Watts Service Remembers Youths Killed by Gangs

During a memorial service in Watts on Sunday, Luster Kelsey was reminded, as he often is, of the murder of his 17-year-old son four years ago.

It was September, about 3:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. His son, Kevin, stood in an alley less than 10 feet from two youths he thought were his “friends.” The two were arguing about who should kill him.

As Kevin walked away, one youth shot him in the neck. As he lay wounded, asking for an explanation, his murderer stood over him, struggling to fix the gun, which had jammed. The next shot was to the head. Five days later, Kevin was dead.

The gunman was convicted of first-degree murder. It was during the trial that the senior Kelsey learned the details of his son’s slaying.

Kelsey said the murder was apparently in retaliation for the gang-related death of one of the “friend’s” brothers, who had been killed by someone who lived in the Kelseys’ Watts neighborhood.

Kelsey is convinced that his son had no part in that death. And “he didn’t appear to be in no gang,” the father added.

But that didn’t matter to his son’s murderer, Kelsey said he believes. “He don’t have to be responsible. All they want is someone, out of that area, to feel justified,” he said over the noise of drums beating out rhythms for the Nickerson Gardens Drill Team.

Kevin Kelsey and 45 other youths and 12 adult community members were remembered in Sunday’s “Service of the Golden Thread” at the William Nickerson Recreation Center in the Watts housing project.

All 46 youths died in gang-related killings in the last few years, although some were just innocent bystanders, said Dr. Ernest Smith, one of the organizers of the religious service attended by about 150 people, at least 60% of them children.

“The idea is to get the young people to think about the amount of bloodshed in their generation and what they’re going to do about it,” Smith said of the service. “We don’t expect any conversions, or any changes. All we’re trying to do is plant a seed and hopefully it will come to fruit someday.”

The “fruit” that Smith and the other organizers are trying to foster is a gang-free life for black children. He said he hoped that children “who are not in gangs become strengthened in their view (of) why they are not in gangs.”

Those children, in turn, can influence friends and acquaintances who are in gangs to get out, he said. Youths who stay out of gangs may grow up to be parents who keep their children out, he added.

“Leadership has got to emerge now, and that’s moral leadership . . . ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” Smith said.

For that reason, children were involved as much as possible with Sunday’s service, he said.

The drill team strutted, youth choirs sang religious songs and children read the “Roll Call of the Dead.”

Five boys, ages 10 to 14, known as the “Juvenile Committee,” performed two rap songs.

The first rap was religious and preached: “There’s a brother named God” and “I’m so glad Jesus set me free.”

They got tough on their second rap, “Beat It”:

I’m hot on your trail

Like a hammer on a nail

Closin’ in fast like a prison cell

When I catch you slippin’ I’m going for broke

Like a pit bull lockin’ on your throat

So beat it.

Maxwell Henderson, 22, who writes the raps for the Juvenile Committee, which is now recording an album, said the group sets an example for the other children in the housing project.

“It’s hard to stay out (of gangs), but with the right teachers and the right example, you can do it,” he said.

Smith said that most of the youths remembered at Sunday’s service lived in crime-ridden Nickerson Gardens--the largest public housing project west of the Mississippi River.

It was the 12th annual service and the second consecutive year that it was held at Nickerson Gardens.

The service has “always been (held) in a rough place,” Smith said. “But that’s what we do, because that’s where the problem is.”

The gatherings are also are a way of “sanctifying the property,” Smith said, and, “in that respect, making the burden a little lighter.”

Sunday’s service was the largest in terms of the “Roll Call of the Dead,” he said. The names were painted on two large boards under the inscription: “In memory of many . . . just to name a few.”

‘Mothers’ of Program

For the first time Sunday, more than just the youths who have died were remembered. The 12 adults were remembered for how they helped the young people in the community. Unlike the youths who died violent deaths, the 12 community workers died of natural causes or in accidents in the last 12 years.

Two of those, Ella Scranton and Grace Wilson, died in the last year. They were considered the “mothers” of Watts College of Child Development, one of the sponsors of the service.