Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- L.A.Watts Times
- Abstract:
- The Watts Times was founded in 1965 following the Watts Riots. In 1976, Charles Cook purchased the publication and changed the name to L.A. Watts Times. The collection consists of original L.A. Watts Times newspapers, a small amount of awards, and a very small amount of ephemera.
- Extent:
- 13.8 Linear Feet (33 flat boxes)
- Language:
- Materials are in English.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], L.A. Watts Times Newspapers and Ephemera (Collection 2122). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The collection consists of issues of original L.A. Watts Times newspapers along with a small amount of awards and ephemera. The bulk of the newspapers are loose publications; a small portion are hard bound together by year. Many of the awards, honors, and commendations are from the California State Government and City of Los Angeles and they acknowledge the L.A. Watts Times as well as publishers Charles and Beverly Cook and Melanie Polk.
- Biographical / historical:
-
The Watts Times was founded in 1965 following the Watts Riots and eventually became the premiere African American publication in Los Angeles. In 1976, the newspaper was purchased by Charles Cook, an African American activist and former leader of the Congress of Racial Equality. As an effort to include news about Los Angeles' entire African American community, Cook changed the publication's name to L.A. Watts Times. Cook was credited for transforming the L.A. Watts Times from being a tabloid circulated in Watts to becoming a financially stable weekly publication distributed in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Carson, Compton, Inglewood, Gardena, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.
After Charles Cook's death in 1998, his daughter Melanie Polk became publisher of L.A. Watts Times. In June 2010, Polk sold the publication to Danny Bakewell, publisher of Los Angeles Sentinel and owner of Bakewell Media
- Acquisition information:
- Danny Bakewell, Chairman of Bakewell Media, 2012.
- Processing information:
-
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.
- Arrangement:
-
The collection is not arranged.
- Physical location:
- Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Indexed terms
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], L.A. Watts Times Newspapers and Ephemera (Collection 2122). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988