![]() Compton became known in the Black community as that gem on the southern end of Central Avenue. Black middle-class families flocked to Compton for its housing, good schools and the opportunity to live in a progressive Black space. There was also an array of churches, chicken and rib joints and Black-owned retail outlets. On 137th Street, a block west of Central Avenue, Sam Littleton established Littleton's Patio, which was the site for many political fundraisers, strategy sessions and community events. ![]() Next door, another Black entrepreneur Walter "Dootsie" Williams opened Dooto Music Center, which included office space, an auditorium and recording studio where several popular recording artists recorded, including The Penguins, The Platters and Comedian Redd Foxx. Rams football player, opened Sportsman Bowl, a brand-new, modern bowling alley, coffee shop and cocktail lounge (which years later became the famous Skateland USA roller rink, a launch pad for hip-hop's legendary N.W.A.). On Central Avenue at 137th Street, Woodley Lewis, a former L.A. Dollarhide became the first Black man to be elected to the Compton City Council. and Central Avenue on Compton's northwest border to Compton's Richland farms on Compton's southwest border. In less than 20 years after Velma Grant built Carver Manor on the edge of the city of Compton to counter racist housing restrictions, the Black community stretched from Carver Manor on El Segundo Blvd. Williams Blazes a Trail for Black Architects By the early 1960s, the westside of Compton became predominantly Black. In 1954, in an added effort to contain Black residents to the westside of the city, Compton built Centennial High School within blocks of Carver Manor. This enraged some white residents of Compton who then organized to "Keep the Negroes North" of the Compton/Willowbrook border. 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. The neighborhood, named George Washington Carver Manor, or "Carver Manor," was designed by Williams for 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. ![]() Two years prior to the Supreme Court ruling, in 1946, Mrs. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the city of Compton, a Republican Party stronghold, was nearly all-white and very Mormon. One of those new neighborhoods was the westside of the city of Compton, California. 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. ![]()
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