A Hectic History

Movies, TV shows, videos, songs and news reporting helped promote the idea that “South Central” was little more than gang violence and civil unrest. From the Watts Riots of 1965 to the L.A. Riots of 1992, generations have seen footage of South Los Angeles burning on their TV screens.

In 1965, a Black man named Marquette Frye was arrested by a white California Highway Patrol officer on 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard for suspicion of drunk driving one evening in August, according to the 1965 report by the governer's commission on the Watt's Riots. Frye’s mother saw her son being arrested and began fighting the police. The arrest attracted bystanders, which turned into a brawl that spread and lasted days and triggered $40 million worth of property damage, which today would be the equivalent of $397 million. The Los Angeles Times labeled the civil unrest as “Negro Riots.”

Casey Nichols’ article in BlackPast, a news outlet “dedicated to providing reliable information on the history of Black people,” stated that “the revolt inspired the federal government to implement programs to address unemployment, education, healthcare, and housing under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. But much of the money allocated for these programs was eventually absorbed by the Vietnam War.”

Twenty-seven years later, in 1992, the city discovered that not enough had changed.

A jury acquitted four white Los Angeles policemen of assault with a deadly weapon, excessive use of force as a police officer and filing a false report after the severe beating of Black motorist Rodney King in March 1991. In mid-1992, social unrest followed, looting was rampant, in the Crenshaw district, Fedco, on the corner of La Cienega and Rodeo was burned. Police beatings were happening on Lincoln and Indiana avenue in Venice. Some areas were largely untouched but many were not.

Images of conflict, flames and destruction appeared in newspapers and magazines and on TVs across the country and abroad, cementing the notorious reputation of South Central where the unrest began.

“People always want to sell, ‘Black people just lost their minds for no particular reason,” said Aubry Kaplan. “No, it was a very specific thing.” Aubry Kaplan, who has covered Black issues for decades, explained that tensions had been building in the years prior to both 1992 and 1965.

“The year before, in 1964, California passed the Fair Housing Act which said you cannot discriminate. Voters (in Los Angeles) voted to actually overturn the Fair Housing Act, they actually wanted segregation and discrimination. And that made a lot of people angry.” In 1978 in California, Proposition 13 was passed and that took away the ability of cities to use property tax for local improvements. “Cities have been sort of starved ever since there's been a real shift away from public investment, and that has hurt Black communities,” Aubry Kaplan lamented. Then, in 1990, a 14-year-old Black teenager named Latasha Harland was shot in the back of the heas and killed over a bottle of orange juice by a Korean grocery store owner. “There was a whole series of events that had people on edge,” Aubry Kaplan recalled.

In the popular mind, she said, the result of such events and how they were covered in many media and reproduced in popular culture stained the image of South Central. It became an area that businesses, including supermarket chains, avoided, deeming it too risky to invest in. The overall impression was, she said, that it is an area that requires policing above all else.

The New South Los Angeles

Many longtime stressors still exist in what is now South Los Angeles: racial tensions, conflicts between residents and police, and the legacy of redlining, which was a form of discrimination in housing. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned it, but until then local government maps outlined areas where Black residents were permitted to live, areas that were deemed to be risky investments. Fast forward several generations and South L.A. still suffers from a shortage of supermarkets, good jobs, and acceptable schools according to Aubry Kaplan. Gang violence has not completely disappeared.

Gentrification has drawn new renters and homebuyers, who have been driving up the cost of housing, which is driving the displacement of locals who, when forced to move out of their homes, cannot afford to rent at market prices in the communities where they have long lived. Today it is virtually impossible for most South LA natives to save money or buy a home.

The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, built in 1947, was one of the first shopping malls in Southern California that were built for cars. In the heart of the Crenshaw district, the mall became popular among Black celebrities in the 1960s. Coming out of the turmoil of 1992 with the riots, next to the mall was Magic Johnson Theaters, which provided hope needed investment for the local community. I still remember attending this theater when I was a child with my brothers and feeling a sense of joy going to a movie.

It was closed in 2006 due to a lack of profitability as the mall's business declined along with the malls increasingly dated look, but these days, there are plenty of investment funds. In 2021 the Harridge Development Group bought the entire complex for $111 million. The Los Angeles Times described the buyers’ goal as a transformation of the “struggling center into a more modern complex with housing, offices, stores and restaurants.”

Having grown up going to this mall to watch movies, shop and participate in the Pan African Film and Arts Festival, I am not against it being revitalized. My fear is that what replaces it will be unaffordable for longtime customers from the area. “Harridge’s CEO told the The Times that just one-tenth of the housing built at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza will be “below-market rate.” That just is not sustainable for residents of the area.

In 2021, California Senate Bills 9 and 10 drastically changed zoning laws in the state by making it much easier to build apartments or condos on land that was previously designated for only one house.

In the Crenshaw area, the median sale price of a home is $930,000, putting them ever further out of reach for longtime residents in an area where the typical income is $49,903. In West Adams, some homes are in the millions, more than triple the price of a decade ago.

New “affordable” housing complexes like the Evermont Development, which sits on the corner of Vermont and Manchester avenues, just six miles away from Baldwin Hills mall, will promise “62 affordable senior homes, 60 apartments for individuals in need of supportive services, and the remaining apartments reserved for low-income tenants.”

Billionaire Diplomacy

When Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, bought the Clippers in 2014, he went about transforming and rebranding the team. First, management brought in superstar players like Kawhi Leanord and Paul George: to improve the team, and the team will move into the Intuit Dome on Century Blvd in Inglewood next season. The multi-billion dollar investment in South Los Angeles has led Balmer’s team to work with local construction companies and generated about 7,000 jobs, with 1500 permanent operational jobs to follow after that.

Nearly half of construction and design subcontractors were Black-owned businesses, and another 35% are owned by Latinos, according to the trade publication Variety. Overall, more than one-third of workers involved in the Intuit Dome project have been people of color. Since construction began in 2021, the unemployment rate in Inglewood has plunged from 13.70 % (during the pandemic) to 5.9%.

Despite the obvious benefits for workers, there are concerns. “The real problem is they are a big force in town, they almost replaced the government. The government gave away land to help get that Intuit Dome built," said Aubry Kaplan. “I would rather have functional schools than a football stadium.”

A Visit to Mudtown Famrms in Watts

Based on a National Library Of Medicine Article, green spaces are beneficial to an area for many reasons. They serve as social spaces for recreational and cultural activities, and green spaces clean the air and lessen the impact of some types of pollutants. The result is positive effects on health.

“So, when we put ourselves in nature we can use all of our senses and that can immediately lower the heart rate and send messages to the brain that create more positive emotions,” said Dr. Kelly Greco, a psychologist and clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at USC.

“Whether it's on grass or its in the mountains or its a farm, it helps us feel more grounded and in control… There's a lot of research that shows how it decreases your heart rate and counteracts that stress response cycle … and helps calm ourselves down.”

As summer temperatures rise due to climate change, green spaces and trees are also important for mitigating heat. Recent research has linked redlining to a lack of shade, contributing to dangerous urban heat islands. Previously redlined cities are on average 5 degrees warmer than others nationally and up to 12.5 degrees warmer in some places. Research suggests that the lack of shade in parts of Los Angeles is partly due to economic and racial lines drawn up by redlining long ago.

South Los Angeles has a “lower-than-average tree canopy.” The average amount across Los Angeles is 21%, but in an area including South Los Angeles and Pacoima, it is just 5% to 7%. Meanwhile, surface temperatures in some South Los Angeles neighborhoods are 3 to 4 degree C above the citywide average, according to the Los Angeles Shade Equity Initiative.

But there are home-grown efforts in South Los Angeles that may not involve planting newer or more suitable trees, but that aim to improve our interactions with nature in open spaces. One in Watts is called Mudtown Farms. I had the opportunity to visit this lush garden.

Cowboys in South LA

As a lifelong city boy, I was shocked on my way home one day to discover people placing saddles on horses' backs in the streets of South L.A. I asked the Black men on my street who were tending to the beautiful animals about it. They said their organization’s name was Urban Saddles, a group of Black cowboys and cowgirls whose goal has long involved showing inner city youth another path in life, one far from gangs and or other negative alternatives. They refer to it as the “equestrian lifestyle.”

South L.A. still endures gang violence, but not as much as it did one or two decades ago. Homicides are down 32 percent in the last two years, according to the LAPD.

But maybe the equestrian lifestyle could help with other stresses — inflation, construction and so many other forces that I have gotten to know since growing up beyond my childhood bubble in Miracle Mile. I decided to saddle up and find out.