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Geographic Definition
Since the 1950s, the definition of "South Central" has gradually expanded to include all of the areas of the city of Los Angeles (and small unincorporated pockets of Los Angeles County) lying south of the Santa Monica Freeway, east of the city limits of Inglewood and Culver City, and north of the Century Freeway. Some incorporated cities out of L.A. city limits lying east of Alameda Street, are considered identifiable with South L.A. to some extent in urban or "inner city" characteristics. But the demography of South Los Angeles has been changing since 1990, when Hispanic immigrants from Mexico and Central America arrived to buy or rent apartments and homes vacated by African American renters moved out of the area. In the 2000 census, 55% of residents in the designated area of South L.A. were Latino, while 40% were African American. A large percentage of small stores and shops are owned by Asian American immigrants, especially Koreans, Filipinos, and Indians.[citation needed] History19th Century-1948South LA contains some of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, featuring many spectacular examples of Victorian and Craftsman architecture in West Adams. It is home to the University of Southern California, founded in 1880, as well as the Doheny Campus of Mount St. Mary's College, which was founded in 1920. The 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games took place near the USC campus at neighboring Exposition Park, which hosts the Los Angeles Coliseum. Until the rise of the Wilshire Boulevard corridor refocused Los Angeles' development to the west of downtown in the 1920s, West Adams was one of the most desirable areas of the city.
1948-1960sWhen the Supreme Court banned the legal enforcement of race-oriented restrictive covenants in 1948's Shelley v. Kraemer, blacks began to move into areas outside the increasingly overcrowded Slauson-Alameda-Washington-Main settlement area. For a time in the early 1950s, southern Los Angeles became the site of significant racial violence, with whites bombing, firing into, and burning crosses on the lawns of homes purchased by black families south of Slauson. In an escalation of behavior that had begun in the 1920s, white gangs in nearby cities such as South Gate and Huntington Park would routinely accost blacks who traveled through white areas; the black mutual protection clubs that formed in response to these assaults ultimately formed the basis of the region's fearsome street gangs. As was the case in most urban areas, 1950s freeway construction radically altered the geography of southern Los Angeles; and, as was the case in most large American cities, a major motivation in planning freeway routes was the reinforcement of traditional segregation lines. The Harbor Freeway ran just to the west of Main Street, and the Santa Monica Freeway just to the north of Washington Boulevard. The Marina Freeway was originally to run near Slauson Avenue all the way to the Orange County line, but was deemed redundant and went unbuilt except for its westernmost portions. However well the freeways worked in moving cars around, they were decidedly unsuccessful as instruments of segregation. The explosive growth of suburbs, most of which barred blacks by a variety of methods, provided the opportunity for most whites in neighborhoods bordering black districts to leave en masse. The spread of blacks throughout the area was achieved in large part through "blockbusting," a technique whereby real estate speculators would buy a home on an all-white street, sell or rent it to a black family, and then buy up the remaining homes from frightened whites at cut-rate prices and sell them at a hefty profit to housing-hungry blacks. This process accelerated after the Watts Riots of 1965, a traumatic event that resulted in the near-total abandonment of southern Los Angeles by white residents and merchants, as well as a large-scale movement to the north and west by middle-class blacks. By the late 1960s most of Los Angeles south of Pico Boulevard and east of La Cienega Boulevard had become overwhelmingly black. Areas wealthy (Baldwin Hills, West Adams) and impoverished (Watts) alike were referred to under the umbrella name of "South Central," even if they were 10 miles from the intersection of Vernon and Central Avenues. The Santa Monica Freeway formed the northern boundary of the "new" South Central, primarily dividing the middle-class blacks of Mid-Wilshire from the poor and working-class blacks to the south. 1970s-1990sBeginning in the 1970s, the precipitous decline of the area's manufacturing base resulted in widespread poverty and crime. Street gangs, such as the Crips and Bloods, rose to great notoriety at this time, becoming even more powerful with the arrival of crack cocaine (trade in which became dominated by gangs) in the 1980s. The area suffered even further as downtown Los Angeles' service sector, which had long been dominated by unionized African-Americans earning relatively high wages, replaced most of these black workers with newly arrived Central American immigrants. By the time of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which began in South Central and spread throughout the city, South Central had become a byword for urban decay, its bad reputation spread by movies such as South Central, Menace II Society, Friday, and in particular, South Central native John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood. The rap group N.W.A.'s album Straight Outta Compton also popularised South Central's bad image. Landmarks
CommunitiesSouth Central is a district of Los Angeles to the east of Inglewood. Image:Highsmithrandysdonuts.jpg Randy's Donuts, a landmark of South Central, is visible from the freeway Communities in South Los Angeles include:
Although the following are incorporated cities or unincorporated communities, they are often considered part of the South Los Angeles area despite being outside of the Los Angeles city limits: Cities: unincorporated Los Angeles County communities: People from South Los Angeles
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