Five nights in the ghetto

This is a five-part documentary series or “audiomosaic” as the producers call it, about the ghettos and race relations in Los Angeles. The series was produced by Leonard Brown and a team of volunteers. Initially broadcast by KPFK at 9:30 p.m. on October 26, 27, 28, and 30, 1964 and at 9:00 p.m. on November 2, 1964. The parts are: Episode 1: The place; Episode 2: The person; Episode 3: The family; Episode 4: The wall; Episode 5: The out. The Archives currently holds copies of Episodes 3 (BB5380.03), 4 (BC0326), and 5 (BB5380.05A+B). Each episode closes with a choir singing “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” The sound quality of the recordings is generally fair to poor. Brown wrote the following description for the Folio.
KPFK Folio note, October 26-November 8, 1964, p.2
There is a siege within the city. There is an enclave, a community of color, and of cultural contrasts. We have called it “the ghetto” here because certain of the implications of this word seem suitable. There is the oppression of poverty and neglect. There are walls of misunderstanding and fear. And, finally, there is the in-turning of the people of this “ghetto” for the satisfaction of life which the community-at-large seems so reluctant to share with them. The more abstract the analogy becomes when the Negro’s urban America is compared to the medieval city districts to which Jews were confined, the more appropriate it seems, for “the ghetto” we must ultimately put upon our map is not limited by time and place. “The ghetto” is here, in the strangeness which separates “them” from “us.” It exists in the human heart.