By Edward J. Boyer We sat together on the small couch in her Los Angeles apartment on La Brea, upstairs next to the liquor store just off the corner of Venice Boulevard. She opened the file folder on her lap and handed me a page. When I finished reading the page, she took it back […]
Riffs on the City
Aretha, Smokey and a Neighborhood Full of Memories.
North End Detroit neighborhood produced Aretha, Smokey and other celebrities.
Homecoming in Havana
I had seen him watching me for several days. The driveway leading out of Havana’s Hotel Nacional might have been 50 yards or more, and he seemed to be standing there at the end of it every day.
Parks Support Backs Blacks Into a Corner
By EDWARD BOYER FEB. 17, 2002 With the cold slap of reality still stinging, black elected officials and some community leaders remain in an uproar over Mayor James K. Hahn’s announcement that he will not support a second term for Police Chief Bernard C. Parks. These are the same leaders who have been in the […]
Gleaming ‘Big Mo’ in Hawaii on Last Cruise
“There are only two kinds of sailors in the Navy–those who have been battleship sailors and those who wish they could have been.”
Making Demons of Those We Fear (September 1998)
Does anyone remember “Dog Town?” That’s the unflattering name police in Oakland sometimes used to describe the mostly African American neighborhood near the Nimitz Freeway. When the Nimitz pancaked during the Loma Prieta earthquake in October, 1989, 30 people were killed. Dozens more had to be rescued. Residents of the West Oakland neighborhood rushed to […]