George Givens Dies; Fought Liquor Stores, Assault Guns

George Givens, a longtime community activist in south Los Angeles and Compton who helped campaign against liquor stores and assault weapons, has died of bone cancer. He was 53.

Givens, a native of Dallas who settled in Willowbrook with his family in 1944 and later moved to Carson, was a founding member of the South Central Organizing Committee, now the Southern California Organizing Committee, which works to foster activism among residents in low-income neighborhoods.

One of his first campaigns with the group, formed in 1981, was to lead efforts to improve the quality of food at south Los Angeles and Compton grocery stores. Under the auspices of the group, he later helped push through tighter restrictions on liquor stores in Los Angeles, making it easier for community members to petition the city to close them.

In 1987 Givens sold the Barbecue Experience restaurant he had operated in Compton since 1981 and joined SCOC full-time as its lead organizer. Over the next three years, he worked on the successful statewide campaigns to raise the minimum wage and ban assault rifles.

He took up the reins of the Nehemiah West Housing Development Corp. in 1991, seeking to increase affordable housing for buyers. Since then, the agency has completed 158 townhomes in Compton and Bell Gardens and has another 163 under construction.

Givens is survived by his wife, Joan; his children, Eric of Ladera Heights, Quentin of Los Angeles and Candace of Hampton, Va.; his mother, Carrie Etta of Willowbrook; his brother, Lonnie of Willowbrook and a grandson, Tyler.

Services were to be held Friday at St. Albert the Great Church, Compton, with burial at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City.