At Age 30, Carson Celebrates Its Multicultural Success

The population of Carson is almost evenly divided: About 25% is Latino, 25% African American, 25% Asian American and 25% white. And as the city Saturday began celebrating the 30th anniversary of its incorporation, its leaders started spreading the word that their sometimes gritty town of 84,000 is an urban success story.

“In its 30 years, it is to me the microcosm of the future of America: a multicultural city which is getting along,” City Councilwoman Lorelei Olaes said.

Officials put that amicability on display Saturday at the launching pad of the Goodyear blimp, where the yearlong anniversary festivities kicked off with a series of rides in the city’s most famous vehicle.

A multiracial group of about 100 invited guests mingled underneath a canopy by the blimp’s launching field just off the San Diego Freeway, many sporting “I Love Carson” buttons and hoping that the celebration marks a significant point in the city’s history.

“A city, like a human being, goes through its growing pains, and at 30 it’s mature enough to know where it came from but it is young enough to see its future,” Olaes said in an interview.

Carson is built on one of the few Spanish land grants that stayed in one family for generations. But it was an interloper from New York, George Henry Carson, who married into the Dominguez clan and took control of the 75,000-acre ranch in the mid-19th century.

The sprawling ranch remained unincorporated through the first half of this century. It was the site of the world’s first air meet in 1910 and is now the West Coast home for the Goodyear blimp. Five refineries sprouted up after oil was discovered in the early 1920s.

By 1949, the Chamber of Commerce had begun using the word “Carson” to distinguish the area from the South Bay’s other unincorporated towns. Ten years later the fight for incorporation began.

Mary Anne O’Neal, now a city councilwoman, recalled Saturday going door to door to gather signatures for the incorporation effort. The region was then littered with garbage dumps and auto scrap yards and split among three postal zones. “We wanted to establish a real sense of community,” O’Neal said.

The celebrations will include a semiformal ball, cultural fairs and fireworks later in the year. Memorial hats, T-shirts and cloisonne pins are on sale at City Hall.

Over three decades, city leaders bulldozed and built, replacing the 76 junkyards and two dozen landfills with industrial parks--3,500 companies now call Carson home--and subdivision after subdivision. Along with its gung-ho development, Carson adopted its city motto: “Future Unlimited.”

Low home prices made Carson a destination for first-time home buyers. First, blacks from South Los Angeles began buying homes and then, as Navy families relocated from the Pacific to Long Beach in the 1970s, Filipinos and Samoans arrived. The city now boasts the largest Samoan population outside of Samoa.

The diversity is evident in subdivisions where children of many races play in streets under the watchful eyes of their parents, or at the Carson community center, where Sunday church services draw diverse congregations.

Throughout it all, Carson has remained calm. During the 1992 riots, Carson was quiet, Mayor Pete Fajardo said. He added that major crime rates continued to fall in the city last year.

Explained 18-year resident Marty McHale, a retired carpet salesman: “We understand peoples’ problems here. We don’t just curse the darkness. We try to do something about it.”

For example, residents say, rather than break down into racial divisiveness over poor public school performance, residents in Carson and neighboring Lomita are trying to break away from the Los Angeles Unified School District and create their own school system.

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Also, the city human relations staff is active and Carson recently hosted an open discussion on race relations and hate crimes.

But James Johnson, a University of North Carolina business professor who has written extensively on the demographics of southern Los Angeles County, said the Carson of today--split in quarters between the four main ethnic groups--is probably a fleeting statistical quirk.

Whites and blacks have been steadily fleeing Los Angeles County, and Johnson said Carson should be no exception. He expects that Latino and Asian immigrants will soon replace most of the other groups.

For example, in the 1980 census, whites were 43% of Carson’s population and blacks were 29%. In the 1990 census, both groups accounted for about a quarter of the populace.

“I think what you see now is a snapshot in time. You’re catching a demographic transformation,” Johnson said. “I would be surprised if the mix lasts.”

Even if it is fleeting, Carson residents reveled in their diversity Saturday.

Times researcher Cecilia Rasmussen contributed to this story.