Posted: July 8th, 2008

Without a name, former ‘South Central’ L.A. has become almost invisible
The South L.A. area was once a thriving hub of jazz and African American culture. Now its residents can hardly describe where they are.
By Jill Leovy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 7, 2008

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Patrolled by the Newton Station, the area has the highest poverty rate of all Los Angeles Police Department divisions and is typically among LAPD’s top four divisions in homicides. The population is about 14% black and 83% Latino, largely Spanish-speaking and ethnically Mexican.

The area is home to century-old homes in the Queen Anne style, many of them hidden beneath a slather of stucco.

It feels isolated from the city’s commercial mainstream. But it is not empty or blighted, just working-class and jumbled. Bus stops are crowded at rush hour. There arepanaderías and 99-cent stores. People sell CDs, T-shirts and caged pigeons on street corners. Sidewalk taco stands have folding tables and bright umbrellas.

“You have streets and alleys here that haven’t been paved since World War II, houses next to plating plants,” Cremins said.

This same area was once called “The Avenue.” It was L.A.’s Harlem, “the black main street of Los Angeles,” said R.J. Smith, author of a history of the area in the 1940s. “It was a place where you could see Louis Armstrong . . . Joe Louis . . . Count Basie.”

“South Central” meant something bigger than a place, Sides said. “It was synonymous with sense of black progress and accomplishment — a physical manifestation of blacks’ progress in the American West.”

As segregation eased in the 1950s and ’60s, blacks moved out and the population became more transitory. Malaise set in. Riots and economic forces battered the area, and youth gangs proliferated. The name “South Central” began being used outside of the black community in Los Angeles — with a different connotation. “It became a loose way of describing everywhere that there were black people,” Sides said.

Read the rest of this story . . .

Jazz tiles at the Central Avenue Jazz Park across from the Dunbar Hotel reflect the rich history of jazz along Central Avenue.

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