On screen, she may have played a housekeeper or an enslaved person, but here in Sugar Hill, she hosted extravagant soirees in her sprawling mansion where people like Duke Ellington and Ethel Waters would perform. By the 1940s, Sugar Hill was home to some of the most prominent figures of Black Los Angeles - doctors, entrepreneurs, oil barons, even Hollywood stars like "Gone With the Wind's" Hattie McDaniel. And we'd go up and down the streets selling lemonades.ĬHANG: Berkeley Square was part of a larger neighborhood called Sugar Hill, which was named after a wealthy Black section in Harlem. And we sell lemonade at the east end of Berkeley Square. There were all kinds of, like, craftsman houses - five, six, seven bedrooms. They lived in a charming little pocket of central Los Angeles called Berkeley Square. Van was just 3 years old, his sister Ra was 4 when their family moved here almost 70 years ago. MEHTA: Their house is now where the Santa Monica Freeway is. VAN NICKERSON: What she's pointing to, right there where that sign says this quarter next 3 exit, lift it up, our house is right about there. R NICKERSON: Yeah, that's where Berkeley Square was. JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: This is what Ra (ph) and Van Nickerson's (ph) childhood home sounds like today. The story of Sugar Hill brings to life many of these ideas we just talked about - segregation, racist covenants and who has the right to live where. We're going to go back in time now and visit a neighborhood in Los Angeles that no longer exists.
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