4th Grade Study Abroad Program - Forced Segregation in the late 1970's
I remember when I got bussed to the inner-city during forced integration in Los Angeles in the 1979. From my suburban home to the ghetto. Myself and 27 other mostly-white kids from the suburban West Valley, over an hour each way, from our homes to 42nd Street Elementary. This is the school that was only a short distance from the famous intersection when the L.A riots began nearly 30 years ago.
42nd Street Elementary. On almost a weekly basis, windows would get shot out, sometimes during school hours. I think the school sat on the border of warring tribes. The racial tension at the school between Black and Hispanic students resulted in every day brawls. The first day of school I was accosted by a group of older students. The question was "Is you a Cuzz or a Blood?" My answer was not the one they were looking for. They roughed me up a little, mostly just scared the shit out of me. Those same eight graders - Crips at it turned out - became our protectors on the school grounds for that long semester. It may sound dramatized, but we were under constant threat on the daily.
There are countless memories from those days, but what still exists with digital clarity in my mind was our short walking field trip to what I remember to be a library. I recall taking that walk three or four times and walking past boarded up homes and being accosted by seemingly crazy people, who I later learned were drug addicts. The smells of rotting garbage and vomit take me back there, even today.
I remember the teenagers on the corners (some of whom went to our school, as the school was Kindergarden though 8th Grade). Those, I later learned, were the corner boys. They wore bright colors (the school was mostly Crips if I remember correctly, but I think the area was contested) and flexed with jewelry and sneakers.
What most prominently grabbed my attention was the old guy in a wheelchair on the stoop. He wore some gold, but it was under his shirt. He had some stylish sunglasses, but was beyond that, he was unimpressive. The only reason I first noticed him was because someone had just left the front porch with a duffle bag and a handshake, crossing the path of our class.
Now I don't know what was in the bag - hell, it could have been gym clothes.
What I do know is this:
That guy that sat in the shadows of those termite-damaged eaves over the nearly collapsing porch? Yeah, that was the dude in charge. Incognito. I'd rather be that guy.