Erin Aubry Kaplan

Photo by Garik Gyurjyan The Reverend Cecil Murray prays for me. He likely prays for everyone who sets foot into his comfortable office-sanctuary, which is all rich wood panel and fluffy carpet that instantly reminds me of the relatives’ living rooms I used to visit on Sundays, even down to......

Photo by Joeff Davis The Democratic convention is over, and there’s little left to say, except: Damn, we’re good. In yet another American political event/performance, black people yet again dutifully did their part. BeBe Winans brought down the house with a gospel rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to kick things......

When brothers Ron and Richard Harris relocated their coffeehouse-theater operation from Hollywood to Leimert Park in 1999, it seemed like a rare alignment of planets for all concerned. The Harrises were looking for a new, more culturally receptive environment in which to serve brew and produce African-American-themed plays, some of......

Photo by Ted Soqui Crenshaw High senior Frances Martin is hoarse from shouting, but the 17-year-old is composed as she takes the microphone to decry the Los Angeles Unified School District’s almost pathological habit of spending money everywhere but where it’s needed the most — in the classroom. “We’ve got......

In the aftermath of the Stanley Miller beating — a videotape of yet another police beat-down of a black man that joins a collection featuring Rodney King and Donovan Jackson — the community response was, as we have come to expect, fast and furious. Police Chief Bill Bratton wisely beat......

Illustration by Winston Smith I don’t pledge allegiance to the flag. I got out of the habit after high school, which is about the same time I started asking myself questions and getting out of many habits that had become rote, habits like putting my hair in big rollers and......

Jono Schafer of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) fondly recalls the good old days of 2000, when striking Los Angeles janitors took to the streets and garnered enough support to win a watershed contract that called for a 25 percent wage increase over three years. One of the key......

I almost hate to bring this up — though if I don’t, I’ll be committing the very crime of omission that Bill Cosby feels most of us do-gooding blacks are guilty of almost by definition. I guess that means me, but I don’t think of myself as someone who avoids......

Photo by Max Gerber When Dale Lya Pierson was growing up near Vineyard Avenue in South Los Angeles in the ’40s and ’50s, she viewed the area’s kinetic jazz scene as simply an extension of family. After all, her grandfather was a musician, her mother a jitterbug enthusiast who went......