Stephen Clark Foster
Stephen Clark Foster was a politician, the first American mayor of Los Angeles under United States military rule. Foster served in the state constitutional convention, was elected to the State Senate, he was elected as mayor of Los Angeles in 1856, elected for four terms to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Foster was born in Machias, Maine, in 1820, he graduated from Yale College in 1840. He taught at a private academy in the South. In 1845 at age 25, he headed for California, like many other young single men, via El Paso and Santa Fe. While in Santa Fe, Foster joined the Mormon Battalion of Volunteers on its way to California to fight in the Mexican–American War, he served as an interpreter on the Battalion's march across the Southwest. In the stormy period when California was under US military rule after the defeat of the Mexicans, Governor Richard Barnes Mason appointed the 26-year-old Foster alcalde of Los Angeles to replace the dissolved ayuntamiento of the Mexicans. For this reason, Foster has been referred to as the first American mayor of the city.
He served as alcalde from January 1, 1848 to May 21, 1849. For the remainder of that year, or until the city came under United States jurisdiction in 1850, Foster served as prefect. Mason appointed a prominent and mature Californio, as mayor following Foster. During his early years in Los Angeles, Foster made a marriage important to his standing in the community, he married María Merced Lugo, one of the sisters of José del Carmen Lugo above. Their father was a prominent Californio landowner; the Fosters had five children together. Foster was elected a member of the 1849 California Constitutional Convention; the group framed the state Constitution and petitioned Congress for admission of California into the United States. Foster achieved his first political office after statehood in 1850, when he was elected to the Los Angeles Common Council for a one-year term. In 1851 he was elected California state senator from Southern California, served two years. In 1854, Foster was elected mayor of Los Angeles.
He is credited with authorizing construction of the first public school in Los Angeles. Los Angeles was said to be the toughest frontier town in the United States, it had a diverse population with simmering tensions after the war, as well as a "disorderly element". The surrounding territory was overrun by bandits driven from the gold mines of northern California southward into the cattle ranching counties. Numerous gamblers and criminals drifted into the city to escape the vigilantes of San Francisco. Mayor Foster, like most of the city's prominent citizens, was a member of the local vigilance committee and of the Los Angeles Rangers, the mounted body of volunteer police. In early 1854, Foster resigned his official position to lead a lynching mob. After the lynching, the people held a special election and returned Foster to office for the remainder of his regular term. Foster was re-elected mayor in 1856, he resigned Sept. 22, 1856, to act as executor for the large estate of his brother-in-law, Colonel Isaac Williams.
Foster next served as a supervisor on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for four terms. He was elected in 1856, 1858 and 1859. In 1857 he replaced Jonathan R. Scott. Foster documented the history of California under the rule of Mexico in articles published by the Southern California Historical Society. In 1888 he wrote A Sketch of Some of the Earliest Pioneers of Los Angeles and Reminiscences: My First Procession in Los Angeles March 16, 1847. At Forefather's Day celebrations on December 21, 1886, Foster read a paper about yankee pioneers, titled First New Englanders Who Came to Los Angeles, which The Los Angeles Times stated was a "historically valuable paper." He died in 1898 and his funeral was held in Downey, California. Former Los Angeles mayor J. R. Toberman was a pall-bearer
Los Angeles
Los Angeles the City of Los Angeles and known by its initials L. A. is the most populous city in California, the second most populous city in the United States, after New York City, the third most populous city in North America. With an estimated population of four million, Los Angeles is the cultural and commercial center of Southern California; the city is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity and the entertainment industry, its sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles is the largest city on the West Coast of North America. Los Angeles is in a large basin bounded by the Pacific Ocean on one side and by mountains as high as 10,000 feet on the other; the city proper, which covers about 469 square miles, is the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the country. Los Angeles is the principal city of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second largest in the United States after that of New York City, with a population of 13.1 million. It is part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area the nation's second most populous area with a 2015 estimated population of 18.7 million.
Los Angeles is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States, with a diverse economy in a broad range of professional and cultural fields. Los Angeles is famous as the home of Hollywood, a major center of the world entertainment industry. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index and 9th in the Global Economic Power Index; the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of $1.044 trillion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will host the event for a third time in 2028; the city hosted the Miss Universe pageant twice, in 1990 and 2006, was one of 9 American cities to host the 1994 FIFA men's soccer World Cup and one of 8 to host the 1999 FIFA women's soccer World Cup, hosting the final match for both tournaments. Home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California.
The city was founded on September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood; the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California assured the city's continued rapid growth; the Los Angeles coastal area was settled by the Chumash tribes. A Gabrieleño settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning "poison oak place". Maritime explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area of southern California for the Spanish Empire in 1542 while on an official military exploring expedition moving north along the Pacific coast from earlier colonizing bases of New Spain in Central and South America.
Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769. In 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four settlers known as "Los Pobladores" founded the pueblo they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles,'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels'; the present-day city has the largest Roman Catholic Archdiocese in the United States. Two-thirds of the Mexican or settlers were mestizo or mulatto, a mixture of African and European ancestry; the settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street, the oldest part of Los Angeles. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, the pueblo continued as a part of Mexico.
During Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta California's regional capital. Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the Californios after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. Railroads arrived with the completion of the transcontinental Southern Pacific line to Los Angeles in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885. Petroleum was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000; the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, under the supervision of William Mulholland, assured the continued growth of the city. Due to clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent city and communities became compelled to annex themselves into Los Angeles.
Los Angeles created the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States. On September 14, 1908, the Los Angeles City Council promulgated residential and industrial land use zones; the new ordinance established three residential zones of a single type, where industrial uses were
Tom Bradley (American politician)
Thomas J. Bradley was an American politician and former police officer who served as the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 1993, he has been the only African American Mayor of Los Angeles, his 20 years in office mark the longest tenure by any mayor in the city's history. His 1973 election made him the second African-American mayor of a major U. S. city. Bradley retired in 1993, after his approval ratings began dropping subsequent to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Bradley unsuccessfully ran for Governor of California in 1982 and 1986 and was defeated each time by the Republican George Deukmejian; the racial dynamics that appeared to underlie his narrow and unexpected loss in 1982 gave rise to the political term "the Bradley effect." In 1985, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. Bradley, the grandson of a slave, was born on December 29, 1917, to Lee Thomas and Crenner Bradley, poor sharecroppers who lived in a small log cabin outside Calvert, Texas, he had four siblings — Lawrence, Willa Mae and Howard.
The family moved to Arizona to pick cotton and in 1924 to the Temple-Alvarado area of Los Angeles, where Lee was a Santa Fe Railroad porter and Crenner was a maid. Bradley attended Rosemont Elementary School, Lafayette Junior High School and Polytechnic High School, where he was the first black student to be elected president of the Boys League and the first to be inducted into the Ephebians national honor society, he was all-city tackle for the high school football team. He joined Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Among the jobs he had while at college was as a photographer for comedian Jimmy Durante. Bradley left his studies to join the Los Angeles Police Department in 1940, he became one of the "just 400 blacks" among the department's 4,000 officers. He recalled "the downtown department store that refused him credit, although he was a police officer, the restaurants that would not serve blacks." He told a Times reporter: When I came on the department, there were two assignments for black officers.
You either worked Newton Street Division, which has a predominantly black community, or you worked traffic downtown. You could not work with a white officer, that continued until 1964. Bradley and Ethel Arnold met at the New Hope Baptist Church and were married May 4, 1941, they had three daughters, Phyllis and a baby who died on the day she was born. He and his wife "needed a white intermediary to buy their first house in Leimert Park a all-white section of the city's Crenshaw district."Bradley was attending Southwestern University Law School while a police officer and began his practice as a lawyer when he retired from the police department. Upon his leaving the office of mayor in 1993, he joined the law offices of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, specializing in international trade issues, his entry into politics came. The club was part of the California Democratic Council, a liberal, reformist group organized in the 1950s by young Democrats energized by Adlai E. Stevenson's presidential campaigns.
It was predominantly white and had many Jewish members, thus marking the beginnings of the coalition, which along with Latinos, that would carry him to electoral victory so many times. His choice of a Democratic circle put him at odds with another political force in the African American community, representatives of poor, all-black areas who were associated with the political organization of Jesse M. Unruh an up-and-coming state assemblyman; the early stage of Bradley's political career was marked by clashes with African American leaders like onetime California Lieutenant Governor and former U. S. Representative Mervyn Dymally, an Unruh ally. Bradley applied for the 10th District seat in June 1961, when he was still a police lieutenant living at 3397 Welland Avenue; the City Council, which had the power to fill a vacancy, instead appointed Joe E. Hollingsworth, he ran against Hollingsworth in April 1963. There were only two candidates and Bradley, two elections — one for the unexpired term left by Controller Navarro, ending June 30, one for a full four-year term starting July 1.
Bradley won by 17,760 votes to 10,540 in the first election and by 17,552 votes to 10,400 in the second. By he had retired from the police force, he was sworn in as a councilman at the age of 45 on April 15, 1963, "the first Negro elected to the council."One of the first votes he made on a controversial subject was his opposition to a proposed study by City Attorney Roger Arnebergh and Police Chief William H. Parker of the Dictionary of American Slang, ordered in an 11-4 vote by the council. Councilman Tom Shepard's motion said the book was "saturated not only with phrases of sexual filth, but wordage defamatory of minority ethnic groups and definitions insulting religions and races."Bradley told Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Bergholz the next month that he "has been asked why he doesn't participate in public demonstrations. His answer: His power as a councilman can best be used in trying to bring groups together, that's where his time and energy should be spent." He said. In 1969, Bradley first challenged incumbent Mayor Sam Yorty, a conservative Democrat though the election was nonpartisan.
Armed with key endorsements, Bradley held a substantial lead over Yorty in the primary, but was a fe
Antonio F. Coronel
Antonio Francisco Coronel was a Californio of Mexican Alta California, that transitioned into various political offices after U. S. statehood of California in 1850. He served as the fourth mayor of Los Angeles from 1853 to 1854. Antonio Francisco Coronel was the son of Ygnacio Coronel, born in Mexico City in the last years of colonial New Spain. Coronel was 17 years of age when he came to Alta California with his parents in 1834, as a part of the Híjar-Padrés Colony. In 1838, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Tribunals for the Pueblo de Los Ángeles. In 1843, he became Justice of the Peace. During the Mexican–American War in 1846–47, Antonio served as a captain and sergeant-at-arms in the Mexican artillery and took part in military operations against the United States. Once the war had ended, Antonio Coronel served as the first Los Angeles County Assessor from 1850 to 1856. In 1853, Coronel became Mayor of Los Angeles. Coronel served as a ward councilman on the Los Angeles Common Council He was the California State Treasurer from 1867 to 1871.
In 1873, Coronel married Mariana Williamson. His donated collection made the basis for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Antonio Coronel became the owner of Rancho Los Feliz
Los Angeles City Council
The Los Angeles City Council is the governing body of the City of Los Angeles. The council is composed of fifteen members elected from single-member districts for four-year terms; the president of the council and the president pro tempore are chosen by the council at the first regular meeting of the term. An assistant president pro tempore is appointed by the President; as of 2015, council members receive an annual salary of $184,610 per year, among the highest city council salary in the nation. Regular council meetings are held in the City Hall on Tuesdays and Fridays at 10 am except on holidays or if decided by special resolution. A current annual schedule of all Council meetings, broken down by committee, is available as a.pdf download from the Office of the City Clerk. Officers: President of the Council: Herb Wesson President Pro Tempore: Nury Martinez Assistant President Pro Tempore: Joe Buscaino Los Angeles was governed by a seven-member Common Council under general state law from 1850 to 1889, when a city charter was put into effect.
Under the first charter of the city, granted by the Legislature in 1889, the city was divided into nine wards, with a councilman elected from each one by plurality vote. The first election under that system was held on February 21, 1889, the last on December 4, 1906. Two-year terms for the City Council began and ended in December, except for the first term, which started in February 1889 and ended in December 1890; the term of office was lengthened to three years effective with the municipal election of December 4, 1906, the last year this ward system was in use. Between 1909 and 1925, the council was composed of nine members elected at large in a first-past-the-post voting system. Council membership in those years was as follows: City population in 1910: 319,200 Election: December 7, 1909 / Term: December 10, 1909, to December 13, 1911 Election: December 5, 1911 / Term: December 13, 1911, to July 1, 1913 Election: June 3, 1913 / Term: July 1913 to July 1915 Election: June 1, 1915 / Term: July 1915 to July 1917 Election: June 5, 1917 / Term: July 1917 to July 1919 City population in 1920: 576,700 Election: June 3, 1919 / Term: July 7, 1919, to July 5, 1921 Election: June 7, 1921 / Term: July 1921 to July 1923 Election: June 5, 1923 / Term: July 1923 to July 1925 Regular terms begin on July 1 of odd-numbered years until 2017 and on the second Monday in December of even-numbered years starting with 2020.
Los Angeles Common Council List of Los Angeles municipal election returns Chronological Record of Los Angeles City Officials: 1850—1938, Compiled under Direction of Municipal Reference Library City Hall, Los Angeles March 1938 Official website Map of Los Angeles City Council districts
Los Angeles City Hall
Los Angeles City Hall, completed in 1928, is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles and houses the mayor's office and the meeting chambers and offices of the Los Angeles City Council. It is located in the Civic Center district of downtown Los Angeles in the city block bounded by Main, Temple and Spring streets; the building was designed by John Parkinson, John C. Austin, Albert C. Martin, Sr. and was completed in 1928. Dedication ceremonies were held on April 26, 1928, it has 32 floors and, at 454 feet high, is the tallest base-isolated structure in the world, having undergone a seismic retrofit from 1998 to 2001 so that the building will sustain minimal damage and remain functional after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake. The concrete in its tower was made with sand from each of California's 58 counties and water from its 21 historical missions. City Hall's distinctive tower was based on the shape of the Mausoleum of Mausolus, shows the influence of the Los Angeles Public Library, completed shortly before the structure was begun.
An image of City Hall has been on Los Angeles Police Department badges since 1940. To keep the City's architecture harmonious, prior to the late 1950s the Charter of the City of Los Angeles did not permit any portion of any building other than a purely decorative tower to be more than 150 ft. Therefore, from its completion in 1928 until 1964, the City Hall was the tallest building in Los Angeles, shared the skyline with only a few structures having decorative towers, including the Richfield Tower and the Eastern Columbia Building. City Hall has an observation deck, free to the public and open Monday through Friday during business hours; the peak of the pyramid at the top of the building is an airplane beacon named in honor of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, cf Lindbergh Beacon. Circa 1939, there was an art gallery, in Room 351 on the third floor, that exhibited paintings by California artists; the building was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1976. In 1998 the building was closed during a total $135 million refurbishment which included upgrading it so it could withstand a magnitude 8.2 earthquake including permitting it to sway in a quake.
Prior to the completion of the current structure, the L. A. City Council utilized various other buildings: 1850s: used rented hotel and other buildings for City meetings 1860s: rented adobe house on Spring Street—across from current City Hall 1860s–1884: relocated to Los Angeles County Court House 1884–1888: moved to building at South Spring Street and West 2nd Street 1888–1928: moved to new Romanesque Revival building on 226-238 South Broadway between 2nd Street and 3rd Street; the Mayor of Los Angeles has an office in room 300 of this building and every Tuesday and Friday at 10:00am, the Los Angeles City Council meets in its chamber. City Hall and the adjacent federal and county buildings are served by the Civic Center station on the LA Metro Red Line and Purple Line; the Silver Line stops in front of the building. An observation level is open to the public on the 27th floor; the interior of this floor, comprises a single large and vaulted room distinguished by the iconic tall square columns that are far more familiar as one of the building's most distinguishing exterior features.
The Mayor Tom Bradley Room, as this large interior space is named, is used for ceremonies and other special occasions. The Los Angeles Dodgers wore a commemorative uniform patch during the 2018 season celebrating 60 years in the city depicting a logo of Los Angeles City Hall; the building has been featured in the following popular movies and television shows: Adventures of Superman: The building appears as the Daily Planet building beginning in the second season of the 1950s TV series. At the time the TV program was broadcast, the show's Daily Planet building was confused with the designed Pennsylvania Power & Light Building in Allentown built in 1928. Additionally, the exact design of this building is used as the Newstime magazine headquarters in the Superman comic books. Alias: A CIA black ops unit is located behind a maintenance door at Civic Station. Dragnet: The building appears as itself in the TV series; the first episode of Dragnet Season 1, Episode 1: "The Human Bomb", original air date 16 December 1951, was filmed at Los Angeles City Hall.
It was embossed on Sgt. Joe Friday's famous badge number 714, displayed under the credits. Perry Mason: The City Hall building appears in the view from Perry's office window; this has led viewers of the show to speculate where the fictional office would have been located in downtown Los Angeles. L. A. Confidential: The police in the 1997 neo-noir film operate out of the City hall, as well as the police badges featuring a depiction the building itself. At the time the film takes place no building in Los Angeles was allowed to be taller than City Hall, so the cameras were placed at certain points so that any building taller than City Hall would not be seen. Tower of Terror: In this 1997 made-for-TV movie, the main character's love interest works at a fictional newspaper, The Los Angeles Banner; the newspaper's logo is based on the top of the city hall. Adam-12: During the seventh season opening credits montage, City Hall is shown directly at the end, as the building that officers Reed and Malloy drive away from.
It is shown on the embossed badges numbered 744 and 2430. The 2003 Dragnet series used the L. A. City Hall building aerial shot and badge throughout its introduction. War of the Worlds: The Ci
Constitution of California
The Constitution of California is the primary organizing law for the U. S. state of California, describing the duties, powers and functions of the government of California. Following cession of the area from Mexico to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican–American War, California's original constitution was drafted in both English and Spanish by delegates elected on August 1, 1849, to represent all communities home to non-indigenous citizens; the delegates wrote and adopted the constitution at the 1849 Constitutional Convention, held beginning on September 3 in Monterey, voters approved the new constitution on November 13, 1849. Adoption of the "state" constitution preceded California's Admission to the Union on September 9, 1850 by ten months. A second constitutional convention, the Sacramento Convention of 1878–79, amended the original document, ratifying the amended constitution on 7 May 1879; the Constitution of California is one of the longest collections of laws in the world due to provisions enacted during the Progressive Era limiting powers of elected officials, but due to additions by California ballot proposition and voter initiatives, which take form as constitutional amendments.
Initiatives can be proposed by the governor, legislature, or by popular petition, giving California one of the most flexible legal systems in the world. It is the 8th longest constitution in the world. Many of the individual rights clauses in the state constitution have been construed as protecting rights broader than the United States Bill of Rights in the Federal Constitution. An example is the case of Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, in which "free speech" rights beyond those addressed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution were found in the California Constitution by the California courts. One of California's most significant prohibitions is against "cruel or unusual punishment," a stronger prohibition than the U. S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." This caused the California Supreme Court to find Capital Punishment unconstitutional on state Constitutional grounds in the 1972 case of People v. Anderson; the constitution has undergone numerous changes since its original drafting.
It was rewritten from scratch several times before the drafting of the current 1879 constitution, which has itself been amended or revised. In response to widespread public disgust with the powerful railroads that controlled California's politics and economy at the start of the 20th century, Progressive Era politicians pioneered the concept of aggressively amending the state constitution by initiative in order to remedy perceived evils. From 1911, the height of the U. S. Progressive Era, to 1986, the California Constitution was amended or revised over 500 times; the constitution became bloated, leading to abortive efforts towards a third constitutional convention in 1897, 1914, 1919, 1930, 1934 and 1947. By 1962, the constitution had grown to 75,000 words, which at that time was longer than any other state constitution but Louisiana's; that year, the electorate approved the creation of a California Constitution Revision Commission, which worked on a comprehensive revision of the constitution from 1964 to 1976.
The electorate ratified the Commission's revisions in 1966, 1970, 1972, 1974, but rejected the 1968 revision, whose primary substantive effect would have been to make the state's superintendent of schools into an appointed rather than an elected official. The Commission removed about 40,000 words from the constitution; the California Constitution is one of the longest in the world. The length has been attributed to a variety of factors, such as influence of previous Mexican civil law, lack of faith in elected officials and the fact that many initiatives take the form of a constitutional amendment. Several amendments involved the authorization of the creation of state government agencies, including the State Compensation Insurance Fund and the State Bar of California. Unlike other state constitutions, the California Constitution protects the corporate existence of cities and counties and grants them broad plenary home rule powers; the Constitution gives charter cities, in particular, supreme authority over municipal affairs allowing such cities' local laws to trump state law.
By enabling cities to pay counties to perform governmental functions for them, Section 8 of Article XI resulted in the rise of the contract city. Article 4, section 8 defines an "urgency statute" as one "necessary for immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety". Many of the individual rights clauses in the state constitution have been construed as protecting rights broader than the Bill of Rights in the federal constitution. Two examples include the Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins case involving an implied right to free speech in private shopping centers, the first decision in America in 1972 which found the death penalty unconstitutional, California v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628. This noted that under California's state constitution a stronger protection applies than under the U. S. Constitution's 8th Amendment.
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City of Los Angeles