SOME PEOPLE DON’T KNOW HOW IMPORTANT THEIR STORIES ARE. Mrs. Henrietta Hendrix is one of them. Henrietta is a friend of mine and I am lucky for that connection. I say this in part selfishly; she is a great cheerleader of my work. I have a feeling she has been a cheerleader for many others as well.
I’d like to share a bit about this woman’s life, a few things that I’ve learned from talking with her – and from the extensive oral history interview she granted me a little while back. One thing that becomes clear as all these women’s life stories unfold is just how much intersection there is between the famous and the less recognized. This is due in large part to the fact that they are all African-American women making their way during Los Angeles’ Great Migration era. And whether they see themselves this way or not, all are activists in one form or another.
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work.
James Baldwin, “’The Negro in American Culture,’ a group discussion.” YouTube.
My friend Henrietta was born in San Mateo, California. Her mother was from San Francisco. And just to keep with one of the many themes in these women’s stories, her mother at one time wrote for a Black newspaper in Oakland, The Oakland Tribune. There is just no way to overstate the centrality of these periodicals to 20th century Black history.
Hendrix’ early life was a map of crisscrossing this country. Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, California… Not every Great Migration story is based on a one-way trip. There were so many varied reasons why African Americans were moving around the country during this part of the twentieth century. Some certainly had or chose to move more than once.
Henrietta attended twelve different high schools before graduating. She then received her bachelor’s from California State University, Los Angeles. She would later earn teaching certifications that launched her career as a Pasadena Unified School District teacher.
One story that Henrietta shared was about living in Ohio with her mother and stepfather, and the hard time they had securing housing. (Yet another common theme). The family ended up moving “across the river and down the river” to Parkersburg, West Virgina. This is where Henrietta remembers experiencing racism for what she believes was the first time:
It was a segregated school. And it was the first time that I actually experienced prejudice…Anyway, the first day [the principal] introduced my sister and I as Black Yankees. Wow. We were the first Black Yankees at the school. And about that time, it must have been about in the fifth grade… And then the next thing I knew, one of the kids called me a n***er and I hit him.
Oral history interview with author, April 30th, 2025
What was that James Baldwin said? Also recall my last profile, on Rita Walters, referencing her experience of going to a segregated school. Walters said it taught her early that she had to stand up for her rights. Yup.
Ultimately, Henrietta and one of her sisters were sent back to Oakland to live with family, where Henrietta ended up graduating from St. Joseph Notre Dame High School. After giving up the idea of being a nun, Henrietta headed to Los Angeles — rosary in hand — to stay with her mother for a little while. She had been working at a local juvenile hall. Mom eventually returned to Oakland but Henrietta remained in LA.
Somewhere around 1959, Henrietta ended up in the West Adams neighborhood, on 35th place. This is a neighborhood mentioned many times before, a community where African Americans were better able to secure housing at the time. It was a heavily immigrant neighborhood, according to Hendrix, and she felt fortunate to have found a Black landlord. She believes that is why she was able to get into such a nice apartment and to attract nice roommates. “Black bungalows,” she called them, set around a sort of courtyard.
If you recall, Edythe Espree also spoke about feeling lucky that she and her husband came upon a Chinese landlord when renting their first apartment as a couple. Luck played such a large role in the often tenuous lives of Black Angelenos.
Henrietta ended up being the property manager at those bungalows, receiving everybody’s rent checks at the end of the month. They “had to be in a check or money order, no cash,” she explained. She was working a decent job at City Linen for a while, as a “production girl.” She explained, “And what the production girl does is she goes in the factory, and she records hourly how much production each segment is doing.” This entailed working inside the laundry factory area, she pointed out, whereas the white women had the office jobs.
It was the women in the office, which was in another division, you can imagine, the hot box is in the actual laundry… They were very Caucasian, very nice, but very elitist in their little minds. Well, yeah. Yeah. And so I probably got the job because of that. None of them would ever step in that laundry.
Oral history interview with author, April 30th, 2025
Her coworkers “…were Hispanic and Black, and a few immigrants…” She had initially tried to get a job at the telephone company, probably Pacific Telephone and Telegraph. But she was told she had too much education as a person with a college degree. This experience has also been echoed by many other African Americans of the time. It was, sometimes, a company’s way of keeping out anyone who might know better than to accept unequal pay or other labor inequities so commonly perpetrated upon Black Americans in the workplace.
I asked Henrietta what she did for fun in Los Angeles, even as life was hard for her – and would soon become even harder.
Very little, yeah…when I had Gracie, as my roommate, we went skating, and there used to be on Washington Boulevard off Vermont, there’s a skating rink, and we would go skating, that was fun. But other than that, very little.
Oral history interview with author, April 30th, 2025
This was probably at the Skatium, located on the site of the old Arlington Theatre. It opened in 1954.
I also asked if she ever went to the famous Central Avenue district, to go hear music or anything. By her time the area was not quite in its heyday anymore, but it still held much Black history and culture. “Only on a date,” she replied. “I never put out any money of my own for recreation. Yeah. Just wasn’t there.”
Henrietta had her daughter, Sharon, in 1962. Times were hard. She was a single mother. At one point when I asked her if she had any souvenirs like bus tickets or programs, she explained why she in fact did not:
I lost my storage, because I couldn’t afford to pay the storage. So I [haven’t] anything from that time. Yeah, well. Oh, it’s your child or it’s your storage you know? So it’s your child, forget the storage, you know?
Oral history interview with author, April 30th, 2025
Henrietta worked a few jobs after having her daughter. There was a short stint at Haggerty’s department store, founded in Los Angeles in 1906. It was located on the 9500 block of Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills by the time Henrietta worked there.
Then she worked at Bullock’s department store.
There is so much more I want to ask her about working at these department stores. (Oral history interviews almost always have a second phase if possible). Many African-Americans of the Great Migration era tell stories about just how light-skinned one needed to be to get any kind of public facing jobs at these kinds oof stores– whether they be in Los Angeles, California or Newark, New Jersey. Henrietta did share one related story:
I had an awakening with Bullock’s. I could see Bullock’s was as prejudiced as they could ever be…they had a class about them and their prejudices. And they had elevator operators, women oh, they looked sharp. But I realized – I looked at them, I looked at myself, and I said, they have no real future in this company. As long as they wear that uniform, they will be here…And I met one of the girls I knew in college and she was there, and she said, “Go to Pasadena.”
Oral history interview with author, April 30th, 2025
And go to Pasadena, Mrs. Hendrix did. And that is yet another part of her story to tell at yet another time. It is one of many stories that will ultimately appear in full in this book I’m working on. Because these women’s lives are so very full, and they deserve so many, many pages.