Change gone come!
I came here by way of Chi-town in the early 70s. I can remember my momma telling me we was moving to a place where the earth shakes and my dream of the earth cracking open and enveloping our house.
My mom and dad purchased a home in a community still containing white folk, one was even a member of the Kennedy clan, They got it for a mere $21,000.00 for a four bedroom home built in 1938 thanks to the Veterans Act..
Back then this was called South Los Angeles. The Warning: you are now entering a danger zone was not labeled by a street called Martin Luther King Blvd. Back then it was called Santa Barbara Blvd. and Inglewood Park Cemetery had a clause in its policy that said No niggers are to be barrier here.
As years past and us youngins grew happily playing throughout the neighbor hood, our greatest adventures where raiding the fruit trees of our unsuspecting seniors and challenging the 55th st. clan to a game of football at Vermont Square park to prove who had the toughest street by breaking a leg or two during play.
The 80s rolled in with force and the last of the rebellious white folk rolled out with the exception of Ms. Kennedy who had told me she raised her children and buried her husband in that community, and she was not going no where even though by this time I had reached my late teens early 20s and begged her to take the next thing smoking to Sacramento our states capital to be with her politician daughters. Our community was changing, the government had pumped Rock Cocaine into it. She had been robbed so many times on her constitutionals to the B of A to do her banking. This woman looked to be a hundred when I moved here. As children we called her a Witch cause she was wrinkled old and white and we where young with Hansel and Gretel fresh in our minds.
Our joke back then was we where gonna get married and buy a 2 room shack in Watts, which still held its notorious claim to fame from the 1964 Watts Riots. We had not yet realized that So. Los Angeles was now holding a new name, South Central with Santa Barbara Blvd. now gloriously posting the landmark Warning: sign of MLK, get the Hell out! as now our own was evacuating our neighbor hoods and running to the desert, until John Singleton with all his 19 year old wisdom came out with his now classic Boyz in the Hood and back then Larry Fishburne, (not Laurence) so eloquently broke down to those remaining what the government was doing to take back the land. No one noticed that property value had shot up to over $100,000.00. My moms $28,000 home was now worth $139,000.00 and climbing and my sisters where saying sale this place and go.
I found Boyz in the Hood to be one of the most informative movies I had saw, opened my eyes around me. I told my mom no! You hold on to your home sit back and wait. Times are a changing. Then I became a menace to South Central, drinking my juice in the hood. Handling family business and waiting, informing the hood. Noticing the Condos, Townhomes and new ranch homes going up in Not only South Central, But the infamous WATTS
A date in time: Now the year is 2006. I came to visit my mom who still resides in South Central Los Angeles oh now her community is called Chesterfield Square. As I stood looking out her security door that now covered her front door I happened to notice the new members to her street and thought to myself, the white folks have returned.
August 12, 2006, A Former NBA star is buying up the So. Los Angeles area, who I shall remain nameless. His community project is in full force on West 51st. street in Chesterfield Square. Over the past 20 years he purchased homes at a price of $120,000 and up to expand the community boys and girls club that raised me and my siblings when it was founded in the dwellings of a old abandoned grocery market by a loving and caring man named Lou Dansler who past away just a couple of months ago way back when, in my youth, and is now famously known as The Challengers Boy and Girls Clubs of America.
My moms $21,000 home build in 1938, rebuild do to the earthquake of 1994 and rebuilt again do to fire in 1998 now holds a whooping value of $1 million dollars. The last house standing since his project has purchased the last two homes standing beside hers, 1 @ $600,000.00 and the other @ $700,000 two homes that in their final days held familys of Hispanics. They went around hers because they said they had to get together the $650,000 she was asking for at the time. I dont understand what that was about. I wondered could it had been that she is a black single retired 50 something year old showing her arrogant business skills by bringing her community property value up and not putting herself in a position of starting over again when she purchases a new home by taking on a new note and the astronomical Cali. Property Tax.
Im not quite sure why I sat and typed this in my closure, maybe it was the echo of the speakers of the event happening at the Boys club which is pretty much now her back yard as the little girl sings the Black National Anthem Lift Every Voice and Sing that made me reminisce about the days of old. But all that has been said in this short story I hope it gives ideas and wisdom to some community that sees a change a coming.
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Lisa Kirk 2007 ©
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