Lynwood, California - My Hometown

The tale of the City of Lynwood is one that begins with promise, but over time finds itself filled with torment and stagnation. Located in the southeast region of Los Angeles County, the city promised to serve a model representative for the working class suburban dream. Close proximity to the booming anchor of Los Angeles and boasting its own fair share of commercial and industrial prowess, the town became a prime target for families looking to sprout roots in pursuit of their own slice of the American pie. 

The initial settlers of Lynwood came from far and wide. In the town’s earliest chapter, the settlers worked - explicitly and implicitly - to create and maintain a community of Whiteness; in a fashion similar to many other suburban cities undergoing formation around the same time. Yet, over the years, the seismic demographic shifts that have colored the entire region would ultimately take hold and render this vision infeasible. 

Again, the story of Lynwood isn’t an entirely unique one. Other cities in the region such as Compton, Lynwood’s neighbor to the South, and South Gate, Lynwood’s neighbor to the North, have undergone similar changes over time. Other cities have seen their hopes for sustainable growth in opportunity and economic development dim over the same time horizon. Yet, for me, the motivation to tell the story of Lynwood is more personal than it is practical. 

Lynwood is, after all, the city that raised me. It’s the city where my mother and father - both children of Lynwood - would meet as bright-eyed high schoolers that would go on to have a snotty-nosed kid - me - well before they were ready to do so. It’s the city where Cleophus Collins and Linnie Collins, my maternal grandparents, would create a base for generations to come. Both born in Arkansas, they would each follow The Second Great Migration west before meeting, marrying and building a family in Southern California. 

It’s estimated that during this Second Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of African Americans boarded trains in an effort to flee the deep racial tensions of the South. Over a three year span between 1942 and 1945, nearly 350,000 African Americans arrived in California; many of them choosing the Los Angeles region as their new home. And although the racial tensions of the West were more muted and the opportunities more plentiful, this major demographic shift would be followed by both booms and busts that would hollow out what we know today as the inner city and set the stage for repeated social behaviors and policy decisions that would depress the economic prospects not just for African Americans, but ultimately for all people of color living in densely populated areas. 

With this work, I hope to revisit some of the primary contributors to the greater urban decline as it has specifically manifested itself in Lynwood. These factors would only become further compounded by the shift of the larger American economy away from manufacturing and towards service industries. I also hope to analyze persistent conditions in the city that are the result of unhealed wounds - self-inflicted and otherwise - that will continue to hamper prospects for growth - and to some extent normalcy - moving forward. And while this work promises not to deliver any sort of magic bullets that might one more make Lynwood and other cities like it resurgent, a successful outcome would be the reignition of conversations across local, regional, state and federal stakeholders on the unintentional, and at times intentional, consequences of broad sweeping policies in California’s post-freeway era. 

This isn't a story about what could have been done differently. It's a story about a community that is struggling today because of far-reaching decisions made at all levels of government.