Community Celebrates Special Ties That Bind

Rahmann Shabazz’s parents moved into the tract community of Avalon Gardens in South Los Angeles in 1952. Shabazz bought a home himself in what residents call the Gardens years later. His oldest son is 19, and although he’s making no bets, Shabazz would like nothing better than to see him continue the tradition and eventually take up residence in the neighborhood.

If Shabazz’s eldest son does make a home nearby, it won’t be anything unusual. Not in this neighborhood, which celebrated its 50th anniversary at a block party and reunion Saturday afternoon.

“Seventy-five percent of the people on this street are the original owners of these homes,” Shabazz said. “Or they’re the children of the owner, or the grandchildren even.”

In notoriously transitory Los Angeles, this half-square-mile of World War II-era homes is an almost unbelievable island of stability and tradition. In 50 years, as the dairy farms that once surrounded the neighborhood fell victim to urban development, this community of carefully manicured lawns and immaculately painted houses has stayed almost exactly the same, residents said.

“The only time anything ever changes around here is when someone passes away,” said 72-year-old Theessie D. Williams, who bought her first home here and has never left. “And then, it’s usually the kids that move in.”

The block party Saturday, which residents said was their first, was just as much a mass family reunion as a chance to mingle with the neighbors. Adults who had grown up in the Gardens flew in from as far away as Atlanta, Washington D.C. and Texas. And the grandparents, children and grandchildren all milled about in total comfort. There were several hundred people there. And everybody seemed to know absolutely everybody.

“All the hugging and love you see on the street out here, right now, that started in the sandbox,” Shabazz said.

Neighborhood kids who once ran up and down 136th and adjacent streets watched as their own children did the same. And the older set, the original owners now mostly in their 70s, watched with pride.

“It makes me feel so good today,” said 73-year-old Lilla Gilstrap, as she stood next to her son Tony, who had brought his baby son back for the reunion. “Three generations here today. We must have done something right.”

Aside from the people, Avalon Gardens appears a fairly average community. The homes are neater and seem snugger than many other 50-year-old dwellings, but in most respects, Avalon Gardens started off the same way thousands of other Los Angeles developments of single-family homes did.

The Gardens went up during the post-World War II Los Angeles building boom. Single-family homes sprouted across the city, particularly south of downtown, at an amazing pace. The boom made the dream of home ownership suddenly much more accessible. The Garden’s early residents, who were exclusively African American, paid between $8,000 and $9,000 for the homes.

Many of those same residents have worked hard to keep the problems of city life out of their community.

“They tried to start that graffiti stuff here, but we wouldn’t let them,” Lilla Gilstrap said. “We paint right over it.”

The community is extraordinarily tight-knit. The appearance of one woman, former Avalon Gardens Elementary School principal Birdielee Bright, was enough to start a wave of tears and exclamations throughout the party.

Bright, who retired long ago after guiding several generations of Gardens kids through their youth, basked in the glow of her former students’ love most of Saturday afternoon.

“Is that Ms. Bright?” exclaimed Stephanie Moses. “I got many a butt-kicking from her.”

As former students clamored around the tough-love principal (who said she was 80, although several former students said she seemed that old in the 1960s), Cheryl Brewer wept as she spoke.

“She taught us everything we needed to go forward in life,” Brewer said. “People like her, they’re who make this place so special.”