Brown and Black Political Theater: A New Demographic Shift for Lynwood

Illegal immigration has placed the African American in the position of having to compete for resources that are few and far between...even though this is a Republican initiative, you're going to find a lot of Blacks favoring it. Omar Bradley, Mayor of Compton

The African American political and demographic majority in Lynwood only lasted for a decade. According to Neal, many black residents lived in the corridor and were driven from the city en masse when property began to be acquired. Lynwood alone saw more than 1000 housing units bulldozed, with previous residents pushed out abruptly in search of affordable housing in a region colored by rising housing costs. 

Few in the 1960s would have predicted the Latino rise to power. Whites so dominated the population that the city was known by some as ‘Lily White Lynwood.’ But Lynwood was sliced in half by the planning and construction of the Century Freeway in the 1970s. More than 1,000 homes were demolished. Employers fled. Property values tumbled.

In 1992, Felicity Barringer from the New York Times took a look at emerging demographic trends in the Los Angeles region. Census data showing an “inner-city black population of Los Angeles jostling for living space with a vast inflow of Hispanic and Asian immigrants.” The impact of White Flight was beginning to come into greater focus, as poverty rates throughout the region began to soar. Despite increased economic uncertainty in the region, the Hispanic population would jump from 27.5% in 1980 to around 40% a decade later.

During this period of time, some African Americans managed to flee Watts and the Florence-Normandie areas to build an enclave of Black homeowners in areas like Inglewood. Experiencing a mass exodus of Whites, Inglewood seemed to some extent to be accepting of these new upwardly mobile Blacks. For those incapable of making such moves, the fight for resources - housing, jobs, or otherwise - began to take on a zero-sum nature. A job gained by a Latino man was a job taken away from an African American man, and vice versa. 

Despite the demographic swings of this particular area, it has been shown that Hispanics enjoy greater access to the “race-restricted White working-class suburbs” east of Alameda. Josh Sides notes that In 1960, Hawthorne, Huntington Park, Inglewood, Lynwood, South Gate and Bell Gardens were home to more than 9000 mexicans but less than 100 African Americans.

As the stage was being set for tension to build between the two groups, the Lynwood Station of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department wasn’t exactly a stabilizing force. In fact, gang activity was manifesting itself inside the station with the creation of the Lynwood Vikings, a white supremacist gang. Created in 1988, the gang would quickly take hold and internal efforts to disband the group would be abandoned in the early 90s, with many opponents fearing reprisal if they spoke up. The gang counted Undersheriff Paul Tanaka as a member, who would later be convicted of obstruction of justice charges that ….

Despite further investigations that confirmed the gang’s existence and the clear profiling of African Americans, members of the city council were very metered in their response. Whereas Armando Rea confirmed the profiling realities that he observed while working as a Sheriff in the city, Mayor Louise Heine used what today would have been a more heavily scrutinized turn of phrase. “Lynwood gets the blame for every damn thing that happens, every cotton-pickin’ thing,'' Heine said.

While any lingering tensions between the city’s Black and White populations were increasingly diminishing, new tensions spurred by the city’s Black leaders would set the stage for conflict between African Americans and Latinos. Such was the case when Robert Henning, Evelyn Wells and Paul Richards banded together to advocate for changing the name of the segment of Century Boulevard that ran Lynwood to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. 

Although the council members succeeded in their quest - a 3 to 2 vote during the celebration of Black History Month that broke out along racial lines - the subsequent election was largely viewed as a referendum on the name change. For the first time a full slate of Latino candidates would run and Armando Rea would be the first and only of the Latino candidates to break through to win a seat. Evelyn Wells and Paul Richards would manage to hold onto their seats. 

“I’m just happy one of us won”, noted one of the losing Latino candidates. Seemingly quite aware of the fact that this was a symbolic moment bigger than any one candidate’s individual aspirations. 

Looking back on what was a hotly contested election, Wells wasn’t bashful when discussing a mailer sent by a group called Latin American Togethers. The mailer highlighted that while 45% of Lynwood’s population was Latino, this population held zero representation on the city council. 

“I see this as racism,” Wells said. Adding that, “I hope [Rea] will be willing to work with the entire community, not just the Latino community.” A more measured Paul Richards simply noted that Rea’s selection was “long overdue” given the aforementioned proportion of Latinos in the city.

Further recall efforts related to the MLK controversy failed, but the damage was done. There was no love lost between the two communities. 

All of these conditions made for interesting circumstances as Lynwood’s Latino population prepared to mount their most formidable show of political agency to date. In an election framed as a referendum against Robert Henning and Paul Richards - both African Americans - many in surrounding areas undergoing a similar demographic transformation watched with great anticipation, in many cases rightly believe that the outcome in Lynwood would likely replicate itself elsewhere. When the final votes were tallied, the city first Black elected official was ousted while Paul Richards narrowly hung onto his seat. Latinos would from this day forth maintain nearly uninterrupted control of Lynwood’s city council. 

As Camarillo wrote in 2009, “[the] politics of exclusion practiced by both groups in Lynwood and in Compton, appeared to have a stranglehold on any potential for intergroup cooperation.” This proved to in fact be the case when Leticia Vasquez, a Latina and also notably a woman who served as a substitute teacher for me from time to time, came other criticism from some segments of the city’s Latino population after being perceived as too sympathetic towards black causes and advancing an overall agenda based on inclusion.

Vasquez, as will be discussed later, tested her political fate and lost while aligning behind an initiative for the city alongside several African American officials. 

Even before the political jousting, Black and Brown interactions could on occasion be tense. A task force funded by Federal dollars would operate out of the Lynwood Sheriff’s Station in hopes of stemming some of the increased gang activity in the region. It was noted that gang members would often prey upon undocumented individuals taking up residence in the city, given that they would seldom report being the victim of a crime out of fear of deportation. Deputies suspected that over time these antagonized individuals might consider forming their  own gangs to fight back against their antagonizers.

Nonetheless, there were also shows of camaraderie between the two groups in the 1960s and 1970s. One thing that seemed to bring Blacks and Browns together was a love of cars. Beyond that, both groups could also commiserate over the poor treatment that both groups received in Lynwood. Some took to calling the city “Lynchwood” owing to how quickly a non-White person driving into the city would find themselves harassed and/or escorted out by Lynwood police officers.