Summary

In Part 4, Chapter 1, Jerkins shifts her focus to the city of Los Angeles, California. Jerkins recalls that, when she was young, she often heard Black people mythologizing Los Angles as an idyllic place. In the decades since Emancipation, many Black people have migrated to Los Angeles in search of work, community, and other opportunities. Jerkins recalls two of her uncles becoming successful music producers in Los Angeles. When Jerkins was a child, she and her mother temporarily lived in Los Angeles to explore possibilities for Jerkins as a child actor. Jerkins summarizes several historical dynamics of Black people moving to California and encountering the many egregious forms of racism they had sought to escape: violence, segregation, discrimination, persecution by police and courts, et cetera. Black communities in Los Angeles—as with Black communities throughout the country—have consistently been deeply underserved, neglected...