L A Renaissance in the 1940s

¶ … 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. 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 and infusing them with a uniquely black sensibility that was not cultivated from any literati source or white establishment.

Kinloch and the other zoot suit wearing young blacks upset the old black social order of Los Angeles, as they began arriving in the 1940s and exercising their influence around town. Blacks began performing comedy in clubs without donning the traditional "black-face" of the minstrel era -- giving humorous skits that were laced with social satire and which were aimed directly at the audiences, without the wall of "masks" in between. In effect, the mask came off and black culture began to thrive in L.A.

Chester Himes was writing noir like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Rhythm and blues music was popping up and the "street smart" black, whose education was received primarily on the street, as Kinloch's had been, was rising to the top. This was not the "Talented 10th" or cream of the crop that DuBois had advocated in Harlem (Smith 26), but rather a talented 90th -- or the talent from the non-elite blacks, responsible for supporting the social scene in L.A.

What Kinloch did, for his part, was to raise awareness about the bigotry and racism that still existed in America (using the example of the Jim Crow Army for starters), which inflamed black society in the 1940s and illustrated the way that America was still very much a country rife with hypocrisy and torn between idealistic missions (such as fighting "the good fight" in WW2) and confronting its own demons back home (such as the evident racism that Clarence Woods experienced in Texas).

Kinloch's eye for reporting and sense of prose helped to sound the alarm for black society in Los Angeles. The Eagle ran an editorial that stated, "The issue faces America fairly and squarely. She must give justice to the black boys in khaki or.