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…
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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: 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…