In the 1960s and 70s, young, Black middle-class families flocked to Compton for the opportunity to live in a progressive, Black space created by Black businesses and civic and political engagement.
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 byJenise 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, wasnearly 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 byrenowned Black architect Paul Williamsas “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.
Read more at: https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/when-compton-was-a-citadel-of-black-political-power