentally ill veteran by choosing to avoid downtown Los Angeles; that homeless vet would now ask you for change on Hollywood and Highland, or bathed himself in the public restrooms on Venice Beach. Homeless people often meet with a mixed reaction from the average person on the street in Los Angeles, many would rather ignore them, and many choose to blame the homeless person for their lot in life. But as the public became more and more aware of the psychological and other issues facing Vietnam vets throughout the 1980’s, its’ easy to see how many people would be more willing to part with spare change for a veteran suffering PTSD flashbacks than for a homeless ex-hippie suffering LSD flashbacks. Public sympathy for vets reached all corners of society, and the homeless population was no exception. In this context, it follows that many of the homeless Vietnam vets we see are either not vets, or are vets but did not serve in Vietnam. Getting statistics on this phenomenon is nearly impossible, although a great deal of anecdotal evidence for this was gathered by Vietnam vet B.G. Burkett in his book Stolen Valor. Burkett contends that the number of homeless Vietnam vets has been overblown, and details a number of examples of homeless supposed “Vietnam vets” who he discovered to be either not veterans at all, or individuals who had been in the military but not served in Vietnam. From the author’s own experience, roughly half of the homeless “vets” I’ve come in contact with in my life, including while I was conducting research for this essay, usually fail to answer simple questions that a person who had served in the military should be able to answer (things like what their Military Occupational Specialty was or what unit they were with). The numbers of individuals who dishonestly portray themselves as Vietnam vets, added to the numbers of legitimate homeless Vietnam vets, has certainly increased the visibility and the image of the homeless vet. This image has become the most visible impact of Vietnam vets on the Los Angeles’ urban landscape, and these veterans’ bodies (or bodies that we perceive to be veterans) are a continuous reminder of the failures of our nations’ foreign policy, as well as a continuous reminder that life in LA is not sunshine and palm trees for everyone.

Since the late 1960’s, Vietnam vets and the City of Los Angeles have maintained a strange symbiosis. Attracted to the glamour and beauty of the Los Angeles of the 1960’s, Vietnam vets found that the scars they carried with them could not be erased by the sun and sand. Struggling with a variety of issues as they attempted to readjust, the larger community of veterans was strengthened by their shared experiences in LA with other vets, another migrant group in a city of migrants. Yet for as many successes as they shared, the breakdowns of individual members of the group continued to make the news. As they tried to fit into the urban landscape of Los Angeles, they found that urban landscape changing around them, becoming a “Concrete Vietnam” by the mid-1980’s. While some Vietnam vets re-entered society successfully, others repeated the mistakes of the Vietnam War within Los Angeles, contributing to the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. Still others dropped out of society, carrying their mental and physical scars to the streets, presenting Los Angelinos with an unsettling image, one that simultaneously contrasts the Hollywood glamour image and yet is as much part of the aesthetic of Los Angeles as Walk of Fame. Yet, when one takes into account the important role of Los Angeles in the Vietnam Veterans’ movement, in the research done on problems like PTSD by Leonard Neff and Shad Meshad and the radical forms of care they devised, and when one considers the impact of the Hollywood celebrity scene (Jane Fonda, et. al.) on the Veteran’s movement, it is clear that Vietnam vets, not just in LA but nationwide, have been marked by the city, as well. The fortunes of one seemed to affect the other, and it will be interesting to see how this trend continues in the future, not just for Vietnam vets, but for the new generation of vets, as well.

Works Cited

Banks, Sandy. “Two Vietnam Veterans set out on Bitter Hike.” Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1981: WS13.

“Bastards of the Party”, HBO Documentary. Dir.: Cle Sloan. 2005, Fuqua Films

Brouhard, Milt. “County Colleges Welcome New Flood of GI Students.” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 1968: OC1.

Burke, Kathy. “War is Over-But Vietnam Vets Find no Peace.” Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1975: C1-C3.

Burkett, B. G. Stolen Valor. Dallas, TX: Verity Press, 1998.

Dean Jr, Eric T. Shook Over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam and the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Ethington, Phillip J. “Segregated Diversity: Race-Ethnicity, Space, and Political Fragmentation in Los Angeles County, 1940-1994.” Los Angeles, 2000.

Gallagher, Teresa C., et. al. “Determinants of Regular Source of Care among Homeless Adults in Los Angeles.” Medical Care (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) 35, no. 8 (August 1997): 814-830.

Harris, Scott. “Man Shoots Up VA Hospital Lobby.” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1981: A25.

Hicks, Jerry. “Sniper Pleads Guilty, Will do Time in Mental Hospital.” Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1984: OC_A1.

Hicks, Jerry. “Vietnam Veteran Convicted of Attack Despite Stress Defense.” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1983: OC-A3.

Hunt, Andrew. The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. New York: New York University Press, 1999.

Johnson, Loch. “Political Alienation Among Vietnam Veterans.” The Western Political Quarterly 29, no. 3 (September 1976): 398-409.

Kendall, John. “‘Wait-In’ Will Demand Rights of Vietnam Vets.” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1981: B24.

Kovic, Ron. Born on the 4th of July. New York: Pocket Books, 1977.

Liddick, Betty. “Vietnam Vets-How Many Time Bombs?” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1974: F1.

Los Angeles Times. “Cal State Outlines Steps for Veterans.” June 2, 1968: OC2.

Los Angeles Times. “Six Rookies Join Police in Torrance.” February 18, 1968: CS2.

Los Angeles Times. “The Region.” January 8, 1984: SD2.

Los Angeles Times. “The State: California has Most Vietnam Veterans.” January 26, 1979: SD2.

Los Angeles Times. “Veteran Sentenced to Die for Rape, Murders of 2 Women.” February 4, 1984: OC_C23.

Markel, Michelle. “Vietnam Vets Seek Better Care.” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 1983: WS1.

Mathews, Linda. “GI Bill: Why Viet Vets Ingore Benefits.” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1969: 1, 20-21.

McGarry, T. W. “Veterans Meet Confusion in Agent Orange Claims Rush.” Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1985: V_A6.

Morrison, Patt, and Marika Gerrard. “Report Meets Demand of Vietnam Vets.” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1981: SD_A6.

Nicosia, Gerald. Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veteran’s Movement. New York: Crown Books, 2001.

Olson, Kieth. “The GI Bill and Higher Education: Success and Surprise.” American Quarterly 25, no. 5 (December 1973): 596-610.

Scott, Wilbur J. The Politics of Readjustment: Vietnam Veterans Since the War. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993.

Stammer, Larry B. “Vietnam Trauma.” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1984: SD1.

United States Census Bureau website, www.census.gov

Wenzel, Suzanne L, and et. al. “Homeless Veterans’ Utilization of Medical, Psychiatric and Substance Abuse Services.” Medical Care 33, no. 11 (November 1995): 1132-1144.

[1] www.census.gov

[2] (Nicosia, 188)

[3] (“Cal State Outlines Steps for Veterans” 6/2/1968)

[4] (Brouhard, 4/7/1968)

[5] (“Six Rookies Join Police in Torrance” 2/18/1968)

[6] (“Bastards of the Party”)

[7] (Mathews, 7/4/1969)

[8] (“The State: California has Most Vietnam Veterans” 1/26/1979)

[9] (Hunt, 19)

[10] (Hunt, 31)

[11] (Hunt, 60-62)

[12] (Kovic, 120)

[13] (Hunt 79-82, 95)

[14] (Kovic, 152-157)

[15] (Mathews, 7/4/1969)

[16] (Nicosia, 189)

[17] (Liddick, 5/15/1974)

[18] (Burke, 5/15/1975)

[19] (Harris, 3/15/1981)

[20] (Hicks, 12/6/1983)

[21] (Nicosia, 189)

[22] (Liddick, 8/9/1974)

[23] (Kendall, 5/19/1981)

[24] (Morrison, 8/18/1981)

[25] (Banks, 12/20/1981)

[26] (Markel, 8/4/1983)

[27] (McGarry, 1/3/1985)

[28] (LA Times, “Veteran Sentenced to Die for Rape, Murders of 2 Women” , 2/4/1984)

[29] (LA Times, “The Region”, 1/8/1984)

[30] (Hicks, 3/23/1984)

[31] (Stammer, 5/6/1984)

[32] (Ethington, 2000)

[33] “Bastards of the Party”

[34] (Gallagher, et. al. 1997)

[35] (Wenzel, et. al. 1995)

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