L A Renaissance in the 1940s Essay

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Black Way, Kinloch, and the Spirit of the Los Angeles Renaissance

In Chapter One of the The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance, R. J. Smith describes John Kinloch, the up-and-coming young African-American editor of the California Eagle. A charming personality with erudite expression and a radio gig to boot, Kinloch made a particular impression on Los Angeles in the 1940s. He had the ears and eyes of society and his goal was to report what he saw and report it in such a way that people actually took notice. The thesis that Smith uses to frame the book is that L.A. was a thriving Mecca of black culture -- imported to some extent from the East, but completely moving in a unique direction that was more grassroots and organic than the elitist-led and white patronized Renaissance in Harlem had been. This thesis is supported by the story of Kinloch and his role in shaping the Renaissance in L.A. in the 1940s by giving blacks a voice and a cause as well as the facts on the ground needed to support their protest against the unjust laws of the Jim Crow society still very much in existence. This paper will show how Kinloch's role at the Eagle helped to fuel the Renaissance in L.A. -- a different kind of Renaissance than that which had "come and mostly gone" (Smith 26) in Harlem.

While in Harlem in the early 20th century, the Renaissance had been led by a choir of black intellectual elites like W.E.B.

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DuBois, in the L.A. the Renaissance was led by an altogether different sort of blacks, like John Kinloch. Kinloch hailed from Harlem and was intelligent and witty enough to manage the California Eagle newspaper in L.A., but his was not the sort of intellectual elite modeled after the DuBois: on the contrary, he was as rough and rowdy and flamboyant as any of the zoot suit wearing blacks of the 1940s. Plus, he was young, full of pep and energy, ready for a fight and looking to take on the world. He found his opportunity in Clarence Woods, an AWOL member of the U.S. military, whose abuse at the hands of local law enforcement authorities in Texas had driven him and other members of the all-black unit to flee the barracks. Woods told Kinloch and the paper all about the reality of the Jim Crow Army and the narrative reeked of the kind of white hypocrisy that the elites were dishing out in mid-century America. Kinloch saw it as an opportunity to blow the lid off the actual racism still emanating in waves across the U.S. He could do so precisely because of his brash but witty and engaging delivery. He was part of a new kind of Renaissance -- one that was confident, street savvy and self-reliant -- affirming the ideals of the 19th century American transcendentalists….....

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