Historical Footnotes

4. "Nigger Alley," Los Angeles

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4. “Nigger Alley,” Los Angeles

Calle de Los Negroes was a narrow street or corridor between the west side of the Plaza of Los Angeles and the old Aliso Road that headed east across the river to San Gabriel. Its origins remain obscure. Some say the name came from a family living there, as Americans might name "Black Street" after a family named Black. Others say that some unusually dark-skinned Indians were its initial residents. But no one says that it was named for Africans (though there was some Black blood among the Californios from Mexico) because true Africans did not exist in California before the gringo conquest.

And no one seems quite sure when it became a gambling strip. This certainly occurred before the Gold Rush because the Californios were fond of monte, the card game played in Mexico, and there were little other forms of recreation in those simple times. But the action must have been restrained, and mostly limited to Sundays, as there was very little cash in circulation and the semi-feudal ranching culture was conservative.

But when the cattle drovers started coming to Los Angeles with gold in 1850, ready to buy beef for wealthy miners at prices astronomically higher than rancheros ever dreamed, the Calle de Los Negroes was transformed. This was in the era where the "house" did not exist. Games were banked by individuals running their own tables in a bar or a saloon. With the enormous sums now flooding through the ranches, it wasn't long before a host of gringo gamblers descended on Los Angeles. It's said there were a hundred of these sports in operation, in a town no larger than a couple thousand people. And the action ran all day and night, all through the week. The street was packed, and the cantinas, especially the best-known Aguila d'Oro (Golden Eagle), rang discordantly with local music. Rope dancers entertained the crowds in back.

There was no better symbol of the gringo conquest of Los Angeles than renaming Calle de los Negroes "Nigger Alley." The Californians seemed to vaguely understand that this was vulgar or offensive, but otherwise could not care less. To Americans, however, the function of the name was obvious. In another Footnote, we considered how the presence of both Northerners and Southerners in California led to frictions over slavery, and to hopes among the Chivalry (or "Chivs," as Southerners were called) that Southern California might be peeled off for their favorite institution. One consequence was that gringos moving to Los Angeles were more than likely to be Chivs or Northerners in sympathy with slavery. And Southerners were always over-represented in the gambling trade.

"Nigger Alley" wasn't just the street. Just as we say "Wall Street" to signify the larger finance world, Nigger Alley also meant the gambling element in general. People might say -- speaking of some matter that the gamblers might object to -- that "Nigger Alley wouldn't stand for it." And this gambling interest was a major force in new American Los Angeles. Not only were the gamblers sucking up the cash, but they were all expert with firearms because there was a lot of money in their banks and only they themselves could possibly protect it. They were particularly strong about the racial conquest of Los Angeles. Nigger Alley could be counted on at any time to show up armed and dangerous when a rebellion of the "greasers" might be rumored. These mostly Southern gentlemen believed themselves the "whitest of the white," defenders of their race.

To our knowledge, just a single Black man settled in Los Angeles around this time. Peter Biggs had come to California in the service of a former Southern governor, but found himself now free. He had a plan, apparently, to bring a load of cats from San Francisco to Los Angeles, believing that the latter place was suffering from rodents. Though this turned out to be inaccurate, Biggs stayed and found much paying work in barbering the local Chivs because he knew the hairstyles that they favored. He also did a little pimping, which was common in the barbering profession then. The Chivs all called him Nigger Pete, and they appreciated that touch of the old homestead that he brought out California. He once got into trouble dancing with a California girl (considered white by Southern logic because she had already danced with Chivs), but managed to survive, probably because his services were irreplaceable.

A major problem with the popularity of Nigger Alley was that it pulled in drifters and a desperado element among the gringos (often Texans) passing through Los Angeles on their way out to the Southwest deserts. The outrageous murder rate around the city, mostly due to these obnoxious characters, forms a large part of the subject matter of my treatment of Jack Powers in the fiction portion of this publication. Powers was himself a gambler, but of a far, far higher class than Nigger Alley, and was unlikely ever to have used the phrase himself because he styled himself an Irishman (as opposed to an American) and because he shaped his manners for the wealthy Californio rancheros, speaking Spanish.

Nigger Alley as an institution disappeared around the middle of the 1850's, when the flush tide ebbed for gold production and Southern California ceased to be the only place to purchase beef. The gamblers left, but the vulgar name for Calle de los Negroes would continue as Los Angeles grew ever more American and its original Spanish street names fell into disuse. The dying gambling strip attracted the first Chinese settlers and gradually became a Chinatown. It was the site of a horrendous pogrom some years later, in which Chinese were hanged from wagons. This is the last we hear of Nigger Alley. The street itself completely disappeared when what was still called Chinatown was swallowed up by Union Station when that railway terminal was built in 1939.

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