Battle of Chavez Ravine

The Battle of Chavez Ravine has several meanings, but often refers to controversy surrounding government acquisition of land largely owned by Mexican Americans in Los Angeles' Chavez Ravine over approximately ten years (1951–1961). The eventual result was the removal of the entire population of Chavez Ravine from land on which Dodger Stadium was later constructed. The great majority of the Chavez Ravine land was acquired to make way for proposed public housing. The public housing plan that had been advanced as politically "progressive" and had resulted in the removal of the Mexican American landowners of Chavez Ravine, was abandoned after passage of a public referendum prohibiting the original housing proposal and election of a conservative Los Angeles mayor opposed to public housing. Years later, the land acquired by the government in Chavez Ravine was dedicated by the city of Los Angeles as the site of what is now Dodger Stadium.

For decades, Chavez Ravine was home to generations of Mexican Americans. The area was split up into three smaller neighborhoods: La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop. A tight-knit rural community nestled in a generally urban area, the people of Chavez Ravine were self-sustaining and largely independent of the surrounding city. By 1951, right before the public housing proposal, Chavez Ravine was home to over 1,800 families. The residents of Chavez Ravine were generally poor and relied on farming for income. Many of the families living in Chavez Ravine by the 1950s moved there due to racial housing discrimination in the city. Due to its reputation as a poor, rural area, the neighborhood of Chavez Ravine was viewed as an example of urban decay. Areas seen as suffering from urban blight were ideal targets for progressive legislation such as the National Housing Act of 1949.

By 1951, Chavez Ravine was slated for redevelopment under the National Housing Act of 1949 - which provided federal money to build public housing, among other things. The Los Angeles Housing Authority began acquiring the land of Chavez Ravine in 1951, through both voluntary purchases and exercise of eminent domain. In furtherance of the public housing proposal, the City acquired almost all of the land of Chaviez Ravine and razed nearly the entire community over the period from 1952 to 1953. The planned public housing development was entitled "Elysian Park Heights" and designed by Austrian architect Richard J. Neutra. Social critics of the era have argued that the urban renewal efforts of the 1950s under the National Housing Act often included significant and even dominant elements of racial and ethnic oppression, sometimes reflected in the dispossession of minority landowners in "renewed" areas.

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