LA High Walks of Fame

Cornelius Cooper Johnson, an African American athlete, was a two-time Olympic champion in high-jump events, in both the 1932 (Los Angeles) and 1936 (Berlin) Olympics, and attended LA High in the 1930s, a school where greatness grows. Johnson also helped make world history when he and his fellow African American Olympians caused Adolf Hitler to walk out of his own 1936 Berlin Olympics. At the 1932 Olympics, Johnson, an LA High student, tied for second place in the high jump. Under current rules, Johnson would have won the silver medal.  At the 1936 U.S. Olympic Trials, he set the world record at 2.07 meters.  Johnson was one of 19 African Americans at the Berlin Olympics, and he won the gold medal with an Olympic high jump record of 2.03 meters, prompting Hitler’s boycott. Johnson was inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1994, and the California Community Colleges Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1998.  

 Dr. Michael L. Lomax, a highly-honored African American educator and civic leader attended LA High—a school where greatness grows—through the 11th grade. After  2004, Dr. Lomax  served as the President/CEO of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to African American and Brown youth. Under his leadership, UNCF  raised more than $3 billion and helped more than 110,000 students earn college degrees and launch meaningful careers. UNCF also advocated for college readiness and education reform by partnering with government leaders and organizations such as The White House, the United States Congress, and the Department of Education. 

The list of his achievements and honors is too long to list in a plaque. Dr. Lomax was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Senate, a former President of Dillard University in New Orleans, a former literature professor at the UNCF-member institutions of Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, a founding member of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a founder of the Atlanta-based National Black Arts Festival, an appointee to the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a cochair of the Democratic National Convention, and the first African American to be elected as Chairman of the Fulton County Commission in Atlanta.

Dr. Joseph C. Mills was an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed African American nuclear engineer, who graduated from L.A. High, a school where greatness grows, and from UCLA, where he received a Ph.D in nuclear engineering. Dr. Mills served for nine years as Boeing’s Vice President and Program Manager, and in conjunction with NASA headed the International Space Station Project (ISSP) which is still orbiting around the earth every 90 minutes. Mills played the key leadership role in managing Boeing’s multi-billion-dollar contract that guided the orbiting laboratory through its design, development, testing, launch, and operation phases. He coordinated several thousand Boeing engineers at five major locations around the country, as well as numerous subcontractors and suppliers in 23 states and 16 partnering countries. He also designed nuclear systems for Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory deep space projects. He received several prestigious professional awards,  such as the Aviation Week Laureate Award for Space (2002), the Black Engineer of the Year Award (2004), and the NASA Rotary Award for Space Achievement (2004). In his presentations to students in South Central L.A., where he grew up, he advised them, “You’ve got to continue towards your goals and you can’t let anyone or anything deter you.” Dr. Mills followed that advice and lived those truths. 

 Anita Ortega, an African-Puerto Rican star basketball player and honored LA police woman, graduated from LA High—a school where greatness grows—in 1977. Upon graduation from LA High, while earning her degree in psychology, she was part of UCLA’s 1978 women's national basketball team where she arrived as a walk-on from Los Angeles High and was later recognized as an All-American. In 1979, she represented Puerto Rico in the Pan AM games and played professionally as an All-Star in the now defunct Women’s Basketball League. Later, she was appointed as the first Afro-Puerto Rican to serve as an Area Commander in the Los Angeles Police Department where she supervised over 300 employees at the Hollenback Community Police Station. Her hard work and accomplishments earned her a place in both the UCLA and LAPD Hall(s) of Fame. In 2011, Ortega was honored as the UCLA Latina Alumna of the Year, and in 2012, she was selected by the California State Assembly as the Women of the Year for the 46th district. 

Hugo Ernesto Perez, an El Salvador-born American Olympic and World Cup soccer star, grew his greatness while at L.A. High, a school where greatness grows. Ironically, his greatness shortened his time at LA High. As reported in the LA Times, while a star on the LA High soccer team, Perez played semi-pro soccer for the Alianza team on weekends, which prompted a rival high school teams coach to yell “foul.” Since then, he played professionally in the United States, France, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, and his native El Salvador. Perez gained his U.S. citizenship as a youth and made 73 international appearances, scoring sixteen goals, with the U.S. national team between 1984 and 1994. He is credited with bridging the end of the North American Soccer league era with the return of the United States to the World Cup stage. Perez provided veteran leadership to the United States Men National Team in the late 80s when the bulk of the squad was college-age players. Perez was a member of the U.S. team at both the 1984 Summer Olympics and the 1994 FIFA World Cup. He was also selected the 1991 U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year and was inducted into the US National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2008. 

Makoto Douglas Sakamoto, a Japanese-born American gymnast and coach, was a champion gymnast in the 1960s, who showed and grew his skills as a student at LA High, a school where greatness grows. His greatest feat came at the 1965 AAU Championship, when he became the only gymnast to sweep the events, winning all seven titles, including all-around honors and honors on all six apparatuses (i.e., this record still stands today). He was also AAU all-around champion in 1963-64. Sakamoto competed for the United States at the 1964 and 1972 Olympics as well as the 1966 and 1970 World Champions. Sakamoto attended the University of Southern California, where he won four NCAA titles. He later became assistant coach at UCLA from 1976-84 and then head coach at Brigham Young University from 1987-2000. He was an assistant coach for the United States at the 1984 Olympics and the 1981 and 1983 World Championships. Sakamoto has also been inducted into the University of Southern California, and the USA Gymnastics Hall(s) of Fame. In 2011, he was also named the Master of Sports by USA Gymnastics, the highest gymnastics coaching honor in the United States. 

Brenda Shockley, an African American, was recognized at LA High as a natural-born leader. Subsequently, as a civic and community leader, she was twice appointed Deputy Mayor of the City of Los Angeles. She was first appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, and in 2022, became the City’s first Chief Equity Officer, addressing and advocating diversity matters that involved unsheltered pandemic victims, community revitalization, education, and equal employment opportunity. In 2023 she was appointed by  Mayor Karen Bass to focus on  political initiatives to include Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access and to create, develop, and implement strategic policy that positively impacts the inequalities of minimum wage across all city sectors, the creation of free community college programs, and workable citywide housing/urban development programs. 

Shockley also provided more than 20 years of leadership as the President of Community Build, a health and human services nonprofit organization, where she played a critical role in economic development, gang member intervention and truce efforts, employment training, education, outreach services during and after the Los Angeles social uprising in 1992.