New Play Is Inspired By The Black Legacy In Boyle Heights That Few Even Know About

The legacy of Boyle Heights’ once-thriving Black community is the inspiration behind a new play premiering in Boyle Heights today.

Titled Rise, the play from the Company of Angels theater group tells the fictional story of a Black woman born in Boyle Heights in the 1920s who resolves to stay in the neighborhood as it changes over the decades.

In more recent decades, Boyle Heights’ population has been predominantly Latino. But over the years its residents have also included Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Japanese Americans, and Black migrants who fled the Jim Crow laws of the South long ago.

The neighborhood’s Black history dates to the late 1800s, as the Great Migration drove Black families west and north seeking safety and opportunity.

These newcomers found restrictive housing covenants in much of Los Angeles — but not in Boyle Heights.

Company of Angels commissioned playwright and screenwriter Kimba Henderson, who interviewed Black former residents, including people who are now in their 80s and 90s.

“What they found in Boyle Heights was safety and acceptance,” Henderson said. “Nobody was going to come and tell them they can’t live there. Nobody was going to come and burn a cross and leave it on their lawn.”

Henderson and Company of Angels held “story circles” to hear from former residents and their families.

Early on, they consulted with Black Boyle Heights, a group of former residents and their descendants who’ve been working to call attention to the neighborhood’s Black history.

Shirlee Smith, one of the group’s founding members, wrote about the community’s multicultural appeal in a 2020 Brooklyn & Boyle essay: “The presence of other cultures often brought a sense of opportunity and a thirst for knowledge,” she wrote, “rather than a retreat into the comfort of people with similar backgrounds who lived in the same neighborhoods.”

More recent years have been less harmonious: Local gang members firebombed Black residents in the Ramona Gardens housing project in 2014. A similar firebombing took place in 1992.

But the stories Henderson heard from long-ago residents told a different tale.

“So many folks, when they talk about their best friend, their best friend wasn’t necessarily the same race as they were,” Henderson said.

Henderson recalled one Black former resident’s story about being invited to dine with Mexican neighbors, expecting to be served Mexican cuisine — and arriving to learn the hosts had prepared a Southern-style feast in their honor.

“It just says something about the people and the families,” she said.

Henderson, who was raised in San Diego, said she wasn’t previously aware of Boyle Heights’ Black legacy.

The same goes for many Angelenos, said Lui Sanchez, associate artistic director for Company of Angels and the play’s director.

“I think it’s important to tell the stories that may have been hidden, or repressed, or oppressed, or replaced,” Sanchez said, “so that people at large that live in Los Angeles know that the fabric of Los Angeles has many, many threads.”

The play opens Thursday, Oct. 6 with discounted tickets the first night. It runs at Company of Angels in Boyle Heights through Nov. 5.