Baldwin Hills communities began with an Olympic village in 1932 and later became home to affluent Black families in L.A. It is now facing changing demographics and gentrification.
ne day in the early 2000s, Professor Darnell Hunt was walking his dog in his picturesque Baldwin Vista neighborhood in South Los Angeles.
In the early 20th century, these lawless, uninhabited hills were best known for the rough and tumble oil derricks that punctured the land, and conflicts between various syndicates to control the oil fields. With its reputation as a dump site for a notorious murder, peat fires, and a narcotics ring meet-up place, the area appears to have had a wild side.
After the Olympics, all traces of the village were quickly removed, and more permanent structures came to dominate the Baldwin Hills. Developers, including the Los Angeles Investment Company and the Baldwin Hills Company, began to develop homes on the hill. So many doctors moved into the neighborhoods that it became known as “Pill Hill.”
Soon, predatory real estate agents were convincing white homeowners it was time to leave the neighborhood before their property value plummeted due to their new Black neighbors. That same year, the NAACP announced it was picketing the Baldwin Hills School after 15 Black children in the neighborhood were denied admission because the principal claimed they didn’t have “the necessary transfer forms."On Saturday afternoon, Dec. 14, 1963, the Baldwin Hills Dam burst, sending a wave of water cascading through the hills.
But the people of the Baldwin Hills built their neighborhoods back relatively quickly, recovering from the catastrophe.Throughout the 1960s, the Baldwin Hills area increasingly became a hub of Black upper-and-middle-class life in Los Angeles. “There were all these accounts of conflict and tension, and backlash among residents in the neighborhood. And eventually white flight, which is usually what follows when one or two white families move out,” Hunt says. “Realtors take advantage of that.
Baldwin Hills was visited by tragedy yet again in July 1985, when a fire destroyed 47 homes in the neighborhood. But those living in the hills still battled racism and racist policies from recent decades. In 2001, neighborhood residents banded together to cancel plans for a power plant in the hills, which was seen by many as a form of environmental racism. For decades, economic racism has forced many residents of the Baldwin Hills to go west to shop and eat out.Residents hope the $2.
“Back during the day, a lot of affluent African Americans bought their homes there,” Manning says. “And now they're all old. And so, a lot of them are dying. And some of the kids... a lot of kids went back east to go to Howard University. And a lot of them didn't want to come back to California.” “We want to maintain a place in L.A. that is associated with African Americans and the history that they have contributed to the area. But at the same time, I mean, it's nice to build resources in the community and to upgrade services and things like that, that often come with development in the area,” says Hunt, a consultant for Destination Crenshaw.
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