Rolland Joseph 'Speedy' Curtis was born in Louisiana in 1922. After serving three years in the Marines during World War II, he and his wife, Gloria, relocated from New Orleans to Los Angeles in 1946. Curtis served four years with the Los Angeles Police Department, but resigned from the force in order to pursue both a Bachelor's and Master's degree from USC. He later became involved in city politics, as an associate of Sam Yorty, and later a field deputy to City Council members Billy Mills and Tom Bradley. He was briefly director of the Model Cities program in 1973. Rolland J. Curtis died in his home in 1979, the victim of a homicide. An affordable housing complex on Exposition Blvd. near Vermont Ave. was named in his honor in 1981, along with a nearby street and park.; Photograph included in the Exhibit: Firsts, Seconds and Thirds: African American Leaders in Los Angeles During the 1960s and '70s from the Rolland J. Curtis Collection. During the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Maulana Karenga (1941-) was a major figure and who, with Hakim Jamal, co-founded the black nationalism and social change organization US in 1965. Karenga created the the first pan-African holiday, Kwanzaa, in 1966 to promote African traditions. An author of several books, Karenga is the Chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach and the director of the Kawaida Institute for Pan African Studies.; Bill Greene (1930-2002) was a freedom rider in the South, during the violent years of the Civil Rights Movement. Having served a prison sentence for his part in the demonstrations in Mississippi, he escaped from a Louisiana jail after another arrest and became a fugitive, shortly before becoming engaged to his wife. "I spent most of our honeymoon sewing up his ragged clothes. He was one of the larger guys, and the police force always went for him first," his wife remembered. Greene began his career as the first African American clerk in the California Assembly. By 1967, he had succeeded Mervyn Dymally, taking over Dymally's Assembly seat, and again in 1975, claiming Dymally's recently vacated Senate seat. Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett, left) with Assemblyman Bill Greene.
Type
image
Format
1 negative :safety ;10 x 13 cm. Photographic safety negatives
Karenga,--Maulana Greene, Bill,--1930-2002 Political activists--United States Civil rights workers--United States Legislators--United States Men--California--Los Angeles Los Angeles (Calif.)
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