From uprising to fires, Blacks in L.A. continue the fight against erasure.
By Erin Aubry Kaplan
Nearly a month out of the catastrophic Eaton fire and its widespread devastation, there are sustained calls to rebuild the historic but fragile Black community of Altadena. There is also growing anxiety about what that requires, recalling another milestone moment: South Central Los Angeles in 1992.
Thirty-three years ago, in the wake of the not-guilty verdicts in the criminal trial against the four police officers who beat motorist Rodney Glenn King (who, coincidentally, was from Altadena), Black people boiling over at the racial status quo took to their streets. Fires erupted across South Central L.A. and when the smoke cleared a week later, there was $1 billion in property damage, mostly commercial. Whole blocks looked like war zones. “Rebuild L.A.” became a rallying cry, and the name of a high-profile nonprofit. But although the burned-out lots were gradually filled over the years, none of the big-scale improvement envisioned at a thousand community meetings happened. Today, the Black community in South Central that had clamored for change is fraction of what it was, reconfigured by a Black exodus, demographic inroads by Latinos and, most recently, gentrification.
The parallels are not perfect. The Eaton fires were fueled by nature, not racial and economic frustration. The levelled landscape is overwhelmingly residential, not commercial, resulting in massive displacement of people. Nor were Black people the only ones impacted; white, Asian and Latino residents in Altadena also lost it all, as did thousands of residents in the fires in Pacific Palisades across town. And suburban Altadena continues to experience an outpouring of support and positive media coverage — in stark contrast to 1992, when many viewed the devastation of South Central as something Black people had brought on themselves, a view that reinforced an image of Blacks in the inner city as criminal and undeserving of the help that they sought.
And yet in these crises there are through lines. A cohesive Black community that flourished over decades despite redlining and other kinds of racism was devastated in a matter of days (one thing ’92 revealed to the world was that the inner city was hardly all poor people; the fires hit the Crenshaw District, one of the L.A. enclaves that together housed the biggest black middle class population west of the Mississippi.) The most pressing question now, as then, is how to build back, and build back better so that the displacement and devaluation that has always threatened to undermine Black neighborhoods is at least minimized. This has become more crucial than ever as South Central has dwindled and Altadena has taken on great symbolic significance as an increasingly rare Black enclave in Southern California that must be preserved. Of the thousands who’ve lost homes in the L.A. fires, it’s clear that the community with the most to lose — financially, culturally — is black Altadena.
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That’s because it had been losing. In a data report on Black Altadena published last week, the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA confirms that while the fires revealed Black Altadena’s history and significance, it also laid bare its precariousness. Among the findings: 45% of Black homeowners are “cost burdened” and 28% are “severely cost burdened,” meaning that they spend more than 30% and more than 50%, respectively, on housing costs. Some 57% of Black homeowners are 65 or older, making barriers to fire recovery higher.
Bill Gould, 61, has lived in Altadena since 1988. His home burned to the ground, as did his brother’s home a mile away. Gould is descended from a Black family that founded Gouldtown, New Jersey, a free Black settlement that dates back to the 1700s. Among the things lost to the fire was an ancestor’s diary that further defined that illustrious history. “Lots of people have lots of roots over time,” he said. “I really hope folks can retain their generational wealth.”
Well before the fires, Gould became uneasy about that. A longtimer on Gould’s block, a man everyone else looked up to, had his home repossessed by the bank. Ultimately it was sold and became an Airbnb rental. “I viewed this as a major loss — this senior statesman on the street left and was replaced by a guy who had no interest in maintaining community at all,” said Gould. “It broke my heart that he lost his home. I hope those types of things don’t accelerate.”
What happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is a another cautionary tale. A massive hurricane — an early warning sign of climate change-fueled disasters to come, like wildfires — suddenly displaced Black people who had been living in New Orleans for generations. But there was no concerted effort to rebuild the hard-hit Ninth Ward, or to even ensure evacuees returned home. As in South Central in1992, Black people navigating the crisis were seen less as victims in need of help and more as criminals. After Katrina the city’s population shrank by half, while improvements mostly happened in and around the touristy French Quarter. The effective purge of Black folks by hurricane is what we might today call “climate gentrification.”
There is a similar unease about such a purge here, compounded by the certainty that some Black homeowners will choose to walk away. Gould says he worries about the aging homeowners who may not be interested in waiting years for a rebuild, if it happens, and because of that and financial pressures will opt to take insurance money or developer offers and move on. Homeowners in Crenshaw and other parts of South Central have had a similar worry about neighbors cashing out and leaving; in recent years, “Don’t Sell” has become a battle cry against gentrification specifically and the waning Black presence in general. Turnover in any housing market is inevitable, but the question is how much more turnover Black communities here can take before they become something else.
Gould would like to stay, but he needs to know the scope of the damage to his own property before he makes a decision. Driving around town, he said the sheer scale of damage to Altadena remains a daunting sight. “This is a long-term kind of thing,” he said. “Even if your home is OK, you look out of the window and see six houses burned down. I don’t know what kind of psychological effect that has.” Not to mention the businesses lost, places that made Altadena identifiably Black. Places that made it home. “The African drumming place went down, the Black-owned Little Red Hen restaurant went down,” he mused. “I’m hoping these things come back.”
The good news for Gould and others, including those Black people still in South Central and looking for models of change, is that saving Altadena has become such a cause. He’s hoping it stays that way. “I appreciate all the incentives and help,” Gould said. “But I’m wondering a year later, what kind of collective will is there going to be?”
Erin Aubry Kaplan examines the persistent barriers to racial justice and opportunities for progress in an era of receding black presence in Los Angeles and California.
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