L.A. Times "Eternity Street" Review

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times has a nearly full-page review (click here) of John Mack Faragher's Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles.  The reviewer is Jill Leovy, a Times reporter whose book, Ghettoside, examines the modern crisis of black male homicide and the abysmal rate at which these crimes are solved.

It helps to know this (this blogger had to look up this information) before reading the review, because so often, book reviews are revealing about the reviewer as well as the reviewed.  Leovy's main point of analysis is that Faragher asks the right question relating to why people were, in frontier Los Angeles 140 and more years ago, murdered with impunity and protection.

This question of justice denied is crucial for Leovy as she eloquently and passionately discusses why Faragher's excellent book does so many things well--to the point where she repeats at the beginning and end the positive affirmation: "Now we're talking."

What is interesting to this blogger in Leovy's review is what might be termed a variation on a common theme; that is, the attempt to directly, concretely and specifically link violence and criminal justice issues from frontier Los Angeles to later periods and events.

This has been done, for example, by historians in comparing the Chinese Massacre of 1871 to mob violence in Los Angeles in 1943 (Zoot Suit Riots), 1965 (Watts Riots) and 1992 (the civil unrest in the aftermath of the trial involving officers from the Rodney King beating).

In Leovy's review, she links frontier Los Angeles to the modern Gaza Strip, South Africa and Compton and suggests Faragher's analysis might help "dissect" such issues as gang and drug violence, honor and witch killings, and counter-insurgency and state-building.

Without trying to review a review, a core question is: how readily can we compare and contrast types of violence in modern places to those of frontier Los Angeles?

This blogger has, in the twenty years studying and writing on this topic, been very wary of making ready connections between that era and later ones, except in broad brush with broadly-sweeping strokes.

If you've read Faragher's book and Leovy's very interesting review, leave a comment here about what you think!

"Eternity Street" Is a Must-Read

After devoting two marathon sessions Saturday and Sunday to the 513-page Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, this blogger can unequivocally say that John Mack Faragher's new book will be a classic for its evocation of the "culture of violence" that existed in Los Angeles up until the mid-1870s.

Not only does Eternity Street deal with criminal violence, vigilantism, the struggle for a reasonable administration of criminal justice and the high level of support for popular justice in the town, but it also spends a good deal of time examining the precursors of violence in the Spanish and Mexican periods and the American conquest of Alta California.

One of the more unusual aspects of the book is an examination of domestic violence, which Faragher identifies as being a direct link to the criminal violence that plagued the community, especially as the male-dominated nature of the household transferred itself, with respect to a sense of entitlement, to positions on popular justice held by many in Los Angeles.

Faragher and his five research assistants did a very thorough job in researching and his structure, broad viewpoints, comprehensive coverage and analysis, and beautifully evocative writing style make Eternity Street a must-read for those interested in crime, the administration of justice (or lack of) and the general history of frontier Los Angeles,

Congratulations to Faragher for his achievement, which is the first full-length treatment of its kind about early Los Angeles.

There is still one more chance to hear him talk about this fine book tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena.

Eternity Street Lecture on Frontier Los Angeles Violence and Justice

This afternoon at the Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, Yale professor emeritus John Mack Faragher gave a stimulating presentation based on his new book Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, published by W.W. Norton and Company.

With accompaniment from PowerPoint slides, Faragher began by noting that, whereas in Europe over the centuries homicide has dropped precipitously, there was a major spike in American homicide in more recent generations, though a noticeable decline has taken place since 1990.  He then moved to the local scene, stating that, after considerable research, he was able to document 468 homicides in Los Angeles between 1850 and 1875.

Courtesy of W. W. Norton and Company.

While this is a far cry from the claims of Horace Bell and Harris Newmark that there was a murder a day at a certain point in the early 1850s, Faragher reminded the audience that, per 100,000 residents, it was still extraordinary to have an average of, say, 20 homicides a year in a frontier town as small as Los Angeles.  This rate dwarfed most homicide rates in major areas of the United States and within California at the time and today.

Faragher then talked about something that has not received nearly as much attention (and that goes for this blogger's work, as well) when it comes to examining violence in society generally, much less that of Los Angeles during the 1850s through 1870s.

Much has been said about the preponderance of young men, free from tethers of home, imbued with copious amounts of alcohol, supplied with advance weapons of destruction (like the new Colt revolver, introduced in the late 1840s), surrounded with people of many other ethnicites and races, and unrestrained by a dysfunctional and poorly-supported government and criminal justice system.

However, what Faragher did in his book and explained in his talk was that the little-known effects of domestic violence have a connection to individual and larger-scale violence.  He reviewed some of the many cases in Los Angeles's civil court records that document spousal abuse from the Mexican era through the early American years.  While in some cases, judges granted divorce and other petitions from women abused by their husbands, a good many did not.

In one notable incident cited by Faragher, Phillip Rheim, a German known as Felipe Reim by Angelenos and who owned the Los Dos Amigos saloon, was particularly abusive to his wife, who finally secured a divorce by default when Rheim failed to appear in court.  Rheim then committed suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum, an opiod, with the suggestion being that the divorce pushed him over the edge.

Faragher proceeded to cover some of the more notorious incidents of vigilante activity in Los Angeles, from the first lynching to take place in the town in 1836 when Maria Rosario Villa de Feliz and her lover Gervasio Alipas killed her husband and then were hung by a committee of citizens, up through the horrific Chinese Massacre of 1871.  Faragher talked about a number of incidents, detailing the operations of vigilantes, and the responses by those in support of and opposed to mob law.

The one-hour talk held the rapt attention of about fifty audience members.

The presentation concluded after about an hour and there were plenty of questions from an audience that clearly was impressed by what they heard.  A reception was held on a warm winter afternoon and copies of Eternity Street were sold and signed.  This blogger picked up a copy and is raring to get reading tonight.  More on the book will be posted on this blog soon.

For those who did not get to see this talk at either the Huntington Library on Friday or the Homestead today, Faragher is giving his talk tomorrow at the Autry Museum at 11 a.m., so there'll still be time, for those interested, in watching the Super Bowl later.  He'll also be interviewed on Larry Mantle's Air Talk on KPCC 89.3 on Monday around 12:30 or so--check listings for that.  Finally, he'll be doing a talk and book signing at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Criminal Justice Lecture This Saturday!

The Homestead Museum, which last week had its first offering in the second year of the "Curious Cases" series of lectures and group discussions of noted criminal events from 19th-century Los Angeles, is hosting a special lecture as a complement to that series.

John Mack Faragher, an award-winning Yale historian, has just published his book Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, and will present a lecture about it at the Homestead this Saturday, 6 February from 2 to 4 p.m.

To reserve your seat, call the museum at 626.968.8492 or email info@homesteadmuseum.org.

New Book on Violence in Frontier Los Angeles Coming in January

John Mack Faragher, an award-winning historian and professor of history at Yale University, is the author of a new book, coming in January 2016, called Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles.

Published by W.W. Norton and Company, the book deals with the same general theme as Trembling on the Brink.  The book, which will be 624 pages, is getting impressive testimonials from such notable Los Angeles-area historians as William Deverell of U.S.C. and U.C.L.A.'s Stephen Aron.

Faragher's work, including a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his treatment of Daniel Boone, is very highly regarded and there is every reason to expect that his newest work will be one of great interest to anyone interested in the history of Los Angeles and its notorious criminal history during the mid-19th century.

So, congratulations to him for his latest endeavor.

For more info on Eternity Street, click here for a link to the Norton Web site page for the book.