Title supplied by cataloger. 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.; Elected in 1963, Billy G. Mills (1929-) was the third African American to serve on the Los Angeles City Council, a seat he held until 1974 when he became a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. He was the first African American chairman of the Democratic County Central Committee, winning over fellow Councilman Tom Bradley by just three votes.; President Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1933. The CCC enrolled mostly young, unskilled and unemployed men between the ages of 18 and 25 in work programs to improve America's public lands, forests, and parks. Men enlisted for a minimum of six months. Enrollment in the CCC peaked in August 1935. At the time, more than 500,000 corpsmen were spread across 2,900 camps. Women were prohibited from joining the CCC. By the time the CCC program ended at the start of World War II, the CCC had planted more than 3.5 billion trees on land made barren from fires, natural erosion, intensive agriculture or lumbering. In fact, the CCC was responsible for over half the reforestation, public and private, done in the nation’s history. In the 1960s, Councilmembers Billy Mills and Tom Bradley led the city council to pass several resolutions calling on the federal government to institute programs similar to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to combat unemployment among African American youth in South Los Angeles. Los Angeles City Councilman Billy Mills (center) is pictured holding a broom as he speaks to a group of unidentified men; the gentleman standing second from the left may possibly be Rev. Eugene Thomas. The group is helping the Councilman clean up a corner lot located at 93rd Street and Clovis Avenue. This location is now 9301 S. Clovis Avenue, and the present site of Veteran's Helping Veterans, LLC. The sponsors of this event were most likely a partnership between the (ACC) A Corporation in Christ, and the (CCC) Civilian Conservation Corps. Photograph circa 1965. See images 00130057 through 00130069, and 00143696 through 00143702 for additional photos in this series.
Type
image
Format
1 negative : safety ; 10 x 13 cm. Photographic safety negatives
Mills, Billy G Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.) African American men Men African American young men Young men African American boys Boys City council members Clergy Civic improvement Neighborhoods Dwellings Conservation & restoration Grasses Weeds Garden tools Brooms & brushes Rakes Los Angeles (Calif.)
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