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The junction of the 110 and the 105 freeways as seen by aircraft.

South Los Angeles is a region in southern Los Angeles County, California lying to south of downtown Los Angeles, California.^[1]

Depending on the source, South Los Angeles has different definitions:

South Los Angeles (formerly known as South-Central) “is defined on [Los Angeles] city maps as a 16-square-mile rectangle with two prongs at the south end.” In 2003 the Los Angeles City Council renamed this area “South Los Angeles”.^[2]

South Los Angeles can also refer to a larger 51-square mile area incorporating part of Los Angeles and unincorporated areas.^[3]

Geography

City of Los Angeles

The City of Los Angeles delineates South Los Angeles as a area of 15.5 square miles. ^[4]. Adjacent regions include “West Adams, Baldwin Hills, and Leimert Park” on the west and “Southeast Los Angeles” (the area east of the Harbor Freeway) on the east.^[5]

Mapping L.A. boundaries

According to the Los Angeles Times Mapping Project, South Los Angeles comprises 51 square miles, consisting of 25 neighborhoods within the City of Los Angeles and also three unincorporated neighborhoods.^[3]

Google Maps

Google Maps delineates a similar area to the Los Angeles Times Mapping Project with notable differences on the western border. On the northwest, it omits a section of Los Angeles west of La Brea Avenue. On the southwest, it includes a section of Inglewood north of Century Boulevard. ^[6]

Districts and neighborhoods

The South Los Angeles region as mapped by the Los Angeles Times

City of Los Angeles

According to the Mapping L.A. survey of the Los Angeles Times, the South Los Angeles region consists of the following:^[7]

Unincorporated county

History

Pre-1948

South L.A. 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 1920s, West Adams was one of the most desirable areas of the city. Then development of the Wilshire Boulevard corridor drew Los Angeles’ development west of downtown. As the wealthy were building stately mansions in West Adams and Jefferson Park, the white working class was establishing itself in Crenshaw and Hyde Park. Affluent blacks gradually moved into West Adams and Jefferson Park as the decades passed.^[8]

At the same time, the area of modest bungalows and low-rise commercial buildings along Central Avenue emerged as the heart of the black community in southern California. It had one of the first jazz scenes in the western U.S., with trombonist Kid Ory a prominent resident.^[9] Under racially restrictive covenants, blacks were allowed to own property only within the Main-Slauson-Alameda-Washington box and in Watts, as well as in small enclaves elsewhere in the city.^[8] The working- and middle-class blacks who poured into Los Angeles during the Great Depression and in search of jobs during World War II found themselves penned into what was becoming a severely overcrowded neighborhood. During the war, blacks faced such dire housing shortages that the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles built the virtually all-black and Latino Pueblo Del Rio project, designed by Richard Neutra.^[10]

1948–1960s

When 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 began in the 1920s, white gangs in nearby cities such as South Gate and Huntington Park routinely accosted blacks who traveled through white areas. The black mutual protection clubs that formed in response to these assaults became the basis of the region’s fearsome street gangs.^[11]

As in most urban areas, 1950s freeway construction radically altered the geography of southern Los Angeles. Freeway routes tended to reinforce traditional segregation lines.^[12]

1970s–1990s

Beginning in the 1970s, the rapid decline of the area’s manufacturing base resulted in a loss of the jobs that had allowed skilled union workers to have a middle class life. Downtown Los Angeles’ service sector, which had long been dominated by unionized African Americans earning relatively high wages, replaced most black workers with newly arrived Mexican and Central American immigrants.^[8]

Widespread unemployment, poverty and street crime contributed to the rise of street gangs in South Central, such as the Crips and Bloods. They became even more powerful with money from drugs, especially the crack cocaine trade, dominated by gangs in the 1980s.^[11]

2000s–present

By the early 2000s, the crime rate of South L.A. has lowered significantly. Current redevelopment, improved police patrol, community-based peace programs, gang intervention work, and youth development organizations lowered the murder and crime rates to levels that have not been seen since the 1940s and ’50s. Nevertheless, South Los Angeles is still known for its gangs at the time.^[13]
In mid 2003, the City of Los Angeles officially changed the region’s name from South Central to South Los Angeles, a move supporters said would “help erase a stigma that has dogged the southern part of the city.”^[14]

On August 11, 2014, just two days after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a resident of South Los Angeles, Ezell Ford, described as “a mentally ill 25-year-old man”, was fatally shot by two Los Angeles police officers (see Shooting of Ezell Ford).^[15] Since then, a number of protests focused on events in Ferguson have taken place in South Los Angeles.^[16][17]

Demographics

By the end of the 1980s, South Los Angeles had an increasing number of Hispanics and Latinos, mostly in the northeastern section of the region.^[18]

“Between 1970 and 1990 the South LA area went from 80% black and 9% Latino to 50.3% black and 44% Latino.”^[19] This massive and rapid residential demographic change occurred as resources in the area were shrinking due to global economic restructuring described above and due to the federal government’s decrease in funding of urban anti-poverty and jobs programs, and other vital social services like healthcare. The socio-economic context described here increased the perception and the reality of competition amongst Asians, blacks, and Latinos in South LA. The results from the 2000 census which show continuing demographic change coupled with recent economic trends indicating a deterioration of conditions in South LA suggest that such competition will not soon ease.”^[7]

In the 2010 census, the area of South Los Angeles had a population of about 768,456. 64.0% of the residents were Hispanic or Latino, nearly 31.4% were African American.^[20]

Education

South Los Angeles is home to the University of Southern California, a private research university in the University Park neighborhood. It is California’s oldest private research university.^[21]

Public schools

Almost all of the South Los Angeles Area is served by the Los Angeles Unified School District. There are some schools not within the LAUSD reach that also serve the South Los Angeles Area, such as independent private schools.

Los Angeles Unified School District

The following are some of the schools under the LAUSD which fall within the boundaries of the South Los Angeles region.

LAUSD Elementary Schools ^[22]

• Coliseum Street Elementary


• Graham Elementary


• Grape Street Elementary


• Manchester Avenue Elementary


• Russell Elementary


• 68th Street Elementary


• 75th Street Elementary


• 107th Street Elementary


• 109th Street Elementary


• 112th Street Elementary


• 116th Street Elementary


• 118th Street Elementary

LAUSD Middle Schools^[22]

• Audubon Middle School


• Charles Drew Middle School


• Edwin Markham Middle School


• Mary McLeod Bethune Middle School


• Samuel Gompers Middle School


• Thomas Edison Middle School

LAUSD High Schools^[22]

• Crenshaw High School


• David Starr Jordan High School


• Susan Miller Dorsey High School


• Diego Rivera Learning Complex


• John C Fremont High School


• King-Drew Senior High Medicine and Science Magnet


• Mervyn M Dymally Senior High


• Nathaniel Narbonne Senior High

Community Colleges

• Los Angeles Southwest College

Universities

• University of Southern California

Landmarks

An image of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

An image of the California Science Center

Former landmarks

Notable people

Music and entertainment

Sports and athletes

Politicians

Artists, filmmakers and writers

Clergy

• 
  Frederick K. C. Price (Watts)—founder and pastor of Crenshaw Christian Center


• Javier Buelna – founder and pastor of Restauracion Total ( RTLA Church )

Government and infrastructure

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services operates the South Health Center in Watts, Los Angeles, serving South Los Angeles.^[24]

See also

• 
  Our Town in Los Angeles Times suburban sections

People

• 
  James G. McAllister, president of the South Los Angeles Property Owners’ Protective League and City Council member


• 
  Robert C. Farrell (born 1936), journalist and member of the Los Angeles City Council, 1974–1991, prepared report on unemployment in Watts

Other regions of Los Angeles County

References

Further reading

• Renwick, Lucille. “COVER STORY : THE MYTH OF South-Central : More a Stereotype Than a Place, It Is Defined By Ethnicity and Negative Media Images Rather Than Street Boundaries”. Los Angeles Times. January 3, 1993.


• Kotkin, Joel (contributing editor of Opinion section) “COMMUNITY: Latinization of South Los Angeles” (Opinion). Los Angeles Times. May 28, 1995.

External links

• 
  Media related to South Los Angeles at Wikimedia Commons


• 
  South Los Angeles travel guide from Wikivoyage

Coordinates: 33°55′39″N 118°16′38″W / 33.9275°N 118.27722°W / 33.9275; -118.27722