Straight Into Compton

The story of Compton is not just what's changed, but how it's changed; community policing opened a door, and community activists were well positioned to walk through it. It's a tale of larger cultural trends, like the death of crack, and distinctly local initiatives, like gun buyback programs in grocery store parking lots. And it involves excesses of violence so dramatic that the gang leaders themselves recoiled, and worked to calm things down. (Article continued below...)

It's also a story of good, hardworking people, hungry to restore a sense of pride in their city. But those residents know all too well that their hard-won gains could prove to be fleeting, given the howling winds of economic distress at the door. And so Compton's leaders are pushing hard to stay one step ahead of forces they know could prove their undoing. "Ninety-five percent of the people in Compton want to do the right thing," Compton's mayor, Eric J. Perrodin, tells NEWSWEEK. "But of course, if people can't eat, they're going to do what they need to survive. And that usually means crime." In other words, "Straight Outta Compton" is an album no one here seems all that eager to play again.

Kelvin Filer, a Compton Superior Court judge, grew up in the city, and remembers what it was like before the downhill slide. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the community was a magnet for migrants seeking suburban tranquility and blue-collar jobs. Trouble brewing in nearby Watts helped spur the settlement of middle-class blacks in Compton—which became known as "Hub City" because of its central location (today it sits amid five freeways and two ports). George and Barbara Bush lived here for a brief time—in 1949, while the senior future President Bush was working as an oil-field-supply salesman.

In 1952, Compton received the National Civic League's "All American Cities" honor, and by 1960, the city's median income was almost twice that of Watts, with an unemployment rate of less than a third, according to Sides, a professor at Cal State Northridge, whose research on Compton was published in the 2004 book, "LA City Limits." In 1963, the city elected its first black politician, Douglas Dollarhide, who would later become the state's first black mayor. "I have wonderful memories of growing up here," says Filer. "The street that I was raised on was straight out of 'Leave It to Beaver,' with African-Americans. We played Little League, we were in the Cub Scouts, we all went to the same church."

But the Watts riots of 1965 shattered that calm; white business owners fled so fast, as Filer's father, a longtime city councilman, once put it, "they were leaving their doors open." In their wake were deserted storefronts and boarded-up homes. The black middle-class population also bolted. Unemployment shot up, along with the crime rate. The Crips were founded in South Central in 1969; the Bloods followed, on Piru Street in Compton, adopting the red color of their local high school, Centennial.

Conditions spiraled downward; a 1982 Rand study declared the city "a disaster area." And that was before crack came to town. Between 1984 and 1991, gang violence in L.A. County increased by 200 percent, with half of all black males between 21 and 24 said to be affiliated, according to a 1992 report by the district attorney's office. By 1991, Compton had its highest number of homicides on record, with 87—or three times the per capita murder rate of the city of Los Angeles. The days of "Leave It to Beaver" were long gone.