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Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles


  • Walter Dominguez, Director
  • William Deverell, Producer
  • Walter Dominguez and John D. Estes, Producer

Mexican laborers

About the Project

Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles, is a groundbreaking 4-part series that tackles a long-overdue and sometimes painful examination of the early history of Los Angeles' Anglo American, Mexican American and other ethnic interactions, and illuminates how these many layered and often troubled relationships built one of the world's great cities. It's the story of the remarkable energy and drive that early Los Angeles' Anglo city leaders displayed in devising their civic vision, crafting a romantic myth about Los Angeles in order to lure visitors and investors from the rest of the nation. It's also the story of the ethnic Mexican people - of their endurance in the face of demeaning racial stereotypes and barriers to sharing in the same opportunities as the Anglos, but whose monumental labor made the city of Los Angeles possible.