[...] His view of the world was shaped decisively by the paradox of black Los Angeles in the years following World War II. To immigrant African Americans from the South, like the Cochran family, this was a city of unexpected and bountiful promise. But it was a promise on which the majority white community was determined to set firm limits. Enforcement of those barriers was the task of the Los Angeles Police Department, whose ranks then Chief William Parker filled with ex-servicemen, most from the South and Southwest.
To an extent not true in any other American city, the story of black progress among Angelenos of Cochran's generation was a tale of struggle against the racism of the LAPD, and his conduct of Simpson's defense was simply one more battle in that struggle. Paradoxically, though the city remained residentially segregated for decades after the war, it also was a place where interracial contacts and friendships flourished with a frequency and intensity rare in other large American cities.
Thus Cochran, a product of a then nearly all-white Los Angeles High School, UCLA and Loyola Law School, could become — as one poll a few years ago found — the most recognizable black man in America along with Louis Farrakhan, while at the same time living a life in which his closest personal friends were white and Jewish. It simply never occurred to him that those friendships were in any way precluded by his abiding concern for the African American community. [...]
| I enjoyed "Johnnie Cochran: L.A. quintessential," Tim Rutten's latest registration-required Regarding Media column for the Los Angeles Times
posted in articles on April 2, 2005 3:03 AM | t (0)
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