HIST 660/497: Westlake/MacArthur Park - Discovering a Community’s History to Define Its Future
Professors Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens and Jorge Leal
In Fall 2015, CSUN undergraduate and graduate students from department of history will team up with high school students from Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), an innovative arts and education program in downtown Los Angeles, to develop a community history of Westlake/MacArthur Park.
Since its foundation, Westlake/MacArthur Park has played an understudied role in the development of arts, culture, social movements, and commerce in Los Angeles. Founded in the 1880s, Westlake was known as the Central Park of Los Angeles. The Choinard Art Institute, Otis School of Art and Design, the Art Center School, and the Denishawn School of Dance all started in the community, which also gave rise to centers for Labor, Housing, and Immigrant Rights, including CARECEN, the UCLA Labor Center, SALEF, and Cliníca Romero. Residents who trace their origins to Central America, Mexico, Asia and Eastern Europe built thriving commercial enterprises that frame the periphery of the park and radiate outward to Pico-Union and downtown. As the density and diversity of Westlake/MacArthur Park’s population increased, residents organized around new challenges. The Park became a site for large-scale protests against police brutality, US involvement in Vietnam and Central America, and for immigrant rights, making it a visible manifestation of political and social transformations defining the country, the city, and the Americas. Like many ethnically diverse communities in Los Angeles, Westlake/MacArthur Park is experiencing redevelopment/gentrification. This development may offer promise as Urban Studies Specialist Gerardo Sandoval suggested in one of the few published studies of the community. Yet, it also threatens immigrant and elderly community members with physical displacement and with losing the opportunity to define their community and its history.
This course seeks to provide that opportunity by inviting students and community members to work collaboratively to develop inclusive community histories of Westlake/MacArthur Park. Developing a strong sense of the community’s history and acting as agents in creating it may catalyze HOLA students, CSUN students and community members to become agents in current debates about development in Los Angeles and to define the direction that development takes in their communities. The class reflects the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences’ commitment to studying the problems of urban America and to making students leaders in solving problems facing America in the global context.