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As Los Angeles joins the rest of the country in celebrating February as Black History Month, it's easy to forget that not too long ago, the city seemed to regard its multiracial history as something of an embarrassment.
In the 1950s, a plaque was installed in El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park, paying tribute to the 11 families who founded Los Angeles on Sept. 4, 1781, after a long trek north from Mexico. They were called pobladores, and more than half of them were black. Those early Angelenos of African descent had Spanish surnames, and their ethnicity would not have been known had the plaque not indicated it.
The plaque soon vanished without a trace.
Rumor had it that several Recreation and Parks commissioners had been displeased by its public display of the role blacks played in city's founding.
More than 20 years later, another plaque was put in the same spot. It honored the city's founders without mentioning their race.
That plaque was replaced in 1981-marking the city's bicentennial-with a simple bronze tablet that tells the pobladores' names, race, sex and age. It was installed through the trailblazing efforts of Miriam Matthews, California's first college-trained black librarian.
There are no grandiose monuments, no streets or landmarks named for the 44 pobladores,...