February is Black History Month and this year marks the 400th anniversary that blacks were brought to Bermuda as indentured servants. Throughout this month, The Royal Gazette will feature people, events, places and institutions that have contributed to the shaping of African history

Watts, one of the most famous neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, is located approximately seven miles southeast of downtown. Originally part of the Rancho La Tajauta Mexican land grant, Watts was incorporated in 1903 and began to grow as a community in 1907, when the Watts Station was built and transportation within Watts became easier.

The town was attractive to working-class families and differed from other suburban communities in that it welcomed white, black and Latino families. By 1920, 14 per cent of its population was African-American, which at that time was the highest in California.

In 1926, Los Angeles annexed Watts. The African-American population continued to grow after annexation and, by the time of the Second World War, the community was inhabited mostly by middle-class blacks.

The war brought tens of thousands of black and white migrants from Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas. The city built new public housing projects to accommodate the increased population, most of which were located in Watts. By the early 1960s, these projects had become largely dominated by African-Americans, as whites moved to the surrounding suburbs, which excluded black settlement. Watts increasingly became an island of black poverty surrounded by middle-class white suburbs.

This economic and racial isolation generated resentment against insufficient hospitals and schools, and frequent incidents of police brutality. The latter led to the Watts Riots on August 11, 1965 after an altercation between Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist, and Lee Minikus, a white police officer who pulled him over for drink-driving.

The Watts Riots involved residents’ looting and vandalising the area, attacks on the police and arson. During the six-day riot, 34 people were killed and 1,032 injured. The riot caused an estimated $40 million in damage and 3,438 arrests.

After the riots, Watts suffered further as gangs grew more powerful and the level of violence rose. Between 1989 and 2005, the police reported more than 500 homicides in Watts, most of them gang-related and connected to the fight over control of the illegal drug market. Four gangs, the Watts Cirkle City Piru Bloods, Grape Street Watts Crips, Bounty Hunter Watts Bloods, and PJ Watts Crips, were responsible for most of that violence. The gang violence and continuing poverty and isolation of Watts generated a shift in population. Those African-Americans who had the resources left the area for other parts of Los Angeles, and in some instances for a return to the US South. As blacks abandoned the area, primarily Hispanic immigrants from Mexico and Central America replaced them. By the 2000 census, Watts was no longer a predominately black section. Almost 61 per cent of the residents were Latino and only 38 per cent were African-American. Watts was no longer black, but it remained impoverished. Half of the families and individuals in Watts had incomes that placed them below the poverty line.

Neighbourhood leaders have recently begun a strategy to overcome Watts’ reputation as a violent and impoverished location. They point with pride to the museums and art galleries that were opened in the area in the 1990s surrounding the Watts Towers, a multistorey sculpture in the heart of the community.

• Sources: Mary Ellen Bell Ray, The City of Watts, California: 1907 to 1926 (Los Angeles: Rising Sun Publishing, 1985); Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: the Watts Uprising and the 1960s (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997); Jerome Fortier, Art and Social Change in Los Angeles 1965-2002 (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 2003)