Inside one of Boyle Heights’ oldest barber shops, Rodney Trammell gives an oral history of Brooklyn Avenue, before it was named for civil rights leader Cesar E. Chavez.
The street was lined with Mexican and Jewish retail stores and bakeries, he recalled. There was a movie theater here and the original Canter’s Deli opened here. Different nationalities and ethnic groups lived and shopped together.
Brooklyn Avenue, he said, Was Boyle Heights.
Rodney Trammell waits his turn at a barber shop on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles on Wednesday.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
So when civic leaders sought to change its name in 1993, many in the community opposed it. They were longtime residents and merchants: Jews, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans.
The residents lost the battle but refused to accept it. They still refer to the street by its original name in conversation. Merchants – new and old – store street names. Custom apparel designers and artists pay homage to it through hats, shirts, and artwork.
“For me, it was always Brooklyn Avenue,” Trammell said. “And it will always be Brooklyn Avenue.”
Now the old debate has resurfaced, with conflicting feelings over it, amid discussion over changing the name of the street in the wake of sexual abuse allegations against the famous Labor leader.
Chávez is accused of sexually assaulting two underage girls and raping labor leader Dolores Huerta in the 1960s and 70s. New York Times investigation. The allegations have led to an outcry to erase Chávez’s name from schools, parks, streets, buildings and holidays.
Concepcion “Connie” Sotelo, who with her husband opened Los Cinco Puntos, a Mexican carniceria and grocery store on the avenue in 1967, said she was devastated to hear about the allegations.
He said that people have made hurtful comments on him. “They say things like, ‘Now you have the Mexican Epstein,'” she said. “It hurts, you know.”
She couldn’t help but think about the past when she and others protested as city and county officials tried to change the name of Brooklyn Avenue.
Brooklyn Avenue Pizzeria on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
“I think we were right,” she said. “Not for the reasons we know today, but simply because we wanted to keep it Brooklyn Avenue.
“It was nothing against Cesar Chavez,” he said. “He did a lot for the Mexican people and farmers, but I never felt it was important to name a street after him.”
She said she and her husband signed petitions and wrote letters to city officials in protest.
Sotelo said the dedication ceremony for the name change took place outside Los Cinco Puntos. He remembered seeing a large crowd and hearing people cheering and a mariachi band playing.
Mayor Richard Riordan attended along with Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who along with other Latino politicians led the effort to rename the street after Chávez.
Brooklyn Hardware Store on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in East Los Angeles.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
Cesar E. Chávez Avenue spans more than six miles, passing through the working-class communities of Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, and Monterey Park.
The area was founded in 1858 by an Irish immigrant named Andrew Boyle. It was Boyle’s son-in-law, William Workman, who subdivided the land and created Boyle Heights, naming the main street Brooklyn Avenue.
Historians say the street name was part of Workman’s overall effort to attract residents of the Midwest and East Coast. There were also the Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati roads, and the Michigan and Pennsylvania avenues, among others.
Cesar Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers, speaks at a rally to boycott the Tianguis Market on Brooklyn Avenue in East Los Angeles for selling chemical-tainted grapes.
(Larry Bessel/Los Angeles Times)
The area became home to Jewish, Mexican, and Eastern European immigrants. From From 1959 to 1962Cesar Chavez and his family lived in boyle heights While there he served as the executive director of a community service organization.
By the late 1960s, many Jewish residents and European immigrants had moved out of the area. They were replaced mostly by Mexican immigrants and their families, who opened businesses and bought homes.
The area became the birthplace of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement which included East LA Walkouts and this Chicano Moratorium.
The idea of renaming a Brooklyn avenue after Chávez was raised by Molina in April 1993, just a week after his death.
The plan was supported by then-Los Angeles City Council members Richard Alatorre and Mike Hernandez, who called for renaming parts of Brooklyn Avenue, Macy Street, and Sunset Boulevard.
Abigail Calderon, whose family owns a store on Main Street and studied the issue as part of her doctoral dissertation at Yale University, found that Mexicans and Mexican Americans resisted the change because it obscured their deep ties to the old neighborhood, as if they were just coming in and changing things.
He said civic leaders chose a street whose name has become deeply meaningful to people for a variety of reasons. He compared it to Whittier Boulevard, a touchstone of Mexican American culture in Southern California.
“If (officials) wanted to change Whittier Boulevard, a lot of people would have a problem,” he said. “People interpret it.”
He said the pressure to change the name of the road was also political. The proposal comes at a time of heated anti-immigrant rhetoric as California experiences an economic recession and demographic changes.
proposal 187 – Renamed the Save Our State Initiative – to be introduced three months after renaming Brooklyn Avenue. The decade also saw the English-only movement in schools, which included the passage of Proposition 227 in June 1998. (In 2016, voters approved Proposition 58, which repealed the bilingual restrictions enacted by Proposition 227.)
“A lot of big politicians were pushing for (the name change) because they wanted to make sure that Latinos had a place and an area that could be seen on the map as very Latino,” Calderon said.
Vivian M. Escalante, chief executive director and president of Boyle Heights Community Partners, said a sense of political urgency led it to be Chávez’s legacy.
A street sign on Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
“While the public was told the change was about ‘honoring a hero,’ the political reality was a deliberate effort to strengthen Chicano political identity in East Los Angeles, often at the expense of the neighborhood’s multi-ethnic history,” she said.
Escalante and organizations have been calling for the street to be renamed Brooklyn Avenue for years.
On a recent Monday afternoon, at a small Mexican eatery just off the 710 Freeway in East Los Angeles, Grisel Gonzalez, 57, looked out the window at the avenue.
She said she was 20 years old when rumors began to spread that a Brooklyn avenue would be renamed after Chávez.
Growing up, she would often hear her mother and grandmother talk about Chávez and his efforts to help fight for the rights of Mexicans.
“He was a hero,” she said.
But when asked that day how she felt about the recent allegations, Gonzalez became nervous. She was confused and hadn’t seen the news yet. Her eyes widened at this and her jaw dropped open as she shook her head.
she was angry. This brought back dark memories of when an uncle had touched her inappropriately. She was only 8 years old.
His new decision on the name of the road was immediate.
“They need to change the name to Dolores Huerta or another victim.”
