Word of the Week · Issue 015 · Week of 19 October 2026

DESIGNATED

What it claims: Recognized by the state as a place whose culture is worth preserving.
What it does: Fourteen cultural districts existed in California before this one. None of them was Black.
The receipt: The designation arrives after the displacement.

Storefronts on South Central Avenue in the Central Alameda neighborhood of Los Angeles, photographed in 2013 under a clear sky. A blue building at 2725 South Central Avenue carries a banner for Bubbles & Clips Pet Grooming. Beside it, a cream building at 2723 South Central Avenue is hand-lettered Lulu's Cuts, with a Zumba Fitness sign in the window and a young tree planted at the curb. A green building is painted for Dominic's Mini Market, with a sign on its awning advertising EBT and barred windows and door. A utility pole and overhead wires stand in the foreground. — South Central Avenue in the Central Alameda neighborhood of Los Angeles, 2013. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, LC-DIG-highsm-24342 (online). No known restrictions on publication.

A designation reads like protection. The state names a place and what is inside it, and the naming sounds like a promise to keep it.

In December 2025 the California Arts Council named Historic South LA what it calls the state’s first Black Cultural District. Fourteen cultural districts came before it, and none of them was Black. About 70 percent of the city’s Black population lived along the Central Avenue corridor by 1940. The Harbor Freeway was cut through South LA, and the Santa Monica Freeway cut Sugar Hill in half.

In the Senator’s announcement of the vote, Aminah Muhammad of the Leimert Park Village Merchants Association said the district’s future “deserves protection.” The certification runs through 2030. A designation can name a place, but on its own it does not keep anyone in it.

Read the file DESIGNATED WR-FCT-013