My new nov­el, The Great Mann, is a reimag­in­ing of The Great Gats­by set in 1945 Los Ange­les’ Sug­ar Hill, a neigh­bor­hood where phe­nom­e­nal­ly accom­plished Black Ange­lenos lived in man­sions, defy­ing the racial covenants that for­bid them from liv­ing in these homes they owned unless they were act­ing as ser­vants to white bosses. 

The well-known actress Hat­tie McDaniel lived in Sug­ar Hill and threw galas and events in which Duke Elling­ton served as her enter­tain­ment. Louise Beavers, the first Black actress to ever be sent on a pub­lic­i­ty tour by a major film stu­dio, was her neigh­bor. Sug­ar Hill was also home to Nor­man O. Hous­ton and John Alexan­der Somerville, both nation­al­ly renowned Black busi­ness moguls and activists. These men lift­ed thou­sands of African Amer­i­cans into the mid­dle class by sim­ply offer­ing them oppor­tu­ni­ties they had pre­vi­ous­ly been unjust­ly denied. 

And all these Sug­ar Hill res­i­dents were rep­re­sent­ed by Loren Miller, the Black civ­il rights lawyer who would go on to stand before the Supreme Court and suc­cess­ful­ly argue against racial covenants. Miller also wrote the major­i­ty of the legal briefs in Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion. He even suc­ceed­ed in con­vinc­ing the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court to order the state to aban­don the Alien Land Laws that had dev­as­tat­ed Japan­ese Amer­i­cans dur­ing WWII. Dur­ing his life­time, Miller was con­sid­ered to be one of the best legal minds in the nation, a close sec­ond to his friend Thur­good Mar­shall; indeed, many thought the lat­ter was actu­al­ly sec­ond to Miller. 

And yet very few peo­ple today have heard the name Loren Miller.

Most aren’t famil­iar with Somerville either or Louise Beavers, even though Beavers was equal­ly as famous as her Oscar win­ning neigh­bor, McDaniel. There’s a Nor­man O. Hous­ton Park in Los Ange­les, but still those who fre­quent it like­ly don’t know any­thing about its namesake. 

The sto­ries of these remark­able indi­vid­u­als have been deval­ued, dis­missed, and erased (a fate shared by the glo­ri­ous man­sions they inhab­it­ed). A vic­tim not just of time but of insid­i­ous racism that con­tin­ues to worm its way through our nation’s psyche.

As a Black woman it was an hon­or to write their names, cel­e­brate their com­plex­i­ties, and rein­tro­duce them to the world in my nov­el, The Great Mann.

As a Black woman who is also Jew­ish, telling their sto­ries felt like an act of tzedakah.

I know that tzedakah isn’t char­i­ty. Grow­ing up it was made clear to me that to embody the spir­it of tzedakah one couldn’t sim­ply assist those who have suf­fered injus­tice, rather you had to try to cor­rect the injustice. 

And engag­ing with tzedakah is a mandate. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s a man­date that some­times feels impos­si­ble. These days open­ing a news­pa­per is like step­ping under an avalanche of injus­tices. The temp­ta­tion can be not to help but to run, duck, and cov­er so as not to be buried under a rocky pile of soci­etal ills.

But when I’m feel­ing over­whelmed by the state of the world, I recall the words of Rab­bi Steve Led­er of Los Ange­les’ Wilshire Blvd Tem­ple, Tend the part of the gar­den you can reach.’

But when I’m feel­ing over­whelmed by the state of the world, I recall the words of Rab­bi Steve Led­er of Los Ange­les’ Wilshire Blvd Tem­ple, Tend the part of the gar­den you can reach.”

Stand­ing here, in my cor­ner of the gar­den, I stretch out my hand and find that I can reach the Black his­to­ry that Amer­i­ca has repeat­ed­ly tried to erase. 

And who under­stands the impor­tance of his­to­ry bet­ter than the Jew­ish peo­ple? Each year we jour­ney thou­sands of years back in time to cross the desert with Moses, wear the clothes of Queen Esther, and spin a drei­del with the Mac­cabees. We lis­ten to our elders tell us sto­ries of the Old Coun­try, recount the tales of those who faced vio­lent anti­semitism and escaped pogroms, those who sur­vived the hor­rors of the Holo­caust and those who did not.

The pow­er behind the phrase Nev­er again” is pred­i­cat­ed on the belief that we must Nev­er forget.” 

The Jew­ish peo­ple know that soci­ety can­not build a strong future with­out the foun­da­tion of our his­to­ry. Build­ing on revi­sion­ism is the equiv­a­lent of build­ing on sand. 

And so with The Great Mann, I ask read­ers to remember.

Remem­ber the wealth that was built by many African Amer­i­cans at a time when they were not treat­ed as full cit­i­zens and had lim­it­ed rights. Remem­ber the civ­il rights war­riors who fought not on bat­tle­fields but in court­rooms. Remem­ber the Black actors who con­vinced Hol­ly­wood to hire more minori­ties and strug­gled to bring dig­ni­ty and pride to the demean­ing roles they were too often pushed into. 

The man­sions that the Black res­i­dents of Sug­ar Hill lived in were even­tu­al­ly tak­en by emi­nent domain to make way for a free­way. A hand­ful of the homes that still stand are in ruins. 

But as any­one who has prayed before the Wail­ing Wall can tell you, ruins can be sacred if we remem­ber what they signify. 

In writ­ing The Great Mann, I tried to chan­nel the spir­it of my Black ances­tors and take up the man­tle of tzedakah that was hand­ed down to me by my Jew­ish ones.

This book is my attempt to use sto­ry­telling as a means of cor­rect­ing the injus­tice of for­get­ting. It’s the tree I’ve plant­ed in my cor­ner of the garden. 

Here’s hop­ing it bears fruit. 

The Great Mann by Kyra Davis Lurie

Kyra Davis Lurie is a New York Times best­selling author and screen­writer. Her nov­els have been pub­lished in nine lan­guages across six con­ti­nents. Kyra was born and raised in Cal­i­for­nia and lives in Los Ange­les with her hus­band and their utter­ly per­fect dog, Potus.