Almost five thousand people representing the rainbow of cultures in Northeast L.A gathered for Lummis Day 2009, the 4th celebration of the annual multi-cultural festival, presented by the Autry National Center, the Annenberg Foundation and the neighborhood councils of Northeast L.A.
The Lummis Day Festival was created to celebrate the patchwork of cultures that enriches the city. Artists represented Latino, Tagalog, Native American, Anglo and African-American traditions. Music included blues, rock, banda, salsa, jazz and country. Dance troupes represented Philippine, Mexican, Pacific Island and jazz dance traditions. Poets, painters and culinary artists, all with local connections, added to the Festival’s collection of cultures.
Lummis Day takes its name from Charles Fletcher Lummis, who joined the L.A. Times as the newspaper’s first city editor in 1876. A prolific writer and photographer, Lummis was also one of the city’s first librarians, founded the Southwest Museum and helped introduce the concept of multi-culturalism to Southern California.