[gunshots] [sirens wailing] (Woodard) 1965-- in a predominantly black neighborhood in Los Angeles, decades of pent-up frustration and anger came to a head over poverty, racism, and police brutality.
(man) Get your hands up high.
You can lift them higher than that.
Get them up there.
First one drops their hands is a dead man.
(Woodard) The city that once shimmered with promise for African-Americans exploded in gunfire and flames in the worst racial riot in Postwar America.
[shouting] (man) All we want is jobs.
We get jobs, we don't bother nobody.
If we don't got no jobs, we'll tear up Los Angeles, period.
The police-- we'll burn them up too.
(Woodard) The Watts Riot revealed an America starkly divided by race, even in this era of historic advances in civil rights.
And barriers to justice and equality seemed intractable unless new paths could be forged.
This city is ready, not for a black man, not for a red man, not for a yellow man, not for a white man.
It's ready for the best man, and that is Tom Bradley.
[cheers and applause] (Woodard) In 1973, Tom Bradley, the son of sharecroppers and grandson of a slave, made history.
He was elected mayor of Los Angeles, the first African-American mayor in a major American city with an overwhelmingly white majority.
His extraordinary multiracial coalition would unite a divided city, rein in a fiercely resistant police department, and transform the national dialogue on race.
Tom Bradley was way ahead of his time because he put together the same kind of majority that elected Barack Obama president.
But he did it in '73.
(Woodard) Tom Bradley's story gives us a glimpse of what is possible in America-- coalitions, justice, police reform-- and raises the question, what remains to be done to bridge the racial divide?
(male an[inspiring music] ♪ ♪ (Woodard) In booming 1940s Los Angeles, the police department was a small force in a big city.
It kept order with a brutal and biased hand.
Black and white officers could not ride in the same patrol cars, and the city's few black police officers were restricted to working in the Newton Division in South Central, the heart of the black community.
(Bell) We were totally segregated.
But the more blacks we got in or on the Department, we could begin to bring changes about.
Tom Bradley was one of the ringleaders in bringing about change.
(Woodard) This was the police department that Tom Bradley joined in 1940.
It was a civil-service job that paid $170 a month and provided the means for Bradley to marry his high-school sweetheart, Ethel Mae Arnold, and start a family.
(Bradley) The Department had a reputation for the treatment of blacks in the city.
It was something that I was determined that I wanted to go on the job to try to change that attitude.
The first time I ever heard of Tom Bradley was probably in the early '50s.
He was generally perceived as a no-nonsense police officer.
He basically walked his foot beat.
He held people accountable.
(Adams) He never used his weapon, and I don't even think he ever drew it.
But he would always catch burglars, car thieves, purse-snatchers.
You know, he would just outrun them.
(Woodard) Bradley had been in LAPD blue for ten years when William Parker was appointed Chief of Police.
Parker took over a department that was totally corrupt.
Officers were involved in the criminal element, and he basically revamped the Department.
(Domanick) Bill Parker did clean up the Department in terms of its corruption, but allowed a different kind of corruption, which was to be as brutal as you needed to be.
Parker could never say Negro, you know that?
He used nigra or nigger.
He ran the Department just like J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI.
He was a dictator.
(Reinhardt) Everybody knew that Chief Parker was watching you.
It was the practice in the Police Department to put anyone suspected of being too liberal, too much of a reformist, and trying to get information on them.
(Bradley) I made a number of recommendations about things that I thought ought to be changed.
I did develop a reputation of being what they would call a troublemaker.
Anyone who had the courage to speak out against the injustice in the Department.
(Woodard) Bradley took the exam to advance to lieutenant and became the first African-American to supervise white officers.
Then he set his sights on becoming a captain.
Several of us met with Parker to solicit his support for the promotion of Tom Bradley, and Parker told us, "Well, you know, you're way off base.
We're not going to be promoting his kind."
Unmitigated manifestation of racism.
And when that ambition and that limitation come to a head, Tom Bradley has to make a decision.
"Is my future in the Los Angeles Police Department?
"Or is my future somewhere else?"
Tom Bradley chose to go to law school.
(Woodard) Tom Bradley's journey began in the segregated South.
Born in Calvert, Texas, in 1917, his parents were sharecroppers.
His grandfather had been a slave.
(Bradley) I recall that I worked all day and still couldn't fill a cotton sack.
That was enough to impress me.
That was no life for me.
(Woodard) His family joined the great migration of African-Americans who fled the racism and poverty of the South for the dream of a better life.
Moving west provided an opportunity one never had in the South.
If you were looking for a future, Los Angeles was a Mecca for you.
(Woodard) Tom Bradley was seven years old when his family arrived in Los Angeles.
(Jimenez y West) For Tom Bradley, even though the African-American community lived in segregated communities, they're achieving higher education, they're becoming skilled tradesmen, there's a very high bar of expectation about what you can do, what you can achieve, and who you can be.
(Elkins) Tom was a unique individual.
All-city football player, tackle.
He was identified at an early age as a potential leader.
(Woodard) Bradley won a track scholarship to UCLA, where he was one of only 55 African-Americans in a student body of 7,000.
While UCLA welcomed gifted black athletes, racism was a fact of daily life.
There were no colored teachers.
There were no colored administrators.
All of the fraternities and sororities were segregated.
(Woodard) Bradley joined the prestigious black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, and he was elected to represent UCLA's black students when racial issues flared on campus.
(Jimenez y West) The networking that he will get in Kappa Alpha Psi, learning how to negotiate the complexity of a predominantly white institution, was going to continue for the rest of his life.
Los Angeles was always a diverse city, with people coming from different parts of the country and different parts of the world.
But it was a city largely defined and controlled by whites.
(Lorraine) We were still segregated.
There were still areas that you couldn't go to.
So my dad focused on moving us into an integrated area or making it integrated because we moved there.
For the black community in Los Angeles, one of the most galvanizing and important civil rights battles was the battle against racially restrictive housing.
It was a barrier for people of color-- African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asians, sometimes Jews-- to move into the neighborhoods they might want to live in.
Restrictive covenants blanketed the city, meaning that white neighborhoods were fighting to stay all-white.
You'd have trouble getting a loan, and if that's not enough, then you could face physical violence.
Neighbors could attack you, and did.
And that was the situation that existed.
(Phyllis) My father--he looked at the house at night because he didn't want to be seen in the daytime.
He wanted to move and have better things for his life, for his family.
That's just how he lived his whole life.
(Lorraine) We had to have a white intermediary to buy the house.
Daddy--he always thought that unless people got to know you as a person, they would always think of you as a group, and the only way to change that perception is to live among or work among or be among.
(Woodard) By the early 1960s, LA's black community had grown in size and prominence, yet African-Americans were largely excluded from political power.
There are no African-Americans at the local level.
You have a number of campaigns for City Council.
None are successful.
As we look at the '60s, the church was not only the threshold, it was the assembly point for the civil rights movement.
It had to be socially active-- getting people to vote, getting candidates to present themselves.
Leadership had to come out of the black church community.
Enter H. Hartford Brookins, the extraordinary new leader of First AME Church, and the brilliant idea of saying, "Look, what we need to do is get behind a single candidate and to have a convention to select that candidate."
(Brookins) In the black community, Tom Bradley was prominently known and highly respected.
So I get up and make that speech.
"And I, therefore, nominate the man I think best qualified "to take this position, and that's Tom Bradley."
(Sonenshein) Bradley had his base in the African-American community, but in the Tenth District, it wouldn't be enough to have black votes to win.
He always needed much more than that.
This is a very diverse district of African-Americans, of Asian-Americans, of Jewish liberals.
When Tom Bradley's running for office in 1963, there aren't many models except for one, and that's Mexican-American Edward Roybal.
He put together a multicultural coalition to win elective office, reaching across ethnic boundaries, ethnic communities.
Bradley watches this and replicates this when he runs for City Council.
As a member of the Council in the Tenth District, in and for the City of Los Angeles, to the best of your ability.
I do.
Mom, how are you doing?
Oh, fine, darling.
How are you?
- It's a great day, isn't it?
- Wonderful.
I'm so proud of you, my dear.
(Guerra) In 1963, something incredible happens.
3 African-Americans get to the City Council.
3 out of 15--that's 20%.
Nowhere else in urban America are blacks incorporated into the political structure to the degree that they are in Los Angeles.
So the expectations are built up that there is going to be change.
(Woodard) Just months after Bradley took office, President Lyndon B. Johnson called on the nation to defeat the social ills of economic inequality and racial injustice.
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.
[applause] (Sonenshein) The biggest thing the United States was doing in the 1960s was the War on Poverty.
In most big cities, the federal government was pouring funds in in order to help.
But in Los Angeles, Mayor Sam Yorty kept saying, "We don't want federal interference."
What he really meant was he didn't want something created in the inner city that could undermine his political power.
23 cities have already organized effective local anti-poverty programs.
Los Angeles, unfortunately, is the only major city in the United States which has failed to do this.
(Woodard) A few miles from Bradley's council district lay the community of Watts.
Once the destination for tens of thousands of African-Americans who came to LA's booming wartime factories, Watts had become a place of broken dreams.
(Jimenez y West) You've got this mixture of a lot of working-class people with decreasing opportunities for employment, primarily in public housing.
And there's no infrastructure there.
Take three busses to get to the public hospital.
There's no banking institutions that are there.
You've got extraordinarily heavy police presence that is there as well.
I think that there is widespread belief in the Negro community that there is a considerable amount of abuse of police authority.
There is a great deal of malpractice on the part of the police.
They are regarded with suspicion in some quarters and with hostility in others.
After Bradley sees what's happening in South Los Angeles, he really became the most formidable challenger to the alliance between Police Chief Parker and Mayor Sam Yorty.
I think that Bill Parker saw Tom Bradley as a traitor.
Bradley was a former police officer, and he wasn't abiding by the code of the LAPD, which was circle the wagons and never admit you did anything wrong.
(Sonenshein) Then in 1964, a slap in the face of black voters... a ballot measure, Prop 14, to invalidate a fair housing law to prevent discrimination on the basis of race.
(male reporter) State law requiring the sale of homes to any person able to pay regardless of color was under attack.
White organizations led by various real-estate groups collected signatures for a referendum, which would repeal the law.
Martin Luther King came to Watts to spell out the meaning of the referendum battle.
If a man says to you that you can't live next door to him because of your religion or because of your race... that man is saying to you that you are not fit to live.
California has said that.
(Woodard) August 11, 1965-- the arrest of a black man suspected of drunk driving fueled the tempest of anger, frustration, and violence that Tom Bradley had warned about.
(male reporter) Six days of rioting in a Negro section of Los Angeles left behind scenes reminiscent of war-torn cities.
More than 100 square blocks were decimated by fire and looters.
[gunshots] [shouting] (Farrell) While this was happening in Los Angeles, there were things that were happening at the national scene-- the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Mississippi Freedom Summer.
Difficulties in every major urban area where people were bent on keeping colored people, African-Americans, in their place, and it wasn't working, and they allowed things to get to the place where there were flash points.
(Woodard) A week after the riot, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. returned to Los Angeles to meet with local leaders and the community of Watts.
And for the respect of Dr. King that we have here, I say this-- Sure, we like to be nonviolent.
But we up here in the Los Angeles area, we're not to turn the other cheek.
[cheers and applause] I simply said to the Mayor, there is a strong feeling in the Negro community that Mr. Parker should be removed.
To me, it is utterly ridiculous to try and blame the Chief of Police and the Police Department for the lawless conduct that took place here.
It was the Negroes attacking the whites.
You'd think from the talk here today that it was the Police Department attacking the Negroes.
(Sonenshein) Watts changes everything in Los Angeles.
Police Chief Parker and Mayor Yorty had drawn a line in the sand, and it was about race, and it was about ideology, and Tom Bradley was on the other side of that line.
(Jimenez y West) For Tom Bradley, it's relatively clear-- "I'm not going to be able to utilize this position, the LA City Council, to make substantive change."
And Tom Bradley's choice of a pathway is going to be, "Let's become the Mayor."
(Woodard) By the late 1960s, the nation was in turmoil over race relations and the Vietnam War.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.
Eight weeks later, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was shot to death in Los Angeles.
Fear and uncertainty gripped the nation.
(Guerra) It felt like urban America was falling apart.
And Tom Bradley created a different way to respond to these issues-- to incorporate the community and their concerns, not to exclude them.
(Woodard) In 1969, City Councilman Tom Bradley challenged two-term incumbent Sam Yorty to be Mayor of Los Angeles.
We are a divided city today, divided on the basis of race and religion and on the basis of neighborhood, on the basis of age.
It's about time that we begin to pull together.
(Clayton) Tom Bradley needed to get the city to not just see him strictly as a black man, because he couldn't have won.
There simply weren't enough black people in Los Angeles.
I think at the time, there was about 18%.
We weren't Detroit or Chicago or Atlanta.
And so he understood that he had to reach out across all different ethnic groups.
Tom Bradley had more volunteers than ever before in the history of Los Angeles.
There were thousands upon thousands of volunteers.
(Sonenshein) The 1969 campaign was for the heart and soul of Los Angeles.
And it was going to create the first strong coalition between black and white voters in modern urban America.
[crowd cheering] This is a picture of the coalition of Los Angeles, a coalition of conscience, a coalition of those people in this city who reject the politics of corruption, who are determined to see in this city a government that extends justice and dignity to every man.
[cheers and applause] (Sonenshein) The election was one of the roughest, dirtiest, meanest elections in American history.
(male reporter) In a very affable way, Mayor Sam Yorty has been running a ferocious campaign.
He has smiled and spoken casually.
But what he's been saying is that a conspiracy is about to take over Los Angeles if he's not elected.
He spreads the word wherever he goes.
The word, when translated, is race.
Do you believe there's a power combine of black militants, white radicals, Communists manipulating Bradley's campaign?
I don't believe it.
I don't believe it.
I know it.
It's just very obvious here.
(Reinhardt) Sam Yorty campaigned very strongly to say that if we elect Tom Bradley, we're electing a group of blacks who were going to come take over City Hall.
(Juarez) Tom was red-baited continually.
Anytime anybody was called a Communist, it was really like a pox on your house.
It was very brutal.
Militants are being very quiet right now, and they're kind of laying back and waiting.
They don't want to jeopardize Mr. Bradley's chances.
I must say I never expected it to stoop this low.
He's now clearly made it a central theme of his campaign to deal in the art of fright and fear and the appeal to racism.
Gentlemen, we've conducted two polls from the active fire and police personnel.
This chart indicates 55% of the police personnel said they would either resign or retire if Tom Bradley is elected Mayor.
28% of the fire personnel indicated they would resign or retire from the Department if Tom Bradley is elected Mayor.
And the people that were saying, "We are going to retire," were representing a Department that was over 90% white male.
[marching band plays] (male reporter) There is just one issue in this election--race.
Would Yorty be better at keeping law and order or Bradley?
A white mayor or a black mayor?
(Bell) The election was real, real lousy.
Tom was getting death threats and everything else.
And the black policemen formed a committee to go around.
We were his security.
Well, you say you want Bradley, you got Bradley.
[cheers and applause] I want you to hang tight on the faith that we can win it.
Thank you again very much.
Good night.
[cheers and applause continue] (Sonenshein) The Bradley forces had tremendous support, but Yorty had tapped into that same vein of fear that he had been profiting from for years since the Watts riot.
76% of registered voters turned out.
It's an all-time record.
And the result of this polarized campaign was a victory for Sam Yorty.
[cheers and applause] While I have been somewhat disappointed, I'm not going to give up this fight.
I've been engaged in a battle for justice all of my life, and I will continue that effort.
I started working from the day that campaign was over in 1969, hoping that people would know me, would understand what I stood for, would know my record and my background and my programs.
(Morrison) 1973 was a very different year from 1969.
It was the calm after the storm.
So much of that stress and upheaval was over, and the issue of government reform and cleaning up government was very much at the forefront of people's minds.
I think the people of this city know where my heart is.
I love this city.
I want to keep fighting to make it better.
That's why I'm running.
(Rising) We spent a significant amount of time in the paid media telling voters what Tom Bradley stood for, what he believed in, and this was somebody whose views were very much in tune with the majority of the people.
(Sonenshein) The heart of the Bradley campaign was a relationship between African-Americans and Jews.
Jews and blacks were the strongest supporters of this historic civil rights movement.
So, when it came time to change Los Angeles, blacks and Jews, along with Latinos and Asian-Americans all had an interest in change, because they were on the outside looking in.
The idea of working together in coalitions became more acceptable as Tom Bradley runs for office again.
There was a lot of support from Chicano, Latino unionists and activists.
And certainly Cesar Chavez was somebody that admired Tom Bradley, and we knew that.
We got Bradley headquarters in Little Tokyo in a very visible location.
We leafleted.
We got a lot of younger people, younger Asian-Americans, aware of the importance of active participation in the democratic process.
(Lavery) It was kind of an awakening in Los Angeles.
We were a divided city, and it was Tom Bradley's campaign that brought these disparate groups together.
The people of this city are going to be able to look beyond the question-- the irrelevant factor of race and look to the qualifications, the programs, the ideas that the candidates offer.
[cheers and applause] [crowd chanting] We want Bradley!
We want Bradley!
We want Bradley!
(man) It is my honor to present to you the Mayor of all of the city of Los Angeles, the honorable Thomas Bradley.
[cheers and applause] Tonight was the fulfillment of a dream-- the impossible dream.
[crowd cheering] The victory which has come tonight is not just a victory for Tom Bradley, not just a victory for the campaign, but a victory for progress, a victory for our children.
Thank you very much.
Would you welcome, please, the new Mayor Elect of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley.
[applause] How do you explain the turnaround from four years ago to this point now, where you've had--I guess it would be a landslide victory, something like 100,000 votes.
It was the biggest margin of victory in this city since 1929, so it was quite a victory.
You had to carry the majority of the white vote, and that is remarkable.
It's nice to see in this day and age.
You know, I'm very proud of that.
Tom Bradley became the first African-American to be elected mayor of a major American city with an overwhelmingly white population.
And I will faithfully discharge...
The duties of the Office of Mayor...
The duties of the Office of Mayor...
So help me God.
So help me God.
[cheers and applause] Your rejection of the appeals to racial prejudice will serve as an historic monument to the political process in this country.
[cheers and applause] (Moore) It was a coming-together of the people.
We were all related.
It was one cause.
It was one city.
Oh, I'm swelling up... [voice breaking] 'Cause I remember.
[exhales sharply] Wow.
[exhales sharply] That's what we did.
We cried.
We screamed.
We yelled.
We couldn't believe it.
We couldn't believe it.
When President Barack Obama became President of the Untied States, we like to say Tom Bradley laid the road map.
(Weiner) The day after he was elected, the City Hall chamber was completely different.
The furnishings were the same, the hallways were the same, but all of a sudden, there were no lobbyists.
There was this immediate transformation from a lobbyist mayor to a people's mayor.
(Bradley) We're here to serve all of the people.
We want no favoritism extended to anybody because of their power, their prestige, their influence, or their so-called connections.
(Maddox) Before Tom Bradley was Mayor of LA, you did not have diverse people in high-ranking positions in City Hall.
You did not have Latinos, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans on powerful boards and commissions that make major decisions that affect the city.
As soon as he became Mayor, he began the process of incorporating Mexican-Americans into his governing coalition.
He decided to have two deputy mayors at all times.
And always one of those was a Latino.
He'd have a monthly open house, and anybody with any problem could come to City Hall, line up, and have a meeting with the mayor.
I think personally he's made an excellent attempt at meeting the people and getting down to earth and finding out really what's happening and what people are trying to think and what they're concerned about.
Hello.
How are you?
(Cunningham) Tom Bradley was on a pretty even keel.
He wasn't bombastic.
Tom was very economical with his words.
It was a quiet kind of leadership.
Los Angeles had moved further beyond racism than most cities in the world.
Nobody thought of Tom Bradley as being black.
He was a distinguished gentleman.
He was wise, and he was calm.
People said they couldn't read his face, his expressions.
You have to be black to understand this, especially from that era-- you couldn't let people read your face and what you were feeling.
He was brought up that way.
That's how he survived during his time.
You listened.
We did not always comment.
I'm a very complex man, I think.
On human matters, I'm considered a liberal.
On fiscal matters, I'm considered conservative.
I'm very careful about spending the taxpayers' dollars.
(Fabiani) Mayor Bradley had this vision, which turned out to be accurate, that Los Angeles was going to be one of the foremost cities in the world in all kinds of things, including entertainment and culture and the arts.
He said that LA needs a heart.
We need a economic center, a political center, a cultural center.
And it's got to be accessible to this vast, sprawling city.
He said public transportation is essential.
It's vital for us to have a great, vibrant downtown.
This line is taking us into the 21st century.
[cheers and applause] The Mayor found a way to work with big business to get Downtown more like a bustling, real downtown.
He understood that LA needed to be seen as an international city.
He had his eye on the Pacific Rim long before a lot of other people did.
The Mayor knew how to sell the city of Los Angeles.
And as a result, we saw trade increase both at the airport and at the port.
Think of how obscure Los Angeles was politically.
Then all of a sudden, here comes this man, a black man, a Democrat, bringing Los Angeles into prominence.
His name was brooded about as a vice presidential candidate and as a cabinet secretary.
All of a sudden, Los Angeles was a political player on the national scene in a way that it had not been before.
(Woodard) But as Bradley entered his second term, he faced many challenges confronting mayors throughout the nation.
In the 1970s, racial tensions over crosstown school-busing escalated.
And in 1978, Proposition 13, a California initiative to limit property taxes hit Los Angeles hard.
We in Los Angeles will lose over $200 million.
That's about a fourth of our budget.
(Sonenshein) Bradley had to preside over very unpopular cuts in city services.
And in that same year, the appointment of a new police chief, Daryl Gates, who was to become the Mayor's principle political adversary throughout the next decade and a half.
(Woodard) Chief Daryl Gates was a 29-year veteran of the LAPD, popular among white residents and revered by the Police Department's rank and file.
You have to remember that Daryl Gates was Chief Parker's driver, and Daryl Gates had the same kind of philosophy as Chief Parker.
(Sonenshein) From the day Bradley took office, he had to deal with a recalcitrant police department that was used to having its own way at City Hall.
It was very, very difficult to bring about change.
(Woodard) While Gates was applauded for creating crime- and drug-prevention programs, he was sharply criticized for the use of excessive force by LAPD officers in minority neighborhoods.
(Gates) We will do everything in our power to put the gang members where they belong, and that's in jail.
(Maddox) Those of us in South LA, especially African-Americans, viewed LAPD as an unwelcome force.
There were incidents of police brutality, racism, and I mean brutal things.
(Woodard) Tensions between the police and minority communities worsened when LAPD officers fatally shot an African-American woman, Eulia Love, during a confrontation over an unpaid gas bill.
I am, therefore, requesting that you initiate an immediate review of this case, including meetings with the citizens in various parts of the city.
(Woodard) Criticism of the LAPD intensified when Chief Gates defended the use of chokeholds-- a controversial policing technique which had resulted in the deaths of 16 people, 12 of them black men.
(male reporter) Gates speculated in a newspaper interview that black may be anatomically different from whites.
He said...
I think that Daryl Gates has proven without a shadow of a doubt that he is not competent or capable to handle this job.
I ask again for Daryl Gates' resignation.
(Sonenshein) Bradley knows he can't get Gates out.
The City Charter gave the Police Chief civil-service protection, which meant the Mayor and the Police Commission could not fire the Police Chief without cause.
And, unfortunately, misbehavior in minority communities was not defined as cause.
And Daryl Gates knew that from the start.
(Woodard) While Bradley contended with a defiant police chief, he pursued the chance to make history again.
Tom Bradley knew that he wanted to become governor.
He thought that he would be much more effective as governor to change certain laws.
And so the ambition led him to, you know, not push very hard on some policies.
And I think this was certainly the case when it came to police reform.
I accept, with gratitude and thanks, your nomination for the office of Governor of the State of California.
(Woodard) The polls were clear.
Tom Bradley was on his way to becoming the first black governor in modern American history.
But his endorsement of a controversial handgun-registration initiative threatened his solid lead.
(Gastelum) We knew this is gonna be a problem for us, 'cause there's gonna be ranchers and farmers and cowboys out there coming out, trying to say, "You're not gonna take my gun away."
And while they're in the booth, they're gonna vote no for the black Democrat and yes for the white Republican.
(Brathwaite Burke) All the polls had said that he was winning statewide.
He's getting ready to walk out to claim victory, and someone says, "Hold on."
(Brokaw) NBC News projecting that George Deukmejian will be the winner in the California Governor's race over Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.
(Brathwaite Burke) And everyone collapsed because Tom Bradley had lost.
And what it said to us was that people would say that they were supporting Tom Bradley because he was a good candidate, but when they got behind the voting booths, they couldn't take their hand and stamp that name and that you still have in the back of your mind a question about race.
(Woodard) But Mayor Bradley would not let defeat destroy his dreams.
Two years later, he would bring the Olympic Games to Los Angeles.
It was an intensive campaign that began during his first term in office.
The winner is Los Angeles.
[cheers and applause] (Woodard) But a triumphant Tom Bradley soon faced resistance from the public, the police, the City Council-- all worried about traffic, terrorism, and the price tag.
We have no intention of going into the red.
We've indicated that we think our revenue projections are sound and conservative.
(Woodard) Bradley had a plan to finance the Olympics through business sponsorship.
It was bold and innovative.
But the International Olympics Committee refused.
The public, it believed, should pay for the games.
(Remy) Tom Bradley wouldn't buckle.
It came down to the final days, and Tom indicated to the Olympic Committee that the taxpayers were not going to be on the hook.
I am, therefore, sending the letter to the City Council recommending that they withdraw the bid for the 1984 Olympic Games.
(Woodard) The IOC was forced to back down, and the 1984 LA Summer Olympics became Bradley's crowning achievement as Mayor.
[fanfare playing, crowd cheering] The games produced an unprecedented profit of $232 million, which continues to fund youth sports programs in Los Angeles.
Without even realizing it, Tom Bradley may have saved the Olympic Games, because this model that he created of using private money, and even making a little money, became the gold standard for the Olympic Games.
(Woodard) Across the globe, Mayor Bradley's popularity soared, and on the home front, he was hailed as a unifying force and coalition builder.
But there were issues that even Bradley could not resolve.
But if I speak the truth tonight, shut your mouth!
(Woodard) By 1985, the threads of Bradley's black Jewish coalition began to unravel, when Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, known for advocating black nationalism and anti-Semitic views, came to Los Angeles to speak.
Don't I have a right to criticize Jewish behavior if I think it is incorrect?
And I repudiate racism, hatred, violence, and bigotry.
We must act quickly to heal the wounds between Jews and blacks.
(Woodard) But the damage had been done.
The man who had been so adept at building bridges found himself watching his city divide again.
(Pastor) 1980s Los Angeles is racked by deindustrialization and the loss of jobs, particularly union jobs, and, at the same time, a massive flood of immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
Los Angeles became the place where inequality was on the rise, working poverty was on the rise, frustrations were on the rise, At that particular time in South LA, you had the emergence of crack cocaine, crack houses everywhere.
Unemployment was off the chart, not a lot of opportunities.
It was a bad situation.
We are determined to take back the streets of this community for the law-abiding people who live here, who work here, who play here.
(Aubry) Tom Bradley was an icon for many people.
That was an unfortunate thing, I think, because it did hinder people raising publicly the kind of issues and questions that they would have raised otherwise.
I think that he did neglect South Central in terms of economic development and unemployment and that kind of thing.
There was perhaps a sense that he was more the Mayor for the rest of the city than he was for blacks, because if anyone thought that Bradley would wave a wand and all the problems that blacks were experiencing would go away, that was the furthest thing from the truth.
I think he tried to do the best he could.
He just wasn't very vocal about it.
Sometimes you have to use the bullhorn and pound your chest and let people know, "This is what I'm doing to help this particular community."
He just wasn't wired like that.
That wasn't Tom Bradley.
[cheers and applause] I intend to make the next four years the most active, the most productive, and the most progressive in the long history of our city.
[cheers and applause] (Woodard) It was unprecedented-- five terms as mayor.
But his optimism was challenged by growing racial tensions that strained the city's peace.
(Maddox) Korean merchants were moving into South LA and running and operating liquor stores and markets that previously had been owned and operated by African-Americans.
There was a lot of tension because the African-American customers felt that the Korean merchants were being very disrespectful to them.
Why don't you open a market that we can use for our families?
Go back to Korea!
Why don't you hire blacks?
Why don't you hire blacks?
(Choo) So there's that buildup, and the language barrier, as simple as it may seem, is huge.
When you can't explain your actions to someone, then that gap is filled in with mythology about people being rude and racist... both ways.
(Woodard) As discontent simmered, Mayor Bradley worked to bridge these racial divides, while at the same time fighting to rein in the LAPD.
Daryl Gates continued a long tradition of Los Angeles Police Department operating like an occupation force in the African-American community.
A very brutal, racist institution, where it was, in my opinion, unofficially, if not officially, sanctioned-- it's all right to beat the hell out of black people.
(male reporter) Early Sunday morning, a black man whose car had been stopped by Los Angeles police officers was struck and kicked repeatedly.
When people saw the video of the beating of motorist Rodney King, everybody had a visceral connection because we all felt either we had been Rodney King, or we've seen beatings like that, and finally somebody caught something like that on camera.
I am as shocked and as outraged as anyone.
Tom Bradley now was in a position to take further action, stronger action on police reform.
He created the ten-member Christopher Commission under Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State.
(Bradley) The Commission has shown that the problem of excessive force is aggravated by racism and bias within the LAPD.
The Chief has only one choice.
He must step aside.
I am not going anywhere.
- I'm staying in the Department.
[cheers and applause] We want Daryl Gates removed as Chief of Police.
(all) Gates has got to go!
Gates has got to go!
(all) Reform LAPD!
Reform LAPD!
(Woodard) 13 days after the Rodney King beating, another videotape incident shook Los Angeles.
African-American teenager Latasha Harlins was fatally shot by Korean immigrant grocer Soon Ja Du after a dispute over a bottle of orange juice.
(all) Stop killing our children!
We want justice!
Stop killing our children!
(Woodard) But for many African-Americans, justice would not be served.
Soon Ja Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.
The judge imposed probation, but no jail time.
She got away with murder.
After seven days of deliberation, the jury in the Los Angeles police beating of black motorist Rodney King returned verdicts late today.
(Woodard) April 29, 1992-- the city braced itself for the outcome of the trial of the four police officers accused of beating Rodney King.
The jury has reached a verdict.
Would you hand them to the bailiff, please?
"We, the jury, find the defendant, "Laurence M. Powell, not guilty "of the crime of assault by force likely to produce "great bodily injury and with a deadly weapon.
in violation of penal code section..." I was shocked.
I was stunned.
I had my breath taken away by the verdict that was announced this afternoon.
We have had enough.
[cheers and applause] We encourage you to express your outrage and your anger verbally.
We don't intend that any of you is to go out and burn down any buildings or break out any windows.
(Mack) Here you had a very angry, frustrated community where an obvious injustice had taken place, and this is sort of like a volcano that had been building and building.
There were other kinds of issues out there-- lousy education, unemployment twice the rate of the general population.
For us, it didn't start off with Rodney King, but the murder of Latasha Harlins is what stroked the civil unrest.
We felt that enough was enough, so we decided that we wanted to go to Koreatown and burn down their stores in memory of Latasha Harlins.
I mean, can't people realize what they're doing is wrong?
This is not the way to overcome racism.
(Choo) The Korean immigrant community, the Korean businesses, called the police like everybody else, but the police did not come.
So the arming themselves were an act of a desperate people trying to protect themselves.
[indistinct shouting] No justice, no peace!
No justice, no peace!
It was just a tough moment for the Mayor to endure.
I think it sucked a lot of his life out of him.
He watched a city that he loved so much, that he dedicated his time in serving, and here he's watching it burn.
I saw the pain in his eyes.
I saw the pain in his demeanor.
I saw the pain in his persona.
Nothing but pain.
(Pastor) 1992 was actually the symbolic end of the Bradley era.
When you look at the neighborhoods that exploded in unrest, they had twice the poverty, twice the unemployment.
It was very much a bread riot instead of a race riot.
(Sonenshein) It seemed as if the Bradley years would end in tragedy, but instead, only six weeks later in a climate of fear, the Bradley coalition came together one more time to pass Proposition F, which for the first time created a modern Los Angeles Police Department under civilian authority that would be accountable to the community and thereby redeemed the promise of the Bradley coalition at the very end.
I've served a record of five terms as your mayor.
[applause] Others should now have the opportunity and the responsibility to bring their vision to bear on the future of this great community.
I am prepared to pass the torch to new leadership.
[cheers and applause] Tom Bradley, who lived the American dream, rising from the cotton fields of Texas, to five terms as mayor of Los Angeles-- Tom Bradley died today at the age of 80.
(Jimenez y West) The story of Tom Bradley is absolutely extraordinary.
It's about the American dream.
Work hard, focus, intelligence, and community.
Building a multiracial coalition offers hope.
Is that not what America is about at its core?
(Woodard) Tom Bradley was Los Angeles' great modernizer, leading LA to become a celebrated, diverse, global, and cosmopolitan metropolis.
He proved through his own life story that effective and durable coalitions could be built, and barriers of race and class overcome.
In time, the bridges that Bradley built on the contested landscape of race in America ushered in new generations of African-American and minority leaders, who won elections, governed cities, states, and ultimately the nation.
What once seemed out of reach, indeed impossible, came within grasp.
Tom Bradley showed a way to bridge the racial divide.
to bridge the racial divide.
♪ Gonna walk on and on together ♪ ♪ Gonna let no one turn me around ♪ ♪ Gonna march on and on together ♪ ♪ Gonna stand here on the higher ground ♪ ♪ Gonna walk on and on together ♪ ♪ Gonna let no one turn me around ♪ ♪ Gonna march on and on together ♪ ♪ Gonna stand here on the higher ground ♪ ♪ Gonna walk on and on together ♪ ♪ Gonna let no one turn me around ♪ ♪ Gonna march on and on together ♪ ♪ Gonna stand here on the higher ground ♪
