The History of South Central Los Angeles and Its Struggle with Gentrification

Documents the history of African American settlement in South Central Los Angeles from 1900 through the present. Reports that roughly 200,000 Black individuals migrated to Los Angeles between 1942 and 1945. By 1940, approximately 70 percent of the city’s Black population lived along the Central Avenue corridor. Describes racial covenants in property deeds that confined Black residents to the corridor. Names the Dunbar Hotel (43rd and Central), Club Alabam (42nd Street), and Lincoln Theater as cultural anchors. Reports that Interstate 10 cut through a 500-foot-wide section of West Adams known as Sugar Hill, destroying hundreds of homes. Notes that Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) rendered racial covenants unenforceable.