California

How Compton Became a Citadel of Black Power

The victorious Dollarhide for Mayor campaign staff, including Douglas Dollarhide (center) and Campaign Manager, Maxcy Filer (fourth from right) | Courtesy of Gerth Archives and Special Collections, California State University, Dominguez Hills

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.

By Robert Lee Johnson

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.