Church and Inglewood: Growing Up Together

Inglewood and the First Presbyterian Church of Inglewood were established in tough times.

“Life was hard in the new town,” according to a history of the church. Wild hogs roamed outlying areas; willows grew 40 feet high at what is now Imperial and Crenshaw, and residents petitioned the county “to gravel the roads leading from Los Angeles to Inglewood because they were impassable.”

That was in 1890. The town’s population was less than 300.

Next Sunday, the church will celebrate its 98th anniversary--years that span Inglewood’s growth from a turn-of-the-century agricultural town to a modern-day city of 100,000 that has experienced dramatic ethnic change.

Wrote Church History

“I would describe it as a city that has always been proud of itself,” said Gladys Waddingham, who came to Inglewood in 1922 and joined the congregation soon after. Since the late 1920s, the indomitable Waddingham, 87, has lived in the same house in the city’s Morningside Park neighborhood. She is a charter member of the Centinela Valley Historical Society and author of the church’s 276-page history, published in 1985.

“She is the (church’s) foundation,” said Thomas Hawkins, a church elder and assistant to the Rev. Daniel Newhall, the pastor.

Waddingham, Hawkins and others in the integrated 309-member congregation are proud of how the church has managed to cherish the past while adapting to change.

William Kelso, an oil and real estate entrepreneur who became the city’s first mayor when Inglewood was incorporated in 1908, was one of the 14 founders of First Presbyterian. At the turn of the century, the congregation had its own building at Market and Queen streets. But it was forced to move after the advent of the streetcar, which passed directly in front of the church, kicking up sand and fleas.

The second church was built in 1911 at Nutwood and Commercial (now La Brea). When Waddingham arrived in 1922 to teach Spanish at Inglewood Union High School, the community was “the fastest-growing city in the nation. It was an agricultural hub,” she said recently.

It was also a conservative city with elements of prejudice. Waddingham’s book describes “Caucasian-only” signs and a 1922 Ku Klux Klan raid on the home of Fidel Elduayen, a Basque immigrant from Spain, which resulted in the death of a town constable.

The transition from agriculture to a booming prosperity based on the aircraft industry and real estate occurred in the 1940s. Ground breaking for the third church building at the present location--Hillcrest and Queen--took place in 1945. There were troops camped at Hollywood Park Race Track and anti-aircraft batteries at Century Boulevard near Prairie Avenue.

Just as the church paralleled the city’s growth during the 1940s and ‘50s, it was affected by the turmoil of the 1960s and ‘70s.

In 1975, amid heated conflict generated by Inglewood’s rapid change from a largely white community to a racially mixed one, Presbyterian officials decided that First Presbyterian was a “crisis church” that would not survive declining membership past 1979.

“They gave us about five years,” said Ann Gibbs, former director of the congregation’s nursery school.

Gibbs, who had been a member of an integrated Presbyterian congregation in New York City, became an important force in the church’s determined fight to survive in Inglewood and achieve racial integration, Newhall said.

She assumed leadership of the nursery school, which she transformed into a full-day program geared to accommodate the needs of the city’s new residents. “We were providing a community service,” Gibbs said. “Black parents brought their children and they were pleased. We recruited people into the congregation through the nursery school.”

Blacks Recruited

Meanwhile Hawkins, a former deputy to County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and retired public relations director for Martin Luther King Hospital, was charged with heading a recruitment drive for black members.

Those efforts were part of what Newhall calls a concerted “public and private” focus on integration that succeeded in stabilizing the church economically and bringing black membership up to a current 29%.

While there were occasionally trying moments, Hawkins and Gibbs praise Newhall for shepherding the congregation through its transition.

“There’s a lot of friendship and fellowship today,” Hawkins said. “A lot of credit goes to Dr. Newhall.

The church is active in community affairs, said Councilwoman Ann Wilk, who recently discussed Inglewood’s future with the church’s Women’s Assn. Inglewood residents make up about half the congregation, which includes several Nigerian families. Other members have moved as far away as Riverside.

There are still problems, such as coping with a national phenomenon: Aging church congregations are struggling to attract young members. Newhall says that a partial solution would be to address the needs of Inglewood’s growing Latino population.

“That’s the next big step,” he said. “One thing I’d like to do is offer a Bible class in Spanish. Right now, we’re not reaching that group.”

But Newhall says that the days of conflict and high crime--which included gunshots fired at Newhall outside the church several years ago and an armed robbery of Waddingham--have given way to hope.

Waddingham, whose projects include an updated history of the church for its centennial--”if I live that long”--said: “Many of those who moved out wish they hadn’t. My neighbors come back and say the neighborhood looks nice. I say, what did you expect? I have always gone along with change. Whenever there was change, I just went with it.”

Next week’s celebration will honor the 25-year-old nursery school and include a presentation on Martin Luther King Jr. by Hawkins. Newhall said it will provide an opportunity to reflect on the past and future of the church and the city.

“Those of us in the congregation who live in Inglewood think it has a capacity to be a remarkable city,” Newhall said. “A church is a sub-community. We’re trying to model the best human relationships that you can have. That doesn’t mean we’re perfect or we don’t have problems. But I’d like to think that my contribution to the world is this little church--a prototype, an attempt in human relations.”