Background for Los Angeles Movement Documents

Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the oldest civil rights organization in America. In the North, most of its members were Black but with a significant number of white members and leaders — many of whom were Jewsish.

The first Los Angeles NAACP chapter was formed in 1914, one of the first in the western United States. Like most northern NAACP chapters, in the 1960s it was primarily composed of Black and white professionals (clergy, doctors, teachers, business owners, etc) and its main activities were legal defense, anti-discrimination lawsuits, and legislative lobbying. In line with the national NAACP's views, as a general rule it did not favor direct action protests such as sit-ins and any form of civil-disobedience, though it did on occassion support moderate, issue-oriented, picket lines or mass marches.

The Western Christian Leadership Conference (WCLC) was formed in the mid-1950s to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was composed almost entirely of African-American ministers plus a few white clergymen. In the 1960s, it's primary focus was raising funds for Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was formed by pacificsts and labor activists in Chicago in the early 1940s to be a direct action organization (in contrast to the NAACP's lawsuits & lobbying strategy). As a general rule, the membership of most northern CORE chapters was usually more or less equally comprised of Afro-Americans and whites (though the membership of college CORE chapters usually reflected the racial makeup of the institution which meant that most non-HBCU campus CORE groups were overwhelmingly white).

The first Los Angeles Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapter was formed in the early 1940s. But it was unable overcome factionalism or sustain itself against "Red Scare" assaults on liberal and integrationist groups. A new LA CORE chapter was resurrected in the 1950s. It took on segregation in public accommodations, employment discrimination, and restricted housing. The 1960 student sit-ins in the South, followed by the Freedom Rides in 1961 increased public awarness of nonviolent protests and publicized CORE. This resulted in a wave of new CORE members who were younger and less likely to be middle-class professionals with established careers.

In the early '60s, LA CORE took action against employment discrimination and segregated housing while simultaneously supporting the southern struggle by picketing Woolworths, recruiting Freedom Riders, and sending relief supplies to the Fayette County TN tent city. The national attention to civil rights sparked by Dr. King's Birmingham Campaign in the Spring of 1963 swelled LA CORE's active members to well over 75, and spurred the formation of satellite chapters in dispersed communities such as Venice, Long Beach, Pacoima, and Pasadena, along with campus chapters at colleges such as UCLA and LA State College. By the fall of 1963, these multiple L.A. area chapters were active campaigns against segregated housing, defacto school segregation, employment discrimination, and police malpractice & brutality.

But by the end of 1963, while the central LA CORE chapter's active membership was approaching 150 it had become divided into two rival factions who disagreed on how hard to push nonviolent direct action protests. At the end of that year, the more militant faction left LA CORE to form the Non-Violent Action Committee (N-VAC). Throughout 1964, the large and active UCLA "Bruin" CORE chapter generally aligned itself with N-VAC while LA CORE and most of the satellite chapters remained allied with the NAACP, WCLC, and ACLU in the United Civil Rights Committee (UCRC) which N-VAC and Bruin CORE were not invited to join. While pursuing different tactics, the two alliances "agreed to disagree" and often cooperated with each other on campaigns and joined each other's protests.

— Bruce Hartford