Pastor is reaching out in a violence-torn area

No major miracles unfolded Sunday in the small park on the corner of Firestone Boulevard and Maie Avenue. None of the rival gangs battling for control of the surrounding South Los Angeles streets came forward to pledge peace. No one offered an easy solution to the poverty and crime that defines so much of life on those streets.

But for Pastor Chris Le Grande, Sunday wasn’t about big miracles. It was about the small ones, the subtle ones.

“In the name of Jesus! En el nombre de Jesus! We got all kind of folk up here today!” Le Grande, pastor of Great Hope Fellowship in Faith, preached to a few dozen worshipers in the parking lot. “When I see Hispanics here and blacks, I realize that we are of the right mind-set.

“There can be no color lines!” he said. “I don’t care whether you are black, whether you are Hispanic. . . . We need to have a mind-set of oneness.”

For the second year, Le Grande, who is black, and volunteers from his and other churches left their pews and altars and set up for the day in Washington Park -- a small, rare strip of green in a blighted, urban area that has undergone an enormous, tumultuous shift in the last two decades from nearly all black to heavily Latino. With race an undeniable factor in the ever-simmering tensions and frictions here, Le Grande’s charity event was a small but powerful anecdote.

At nearby picnic tables covered in donated clothes, black and Latino men and women milled about, taking needed T-shirts, pants and dresses.

“Excuse me, lady, you can have more than just one pair of shoes,” Delores Cotledge, a member of Great Hope, said to a Latina mother who was walking away with only one box.

“You sure?” she asked, glancing back at the table.

“Of course!” Cotledge said.

It would have been an unremarkable exchange were it not for the history of those streets.

Last month, after a lengthy undercover investigation, federal prosecutors indicted more than 60 members of Florencia 13, a Latino street gang, for crimes committed during a violent campaign to drive African American rivals out of the area, authorities said. The turf battle is thought to have led to at least 20 killings in the last three years.

Much of the violence occurred in the park’s Florence-Firestone neighborhood, a working-class, unincorporated community of 60,000 north of Watts. After the dramatic influx of Mexican immigrants to the area that began in the 1980s, officials said, Latino gang leaders in recent years have sought to drive the remaining black gangs and their supporters from the neighborhood and had repeatedly ordered members to attack black gang members.

Too often, the violence spilled over onto innocent lives. Of the 41 homicides recorded in the neighborhood in 2005, about half of those killed had no gang affiliation, authorities have said.

Killings dropped to 19 last year after a major law enforcement crackdown that led to hundreds of felony arrests and weapon seizures. But the violence continues -- at a level greater than in many other parts of Southern California that have undergone similar demographic shifts.

Le Grande and others have said that the continued upheaval threatens to thwart an economic revival struggling to take root. The pastor is trying to extend bridges into the Latino community. He lends space in his church, which boasts one of the largest black followings in the area, to a Latino congregation. It is a small group, with only a few worshipers. But small is better than nothing. Le Grande also wants to start Spanish and English classes in the church.

“I’ve seen the tensions that have come with the changes,” said Cotledge, 51, who has lived in the neighborhood for about three decades. “But people want the same thing: a safe environment. If you’re a working parent and just want something better for your family, then we can all get along.”

Along with the free clothes, people lined up to receive bags of groceries and registered to pick up more food Tuesday for Thanksgiving Day meals.

“Unfortunately we often still get stuck on color. There is a lot of racism and resentment. It’s a shameful thing,” said Miguel Diaz, as he took in the scene. “Small things like this do help. Hopefully, it makes us open our eyes that the person next to us is really the same as us. We’re all human.”

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Times Staff Writer Sam Quinones contributed to this report.