Crenshaw Boulevard is known as the cultural and commercial spine of Black Los Angeles. It spans 23 miles across the region, from Hancock Park to Palos Verdes, and travels through Leimert park, Inglewood, South LA, and the namesake district itself. A century ago, it was a white area — but its demographics began to change after exclusionary housing laws were challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948. Amid economic underdevelopment and disinvestment, Crenshaw became known for other things over the decades, including the crack epidemic and civil unrest in 1992.
Today, the boulevard faces new changes: gentrification, the LA Metro K Line, and a $100 million park and outdoor museum called Destination Crenshaw. The new project has garnered both suspicion and hope for Crenshaw’s future, which Lynell George wrote about in her new piece titled “Crenshaw at the Crossroads.”
At completion, the 1.3 mile-long Destination Crenshaw will stretch from Leimert Boulevard to 60th Street — dotting the throughway with nearly a dozen parks. Sankofa Park will be at its center, which George says is billed as a beautiful centerpiece to the development.
“The hopes are that this will become a gathering place for celebration, for protest, for people getting together, and it will become this new visual landmark of a particular Black Los Angeles,” George tells KCRW.
The project, which broke ground in 2020, continues to stoke residents’ fears over the neighborhood’s future. George points to the long-standing hurt the community has endured, stretching back decades.
“There was so much damage to so many buildings, businesses that went out of business stayed out of business. There are these boarded up storefronts, and some storefronts that have been boarded up since the Watts Rebellion in 1965.”
George continues, “In certain ways, being under the radar, people felt that they could hold on to their own community and style it.”
Now, as property values have risen, the neighborhood is turning over and inviting in a new community, raising fears over a changing culture, George says.
“Look at gentrification cycles: people are very often worried about art. When people say artists are coming and museums are coming, when coffee comes,those are the things that people worry about — that this is going to up-seat this community. … This has been a real concern that I've been hearing around the edges. Murals get painted over that … really told the story of the neighborhood. People really look at things like that as the first wave of being erased.”
But George points out that Destination Crenshaw’s president Jason Foster has worked to meet residents face-to-face to try and alleviate concern. He’s visited businesses and talked to residents about what they need and what could ease the transition.
Those fears are still difficult to assuage, George contends. That’s because they also stem from the years-long controversy surrounding the K Line. Locals, including the late rapper Nipsey Hussle, felt the above-ground light rail would disconnect the Crenshaw community by splitting it in half.
“What Nipsey Hussle was concerned about was that it felt like Crenshaw was just going to be a pass through. It wasn't going to be a destination site. And there's such rich history in this neighborhood that people don't know about,” George explains. “So much of our lives are spent in cars, on transit, moving through places and not stopping. So why not take advantage of this new line going through from the airport, so new people who have not been to Los Angeles before can learn a little bit about Black Los Angeles and Black art and Black music and Black culture?”
In conversation with artists and businesses, George says she heard a desire for Crenshaw's Black residents to stay: “Once people decide that they want to leave, it's as Jason Foster said to me: ‘It takes about three years for them to actually move. So the idea is to try to give them incentives to stay, because presence really matters. Presence is what draws people. So they're trying in every possible way to do public events that celebrate Black LA.”
Read more: Destination Crenshaw was a Nipsey Hussle dream
George herself has seen Crenshaw’s evolution — it's the neighborhood she says that defines who she is.
“My family integrated that neighborhood. We were one of the first Black families to move in. And at first, I could feel the tension, even as a small child, that you're new. People were not, at first, friendly, and then there was a lot of turnover — a lot of turnover, a lot of white flight.”
In their stead, came Black families from states like Texas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Through them, George and her family learned about the experience of Black Americans from other parts of the country. But after George’s mom received a new teaching position, her family moved west to Culver City.
Today, George still visits her old, Spanish stucco home with its red terracotta tile roof. She once dreamt of reinhabiting the abode, but after visits to Zillow, she’s learned the version she remembers no longer exists.