Ryan Reft
Ryan Reft is a historian of 20th and 21st-century American history at the Library of Congress. His work has appeared in several journals, including Souls, The Sixties, California History, Planning Perspectives, Southern California Quarterly, and the Journal of Urban History, as well as in the anthology "Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America's New Leadership" and "Asian American Sporting Cultures." The opinions expressed by Reft are solely his and not those of the Library of Congress. He can be reached on twitter at @ryanreft.
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The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising was the nation’s first multiethnic urban riot, one that points to the complexities of policing in a city of different racial and ethnic groups.
The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising was the nation’s first multiethnic urban riot, one that points to the complexities of policing in a city of different racial and ethnic groups.
The Watts Uprising and the 1992 L.A. Rebellion were both fiery chapters in L.A.’s history. Many are asking, “how could history have repeated itself?” To answer that question, we delve into the events that conspired to create more conservative reforms.
In the early post-1945 period, California served as the emblem of the American dream, the ideal of modernity and purveyor of modernism, which it broadcast to the nation and larger world. Did it manage to live up to its promise?
The influence of the Texas Rangers on border militarizaton stretches from its creation in the 19th century, through the inception of Border Patrol and ties to the NRA, to the Minutemen movement that rose to prominence in the early 21st century.
The influence of the Texas Rangers on border militarizaton stretches from its creation in the 19th century, through the inception of Border Patrol and ties to the NRA, to the Minutemen movement that rose to prominence in the early 21st century.
California history, much like that of America’s, rests on the noblest of deeds, the most nefarious of acts and a sea of grey in between, all driven by the very dreams that fuel boom and bust cycles.
Endorsed by New Deal-era federal housing policy, "redlining" encouraged housing inequality in U.S. cities.
Fifty years ago, the United States Supreme Court upheld the California Supreme Court decision to overturn the controversial Prop 14 referendum.
Nearly a decade later, public policy professionals and academics have worked to unravel the complex factors that led to the 2008 housing crisis and why minorities and women proved particularly vulnerable.
Reitman v. Mulkey, decided in 1967, was an important legal victory against discriminatory housing policies. The case originated in Orange County, California.
During the First World War, L.A. women laid the foundation for the Rosie the Riveter feminism that followed decades later.