In 1964, an Urban League survey ranked Los Angeles as the most desirable city for African Americans to live in. In 1965, the city burst into flames during one of the worst race riots in the nation's history. How the city came to such a pass - embodying both the best and worst of what urban America offered black migrants from the South - is the story told for the first time in this history of modern black Los Angeles. A clear-eyed and compelling look at black struggles for equality in L.A.'s neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces from the Great Depression to our day, "L.A. City Limits" critically refocuses the ongoing debate about the origins of America's racial and urban crisis. Challenging previous analysts' near-exclusive focus on northern "rust-belt" cities devastated by de-industrialization, Josh Sides asserts that the cities to which black southerners migrated profoundly affected how they fared. He shows how L.A.'s diverse racial composition, dispersive geography, and dynamic postwar economy often created opportunities - and limits - quite different from those encountered by blacks in the urban North.

"An exceptional book....[Sides] mixes pioneering research with good writing, sharp analysis and the moving stories of everyday people. His work deserves a place on the bookshelves of all serious students of Los Angeles and the rest of urban California." - Bill Boyarsky, Los Angeles Times Book Review "source material for for planners of tomorrow's multiracial cities." "[A] counter-narrative to the historic narrative of crime, violence and poverty." - Michael T. Jarvis, La Times Magazine"

Josh Sides is Assistant Professor of History at Cal Poly Pomona.