How Compton Became a Citadel of Black Political Power
The following essay is part of "Compton: Arts and Archives," which explores the history, arts, and culture that make the “Hub City” an arts city. Edited by Jenise Miller.
After decades of battling overcrowded housing conditions due to federal red lining guidelines, segregation, discrimination and exploitation of tenants and homeowners, the Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that racial covenants were unenforceable, opening new neighborhoods to Black homebuyers. One of those new neighborhoods was the westside of the city of Compton, California. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the city of Compton, a Republican Party stronghold, was nearly all-white and very Mormon.
Two years prior to the Supreme Court ruling, in 1946, Mrs. Velma Grant, a real estate agent who had come to California from Louisiana, described by renowned Black architect Paul Williams as "that dynamo of a Black woman," developed a neighborhood on the northwest border of the city of Compton in the unincorporated area known as Willowbrook. The neighborhood, named George Washington Carver Manor, or "Carver Manor," was designed by Williams for Mrs. Grant, whose watchwords during construction were "quality materials and quality workmanship." By the early 1950s, 300 homeowning Black families lived on the northwest border of Compton. This enraged some white residents of Compton who then organized to "Keep the Negroes North" of the Compton/Willowbrook border. In 1954, in an added effort to contain Black residents to the westside of the city, Compton built Centennial High School within blocks of Carver Manor. By the early 1960s, the westside of Compton became predominantly Black.
In less than 20 years after Velma Grant built Carver Manor on the edge of the city of Compton to counter racist housing restrictions, the Black community stretched from Carver Manor on El Segundo Blvd. and Central Avenue on Compton's northwest border to Compton's Richland farms on Compton's southwest border. In 1963, Douglas F. Dollarhide became the first Black man to be elected to the Compton City Council. On Central Avenue at 137th Street, Woodley Lewis, a former L.A. Rams football player, opened Sportsman Bowl, a brand-new, modern bowling alley, coffee shop and cocktail lounge (which years later became the famous Skateland USA roller rink, a launch pad for hip-hop's legendary N.W.A.). Next door, another Black entrepreneur Walter "Dootsie" Williams opened Dooto Music Center, which included office space, an auditorium and recording studio where several popular recording artists recorded, including The Penguins, The Platters and Comedian Redd Foxx. On 137th Street, a block west of Central Avenue, Sam Littleton established Littleton's Patio, which was the site for many political fundraisers, strategy sessions and community events. There was also an array of churches, chicken and rib joints and Black-owned retail outlets. Black middle-class families flocked to Compton for its housing, good schools and the opportunity to live in a progressive Black space. Compton became known in the Black community as that gem on the southern end of Central Avenue. Malcolm X visited in the early 1960s, as did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One Christmas, the Compton Black Chamber of Commerce brought in the boxing great Archie Moore to play Santa Claus to the children who had never seen a Black Santa Claus before. Muhammad Ali and the multitalented Eartha Kitt were frequently seen in Compton and Watts.
As many White residents were not happy with the demographic change, some showed disdain by being rude or nasty, some tried to be good neighbors and others eventually fled the city. In the schools, White teachers had issues with teaching Black children. While police community relations were strained as usual, compared to the surrounding police departments such as Los Angeles, Lynwood, Inglewood, Long Beach, South Gate and the Los Angeles County Sheriff, the Compton Police Department didn't seem as brutal (the Compton Police Department was disbanded in 2000 and replaced by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department). This did not mean that the Compton Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was not busy fielding discrimination and harassment complaints. Even though West Compton was majority Black, until the early 1970s East Compton remained majority white and hostile to the Black community. Black people were made to feel unwelcome in white establishments such as the bowling alley on Rosecrans Boulevard. In 1964, Dr. Ross Miller, then the new Chief of Surgery at Compton's Dominguez Valley Hospital, wanted to buy a home close to the hospital on the east side of the city. After identifying a suitable home through his real estate agent, Dr. Miller met the seller, who promptly called off the sale because he did not want to sell to a Black man. Dr. Miller had a white colleague buy the house and quitclaim the deed over to him. This outraged and motivated him to get involved in local politics; he would later become president of the Compton school board and the architect of Compton's first majority Black City Council. In 1968, Dr. Miller's political activism took him to the Ambassador Hotel as a delegate, on a warm night in early June, as the votes were tallied in favor of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the California Democratic Presidential Primary. Shots rang out and there were calls for a doctor. Dr. Miller identified himself and sprang into action to render aid, but was stopped several times because the security had a hard time believing that this young Black man was a doctor.
Despite all of the racial turmoil, many Black people who grew up in the city of Compton during that time enjoyed their childhood and described it as almost idyllic — playing with friends, raiding fruit trees, racing model cars at the Rosecrans Raceway, going to the movies downtown, or at the Tower Theater on Long Beach Boulevard. Parks were supervised and so were the basketball and football leagues. There was also Little League baseball. The schools and churches supported Boy Scout troops that were very active and included hiking and camping in the local mountains. There were church picnics and community Christmas plays at the local park and, of course, the Compton Christmas parade. For the Black middle class, Compton was the place to raise a family.
In the 1960s, as the demand for freedom and equality increased in Black communities across the country, the manifestation of the racial inequities and racist police confrontations appeared right next door to the city of Compton. Like a festering wound of social neglect and fascist policing, the Watts district of Los Angeles exploded in six days of righteous indignation and rebellion for the years of discrimination in housing, lack of services and the brutal tactics of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Out of the Watts rebellion came a new Black consciousness that was birthed in its fires. That September, as Black students went back to school, it was with a new swagger and anger that said "you will not ignore me!" Even "Negroes" west of the 110 freeway became "Black men" from Watts. The youth were no longer willing to listen to the old guard civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League and no longer willing to accept the leadership of the "Negro" preachers and politicians.
New grassroots community organizations came into existence at this time, many of them in the mold of Malcolm X. These more militant organizations drew the ire of the local police who were used to unquestioned control of the streets in the Black community. The most effective of these organizations was the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Their Central Avenue headquarters had been attacked in the early morning hours of December 8, 1969 with dynamite and over 300 LAPD troops, which included multiple tactical teams, in a murderous 5-hour assault that took place just days after the Chicago murder of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton. After weathering years of attacks by the LAPD and other agencies, the chapter moved its headquarters to the city of Compton.
As Black revolutionary organizations soon found out, Compton was not Watts. These were not Black people who were unhappy with the system, rather Black people who were unhappy that they were not part of the system. In the early 1970s, the city of Compton was becoming the citadel of Black political power in Southern California. Late in 1969, then City Councilman Douglas F. Dollarhide, the son of a formerly enslaved person, became Mayor of the city of Compton, the first Black mayor of a major municipality west of the Mississippi River. He was greeted with a majority Black School Board and City Council. He later appointed the first Black police chief, fire chief and school superintendent in California. This led to a Black cultural renaissance in the city that included the Compton Communicative Arts Academy, the Paul Robeson Players and the development of many actors, musicians and athletes. Compton College at that time had a great diversity of students from all around the world and was known as a gateway to UCLA. (Tony Brown's "Black Journal" filmed an episode about Compton, broadcasted in 1972. It includes interviews with community members, Mayor Dollarhide and Compton Communicative Arts Academy founder John Outterbridge. You can watch the "Black Compton" episode with this link.)
The majority of the Black leadership in the city of Compton at that time had been active as members of the local NAACP. Predictably, they could not visualize a different type of city other than what had been offered under the former white administration. Their aim was to be competent, to show the world that Black people could self-govern. When the Dollarhide administration arrived at Compton City Hall, they found that the city's finances were already in disarray because of the lack of tax revenue and pending debt from bonds issued to modernize and rebuild after the 1933 earthquake. The Dollarhide administration began to look at nearby County areas to annex to the city because of their light manufacturing, but the County ultimately thwarted those plans. Under the Dollarhide administration, the city developed the Walnut Industrial Park project, one of the largest business parks in the western United States. But transforming city finances would take time and the looming financial crisis was right in front of them. Unfortunately, the white supremacist narrative was not to be denied. According to that narrative, Black people could not self govern. In 1969, white people did not believe that a Black man could quarterback an NFL football team, let alone run a city (this is four years before Tom Bradley became Mayor of Los Angeles, and, unlike Dollarhide, he did not have a majority Black City Council or School Board). By 1970, Malcolm X was dead and so was Martin Luther King, Jr. The FBI's counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, whose motto was "to disrupt, discredit and destroy," began to focus on Black politicians and political organizations and wreak havoc in the Black progressive community, including California's "Black City," Compton.
See the devastation of the 1933 earthquake in this video courtesy of Ira Gallen
By the mid-1970s, Compton was over 75% Black. Soon, the cities neighboring Compton, whose main street had been Compton Boulevard, were changing the name of the street in an effort to disassociate themselves from the city: to the west, Compton Boulevard became Marine Avenue and to the east Compton Boulevard became Somerset. The white flight of the mid-to-late 1960s damaged the city's financial standing with the loss of small businesses and the sales tax that they generated. The bonds that were used to rebuild downtown Compton after the 1933 earthquake became due. At the same time, during a time of high interest rates and recession, homeowners were losing their homes because of predatory loans and balloon payments that had come due. This led to a crash of Compton's housing market, loss of property taxes and a high vacancy rate that left many abandoned homes. By the 1980s, the dream of suburban homeownership in Compton seemed to disappear into a puff of smoke. Local manufacturing jobs that had been plentiful on the Alameda Corridor left for other countries and were replaced by a destructive cocaine economy, results of the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. The resulting drug wars in Compton and throughout south central Los Angeles created a Black middle class flight. Because of the loss of property taxes and sales tax, the city could no longer maintain schools and parks. Walking to the store became dangerous and sending children to the local parks was out of the question. All of these forces turned Compton’s Black middle-class, suburban dream into an urban nightmare. Compton had been redefined as a place of crime, corruption and incompetence, a self-fulfilling prophecy of the white supremacist narrative.
Over 40 years later and the city of Compton is still climbing out of the chaos. Today, a younger generation is working diligently to create a new narrative about the city. With new vision, they are eager to redefine Compton once again as a haven for young families — where they can raise their children in good schools with decent housing and people who are willing to create community.
Further Reading
City of Compton Collections. Gerth Archives & Special Collections. California State University, Dominguez Hills. https://libguides.csudh.edu/compton.
Drummond, William J. "Compton – A Self-Sufficiency Test for Black Leadership: Other Majority Negro Cities Wait and Watch," Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1970.
"Housing: Decent & Profitable." Time, July 25, 1949. http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,853904,00.html.
Johnson, Robert Lee. Compton (Images of America). South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
Johnson, Robert Lee. Notable Southern Californians in Black History (American Heritage). South Carolina: The History Press, 2017.
Jones, Jack. "Compton Annexation Foes Get 'Racist' Tag: Businessmen Charge Some Industry Is Opposed Because of City's Black Leaders," Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1969.
