Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California

1. On Shaky Ground

C h a p t e r 1 On Shaky Ground Early in the evening on Friday, March 10, 1933, ten-year-old Ruth Ashton was sitting by her radio in her Compton home listening to one of her favorite serials when the ground began to shake.1 Windows shattered, doors collapsed , and stores “burst open.” Brick chimneys were “snapped off,” roofs “caved in,” and walls “buckled,” as people ran for safety from their homes and businesses.2 The brutal earthquake rattled California’s southland for thirteen long seconds. Though the epicenter lay off Newport Beach’s shore, Southern Californians from Ventura to San Diego felt the initial tremor. At 6.3 on the Richter scale, seismologists did not consider it a major shock. Residents felt otherwise. The quake left 118 people dead and caused more than $40 million in property damage over a twenty-mile radius.3 According to engineers who surveyed the area, the earthquake hit hardest in Compton, then a small residential community of just over four-and-ahalf square miles that housed fewer than fifteen thousand people, the vast majority of whom were white and working class. The earthquake “either razed or severely damaged” almost all of Compton’s three thousand stores, offices, and residences. Long Beach, a port city just south of Compton, suffered the greatest loss of life and greatest total damage, but Compton suffered the greatest proportionate damage.4 Compton’s police station and city hall lay in ruins. Fearful for the integrity of the remaining buildings, many residents refused to reenter their homes, opting instead to pitch tents or move furniture into vacant lots where they cooked over open fires. Amid the chaos, sailors , marines, police officers, deputy sheriffs, and American Legion members guarded the town to keep the peace.5 Yet all of this assistance did not translate into a quick recovery. Even when most students in Los Angeles County 16 Chapter 1 returned to school, Compton was one of three locales with unsafe educational facilities. The quake had shattered their town.6 The earthquake was a tremendous setback for Compton, but it alone did not put the town and its schools on shaky ground. In addition to external factors such as the quake, the way Comptonites were developing their town would have ramifications down the line. From early on, Compton’s residents valued local control over drawing boundaries and residential growth, and they resisted building industry. As a result, by the time of the earthquake, the town already had a tenuous infrastructure. Compton was a working-class bedroom community with a low tax base, and Compton schools thus had precious little financial safety net. Once the quake hit, the suburb did not have the resources to rebuild and accrued deep debts that would plague the town and its schools for decades to come. In its formative years Compton faced in quick succession two major crises : an economic depression and a natural catastrophe. Both of these strained Compton’s meager tax base, resulting in an ill-supported infrastructure. When confronting these combined pressures, services—such as schooling— suffered. The demographic, political, and economic changes created uneasy footing on which Comptonites navigated their educational opportunities. Life Before the Quake Compton began as a small farming town. On December 6, 1866, Francis Temple and Fielding Gibson purchased a portion of the Rancho San Pedro from Spanish colonizers.7 Less than a year later, a small band of approximately thirty disappointed gold seekers from the San Joaquin Valley, led by Griffith D. Compton and William Morton, established Compton on this land, making it the second oldest “American” community in the area. These AngloAmerican settlers were Methodists, who sought arable farmland and a permanent home where they could maintain their traditions and mores. Founded by devout people, Compton retained its religious tone, even after other denominations moved in.8 Compton soon became known for its farms. An 1887 Los Angeles Times article included the town in its report on “prosperous agricultural settlements ,” and described its bounty of corn, pumpkins, and alfalfa.9 In 1893 local farmer Amos Eddy sent seven cuttings of alfalfa to be placed on exhibit at the 1893 Chicago’s World Fair. The height of the crop was so astonishing On Shaky Ground 17 that Eddy included a sworn affidavit, in order to curb any doubts of its authenticity .10 Agricultural successes like Eddy’s and affordable land drew people...