Janss Investment Company, which the brothers owned at the time, developed Westwood Village and used racial covenants to ban people of color from owning properties or businesses in the area in the 1920s...
Some student signees suggested that Janss Steps should be renamed after Martin Luther King Jr., who gave a speech addressing segregation and racial injustice on the steps in 1965. Other students who supported the petition proposed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a former UCLA basketball player and social justice advocate...
Larry Janss, the grandson of Edwin Janss Sr., initially brushed off the idea of renaming Janss Steps when he heard about the petition, but he said he quickly became empathetic to the idea after he read an article describing why monuments honoring racist figures should be renamed. Larry Janss said he acknowledges his ancestors’ racist history. However, he added he wants people to associate the steps with the social justice efforts he and his father, Edwin Janss Jr., funded with the Janss Foundation, rather than Edwin Sr. and Harold Janss’ racism...
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