The Ground Breaks At Mud Town Farms In Watts

Grape Street and baby kale are about as synonymous as Secretary of Defense James "Mad Dog" Mattis and the Peace Corps.

Yet Wednesday afternoon in Watts, baby kale - along with roasted brussels sprouts, grilled eggplant and red and yellow bell peppers  - starred in a buffet lunch at the groundbreaking ceremony of Mud Town Farms, a 2 1/2 acre plot near 103rd and Grape streets designed to be a model for the working urban garden. Mud Town Farms will have a mixed fruit orchard and a wide variety of crops, the first of which could be ready to harvest this summer.

"This is a dream project that was not supposed to happen, but it is happening," said Janine Watkins, a community activists whose family moved to the area in 1921. "This is a gift to the babies of one of the poorest  and most maligned communities in our city."

She said Mud Town Farms will help people of Watts form a special bond with the land that for many, if not most, has been missing.

"When you disconnect with Mother Earth, Mother Earth forgets who you are," she said. "Let's make this suffering ground come to life. Put down your cell phone and pick up a shovel. This dirt right here is Watts happening."

The Los Angeles City Council was represented by Councilman Joe Buscaino of the 15th District which includes Watts. He called Mud Town Farms the "re-imagination of 103rd and Grape Streets," as he thanked,  among others,  gang interventionist and social architect Aqeela Sherrillsand chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson whose restaurant LocaL is a half block away. 

Tim Watkins, the CEO of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, the non-profit that owns the land, looked at the chain link fence separating the farm from the Jordan Downs housing project and announced it would be replaced by "an edible fence", overflowing with fresh vegetables.

"People from the neighborhood will be welcome to come to the fence and pick what they need," Watkins told crowd of 150. "They won't have to sneak in at night.  If they take a little more than they can use, that's okay with me. It's here for them,  And if they want to get a little more involved in the garden, they can come inside the fence."

All the speeches went on. chef Eugene Johnson was at the grill, getting the buffet ready; The eggplants, the chick peas, the balsamic pomegranate vinaigrette, the tahini, the pumpkin seed pesto and, yes, the baby kale.  

shveellls

Howard Bingham, Legendary Photographer of Muhammad Ali, Dies At 77

On June 12, 1994, when O.J. Simpson left LAX. for Chicago shortly before midnight and roughly 90 minutes after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed, storied photographer Howard Bingham was on the same flight. At Simpson’s fiery trial he was called to testify as to Simpson's demeanor

Naturally, Bingham was the only witness both defense and prosecution liked.

Johnnie Cochran, approaching the witness: “Are you a world-renowned photographer?”

Bingham: “The world's greatest.”

Cochran: “So, we’re clear about that.”

Later, on cross-examination, when Marcia Clark made a passing reference to Bingham as an outstanding photographer, Judge Lance Ito interrupted: “Uh, the world’s greatest.”

Bingham: “You’re a smart man, judge.”

Howard Bingham died Thursday, Dec. 15 at the age of 77.

"Howard, one of the kindest people I've known, used that kindness to win friends around the globe and help mankind by using his lens to reveal humanity in its stark, unblemished beauty." said Tim Watkins of the Watt Labor Community Action Committee who knew Bingham for over 50 years. "He photographed the greatest of greats yet never lost his connection and love for Watts where his family settled many decades ago.".

Bingham was a photographer for the African American newspaper Los Angeles Sentinel in 1962 when he was assigned to cover a professional fight by an up-an-coming young boxer named Cassius Clay. 

The rest, as has often been said, is history.

One of the great phone calls of my life came from Howard. I was at my desk at the Los Angeles Times after having covered Muhammad Ali coming to Watts in 1996 or '97..

The phone rang. I picked up.

"This is Howard Bingham. The Champ wants to talk to you."

An Oasis Blooms In Watts; Dorothy Sampson and Her Roses

More than 19 years ago, I was H2H, ( heading to a homicide) on 102nd and Grape when I noticed a profusion of color to my left. Hundreds of rose bushes were in full bloom near the corner of Grandee Avenue and Century Boulevard. It was the rose garden at the Watts Senior Center. I went back later and talked to the caretaker of the garden, the lovely and spirited Dorothy Sampson.

Yesterday, I stopped in on the way to Jordan Downs and learned Dorothy, now 82,  had retired two years ago. In 2007, the city council voted to renamed this oasis as the Dorothy Sampson Senior Center and Rose Garden.Rose.

I wrote the story below that ran in the Los Angeles Times on January 1, 1997.  

###

Today in Pasadena, hundreds of thousands of people will watch the nation's best-known celebration of the rose. On Thursday in Watts, one person will continue her work on a quieter tribute--the smallest nationally accredited rose garden in America.

Dorothy Sampson will don overalls, grab pruning shears and lovingly tend the Watts Senior Citizens Center Rose Garden.

"I love this place," said Sampson, 63, the gardener at the center, pruning her way through the 480 rosebushes.

The rose garden near the tracks of the Metro Blue Line grew from a dream that germinated eight years ago.

In 1988, Dolores Van Rensalier, then the director of the center, took a group of seniors citizens to Exposition Park's rose garden near the Coliseum. A member of the group, Arvella Grigsby, taken by the beauty of the roses, sadly remarked that it was "too bad there will never be a beautiful public rose garden in Watts."

"I said, 'Why not?' " Van Rensalier recalls. "From that moment on, I was determined to have a rose garden in Watts. Everybody laughed at the idea. They thought the roses would be stolen. Even Arvella patted me on the back and said, 'That's OK, dear.' "

*

But it wasn't OK with Van Rensalier, a native New Yorker who vowed to create a place of beauty in a neighborhood too well-known for its negatives.

"It doesn't take a lot of people to make a difference," Van Rensalier said from her office at City Hall, where she works for the Department of Recreation and Parks. "Just a few people is all it takes."

Thanks to Van Rensalier, Sampson and crews from the parks department, Watts now has a true garden spot at 1657 E. Century Blvd.

The first roses were planted in 1990. By 1994, the garden was given national accreditation by All-America Rose Selections, based in Chicago. The organization usually requires a garden to have a minimum of 800 bushes before it is accredited, but waived that for the Watts garden, which at the time had fewer than 300.

"We think that a garden is such a wonderful place to reflect, especially in an urban environment like Watts, that the community deserved accreditation," said Patti Tobin, the organization's director of communications. Being accredited allows the garden to receive about 40 of the year's top-rated new roses from the accrediting group.

Today, the garden still has fewer roses than any of the nation's more than 130 other accredited gardens. Nonetheless, there are 480 rosebushes and 25 varieties at the Watts garden, which is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

One month after the first bushes were planted, Sampson was hired as the full-time gardener. She had developed an early love for gardening while growing up in Louisiana. Her father would come home from his day job and work on his plot until dark.

"I'd hear that old hoe go 'chomp, chomp,' and I would have to go out and help him," Sampson said.

Sampson married a man who didn't care for the outdoors, so they made a deal: He'd make the breakfast, she'd work in the yard.

"It worked out fine, until he had company over," she laughed. "He would say, 'Look at you, look at you.' "

After she retired in 1983 from her manufacturing job, Sampson began to work as a professional gardener. Not until last year, at 62, did she stop cutting lawns. Now she has only roses to tend.

"It's nice to go by and see this," Juan Mendoza, 19, said as he strolled by the garden on his way to a market.

Mendoza remembers the plot of earth before the roses bloomed.

"It used to be bunk. Now it's cool. The guys around here respect this place," he said, gesturing at the graffiti-scarred neighborhood, a stark contrast to the clean walls of the senior citizens center.

There were a few thefts of rosebushes during the early years of the garden, but they have stopped, residents said.

For motorists driving down Century Boulevard near the Blue Line tracks, the garden provides a stunning splash of color most of the year. This week, however, Sampson is finishing the yearly pruning of the bushes, and soon nothing but bare canes will be on display while the roses rest for two months.

As lovely as the garden is, Sampson is not quite satisfied. Many of its older bushes are not the top-performing varieties, and Sampson longs to replace them. However, there are no funds to buy new roses.

*

The rose she yearns for the most is Double Delight, one of the world's most beloved flowers: intensely fragrant, with a brilliant red edge and a creamy white center.

She grows dreamy-eyed when she talks about the flower.

"That's my favorite rose, but we only have one," she said.

On Monday morning, with the cloudy skies threatening, Sampson was out in the garden pruning. She came across the one bush of Double Delight, graced with one last strikingly beautiful rosebud. She cut the bloom, took a long whiff, gave it to a visitor and shook her head.

"God, I love that rose," she said.

 

 

LocoL Watts, A Soft Opening in a Hard Neighborhood Goes Beautifully

Location, location, location..  

That is said to be a major key to success when opening a restaurant. 

So where does Roy Choi open his newest venture, LocoL?  On 103rd, a street that during the 1965 Watts Riots became nationally known as "Charcoal Alley" and not for the coals used to grill steaks, but for the burning cinders of the torched buildings by African Americans pushed to the brink by mistreatment from law enforcement. To top that off, to defy the location, location, location pundits, it's a half block from Grape Street, which the mere - and threatening - mention of so often has preceded mayhem.  

But, on a dreary Monday afternoon, that location, 103rd and Grape, across the street from the Jordan Downs housing projects,  mighta been the most joyous, grateful and satisfied corner in this whole city.

"This is so good for the community," said Bow Wow,  a fixture in Jordan Downs, who is employed by LocoL as an "Ambassador".  The ambassador duties?  Well, let's just say Bow Wow, like any ambassador, represents the territory to other territories in a positive manner.

Some were in line to eat, Others were just hanging out, happy to be part of a celebration in a community that has seen so much sadness come its way. One of them was Daude Sherrills, who along with his brother Aqeela  - a prominent gang interventionist and owner/partner in this restaurant  - was one of the architects of the historic 1992 Watts Gang Peace Treaty. 

"This is what a community development business is all about," said Daude as he held court with old and new friends near LocoL's patio. "Plant the roots of the business deep in the community.  It won't tip over that way. There are 36 jobs here, and 99% of the workers are from Watts.  This is great."  

On Saturday, at LocoL's back patio, Nardo, another Jordan Downs stalwart who is employed here, was telling customers "It's a soft opening", He turned to a reporter he's known for decades who had chided him for that lingo.  "Hey, I'm learning the restaurant language."  

LocoL, which bills itself as a "revolutionary fast food restaurant", is the brainchild of Roy Choi and famed San Francisco chef Daniel Patterson. The next restaurant is set to open in SF's gritty Tenderloin district..   There's even one planned near the notorious Nickerson Gardens, a mile away from 103rd Street. . 

This is from Choi and Patterson  

"We are a company where the chefs think about what to feed you. Where the chefs think about how to take care of you. We fundamentally believe that wholesomeness, deliciousness and affordability don't have to be mutually exclusive concepts in fast food. We believe that fast food restaurants can truly empower the communities they currently underserve. We believe that the giant corporations that feed most of America have degraded our communities by maximizing profits over decades. We believe that chefs should feed America, and not suits."

Monday, one of Local's managers, well known as "Ready", was moving through the crowded restaurant with the ease of a maitre d' at Spago, greeting old friends, chatting up new ones.  "It's great to see you,"  "Welcome to LocoL." "Enjoy your meal." 

The line of customers went down Anzac Avenue for nearly a whole city block.They were not disappointed. 

"I'm not going to Burger King or McDonalds or Carl's Jr, anymore," said Dion Mangram, a life-long resident of Jordan Downs.  "This is my new restaurant, It's healthy and delicious and reasonable."  

Indeed, a fried chicken sandwich was four bucks and I'm craving it as I write this.   I might go back tonight.  Now, when I got to Watts  and I go often - LocoL will be my spot.

A local chef, Nancy Silverton, was at LocoL Monday afternoon and she raved about the hamburger and the chicken sandwich, but also about the concept. "This is delicious. I applaud Roy This is really something very special for our city."    

Inside, Roy Choi beamed when he saw a reporter who has covered Watts for 25 years.  They did a hard double-clutch handshake and - to the naysayers who doubted he could ever open on 103rd Street - he triumphantly roared  "Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em." 

It was the most beautiful restaurant opening I have ever attended.  And as tasty and healthy as the food is, LocoL is about location, location, location.

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War and Peace in Watts, Part 2 of the Classic LA Weekly Article

Ronald “Kartoon” Antwine is sitting in his garage, looking out at the Union Pacific railroad tracks near 114th and Wilmington Avenue. Kartoon is one of the legendary Bounty Hunters. A former menace to society. A 6-foot-4½-inch, 260-pound thug who carried a pistol in one pocket and a sawed-off Winchester pump shotgun under his black leather jacket. He robbed people, shot people, beat up people in the wild days of the ’70s.

He paid for his crimes by doing more than 15 years at the toughest prisons in California, including thousands of days at Folsom back when Folsom made the Pelican Bay of today seem like juvenile hall. He walked out of prison in 1992 and has not been back.

Just days after he left Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe (“America’s Hottest Prison”), the peace treaty was being negotiated, and Kartoon became a key representative for the Bounty Hunters and Nickerson Gardens. He recalls that one of the biggest sticking points was that the Crips — PJs and Grape Street — were concerned about their safety in his Blood neighborhood.

“One day I said, ‘Let’s find out,’ and we all started walking through the Nickersons, Bloods and Crips. The young homies were stunned, but they joined in. It was beautiful.”

These days, Kartoon is a gifted writer, a Bounty Hunter historian, a community activist, and still a respected figure in Nickerson Gardens. “You see that field right there by the tracks?” he asks, pointing 50 feet away. “That used to be our Vietnam. That was the frontlines. That was the border between the Bounty Hunters and the PJs. There used to be weeds higher than me there, and we’d be sniping at them from our side and they’d be sniping at us from their side.”

But now that the PJs and Bounty Hunters are getting along, the weeds are gone, and so is the fear of gunfire. “I sit in this garage and it’s a pleasure to see the people cross the tracks, crossing enemy lines. It’s like walking through a force field on Star Trek. Used to be you cross those tracks, you die. Now people walk back and forth.”

Kartoon, 46, partly blames the local government and the lack of resources available to help stop the violence. But Kartoon (Bloods disdain the letter C) reserves his harshest words for those whom he considers the cause of the treaty’s demise and the latest upsurge in violence by young, reactionary gangsters. “All the projects are doing their part to stop the violence, but every project has those reactionaries who listen to no one and don’t want to participate in the peace movement,” he says. “All we ask is they don’t sabotage the peace. It’s like in Baghdad. They got that one religious sect doing all the bombing. But, the other sect refuses to retaliate.”

Kartoon says he’s been in the Nickersons during and after recent shootings. With other hall-of-fame Bounty Hunters Big Hank and Big Donny he tried to persuade the young homies not to retaliate. “Our young guys were saying, 'Fuck this. We gonna do something.' So Hank and Donny and everybody, we had to calm them. It’s not an easy thing to do.”

He doesn’t tell young Bounty Hunters what to do — to attack or not to attack — but rather emphasizes the consequences of their actions.

"All the guys getting busted, they don’t realize what a life sentence is. When the pop goes off, when their head pops out of their ass and they realize they ain’t going home after just five years. When they realize they’ll never be able to taste a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder again. To see them go crazy when they hear their moms is dying and they’re locked up and can’t go see her. When they hear their woman is pregnant by their best homeboy. When they realize they’ll never see a night sky again."

As I’m driving one evening through the 1,066-unit Nickerson Gardens, said to be the largest housing project west of the Mississippi, dozens of men and women are milling about, and children are playing near their apartment units, many of them with small, nicely tended gardens with roses in full spring bloom.

For anyone who has ever seen the nation’s worst housing projects, such as the now-destroyed, infamous Robert Taylor Homes on the South Side of Chicago, the projects in Watts look almost pleasant during a quick drive-through. They are not high-rise prisons like Robert Taylor, Cabrini Green or Rockwell Gardens, but rather two-story buildings with small patches of lawn in front of them. A closer look, however, reveals the poverty and aura of hopelessness.

The Los Angeles city attorney has imposed a gang injunction against the Bounty Hunters here that makes it a misdemeanor for any of them to be together, although it is impossible to enforce all the time. In part of the city attorney’s report, LAPD Officer Victor Ross, one of the most hated men in Nickerson Gardens, writes, "When gang members are stopped by law enforcement they will say that they are going to visit their grandmothers, but in fact they are just hanging out with a bunch of other gang members, drinking, using drugs, playing loud music, gambling, loitering to be hooks or lookouts. They are doing anything but visiting their grandmothers."

Officer Ross describes a few gang members, like Aubrey Anderson, known as "Lunatic" or simply "Tic." "He is feared in the sense that he is short-tempered and is seen as crazy enough to do anything. He is not afraid to commit violence to further the gang." Another one is Israel Jauregui, a.k.a. Izzy, who has a tattoo on his arm that says, "Kill or Be Killed." "He is a violent gang member who is not afraid to commit shootings or other violent acts for the gang." Izzy, it turns out, is in federal custody now, and attempts to contact Lunatic were unsuccessful, much to the delight of my family.

Of the three projects in Watts, Imperial Courts appears the most run-down. The blue and green buildings that house 490 units look tired. Trash is rampant, flowers are few, and packs of young men evil-eye every stranger.

At Imperial Courts Recreation Center, which has a shiny full-size basketball court, no one is in the gym. But the narrow streets are full of young men. No one wants to talk about the breakdown of the truce. The four most common responses are "I’m not from here," "I’m just visiting," "Fuck off" and "Talk to PJ Steve."

PJ Steve is Steven Myrick, a tall, well-built 39-year-old who’s been a Crip almost his entire life, did nine years for kidnapping, robbery and assault, and has 2-inch-tall letters, "P" and "J," tattooed on his throat.

When PJ Steve heard about the 1992 treaty, he had mixed emotions.

"I was locked up when the peace treaty happened, and I was confused about it for a while. I couldn’t get it," says PJ Steve. "But then you realize it was a move for the kids. Kids need a better way than the way we had it. But now you got kids going back to the same ways.

PJ Crip "Cornbread" chimes in that he doesn’t feel safe in Jordan Downs.

In Jordan Downs, a group of Grape Streeters talk about the breakdown of the treaty, and the future. "I didn’t really like the peace treaty anyway," says Scrap, 29. "If I kill you today, then one of your homies who’s like 11 or 12 now is gonna remember it, and when he gets older he’s gonna blow my head off. That’s what’s happening today."

There is some hope in Jordan Downs that the infamous Grape Street shot caller Wayne "Honcho" Day may soon be free after serving nine years in federal prison on drug distribution and conspiracy charges. Day, now 48, was sentenced to more than 19 years, but he successfully appealed on the basis that he was poorly represented, and a decision on whether to reduce his sentence will be made within a month or so, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Terrell.

In a 1997 speech by Steven R. Wiley, then chief of the Violent Crimes and Major Offenders section of the FBI, Honcho was called "the Godfather of Watts." That’s a slight exaggeration, but when told that Honcho may be getting out of prison soon, both Kartoon and PJ Steve consider it good news.

"If Honcho was here, this wouldn’t be happening," says Kartoon.

Sitting on a wooden table near the closed Jordan Downs gymnasium on a fine spring afternoon as his friends prepare to barbecue and play baseball, Honcho’s nephew Kmond Day lays part of the blame for the violence on alcohol.

"Alcohol is not for peace," he says. "But some people drink cuz there’s nothing else to do. The reality is, if we have guys from our own hood who get high and we can’t control them here, how can we expect them to go to other hoods and not act stupid?"

But Kmond says most gang members don’t even know why they bang.

"A lot of so-called gang members could win Oscars. They’re acting like gang members. They’re doing the stuff gang members do — shooting, killing — but they don’t even know the whole purpose of representing the hood. If you ask them why they bang, they say, 'To represent the hood.' Represent what? There is no point in representing the hood. What’s the purpose? There is no purpose."

Many young kids gangbang out of fear, not fear of the other hoods but fear from guys from their own block.

"You got cats that’s killing cats from other projects, and the homies that are with them are afraid of them, so they try to impress their big homies," says Kmond. "But really, they are just scared. But they think it’s the only way to survive."

Some complain bitterly about what they consider the rough tactics of one LAPD officer, Christian Mrakich. They claim he harasses people and encourages the gang wars. "Mrakich is the Rafael Perez of Jordan Downs," says Daude Sherrills.

Captain Sergio Diaz says he has received several complaints about "an officer" in Jordan Downs, but nothing has been substantiated.

"While I can’t talk about personnel investigations, I will tell you, in the course of a criminal investigation earlier this year, we know from wiretaps that targets of these narcotics investigations encouraged each other to make complaints about a specific officer who they knew to be investigating them," Diaz says. "We checked them out and concluded he had done nothing wrong."

Attempts to interview Mrakich are rejected by the LAPD, but his commander laughs when told that many gang members spoke badly of the officer.

"We have a lot of bad things to say about Grape Street, too," says Captain Diaz. "They are killers, dope dealers and robbers. Mrakich and [Victor] Ross are very effective in the projects, and of course many people hate them, quite naturally."

Unlike some in the LAPD, Diaz praises the now-fallen peace treaty.

"There was a lot of skepticism in the department about the treaty, but I believe it made a significant difference in the violent-crime rate," says Diaz.

"Obviously, the truce thing was good in that people weren’t shooting each other. But now, unfortunately, that is over."

On the evening of April 9, Officers Oscar Ontiveros and Darren Stauffer, from Diaz’s Southeast Division, are involved in a shooting that kills Bounty Hunter Spencer "Fox" Johnson after, they say, he pointed an assault rifle at them near Bellhaven and 112th streets. Gang sources say Fox was on the lookout for a Grape Street attack at the time.

In the early-morning hours of May 9, another Bounty Hunter, Kemal Hutcherson, 24, is gunned down — not by police — on perhaps the most cruelly named street in the city, Success Avenue.

Though it has a nationwide bad rep (and this story won’t make it any better), citizens who live here have a great deal of pride in Watts. I’ve never heard anyone boast, "Man, I’m from Bel Air," but folks seem almost eager to tell you they’re from Watts. And because of their resiliency, and because of the mostly good memories of the 1992 treaty, there is much hope that this current battle of the projects will not be left to fester and maim and kill for years.

In the last two weeks there has been a call to fight the good fight. Not to cave in to the violence and accept it as in days of yore. Not to just be outraged when a cop kills a black kid, but be outraged when a black kid kills a black kid.

In the projects, a new group of respected, slightly older gang members — not just famous triple O.G.s like Big Hank from the Nickersons or Elementary from Grape Street, but adults in their mid-20s and -30s, men and women who are trying to reach the youngsters and quell the killings — have emerged.

One of those young men is Bow Wow from Grape Street, who has been meeting with his counterparts from the other projects and reporting back to the young homies.

"We need to keep conversating," says Bow Wow. "There’s a new leadership, and we just need to keep talking and not shooting."

The older guys can help, but much hope is put on the new generation of leaders.

"We are dealing with a new generation who are trying to maintain the tradition of peace, trying to make a difference in a positive way," says Gregory Thomas, supervisor of those gang-intervention workers at CSDI. "Young brothers with respect. Guys that have been through a lot and changed."

The spirit behind the new leadership is that the new violence has heaved the responsibility for peace on the newer generation, and a lot of younger men are stepping up in an effort to stop this madness. They are trying, for example, to prevent a 15-year-old from getting into a car with an AK-47 and shooting another black boy because he lives in a housing project that is similar to his own but has a different name.

"This is not about the Nickerson Gardens or the Jordan Downs or the Imperial Courts," says Michelle Irving, a former Sybil Brand regular turned gang-intervention worker. "Those are just names someone gave three housing projects."

Citing the same impetus that was behind the 1992 treaty, the adults say they are doing this for the children. "It’s sad to see a young person walking down the street worried about if he or she is going to get shot," says Irving, who was "a mother and father at age 14." "They should be walking down the street thinking about school. Thinking about a future. A bright one."

As Aqueela puts it, "Peace is not a destination. It’s a journey with peaks and valleys along the way."

In Watts, that journey just might be never-ending. But at least there’ll be a whole lot of people along for the ride.

War and Peace in Watts, Part 1 of the 2005 LA Weekly Classic Article

President Bush keeps saying America is safer now that Saddam Hussein is out of power. Prez hasn’t been to Watts lately.

The much heralded, often copied and never equaled Watts housing-project gang peace treaty of 1992 has officially imploded, leaving bodies, grieving families and shell casings scattered over the most infamous black neighborhood west of the South Side of Chicago.

The nights of mixing purple, blue and red are over. Gone are the days when the Grape Street Watts Crips from Jordan Downs (purple), the Bounty Hunter Bloods from Nickerson Gardens (red) and the Project, or PJ, Crips from Imperial Courts (blue) could encounter one another without fear of death.

During the wild year of 1989, in the LAPD reporting districts that cover the three main housing projects in Watts, there were 25 homicides. During the height of the treaty in 1997, there were four. So far this year there have been at least seven killings in and around the projects, dozens of shootings, a reported 187 violent crimes and, with all that, the acknowledgment that there is no more treaty.

Long gone are the joyous parties and rowdy football games that homies from the projects threw and played together. Gone are the days when a gangster from the Jordans who had a child with a lady from the Nickerson could have a lazy Sunday-afternoon barbecue in peace. “I can’t even go see my son,” says Grape Street member Dell (“like the computer”) Hester, 21. “I got a baby from a girl in the Nickersons, but I can’t even go there no more. It’s gonna be a real hot summer.”

While many in law enforcement say the treaty has been shaky for years, only recently have actual gang members themselves admitted it. The 1992 treaty, which became official the day before the Rodney King verdict set the city ablaze, was born from older gang members who did not want their children to go through the dread they had long endured. It was marked by celebrations, by families and friends being able to visit each other in different projects without fear.

But in the last year or so, as a new generation of gang members came of shooting age, which is about 13 to 16, word began to spread that the treaty was on the ropes. And in the projects, words, rumors, truth and fiction get spread fast. Soon residents of Nickerson Gardens knew it wasn’t wise anymore to go to Jordan Downs, and folks from there knew they weren’t getting the royal treatment if they popped in at the Nickersons or Imperial Courts.

“We ain’t even thinking about a peace treaty right now,” says Bow Wow, a respected 26-year-old from Grape Street. “We’re just trying to get a cease-fire. Just trying to stop all the shootings.”

Thomas “Tuck” Graham Jr., 20, a Bounty Hunter who was so young when he started banging he doesn’t even remember how he got his nickname, says the days of peace with Grape Street are over.

“We used to see Grape Street members come over here and we’d give them a pass,” says Tuck as he smokes a cigarette and sips on a small bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. “But now things are different. I see a Grape Streeter, especially in the Nickersons, he ain’t getting no motherfuckin’ passes, especially since they killed my homey.” His homey was Dwayne “Sexy Wayne” Brooks, 22, a Bounty Hunter renowned as a smooth-talking ladies’ man.

The Watts peace treaty certainly did not stop all violence in the housing projects. Internal, in-house disputes were often settled with Mac 10s and Sigs. There were also gang member–vs.–rival gang member acts of violence, but for the most part this was done on an individual level, a personal dispute between, say, a Bounty Hunter and a Grape Streeter over a range of things, from drugs to, of course, women. But the peace treaty pretty much squashed one gang firing on another gang simply because they were from a different hood. 

 The killing of Sexy Wayne marked a clear return of killing someone just for that very reason. On March 5, there is a minor conflict in Cerritos at a skating rink. For decades, such places have been magnets for many black gang members. Details of the incident are sketchy, but either words or a few fists are briefly exchanged. Bounty Hunters say Sexy Wayne is not involved in the incident. Later, a group of cars drives to the Artesia Transit Yard near Gardena, where there is a Park and Ride MTA station.

“Shortly before 2 a.m., a group of up to 70 cars that had been cruising just happened to stop there,” says Detective John Goodman of the LAPD’s Harbor Division. “There was some kind of confrontation, and there were a lot of shots fired. Brooks was shot and killed. A lot of people saw it. That may have started the escalation in the current violence.”

Street rumors quickly circulate that the shooter was from Grape Street. Brooks, decked out in Blood red, had been with members of the PJ Crips, who have become strange gang fellows of late with the Bounty Hunters.

Perhaps the most unusual result of the latest outbreak is that it has brought the Bounty Hunters, the city’s most notorious Blood gang, closer than ever to the PJ Crips of Imperial Courts, and that alliance against the Grape Street Crips is sending bewilderment throughout the black street-gang community. 

Nine miles away from Watts, in Hyde Park, a long way in gangland L.A., Kevin “Big Cat” Doucette, a notorious shot caller of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, is telling his cohorts about that distant gang war. “That’s about the craziest shit I ever heard,” says Big Cat, 45. “The PJs and the Bounty Hunters teaming up against Grape Street. Crips and Bloods teaming up to go at Crips.”

Even law enforcement is surprised by the alliance. “The alliance doesn’t seem plausible or possible, but that’s what we’re hearing,” says Detective Dana Ellison of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Century Station. “The so-called treaty is dead.”

And with the dead treaty comes the return of the payback shooting. Bounty Hunter or PJ Crip gets killed, supposedly by Grape Street, then a Grape Street must die in retaliation. Doesn’t have to be the shooter that gets hit with the payback. Sometimes, doesn’t even have to be a gang member. Just someone living in the rival project will do.

Someone like Jason Harrison.

A week after Sexy Wayne was killed, Harrison, 19, who is not a Grape Street gang member, is gunned down on 102nd Street inside Jordan Downs. It’s on. The next day, the Imperial Courts project is shot up. Then the Nickersons gets sprayed. Then Jordan Downs. Then, then, then.

Sal LaBarbera, the lead homicide detective for the LAPD’s Southeast Division, which covers Watts, says tension is as high as it’s been in a long, long time.

“You can tell the energy level is up in Grape Street,” says LaBarbera, a cool New Yorker straight outta Central Casting. “Guys are on guard duty. Trash cans are lined up at the entrance to the projects. Folks are ready to go. Ready to run into their apartment and get the guns.” He’s right, of course.

It’s a rainy late night inside Jordan Downs on 102nd Street near an entrance to the projects off Juniper Street and 103rd, where two dumpsters the size of Escalades are placed. Young men and teenagers of the 700-unit project are indeed on the lookout for strangers while they smoke chronic and sip Olde English 800, still a favorite after all these years.

Contrary to popular opinion, especially from Westsiders who’ve never been here, Jordan Downs can be a welcoming place, especially at a Saturday-afternoon barbecue or baseball game. You might get some curious glances at first, but then, after a few intros, a couple of beers, it’s usually cool. Certainly a warmer welcome than a Grape Street Crip would get on Mapleton Drive in Holmby Hills.

But at night, at least this one (and many others), the place is about as friendly as Uday and Qusay in a bad mood during the Persian Gulf War.

“The fuck you doin’ here? Get the fuck outta here, bitch,” booms a Grape Streeter to me as I slowly drive by. I’m in an Enterprise-rented black Chevy Aveo with doors so flimsy one burst from a Kalashnikov would turn them into Emmenthaler Swiss cheese.

“Hello, officer,” says another, which for years has been a common nighttime greeting to me in Watts. Not a lot of Armenians here. I stop in the lot between buildings 99 and 100 and inform the two Crips that I’m a reporter trying to find out what happened to Jason, trying to humanize him. From nowhere, two more Grape Street Crips appear, one of them standing in a doorway. “You need to leave. We ain’t talking to no reporters.”

I park the Aveo in the lot a short distance from my new buddies, get out of the car, and walk over to the makeshift memorial display of murder candles, yellow roses, a large purple bunny rabbit and a framed photo of Jason Harrison. Scribble a few notes — barely legible later — and head back to the Aveo.

A fifth Grape Streeter, older, like in his 40s, approaches, identifies himself only as Wes, and speaks quietly. “Jason was a good kid. Been knowing him since he was 12. Just had seen him an hour before he got shot, talking to some of the guys, and then I guess he was walking to his grandmother’s, right over there. Be careful.”

I want to talk to the younger gang members, but figure it’s early in my reporting and why push it. At least, that’s my excuse to myself. I drive away.

The next day, a former teacher of Harrison’s praises him. “Jason was just a great, great kid. When I heard what had happened, it felt like I’d been hit in the gut with a baseball bat,” says Gary Miles, a teacher at Markham Middle School and a longtime friend of the Harrison family. “Jason was never involved in any of the Grape Street gang stuff. He was a good, hard-working student. One of those kids, every time you saw him, he’d give you a pound and a hug. Always had a smile. A kid that loved life.

“Lots of people not from around here don’t understand how entrenched people are to their neighborhood, to their set,” says Miles. “Lots of these kids are third-generation gang members from these projects. Forget about being jumped in. These kids are born in.”

Miles, who is from Brooklyn, says the lure of the streets can often be too tempting for a project boy to resist. “Some kids would rather be a part of the hood thing than go on to junior college or a university if they could. It’s that lure. Plus, you throw in the music culture, MTV, and it just adds to the desire. Do I want to be a college football player or do I want to be hood famous? It becomes a seduction.”

Two weeks after he died, Jason Harrison is laid to rest. His funeral, at the Inglewood Mortuary, is overflowing with emotion and mourners. About a hundred guys, guys that grew up together, went to Folsom and Corcoran together, just mingle outside during the services. Jason’s father has “Kodak RIP” shaved into the back of his head. Jason’s nickname was Kodak because he blinked a lot.

His aunt goes on a tirade during her eulogy. “We are here today to take a real good look at our lives. There’s been too many deaths on our streets. When a person takes your life, you don’t take one life. You kill a family. You kill a community.”

The aunt ratchets up her voice. “Today, parents are burying their children. Kids are killing kids. Children are killing, then going to bed snoring.” A purple-clad teenage boy passes out. He starts shaking. Almost no one notices, even the three Crips standing directly behind him. The aunt starts to scream. “He coulda been a gardener, a chauffeur, a movie producer, a cook. We don’t know what Jason coulda been.” 

At the Community Self Determination Institute, on the northern border of Watts, executive director Aqueela Sherrills describes the current situation as a “powder keg.”

“It’s the worst it’s been since the treaty in 1992,” says Sherrills, whose own 19-year-old son, Terrell, was killed in 2003 in an unrelated incident. “It’s crazy out there right now.”

Sherrills and his brother Daude, both of whom have been active in the gang peace movement for more than a decade and who have traveled the world speaking about it, say the current problem is a matter of leadership.

The other gangs couldn’t agree more. Many PJ Crips and the Bounty Hunters lay most of the blame on the Grape Street gang, who they say have lost their leadership, which has cut loose a new generation of young gang members to go on shooting sprees.

Daude Sherrills admits the leadership in Grape Street is not what it once was, but also says, “Imperial Courts has a lot of enemies. We’re not responsible for their enemies.

“But the hopelessness and joblessness create an idleness, which can create apathy for life,” he continues. “And that creates a domino effect that leads to murder and mayhem in the streets. Our race is in worse condition than we were before the ’65 riots. Everyone needs to take responsibility. We are fortunate more lives haven’t been lost.”

Throughout the years, though, many lives have been lost in the three housing projects. According to LAPD statistics, from 1989 to May 21 this year, in the three reporting districts, or R.D.s, that cover Jordan Downs (R.D. 1829), Nickerson Gardens (R.D. 1846) and Imperial Courts (R.D. 1849), there have been 202 homicides. During that same period, there have been a startling 6,470 assaults in the three projects. These numbers cover just three reporting districts, not including all of Watts, out of a total of more than 1,000 in the city.

In 2003, as things started to heat up, there were 12 homicides in the three projects. In comparison, that year the entire West L.A. Division, with 63 R.D.s, had three homicides.

“There’s no denying it’s a very violent place,” says Captain Sergio Diaz, commander of the Southeast Division, which covers more than just Watts. “As of May 21, there had been 30 homicides in Southeast Division, an area less than 10 square miles and 140,000 people. That’s 10 times the national average.” 

To be closer to the late-night scene, when violence is most likely, and to get a better sense of the mood of the community at its most vulnerable, I decide to move in for a couple of nights at one of the two motels along Wilmington Avenue, between Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs.

I have been warned by several gang members not to do this. “But if you do,” laughs Daude Sherrills, “bring your own sheets.” I do. Red 300-count Egyptian cotton. I had been saving them for a special occasion. This wasn’t what I had in mind.

My choices are the Villa Hills, near the railroad tracks off 108th Street, and the Mirror Motel, down on 112th Street. I check out the Villa Hills first. I am somewhat intrigued by the name. There’s not a hill for miles, and to call this place a villa is like calling Fallujah a resort town. Later, I realize the Hills part must have been taken from the slight 5- or 6-foot rise on Wilmington for the railroad tracks, and I guess the Villa part comes from the small bougainvillea near the front of the motel. The rooms go for $40 a night. The manager shows me Room 16. As soon as the door opens, the stench hits your nose like a jab from Larry Holmes. A combination of odors I don’t even want to think about. I tell the guy thanks and head back to check out the Mirror.

The Mirror, painted a faded powder-blue, is a bit larger, two stories, and has 30 rooms. At 4 p.m., there’s only one car in the parking lot. I ask the Indian owner-manager how much for a room for the night. Thirty-five dollars. But then he says something very un-innkeeper-like — he fervently implores me not to rent a room here. “No, no,” he says. “No, you should not stay here. It’s not good around here.” He holds up his left hand and starts shooting off an imaginary pistol. “Boom, boom, boom. Every night, every day. Don’t stay here.”

I’m tempted, but head back and rent Room 16 at the Villa Hills. (I’ll go back to the Mirror another night.) I bring in the sheets. They’re full-size and don’t fit the queen-size bed, but I get two corners on, which is enough. There’s a television that gets Channel 7 and a few others. No porno. There’s a dirty sink and a tiny shower, a ratty dresser, a broken window screen, and walls that appear to have been splattered with something that was probably once cavity blood.

Across the street, Tommy’s Liquor is getting ready to close up at 7 p.m. “It’s not safe here at night,” the clerk says. A couple blocks away, a taco truck stays open later, doing a decent business in the early evening.

As night falls, cars start showing up at the Villa Hills. Some stay for maybe a half-hour. Others, all night. Some guests make a lot of racket arguing, and some are clearly having a good time.

Around 11 p.m., I take the Aveo out for a cruise through the three projects. They seem rather quiet on this night. In Imperial Courts, one lone, young PJ Crip, who won’t give even his nickname, asks, “What we suppose to do? Just let Grape Street shoot at us?”

Still, even at this hour, several front doors are open and many folks appear as relaxed as if they were at a Sunday-afternoon picnic in the park. It takes more than decades of homicide to lock down the residents of Watts.

A short time later, I head back to what Daude Sherrills calls “the only five-star hotel in Watts.” After a while, I go out for a short walk, past the railroad tracks, toward 107th Street. There’s a couple walking the same stretch of forgotten road. I hear at least five gunshots and instinctively duck down a bit, though the shots are not from a nearby passing car. The lady ahead laughs and calls out, “Fraidy cat.” Her companion laughs too.

The next morning, I learn from police that a few blocks away, Keith Moore, 19, of Jordan Downs, was shot to death at 105th and Lou Dillon, in an area of Watts called Fudge Town. These shots are not the only ones of the night. Two other times, gunfire is heard near the motel. Police later say the Fudge Town killing is the only shooting they are aware of. No one calls the cops in Watts just to report gunfire. Someone needs to be hit. If gang members here were good marksmen, the homicide rate in Watts would be world-class bad.

COMING NEXT - PART 2

Gordon Parks To Students in Watts - "Nothing Can Stop You"

Published L.A.Times Feb. 28, 1997

Internationally celebrated photojournalist Gordon Parks was on his own at 15, with both his parents dead. Hungry, broke and shivering on a freezing evening in St. Paul, Minn., he confronted a train conductor who had a wad of money. Parks pulled a switchblade.

It was the only time he almost committed a major crime, Parks, 84, told a group of Verbum Dei High School students Thursday in Watts.

"At that moment, in that white man's face, I saw my father's black face," he said. "And I heard my father say, 'What the hell are you doing?' So I looked at the conductor and said: 'You wanna buy a knife?' "

He has inspired generations of African Americans through his photography, writings, movies, music and, perhaps most importantly, his never-say-die spirit.

And that spirit was out in full force Thursday when Parks spoke to students from Verbum Dei High School at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee Center.

"We have brought you history today," said Janine Watkins, the center's special events coordinator. More than 100 students sat in rapt attention as Parks took them through highlights of his life.

For an hour, the dapper former Life magazine photographer delighted the group with his humor, philosophy and tales of growing up black in the Midwest during the Depression.

"If you want to do something, nothing can stop you," said Parks, who wrote and directed feature films such as "Shaft" and "The Learning Tree." "You can do anything you want to do if you want it bad enough."

Parks credited his deeply religious parents with giving him the proper values. In order to provide a skin graft for a young girl who had been badly burned in a house fire, Parks' father, Jackson, donated skin from his back.

Later, someone asked Parks' father if the girl's family had thanked him and sent flowers.

"My father told the man, 'I didn't do it for thanks. I didn't do it for flowers. I did it for the girl.' "

One student asked Parks, who has inspired so many, who was his inspiration. After mentioning his parents again, Parks said his life changed when he viewed Farm Service Administration photographs depicting the devastating effects of the Depression.

"I thought I could show racism the way the FSA showed the Depression," he said.

A short while after seeing those photos, he sold his first photograph to the Washington Post. It showed a black cleaning woman holding a mop and a broom standing before the American flag. Parks compares the shot to Grant Wood's painting "American Gothic." Today, it is Parks' most famous photograph.

In 1949, he became Life's first black staff photographer and traveled the world. One of his most famous articles was a profile of Red Jackson, a Harlem street gang leader with whom he lived for three months. A generation later, Parks' reputation helped him gain access to the Black Panthers.

"Once we were riding around in Berkeley and one of the Panthers had a gun," Parks said. "I told him my 35 [millimeter camera] was more powerful than his 45."

Three weeks later, Parks said, that Panther was dead.

Margret Triplett, an English teacher at all-boys Verbum Dei, said she wanted her class to take away an appreciation for the past.

"He shows that it doesn't matter where you're from, you have an opportunity to move forward," Triplett said.

Derrick Hogan, 13, who appeared somewhat awe-struck by Parks, said: "I learned about history. People think it's bad now, but it was worse back then."

Parks, who is still busy writing and composing and who was honored Thursday by the Director's Guild of America, had high praise for the Watts Labor Action Community Center. In all his travels around the world, he said, he had never seen a place so committed to the youth of the neighborhood.

Wearing a stylish double-breasted blue blazer, silver handkerchief and brown plaid pants, the legendary photojournalist posed for pictures with the group and left the students with one last bit of advice:

"Don't let anybody tell you you can't do something. Be prepared and make yourself so special that they'll have no choice. They'll have to hire you. There is no obstacle you can't overcome. There are no excuses."

Gordon Parks was born in 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas. He died in 2006 in New York City, The photograph is by Alfred Eisenstaedt, if that means anything to you. 

Watts Sad, Weary and Tense After Nickerson Gardens and Grape Street Homicides

Two years ago, with his South East  High School Jaguars trailing the Huntington Park High School Spartans by 24 points,  then-14-year-old Elijah Galbreath - pulled groin muscle and all -  led his team to a thrilling, come-from-behind victory with four touchdown runs.

This past Sunday, around 2 p.m.,  on 103rd and Grape Street, across the way from Jordan Downs,  Galbreath had no where to run. He had just walked out of Ronnie's Market and was headed home when a car slammed to a halt and a male with a gun exited. Elijah - hemmed in by a large fence, the car and the gunman - surrendered.   He dropped to his knees and put up his hands. The assailant shot him.

Krystal Galbreath, Elijah's sister, was at home in Jordan Downs when someone pounded on her door moments later..

"They just shot your brother," she was told. Krystal ran across 103rd Street and saw her mortally wounded younger brother.  " I went crazy. I just went crazy."  

Elijah was taken to St. Francis Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. 

Roughly two and half hours earlier, a mile-and-a-half away in Nickerson Gardens, another gunman - maybe two - entered those projects through a gate off Imperial Highway west of Success Avenue, saw a target and opened fire. Shot and killed was a beloved lifelong  Watts resident, Clinton "J B" Givens, 39.  

"I was just walking into my home when I heard shots," said a shell-shocked LaTasha Manley, Givens' woman and the mother of his children. "I looked back outside and, and, and there he was." 

"JB's dream was to make sure me and our kids were all right," Manley said as she showed off family photographs. "He wasn't my boyfriend. He was my man."

The two killings have brought a tension and eerie stillness to Watts not felt since  - almost two years to the day - September, 23, 2013, when for rapper Kevin "Flipside" White, 44,  of the Nickersons and Markice "Chiccen" Brider, 29, of Imperial Courts, were shot and killed within minutes of each other, allegedly by Grape Street Crips.  (For more on that check this link  http://www.krikorianwrites.com/blog/2013/9/24/watts-tense-after-2-killings-3-arrested-from-grape-st)

As rough as it is, Nickerson Gardens might have the best sense of humor in town.  But, Tuesday afternoon it was unusually somber, a combination of sadness for JB, concern a street gang battle was looming and a resigned awareness that its fiery past could be so easily rekindled.  At the gym, in the office, in the courtyard where JB died, the animation so prevalent in the projects was gone.

"Senseless, senseless, senseless," said Ronald "Kartoon" Antwine in a powerful Facebook post that drew dozens of agreeing comments.

LAPD's South Bureau Commander Phil Tingirides, who as captain of the Southeast Division was instrumental in developing better-than-ever relations between police and the Watts community - sought to squash fast rumors the killings were part of any Nickerson Gardens Bounty Hunters Bloods against Jordan Downs Grape Street Crips conflict. 

"People are scared, but right now it does not look that way," said Tingirides. "We need to hold off. Fortunately, the community is helping out and we are getting a lot of calls." 

Over on 105th Street, the family of Elijah Galbreath gathered and quietly greeted neighbors, friends. and out-of-town relatives who had flown in from other states to be with them. 

"They killed me when they killed my baby," said Elijah's mother Timeca Person. "They are taking out kids away forever."

When told of the earlier killing in Nickerson Gardens, Elijah's aunt who had flown in from Arizona, expressed shock.

"They haven't learned yet," said Vertrice Dooley, who recalled Elijah as respectful, funny, quick to dance and helpful. "Elijah was kind to everybody. If there were younger kids who needed any kind of help, he was happy to help them."

Mileon James, the football coach at Augustus Hawkins High School where Elijah had  transferred, spoke of the teenager's maturity, talent  and goals.

"He wanted to make his mom and dad proud and be able to get them in a better place," said James, "Elijah had this charisma about him. And he was freakishly athletic." 

Moran Galbreath, 43, Elijah's father, sat on a bench near the family home front door and spoke passionately about his son's death and that of so many other black males.

"This has got to stop." said Galbreath, 43, "We are crying and marching over police killing us, but we are annihilating ourselves. We are steadily destroying our own people."

With a distant gaze, Galbreath proudly talked about that game against Huntington Park High when his son "single-handedly brought his team back"  to a stunning victory.  "He was so determined."

Proud dad recalled the time he took Elijah to see his older brother Daylon who is at Langston University in Oklahoma on a scholarship. 

"Elijah got to work out with his brother and the team there and he turned to me and said 'This is me."

On 103rd a few yards from Grape Street, dozens of "murder candles" were lit in that all-too-familiar site of a fast memorial to the street slain. Moran Galbreath shook his head. "Our kids deserve more than this. Our kids don't deserve to be candles on a corner."  

Clinton "JB" Givens and Latasha manley with their children

Clinton "JB" Givens and Latasha manley with their children

The Beautiful Farewell of Sam Benton, The "I'm Blessed Man"

I have attended more than 100 funerals, but save services for my closest family, I have never been more moved at one than I was today for the funeral of a 62-year-old homeless man who was stabbed to death two weeks ago near Nickerson Gardens.

I called him the "I'm Blessed Man" here when I wrote of his  ignominious St. Valentine's Day death on 112th Street and Evers around 6:30 p.m., his body found laying face down, half on the sidewalk, half on a brown lawn next to a chain link fence and a plant. That's what he would say, "I'm blessed",  whenever a lady - the lady who found him laid out - would ask him how he was doing. I was struck how no one I talked to the next day in the projects, the tightest-knit community in town, knew who this guy was. So I vowed to find out.

He was Samuel Lee Benton, Jr., born Nov 4, 1951 and raised in Compton, on Piru Street. He graduated from Centennial High School and enlisted and served in the United States Marine Corps as a medic in Vietnam.  He was well-read, a jack-of-all-trades, a single man eager to help his family and friends. He was a car salesman at Sopp Chevrolet in Bell. But, after he lost that job, he started to skid. He lived in the small homeless encampment near the 105 Freeway and Central Avenue where he panhandled the off-ramps .He was a crack smoker.

And as addled by drugs as he was, Sam would tell anyone who bothered to ask how he was that he was "blessed."

"When i read what you wrote about Sam always saying 'I'm blessed', I thought, yeah, that was my brother," said Dianne Grey a few days ago as she and her sister and daughter reminisced about Sam Benton.. 

But, you never can know a stranger until you go to their funeral.

I didn't know what to expect as I drove toward the funeral at the Simpson Family Mortuary in Inglewood. Would there be only the family I had visited? Maybe Cousin Keith, who I talked to, also.  Maybe a few of the homeless, though i doubted that. So when I pulled into the packed parking lot off Manchester near Crenshaw, I thought maybe there was another funeral going on there as well as Benton's. I even asked someone "Is this for Sam Benton?" It was.. 

Inside the Chapel of Roses were roughly 100 impeccably-dressed family and friends of Sam who shed few tears, perhaps because the shock of the two-week-old homicide had subsided.

Still, on this very rainy day, most seemed surprised, if not alarmed, to hear the words of Sam himself. On a February 28th, nine or 10 years ago, Sam Benton was sitting on the porch of his "Grannies" house on Piru Street when friend and neighbor Kim Curry-Goldsby walked up.

"I want you to read this at my funeral," Sam told Kim, adding "Promise me you'll read this at my funeral,"  Curry-Goldsby promised she would with one condition; That he accept the lord. He did.

Today, Kim Curry-Goldsby, looked back at the American flag-draped coffin holding Samuel Lee Benton, Jr, and made good on her promise. 

"I can no longer afford to be nonchalant about my future. Today will be the day my life becomes on track. Life not is a total bust. I need to make a drastic change. I'm making a mistake only living one day at a time."

Curry-Goldsby went on reading more of Benton's words, then added that the paper was signed "February 28, but no year listed. It was either 2004 or 2005. I can't remember.  Anyway, his funeral was supposed to be yesterday, February 28."

Then the song "Goin' Up Yonder" by Walter Hawkins and Lady Tramaine came on. If ever a song and moment went together, it was right here and now.

"If you want to know  ...    where I'm going...., where i"m going ...soon,........ if anybody asks you....., .where I'm going....... where I'm going....., soon. ......I'm goin' up yonder...... I'm goin' up yonder....I'm going up yonder... to be with my Lord."

Man, I'm not religious but, Jesus, hearing that song in that setting. that got to me. I hope you listen to that song. Here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGBr42HNlKY

After that song, Rev. D. D. Alexander spoke eloquently, not just about Benton, but about the homeless in general. "Sometimes we need to look at a person through their eyes. Sam, in his own way, was successful. Now Sam is done with the troubles of this world."

Others spoke fondly of Sam. "Sam had a lot of love," said a man who would only give his name as Dave. His sisters, his family, his friends would come by the off ramp and give him food, give him some money. They want him to come home, but Sam didn't want to be a burden to anyone." 

His niece Tanisha said her uncle was a good handyman and always there for her when she needed him. "Whenever he came over, I was like thinking, 'What do I need fixing?'"  He will forever be missed. I love you Uncle Sam.". 

One of Sam's sisters, who works near Watts and didn't want her name used, said  "He said he saw some some action in Vietnam, but not a lot. He didn't talk about it. When he came back from Vietnam i was so happy to see him, I just hugged him hard and i didn't notice anything wrong with him."

 Another sister spoke about how it was difficult to know her brother was out on the streets, but she had come to accept it. 

"A lot people, see someone living on the streets and think, 'How does someone's family member end up like that?'", said Benton's sister Dianne Gray. "I still don't understand it. But, Sam, he really was content. He really meant it when he said he was blessed. You're thinking outwardly he looks like a bum. But, inside, deep down he mean it. I heard someone said Sam thought  he was blessed. My brother knew he was blessed.'

And that plant his head lay next to as he bled to death on East 112th Street, four miles from his sister Dianne's home on West 112th., it was a Bird of Paradise. That's high drama, I know. But, it's true .

###

LAPD Criminal Gang Homicide Division detectives Pete McCoy and James Jameson are actively working the case. The coroner's office said he was killed by a single knife wound to the chest. If anyone has information about who killed Sam Benton, call (213) 485-4341.

sam benton .jpg

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