Old Memories Confront New Realities in South L.A. : Neighborhood: Some blacks adjust, others leave what was once the core of the African-American community.

The changes came gradually, in seemingly unconnected fragments.

The corner jazz club became a parking lot. The neighborhood pharmacy closed its doors and the marquee came down at the theater. A new family, speaking a different language, moved in down the street after the elderly widow passed away.

Gone was the pool hall where neighborhood men bumped heads and billiard balls into the wee hours. A welding shop took its place, an “I Love El Salvador” sticker displayed on the wall.

Slowly, the pieces came together, and the picture that emerged was hard to accept and impossible to change: The community was no longer the same, no longer had the feel of home.

Vincent Sumler sat inside The Pit, a barbecue restaurant he opened on Vermont Avenue in 1958, and remembered the way it was long ago.

“There used to be theaters everywhere, up and down Broadway,” the 60-year-old North Carolina native said. “They’re gone. Just like somebody came in and got them at night.”

South Los Angeles was once the core of the city’s black community. Today, the area is home to tens of thousands of Latino immigrants. They have found hope in a neighborhood that blacks, young and old, have been leaving during the past decade to pursue their dreams of a better life in the suburbs.

Those who have remained, while accepting the many forces that have changed their neighborhoods, mourn for their old community, for the way it used to be before years of crime and economic decline claimed the places of their youth--the skating rinks, the soda fountains, the nightclubs.

Walking alone, to where the old Sears used to be at Slauson Avenue and Vermont--”That’s what I miss,” said Catherine Williams, 68, who has lived in the same house on West 49th Street for four decades. “You can’t walk where you want in peace. I resent that.”

Williams was a newlywed in her early 20s when she came to South Los Angeles in 1943 with her husband, a Navy man based in Southern California. It was in South Los Angeles that she went to her first nightclub, where she saw Nat King Cole. “He was so elegant,” she remembered, smiling like it was yesterday.

Beverly Blake remembers the old-fashioned soda fountain down the block, where she andher girlfriends would giggle and munch on burgers and fries. Now closed, it was one of their many stops around the neighborhood.

“We’d walk everywhere,” said Blake, who is in her late 40s and grew up on 53rd Street. “We’d get out of movie theaters at 10:30 at night and walk from Figueroa and Santa Barbara (now King Boulevard) home.” Back then, she said, it seemed that people visited each other a little more, too.

Many blacks in South Los Angeles understand that old memories cannot compete with new realities. And for that reason, they are asking themselves the same unsettling question--should we stay or should we go?

“If I had money I wouldn’t be here,” said Major Cobb, a 55-year-old security guard who has lived here for some 20 years. “If I had the money I’d be up there in Baldwin Hills or somewhere where they have those swimming pools and everything.”

Or back down South, in Florida, where he was raised. He figures he can get about $165,000 for his house now, enough to buy a large home there so he could “live like a king.”

The son of a migrant worker, Cobb bought his house on 53rd Street in 1972 for $20,500. “It was a nice place,” he said. But since then, the neighborhood has deteriorated. “I think if (people) want to sell, like me, they should take the money and run.”

Ultimately, migration from the area is probably inevitable as the neighborhood children grow up and begin their own families. Mary Clark’s son is one of many who have gotten married and moved east to the Moreno Valley, where a once-barren landscape near San Bernardino has been transformed into one of the country’s fastest-growing suburban communities.

“They have a little daughter and he wanted a better life for her,” Clark said of her son. She said it was not so different from the reasons she and her husband moved here from Louisiana in 1952. “I think if you can go to a better place, why not?”

Still, Clark feels sad as she watches neighbors move away. “We sacrificed to buy (these homes) and when we see other people moving in, we give up and let them have it,” said Clark, a mother of three. “I would like to see us keep what we have.”

Beverly Blake understands all the talk of leaving.

She left 53rd Street once herself, in 1967, when she was a young widow with three small children. Her husband had died in a plane crash and she watched as more neighborhood businesses became liquor stores and the quality of merchandise got worse.

Losing confidence in the public school system, Blake decided to take her children away from South Los Angeles and make a new home in Altadena.

But four years ago, faced with financial problems, she returned to the family home. “And I stayed,” she said, “because I wanted to become more involved in the community.”

“When we move, we lose,” Blake added. At stake is the ability for blacks to live close together and share cultural traditions. At stake, said Blake, is power.

“The more we move out, the less political clout we have,” she said. “If we don’t live together geographically, how do we empower each other?”

While most are sensitive to the political implications of black flight, many say their choice to stay is based on reasons more personal than ethnic pride or empowerment.

No matter that crime has gotten so bad or that Latinos will soon be in the majority, Williams, for one, says she is going nowhere.

“Honey, it didn’t make me no difference whatsoever because . . . this is mine,” she said of her cozy home. “It may not look like anything to anybody else, but my husband’s blood, sweat and tears went into this house. This is mine and I’ll fight like hell to keep it.”

The Pit restaurant is also staying, even though business has not been the same since the neighboring Club Sahara closed a few years back and more Latinos moved into the area, craving foods other than barbecued ribs--the house specialty.

Still, the restaurant remains a symbol of African-American entrepreneurship in an areawhere many of the businesses are not black-owned. “It’s important they see something lasting,” owner Vincent Sumler said of the community, “through the good times and bad.”

South Los Angeles’ last major ethnic transition was in the 1960s, when the area became predominantly black. Many had fled the stifling racism of the South only to be confronted with deep prejudices here. As they moved in, whites moved out--creating one of the country’s most racially segregated regions.

In 1963, the people of South Los Angeles elected the city’s first black councilman, the late Gilbert Lindsay. The community’s economy, if not booming, was at least bustling. Small black-owned businesses, clubs and theaters dotted Central Avenue, the heart of black Los Angeles.

But in mid-August 1965, Watts exploded, and the area’s decline began. The arrest of a resident by a Los Angeles police officer ignited a six-day uprising, leaving 34 dead and causing an estimated $40 million in damage to hundreds of buildings, some burned to the ground.

After the riots, many businesses pulled out. For those who wanted to stay, loans and insurance were hard to find because jittery financial institutions would no longer invest in the community. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, South Los Angeles’ economy got even worse as many major companies, such as Firestone Tire & Rubber, closed their factories, leaving hundreds of blue-collar workers jobless.

The area’s economic troubles did not, however, dim the hopes of immigrants fleeing political and economic instability in Mexico and the war-torn countries of Central America. By the thousands they came, dreaming of opportunity and better lives.

Once again, “For Sale” signs flourished, as they did when whites fled the community. But this time, the reasons for the exodus were--and continue to be--more complex. While some undoubtedly are leaving because of the neighborhood’s changing demographics, most say a larger factor is the area’s long eroding quality of life.

For many, it has been the rise in crime over the years that has most changed their lives, stealing from them something more valuable than material possessions. They say they have lost a sense of freedom in their neighborhood--afraid to walk to church in the dark, to water their lawns after sunset, to move freely without worry.

“You know why it changed?” said Artimese Porter, a resident of 53rd Street for nearly two decades. “It’s all because of drugs. Other than that you could sit outside in the summertime and talk until midnight.”

She feels both sad and angry about the blight of narcotics. “But the anger,” she said, “is directed at the system because I feel the system can do something about the drug problem. We can do everything to help every other country and yet we can’t stop drugs.”

Or gangs.

There was a time, Porter recalled, when her street’s Neighborhood Watch group thrived. Then, in the 1980s, things started to change. Teen-agers stopped coming, afraid of gang members who distrusted the occasional presence of police officers at the meetings.

“They started dropping out, saying they couldn’t be a part of it because they were being targeted,” Porter said of the young people. “I guess the gang members would come by, especially in the summertime. And these children had to go to school with (gang members), and they didn’t want to jeopardize themselves or their families.”

One way many residents have tried to re-establish a feeling of safety is to place security bars over their doors and windows. For years, 77-year-old Frederick Marrero remained a holdout, refusing to let criminals dictate his choices in life.

“I will not,” he said a few months back, “put myself in prison for somebody else. . . . I don’t live in fear.”

Then, one week before Christmas while he was out for the day, someone burglarized Marrero’s home, stealing, among other things, his grandson’s holiday savings and his wife’s jewelry. “She didn’t have a pair of earrings left,” Marrero said sadly.

After some sleepless nights, Marrero said, he concluded that he had no choice but to surrender and install security gates on his front and back doors. Although he had been burglarized at least seven times in the last five years, the last time hurt the worst.

“It reopened an old wound,” he said. “I just felt so violated. That fear just tears at your heart, and stays there.”

Another intrusive reminder of South Los Angeles’ crime is the constant circling and whirring of police helicopters. The sound is supposed to mean safety--that help is on the way--but to some, it just means danger.

Dorothy Cobb was a newlywed, a newcomer from Florida, when she moved into her husband’s home on 53rd Street in 1980. She seldom saw or heard helicopters back home, and was unnerved when they became part of her everyday life in Los Angeles.

“I wouldn’t see it,” Cobb said of the helicopter, “but my heart would go ‘boom, boom,’ as soon as I’d hear it. I’d run to all the doors and make sure they were locked. I’d be so frightened, just (by) the sound of it. It took years for me to get over that.”

Recently, she chose to confront her fear.

She was at the 77th Street Division’s annual open house, and there it was--sitting quietly in the station’s parking lot, a small crowd milling around.

What kind is it, she asked Officer Lew Peake as she edged closer to the helicopter. Is this the type that flies over her neighborhood? How big is the crew? Cobb sat inside the blue and white Aerospatiale with her husband and asked more questions.

“I’m glad I finally got close to one,” she confided.

Still, she could not say she was no longer afraid. “I’ll see,” she said, “the next time one flies over.”

“Cash for your house,” proclaim the flyers. And almost every day they come, a constant reminder to those who want to leave South Los Angeles that there is always a willing taker.

Some notices sound ominous, almost threatening. “Please contact me immediately!” advised one. “Your property is located within one mile of numerous valuable resources, including the 110 Harbor Freeway. . . . You could receive your cash in about 30 days. . . . This is a final attempt to contact you regarding this matter. It may be to your benefit to respond immediately.”

Some, of course, have taken advantage of the quick money for a fast escape. But others toss the flyers into the garbage as soon as they come in the mail.

The neighborhood, they say, is like a house. Maybe you redecorate and it no longer looks the same, and it feels a little empty because the kids have moved away. Maybe you have started double-locking the doors. But it is still home.

Williams still takes walks. She just does not take them alone. She fills her days with church activities and volunteer work for the Challengers Boys and Girls Club and the 77th Street Division. And when she wants to go up to Slauson and Vermont, where the old Sears used to be, her husband drives her.

“If he doesn’t drive,” she said matter-of-factly, “then I just don’t go.”

Artimese Porter says that, while front-porch card games are now distant memories, she still enjoys a good game of bingo at a neighborhood hall or community recreation center. And her block club still gets together, although the meetings are quarterly now instead of monthly because so many of the neighborhood old-timers have slowed down, died or moved away.

Gilbert Lanoix, a deacon at St. Brigid Catholic Church and a longtime resident of West 54th Street, sums it all up. When the stores moved out, he would travel three miles instead of less than one for bargains. When the crime went up, he became more cautious about locking his doors.

“What I’ve done is move with the changes,” he said. “We learn to live.”

The Neighborhood During the past decade, the number of blacks on West 53rd Street and its surrounding blocks have diminished dramatically. Here are some of the people who have remained and the places affected by the community’s changing demographics. 1. St. Brigid Catholic Church 2. Fred Marrera 3. Gilbert Lanoix 5. Catherine Williams 4. Challengers Boys & Girls Club 5. Artimese Porter 7. Beverly Blake 8. The Cobb Family 9. Former site of The Best Iron Works pool hall 10. The Pit restaurant 11. Former site of Club Sahara

About This Series In little more than a decade, what was once the largest black community in the western United States has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing Latino communities. By the turn of the century, experts say, Latinos will outnumber African-Americans in South Los Angeles, marking a milestone in the city’s ethnic history. Behind the statistics are thousands upon thousands of people coping with the change. To chronicle these difficult days of transition in South Los Angeles, Times staff writers Charisse Jones and Hector Tobar lived next door to each other for a month on the 900 block of West 53rd Street, where the changes are in full swing. Jones reported on the experiences of blacks while Tobar explored life for the neighborhood’s Latinos.