Los Angeles is the city that helped give birth to Blaxploitation. 

The first and often credited as the best example of a Blaxploitation film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was written, produced, and currently being filmed was being filmed in Los Angeles by director Melvin Van Peebles. It was released on March 31, 1971.

Junius Griffin, then president of the Beverly Hills chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is credited for coining the term "Blaxploitation". The term blaxploitation first appeared, in the wake of Super Fly’s release, as a Junius Griffin quotation in a Hollywood Reporter story called “NAACP Takes Militant Stand on Black Exploitation Films,” on August 10, 1972.  Senior Lector of English and American Studies at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom's Dr. Ethnie Quinn stated that  “The term blaxploitation was coined by people who were understandably shocked by the portrayals of African Americans on screen, featuring sex and violence, in these 1970s films". 

Los Angeles in the early 1970s is begging for a change. This was just after the Civil Rights protests in the '60s and the Black Panther Party was becoming more popular. There were more new social movements such as Chicano culture from the Latinx community and minority movements were being supported by more white liberals than ever. Sam Yorty had just been elected mayor in 1969 and ran sinister campaigns, involving the FBI, the district attorney’s office, and both the LAPD and LA county sheriffs, to destroy the Panthers, Brown Berets, and other radical groups. This was the era when schools were becoming more desegregated and white flight from integrated school districts and neighborhoods was becoming popular. Areas were now becoming more "urban" and as the Black and Brown population grew, so did their cry for equal treatment and more representation. 

During this time, audiences, mostly Black and Brown, were looking for a hero more like them who would stand up and any mistreatment they faced and were more than just comic relief in a film. The film, not considered a classic, has a limited release. According to the director, Melvin Van Peebles, there were only two theaters in the United States that would show the film: Detroit and Atlanta, both with very high Black populations. 

Works Cited: 

Addelman, Mike. “Blaxploitation Birthday Should Mark Rethink, Urges Historian.” Blaxploitation Birthday Should Mark Rethink, Urges Historian, University of Manchester, 13 Apr. 2012, https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/blaxploitation-birthday-shoul....

Blume , Howard. “School Busing and Race Tore L.A. Apart in the 1970s. Now, Kamala Harris Is Reviving Debate.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2019, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-busing-schools-los-angeles-har...

Sims, Yvonne. “Blaxploitation Movies.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/art/blaxploitation-movie.