In L.A., Driving the Road to Black Empowerment

For Families Like Mine, Cars Were an Engine of Social and Economic Mobility

This essay published alongside next week’s Zócalo and Destination Crenshaw event, “Is Car Culture the Ultimate Act of Community in Crenshaw?” Click here to watch the full conversation.

In 1925 my maternal grandparents bought a new Dodge, packed up their things, and made their escape from the anti-Black restrictions, injustice, and violence of Montgomery, Alabama: bound for a new life in Los Angeles, California.

Thanks to more newly paved roads and cheap automobiles, Dr. Peter Price Cobbs and Rosa Ellen (née Mashaw) Cobbs were able to see …

by Alison Rose Jefferson | May 23, 2024

Ukraine in My Blood and on My Mind

A Foreign Correspondent’s Family Served Russian Imperialism, and Then Was Destroyed By It

by Owen Matthews | July 11, 2022

This is the second of two essays exploring the intertwined histories of Russia and Ukraine, told through one family’s history. Read the first essay …

The Russian Empire, My Soviet Loyalist Grandfather, and Me

From Catherine the Great to Stalin, My Family Played a Part in Imperial Rule Over Ukraine—Until They Didn’t

by Owen Matthews | July 7, 2022

This is the first of two essays exploring the intertwined histories of Russia and Ukraine, told through one family’s history. Read the second essay …

Searching for My Grandfather and the Tulsa in Me

100 Years Later, I’m Still Sifting Through the Tulsa Race Massacre’s Destruction to Find Our Family’s History

by Olga Idriss Davis | June 3, 2021

I am my father’s daughter.

I am the first-born daughter, the middle child, who was called Sweet Pea, Mama-Daddy, and Peanie. Naming is very important in the Black community. The …

How My Great-Grandfather Dealt With a Lout Named Jack London

A Muralist Finds Herself Captivated by the Bay Area Writer, Crusader for Justice, and Drunken Brawler

by Stephanie Taylor | October 7, 2020

Growing up in the Bay Area, I heard a lot of family lore about Jack London, and my great-grandfather George Samuels.

Samuels had been a district attorney, a police court judge, …

An L.A. Woman Embraces Her Ancestral New Orleans Home

How Family Reunions Revealed That My Grandparents’ Stories Are My Own

By Lynell George | July 27, 2017

Zigzagging through the crush of rush-hour commuters at L.A.’s Union Station, I’m hoping to make up for lost time. Suddenly, out of the edges of my vision, a man …

family history