Henry Fuhrmann, one of the assistant managing editors at The Times, likes to say: “Always take the high road. The view is nicer up there.”

Henry is my friend, as well as my supervisor, and he and Mark McGonigle, my boss, have been strong supporters of the Daily Mirror, even when the decision was made at a higher level to shut it down. (And don’t worry; I’m still working as a copy editor on the Metro desk.)

June 9, 1961: Mayor-elect Sam Yorty comes out swinging, with charges that the LAPD was spying on his supporters, and he takes a little shot against The Times. Police Chief William H. Parker quickly disputed Yorty's allegations, saying they were "patently false." 

The relationship between the mayor of Los Angeles and the police chief is one of the most essential – and conflicted – in local  government (think of Chief Daryl F. Gates and Mayor Tom Bradley, who didn’t even speak to each other).  And I cannot recall a honeymoon that was shorter than the one between Yorty and Parker.

ps. That ticking time bomb you hear is the Watts riots, set to explode in August  1965.

June 1, 1961: Sam Yorty defeats Norris Poulson in the mayor’s race. Poulson says one reason for his loss was the Memorial Day riot in Griffith Park in which a mob of African Americans attacked a small group of LAPD officers. The riot broke out when the operator of the merry-go-round tried to eject a teenager who had gotten on without paying, The Times said. Two men were eventually convicted in the incident.

May 22, 1961:  Susan Herrmann, 20, an exchange student from Whittier College at Fisk University, Nashville, majoring in psychology, was one of two white girl "freedom riders" mobbed in Montgomery's race riot. Here is her account by phone to The Times of what happened.

We were all prepared to die -- and for a while Saturday I thought all 21 of us would die at the hands of that mob in Montgomery. We did not fight back. We do not believe in violence.

We were freedom riders, two white girls, one white boy and 18 Negroes, trying to ride in buses through Alabama to New Orleans to help the cause of true freedom for all the races.

We stayed with the rest of the group. The mob kept closing in and starting yelling "Get 'em! Get 'em!"

They picked up Jim Zwerg of Beloit College in Wisconsin, the only white boy in our group, and threw him on the ground. They kicked him unconscious.

Still, we didn't fight back. But we didn't believe in running either.

I saw some men hold boys, who were nearly unconscious, while white women hit them with purses.

The white women were yelling "Kill them!" and other nasty shouts.

The police came and said they would put us in protective custody. They acted like we were crazy. They just couldn't understand why we would be freedom riders. But even though they did not believe in what we were doing, they did protect us and in that sense upheld the law.

ALSO


Montgomery 50 years later.

May 11, 1961: The horse player is the hardest guy I know to please in the whole world of sports. He is grumpy, cynical, suspicious. He never smiles. No matter what happens he is not going to like it. If he wins, the price is too short. If he loses, it's somebody else's fault. The boy rode him like a camel. The starter got him stuck in the gate. The other horses came over on him just as he started to run. 

April 14, 1961: "Elijah Muhammad, 63-year-old leader of the politico-religious cult known as the Muslims, today held his first press conference in 30 years and asked for a part of America to form his own country," the Mirror's Bill Kiley said.  And yes, that is Malcolm X. I’ll see if we still have the original of this photo. Do you think The Times put the story on Page 1? No.

The Times said: He scoffed at suggestions that Negroes in America are steadily achieving more rights and status but shied away from an outright condemnation of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People....

"We never will believe in anything but the religion of Islam. Islam will give us absolute freedom, justice, equality and brotherly love," Muhammad said.

It would be interesting to see how the Eagle and Sentinel, Los Angeles’ African American weeklies (on microfilm at the Los Angeles Public Library), covered this story. So many stories, only one Larry Harnisch.

Note to history tour buffs: The news conference was held at the Clark Hotel, 1824 S. Central Ave.  at Washington Boulevard. 

Feb. 25, 1911: Religion columnist William T. Ellis has a few things on his mind about the Negro “question,” but none of them involve defining what the “question” might be. Presumably it was so familiar to readers that he felt no need to explain it.

 
Ellis considers African Americans “brothers,” but they are, as far as he is concerned, younger brothers who need guidance from their wiser,  older white siblings: "A weaker brother, a deficient brother and perhaps an erring brother he may be, but the black man is still a brother," Ellis says.

Patronizing, condescending white superiority masquerading as Christian compassion and acceptance. Ugh.

Feb. 22, 1961: Longtime readers of the Daily Mirror may recall Paul Coates’ 1959 columns about a young African American boy named Butch Harris, who faced exclusion from the Cub Scouts because of his race. Today, Coates has another instance of a black, 9-year-old boy who is being excluded from the Cub Scouts.

Notice the "Book Burning" item about the Assembly investigating the state Department of Education for burning 184,000 obsolete but unused textbooks. The state had burned hundreds of thousands of textbooks in the last few months, mostly English books for grades 4 through 8 and some music books, the Mirror said.

In this era, textbooks were printed by the state of California, which leased printing plates from commercial publishers, the Mirror said.  

ALSO

Butch Harris on the Daily Mirror

Jan. 25, 1911: Divorce proceedings reveal the peculiar tale of Elda P. Kenny/Kenney and her husband, Robert.

The Kenneys married in Cleveland in 1902 and moved to Los Angeles shortly thereafter, The Times says. In 1910, the Kenneys returned to Cleveland to see Elda's parents and she decided to visit his parents in Shenandoah, Va.

Robert refused to accompany her, so Elda went alone. And she was horrified: Her mother-in-law "was as black as your shoe," she told the judge in her divorce proceedings. 

Jan. 18, 1911: Jealousy takes a tragic turn in Long Beach as a suspicious husband tries to catch his wife cheating on him with a house guest and is shot to death when the guest mistakes him for a burglar.

In Shelbyville, Ky., two victims escape from a mob trying to hang them from a railroad bridge over a creek. One man flees when the rope breaks and he plunges into the creek and while the mob is chasing him, the other man frees his hands and gets out of his noose. 

Feb. 22, 1913: Councilman Robert M. Lusk died in office and the African Americans of Los Angeles called on the council to appoint one of several black contenders to complete his term.

Charles C. Flint, a grocer at 1101 Santa Fe Ave., was the leading contender. The other candidates were T.W. Troy, a furniture dealer at 12th and San Pedro; J.M. Alexander, head of the Afro-American Council and the Afro-American Commercial Co., 818 Wall St.;  and R.C. Owens, 1327 W. 10th, "one of the wealthiest Negroes in Los Angeles," according to The Times.

The Times quoted an appeal to the council by J.J. Edmunds, editor of the Liberator, "a publication for Negroes."

"After detailing the status of the Negroes of Los Angeles and the advance they have made as property owners and in aiding the material prosperity of the city, Edmunds said:

"When it looked as though the entire city was going to be overwhelmed by an undesirable element, you depended upon the Negro votes to help carry the day, and they fully responded. Without this vote the results would have been vastly different. We feel that this, as well as the many other reasons given, entitle us to a representation in this council."

Despite these pleas, the council nominated Wesley J. Bryant to fill Lusk’s term. 

ALSO

Black Politics in L.A.

hile the rest of the news business spends the final days of December looking back at the major events of the year, the Daily Mirror is peering forward, and for us at least, the future is clear: 1961 brings the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs invasion. “The Apartment” will win the Academy Award as best picture. Gary Cooper will die of cancer and Ernest Hemingway will kill himself.   

We are also looking ahead to the last full year of the evening Los Angeles Mirror and the morning Los Angeles Examiner, both of which folded in January 1962, giving The Times supremacy in the morning market. The reconstituted Herald Examiner (d. 1989) struggled for survival as a feisty, sensational afternoon paper,  racked by labor problems and increasingly irrelevant to Americans’ changing lifestyles and preference for TV news.

What else can we see? 1921 is the year of the Fatty Arbuckle case and 1941 brings us the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II. And in 1981, we have the dawn of the Ronald Reagan era.