School Hangs Onto Its Black Heritage

Southwest College, born of the Watts riots in the 1960s, is believed to have the largest percentage of black students of any college or university on the West Coast despite being surrounded by increasingly Latino high schools and neighborhoods.

The 6,700-student community college has maintained its 78% African American enrollment largely because of its location in South-Central Los Angeles, between Watts and Inglewood, and its relationship with local predominantly black high schools. Its Latino population is more than 20%.

“This school is known as a black college,” said interim President Bonnie James. “It’s part of the community here, and it’s probably going to stay that way in people’s minds.”

Campus officials, alumni and students say it is important for students in the city’s historic black core to feel they have a school of their own to counter the effects of growing up poor in an area often overlooked by politicians and corporations.

But critics, including former Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally, a Los Angeles resident and the state Legislature’s liaison to community colleges, said Southwest officials are moving too slowly to adjust to the inevitable increase in the Latino population of its student body.

“Some of my friends are in denial,” Dymally said. “We have to deal with that fact of demographic change.”

Although the African American enrollment has held steady, the percentage of blacks living in South-Central has fallen from 61% in 1990 to 47% in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The region runs from Crenshaw east to Watts and south to Gardena and Inglewood.

Southwest College reaches out to young African Americans by offering programs that appeal to black cultural sensibilities, such as sponsoring a classic black film festival each year and participating in the L.A. Watts Summer Games, James said.

Fifty-seven percent of its full-time faculty members are black, compared with 14% citywide. Southwest educates more African Americans than any other community college in the state, according to figures from the California Community College chancellor’s office.

In contrast, enrollment at the only two colleges in the West registered as historically black colleges and universities--Compton College and Drew University of Medicine near Watts--has fallen to about 50% African American, down from almost exclusively black enrollments when they were founded in the late 1960s.

Alumni Contribute to the Community

The 118 historically black colleges and universities were founded starting in 1837 in response to segregation in the South and East.

Southwest, which does not receive federal funding set aside for minority campuses, is not registered. But school officials promote its heritage by pointing to the contributions to the community made by successful black alumni, such as Jheryl Busby, director of Founders National Bank and former president of Motown Records.

“Poor communities need to feel a sense of possessing what’s in their environment,” said Tim Watkins, president of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, a nonprofit group that provides job training and educational programs for low-income residents.

James Burks, a 1968 graduate of Southwest and a city arts director, said the school should recruit black students beyond South-Central.

“The kids who go to black schools are more comfortable with people who look like them and who they think can empathize with them,” Burks said.

Michandra Lake, 20, graduated from a black high school in Dallas and hoped to attend one of Texas’ eight historically black colleges and universities. Now living in Culver City, she plans to attend Southwest this fall.

“I wanted to go to a black school because this is the last time I’ll get to be around so many of my people,” Lake said. “It’s not going to be like that when I get out of school and go to work.”

The college is a source of pride to local African Americans who struggled to establish the campus, and it serves as a focal point for community events, Watkins said.

Major league baseball holds its inner-city youth games there. It is home to a well-attended series of forums on the payment of reparations to African Americans for slavery. A youth summer camp and shows by black artists, such as the Watts Prophets poets, are held there.

“It was primarily a black institution with a mission to provide an educational service,” Watkins said. “Who’s providing the service does not need to change just because the demographics are changing.”

To Carol Welsh, director of the federal Hispanic Serving Institutions program at Long Beach City College, Southwest is justified in focusing on its majority population.

Since Long Beach was designated a “Hispanic-serving institution” by the U.S. Department of Education in 1997, administrators have adjusted curriculum and trained faculty to appeal to Latinos.

“It’s not to exclude other groups,” Welsh said. “It’s just to start with a concentration on the group that needs it and understanding that Hispanic students, African Americans or any group learns differently in different environments.”

But Dymally, an advisor to the president of Compton College, which was designated Hispanic-serving this year, said Southwest would be better served by modifying its programs to attract nearby Latinos. Compton is seeking a Latino president and expanding its soccer and English-as-a-second-language programs.

“All of our colleges are going to become Hispanic-serving institutions. Maybe not tomorrow, but certainly the day after tomorrow,” Dymally said.

Warren Furutani, a Los Angeles Community College District trustee, said Southwest’s history should be touted to local Asian and Latino high school students, who often attend college elsewhere because they do not feel welcome.

“You can’t deny the heritage that’s Southwest’s cornerstone,” Furutani said. “But I think, like in any public institution, people get provincial and there are going to be cliques and groups. People need to have a broader vision for the college.”

Southwest’s outreach remains confined to the neighborhoods that share its history of triumph after destruction in the Watts riots, which have been credited with helping establish the school. Watts residents took to the streets Aug. 11, 1965, to protest brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department. In five days of violence, 34 people were killed, almost 1,000 hurt and nearly 4,000 arrested.

School Was Born of Rebellion

“If there was no rebellion, there would be no Southwest College,” said Sandra Cox, a board member of the college’s fund-raising foundation and daughter of one of its founders.

A state commission determined the rebellion was caused by police resentment, lack of jobs for blacks and poor educational opportunities for black children.

Cox and others believe the riots caught the attention of Los Angeles Unified School District, which controlled the community colleges at the time, 14 years after the board began getting pressured to create a college in South-Central.

Enrollment figures at Southwest have soared and sunk with the defense- and manufacturing-based economy of the area. From 1991 to 1993, amid recession and unrest in the city, enrollment dropped 20%, compared with a 14% decrease citywide. Southwest was the last of the nine Los Angeles campuses to recover from budget deficits.

“When the rest of the city gets a cold, we get pneumonia in South-Central,” Cox said.

In planning for the school’s upcoming $111-million renovation, James insisted that architects redesign the main building. “You see, it’s supposed to be riot-proof,” James said, pointing toward the foreboding, four-story, gray-walled building that has no windows on the first three floors.

The entrances to Southwest are sealed by iron gates.

“It looks more like a prison than an inviting educational environment,” he said.

Dymally and Furutani agreed that bond funds can be used to make Southwest more attractive to a wider range of students.

“The idea of Southwest as a black school is not some flight of fancy or retro view of the world,” Furutani said. “But the future is in maintaining the cornerstone of history within a more multiethnic environment.”

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Blacks at Southwest College

The percentage of African Americans in the South Los Angeles area* decreased during the 1990s, while the percentage of African Americans at Southwest College grew.

*

Percentage of African Americans, South Los Angeles area

1990: 61%

2000: 47%

*

Percentage of African Americans, Southwest College

1990: 68%

2000: 78%

* Includes Watts, Lennox, Florence, Morningside Park, Hyde Park, Leimert Park, Jefferson Park, Walnut Park, Crenshaw, Baldwin Hills, Athens and parts of Inglewood

Source: Census Bureau, Los Angeles Community College District