Gilbert W. Lindsay

Gilbert William Lindsay (November 29, 1900 – December 28, 1990) was an American politician who worked his way up from Los Angeles City Hall janitor to become the city's first black City Council member and one of its most powerful elected officials.

Biography Lindsay (center) with Robert P. Strather and Fay Allen in 1937. Lindsay was born in Meridian, Mississippi on November 29, 1900. He worked in the cotton fields as a youth, leaving the state as a teenager and enrolling in a school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He then moved to Arizona, where he joined the Army and served in the 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry. As part of an Army program, he studied business administration at the University of Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles in 1923 or 1924 and became a City Hall janitor with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He took a civil service exam for a clerkship, and was given a basement office because his superiors did not want him to sit with whites. He took classes in governmental administration and political science at the University of Southern California and studied business administration at UCLA during the 25 years he worked for the department. He was a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.

About his years as a janitor, the Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying, "I used to scrub toilets for the city of Los Angeles with a mop—that was my job [...] I had the lowest job you can give a human being." He was on the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1953 to 1958 and was also an NAACP vice president. He was tapped by City Council candidate Kenneth Hahn as his aide to turn out the black vote. Hahn won and when he later became a county supervisor he appointed Lindsay as a field deputy, a job that Lindsay held for ten years, until 1963. He was often criticized for supporting Downtown "at the expense of the southern portion of his district."

Morals. The 9th District councilman opined that San Fernando Valley communities would "not be having problems with topless-bottomless bars if moral levels matched those" of his Downtown Los Angeles and South L.A. district. "We have clean-minded people and a clean district," he said. "All this junk is out there where the affluent aristocrats, the holier-than-thou people live."

Council members. Interviewed by Los Angeles Times reporter Janet Clayton for an article about relationships among City Council members, Lindsay noted in 1984 that "All the council members get along fine when they need a vote. Otherwise, they can't stand each other, or I should say, don't genuinely like each other. They each have their own agenda, you know." He said he has a "simple formula" for deciding issues: "When I give my word on a vote, I haven't reneged, least not more than a half dozen times in 20 years. I vote my district, then my friends, and, what's good for me."

Skid Row. The Times noted that Lindsay, "whose district includes Skid Row, has always favored upscale commercial and residential development in the area, the last big undeveloped stretch of downtown Los Angeles." In 1987 the councilman, along with a group of business owners objected to putting more residential and treatment centers in Skid Row on the grounds they were "drawing the homeless, including the mentally ill" to an area that had "great potential for commercial growth."

Afterword In April 1992, a Superior Court jury ruled that Juanda Chauncie, Lindsay's 40-year-old girlfriend, had taken advantage of the councilman to gain control of his money and property. The five-woman, seven-man panel ruled that Chauncie had used undue influence over him and awarded $235,000 to Lindsay's stepson and estate. Attorney Johnnie Cochran's firm represented the estate.

Illness and death

Lindsay suffered a stroke in 1989 that reduced him simply to being the "titular leader" of the 9th District, with much of the real power in the hands of Bob Gay, his chief assistant, the Downtown News reported. "On the Council floor, he has had moments of confusion, and been both humored and manipulated by the other councilmembers. Those who deal with him say that he has moments of tremendous clarity, but that he is largely removed from the day-to-day workings of the office." Lindsay had lost "some control of his hands and has had trouble writing." Lindsay was sent to a hospital again when, in the midst of the excitement occasioned by a planned visit to City Hall by South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, he forgot to take his diabetes medicine and collapsed.

He was brought to a hospital in Inglewood, California, where he remained until his fellow City Council members talked about removing him from his Council seat because he had been outside the Los Angeles city limits for more than 90 days. He was then transferred to "another facility within Los Angeles to make him less vulnerable to efforts to unseat him." A $250,000, 10-foot-high-artwork by Pat Ward Williams entitled The Emperor of the Great 9th District on the Gilbert Lindsay Plaza fronting the Los Angeles Convention Center Gilbert Lindsay Mall, a small plaza at the end of an alley off 2nd Street in Little Tokyo Gilbert Lindsay Recreation Center, 429 East 42nd Street