system received nationwide attention when a South Los Angeles teacher was named the National Education Association’s Social Justice Activist of the Year.

Chronicling Los Angeles history, menu by menu: A city’s history can be seen through private letters, official records and sometimes even menus. A new book and exhibition by Josh Kun, a USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism professor, examined 9,000 L.A. restaurant menus from 1875 to the present, which mapped the growth of the city. (The New Yorker)

The respected pastor who helped put out fires of the 1992 riots now fosters religious dialogue at USC.

Cecil Murray gets settled in his USC office. | Jordyn Holman

Since late November, residents from South Los Angeles have been peacefully protesting courthouse decisions to not indict police officers in Missouri andNew York who killed two young unarmed Black men in the line of duty.

For Rev. Dr. Cecil Murray, the former pastor of South L.A.’s First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the demonstrations in memory of Michael Brown and Eric Garner bring to mind L.A. protests of days gone by in that they aimed to shed light on the disconnect between police officers and the people they serve.

Samuel B. Marlowe (top left) appears in an undated family photo placed at his grave in Inglewood. | screenshot from latimes.com

The two most famous detectives of classic noir literature – Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe — just may have been inspired by the first Black private investigator licensed west of the Mississippi River – Samuel B. Marlowe. That’s according to a former Hollywood