This revelatory social history--a Los Angeles Times bestseller and Book of the Year--resurrects a hugely influential but long-forgotten African American scene. In the 1940s, when FDR opened up the defense industry to black workers, it inspired a massive wave of black migration to a small area of Los Angeles along Central Avenue--and cultural ferment in the arts, culture, and politics. Harlem's Renaissance had been driven by the intellectual elite. In L.A., a new sense of black identity arose from street level. But when the moment was over, many hopes and lives were swept away with it. Based on original research and interviews, told through an engaging narrative, this book shows convincingly that much that we take for granted today--from hip hop and slang to modern-day street fashion--all flowed from the 1940s scene along the Great Black Way.