In the sweep of history, the individual people who worked toward a big social goal can get lost amid the scope of the movement in which they participated. What if you could sit down with a suffragette, or a Civil Rights campaigner, or a Japanese family locked in an internment camp and talk to them about their experiences? The 26th Annual Living History Tour hopes to give visitors a glimpse of what that might be like.
At Angeleus Rosedale Cemetery in West Adams, the tour will take participants around to interact with actors dressed in costume and staged in historical vignettes (right next to the real person's actual grave) who will embody the individuals buried in the historic cemetery.
Known for elaborately carved grave markers and natural trees and gardens, Angelus Rosedale was founded in 1884, when it’s now-urban location was considered the countryside. It was the first cemetery in Los Angeles to accept people without regard to race or religion, resulting in the diverse population entombed within and creating a multi-generational snapshot of our city’s history.
Among the individuals you can ‘meet’ at the tour are actress Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Academy Award, who spent years fighting the ‘restriction covenants’ on Los Angeles’ city books in the 1940s that barred people of color from owning homes in many neighborhoods. You will also hear from George Matsuura, a Japanese-American pro-baseball player who was forced out of his home in 1942 and sent to an internment camp, only to end up joining the US Army to fight in WWII; Hugh MacBeth, the radical African-American lawyer who took up the cause of LA’s Japanese families’ fights for property and citizenship; Josefa Tolhurst an early suffrage organizer and campaigner for women to win the right to vote, among many other important historic figures.
The 26th Annual Living History Tour takes place from 9am to noon on September 24 at the Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, 1831 W Washington Blvd. Tickets for the general public are for sale online for $30 until September 12 or $35 after.
Image: Courtesy West Adams Heritage Association
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