This is the second-to-final blog post for this series about the founding of the Cooperative Center in Boyle Heights in 1925 by the local Yiddish branch of the communist party. The previous post looked at the center’s presence as a hub of leftist activism until it began to transition into a dance hall and nightclub…
All posts tagged Communists
RED BOYLE HEIGHTS: The 100 Year Evolution of the Cooperative Center
As covered in the earlier blog post, The Cooperative Center and the Open Shop, after the Cooperative Center was established in 1925 by a group of Yiddish communists in Boyle Heights, the 3-story venue emerged as a busy center for an array of political leftists and labor activists. It was also the focus of a…
RED BOYLE HEIGHTS: Cooperative Center Surveillance Photos
This blog post will primarily feature Los Angeles Police Department surveillance photos of the communist-run Cooperative Center at 2708 Brooklyn Avenue (now Cesar Chavez Avenue) in Boyle Heights. But first, a little background on these photos. In 1930, Rep. Hamilton Fish, Jr. (R-New York) chaired a congressional committee called the Special Committee to Investigate Communist…
RED BOYLE HEIGHTS: Raids and Riots on Brooklyn Avenue
On a February morning in 1919, a group of citrus growers and law enforcement officers decided to meet inside a packing house in the agricultural town of Charter Oak, 24 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, because of their concerns over a looming problem that threatened the region’s highly profitable citrus industry. Specifically, it was…
RED BOYLE HEIGHTS: The Cooperative Center and the Open Shop
Not long after it opened in 1925, the three-story Cooperative Center at Brooklyn Avenue and Mott Street in Boyle Heights was often described by both the Los Angeles Police Department and the city’s dailies as a “bastion,” or “stronghold” for local communist organizers and “labor agitators.” The inflated rhetoric referred to the fact that during…
RED BOYLE HEIGHTS
Organizing and Redlining This blog post is the first in a series of posts that I’ve titled Red Boyle Heights. The series will focus on people and events in and around the community from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s. The Red refers to two unique aspects related to Boyle Heights during that era. In…