Departures is KCET's hyper-local web documentary, community engagement tool and digital literacy program about the cultural history of Los Angeles' neighborhoods.
Browse the mural by clicking on a thumbnail above. Then, click on the Departures "D" in the mural to view its related content below.
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In the 1950s, Mexican immigrants and their American-born children began owning and renting in Highland Park in earnest, claiming the neighborhood as their home. This demographic shift coincided with the dawn of the Civil Rights era, and a series of aligned events - school segregation, a burgeoning protest movement and intense community organizing - began to reshape the East Side and create new vocabularies of resistance and pride within L.A.’s Latino and Mexican communities.
Highland Park, in particular, became a hothouse for new ideas and novel responses to the problem of discrimination, as schools, storefronts and parks became forums for discussion about a better future. In many ways, Highland Park was a forerunner of changes that would transform the region at large. Five years before the massive student walkouts of 1968, a Mexican-American was elected student president at Benjamin Franklin High School, the same wave of change that would bubble to the surface throughout Los Angeles already percolating in Highland Park.
Highland Park, in particular, became a hothouse for new ideas and novel responses to the problem of discrimination, as schools, storefronts and parks became forums for discussion about a better future. In many ways, Highland Park was a forerunner of changes that would transform the region at large. Five years before the massive student walkouts of 1968, a Mexican-American was elected student president at Benjamin Franklin High School, the same wave of change that would bubble to the surface throughout Los Angeles already percolating in Highland Park.
Index
Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s saw the arrival of a surging Chicano movement that worked towards political and social change.
A multi-faceted group of Chicano and Chicana activists emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, spurred on by the United Farm Workers, the Black Civil Rights movement and the struggle against the Vietnam War.
Highland Park natives Ricardo and Rosalio Muñoz, brothers by birth and in struggle, were important members of the movement for Chicano empowerment in Northeast Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s.
Benjamin Franklin High School's student body reflected the change in demographic that occurred in Highland Park throughout the decades.
Thanks to the lingering aftereffects of the New Deal and the post-WWII boom, development in Los Angeles was in full swing in the 1960s. A tidal wave of development would begin to rumble through the sleepy neighborhood.
1966, Family matriarch Josefina Duardo decided to move to the neighborhood with her nine children from East Los Angeles after being told by relatives of Highland Park's peaceful and natural setting.
The post-war Latinoization of Los Angeles was underway, a change that would transform Northeast and South Los Angeles, and which is still transforming the city to this day.
Funders and Partners
Support for the Departures is provided through these funders as well as local community partners and viewers like you.
