The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance

With stunning descriptive language (and the occasional bit of cheese), Smith paints a portrait of 1940's Central Avenue in all its glory, serving as home-away-from-home for familiar figures such as Ellington, Dandridge and DuBois, as well as more obscure L.A. figures like sidewalk fortune-teller and backroom bookie Julius Juarez, L.A.'s janitorial services chief L.G. Robinson and singer Ivie Anderson. The first chapter introduces John Kinoch, a Harlem transplant and editor of the newspaper California Eagle. Kinoch and the Eagle served as a magnet for other Harlem transplants such as DuBois and Hurston, who came looking for opportunities in Hollywood; the paper also served as a medium for those speaking out against Jim Crow. Unfortunately, Smith spends too much time rehashing the big picture-national events such as A.Philip Randolph's march on Washington connects to L.A. only through the editorial support of the Eagle-which tend to detract from Smith's search for a ""lost Negro Reaissance"" in the L.A. scene. Though rich in detail, this story makes a more convincing justification for Smith's own fascination with black West Coast culture and history than a meaningful comparison to Harlem's groundbreaking black arts scene.