L.A. African American Oral History Project

Tim Watkins

Tim Watkins grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. His father was sent to Los Angeles from Mississippi at the age of thirteen to escape being lynched. He met Tim’s mother, a white woman from San Francisco, after his first wife passed away from tuberculosis. Tim’s parents were married in Mexico because it […]

Ozie B. Gonzaque

Ozie Gonzaque and her four sisters grew up in Louisiana where her grandfather worked as a farmer and her father worked as a laborer for a gas station. While her parents were respected in the community, after an incident where her father couldn’t get the deed to his own property, the family decided to move […]