Curtis, Rolland J

Description

Rolland Joseph 'Speedy' Curtis was born in Louisiana in 1922. After serving three years in the Marines during World War II, he and his wife, Gloria, relocated from New Orleans to Los Angeles in 1946. Curtis served four years with the Los Angeles Police Department, but resigned from the force in order to pursue both a Bachelor's and Master's degree from USC. He later became involved in city politics, as an associate of Sam Yorty, and later a field deputy to City Council members Billy Mills and Tom Bradley. He was briefly director of the Model Cities program in 1973. Rolland J. Curtis died in his home in 1979, the victim of a homicide. An affordable housing complex on Exposition Blvd. near Vermont Ave. was named in his honor in 1981, along with a nearby street and park.; Photograph included in the Exhibit: Firsts, Seconds and Thirds: African American Leaders in Los Angeles During the 1960s and '70s from the Rolland J. Curtis Collection.Claude Hudson (1886-1989), a dentist who became the first African American to receive a law degree from Loyola University in 1931, was one of the founding members of the NAACP, known at the time as Niagara Movement. He was one of the most revered Civil Rights leaders in Los Angeles, and is credited with desegregating Los Angeles beaches, an accomplishment he celebrated by taking "the blackest little boy I could find and went to the beach with him. We ran along the beach from the Inkwell all...

Record Contributed By

Los Angeles Public Library

Record Harvested From

California Digital Library