Carol Jacques

Carol Jacques

Interview transcript

CJ: My grandfather was living in Chavez Ravine. It was the area that had primarily been designated in Los Angeles for Mexicans. And it was like a little Mexican village and I remember it very vividly.

It was full of color, the flowers were bright, the ladies all had canaries, and we were essentially living in the middle of a park. My grandfather saved his money and bought two lots. On one lot he built his own little house. And the next lot was for pigs and goats and corn. They called it slums but it was never a slum to me. The city of Los Angeles forced all of the people out of Chavez Ravine. I mean they just came and knocked on the door and said “You have to move now.” Most of them went quietly because people didn’t want to make a lot of trouble and I was nine and it was a very sad time for me. You were uprooted and torn out of a technicolor world into a black and white world. When we moved to Silver Lake we were the first Mexicans that ever arrived there. And we would actually get hate notes on the car saying “Mexicans get out.” I remember that people would move from the bus because they wouldn’t want to sit next to a Mexican or I remember being called a squaw and um…I went back to Chavez Ravine and they tore down the hill that I lived on and they put Dodger Stadium in that space that I remember.