This video is sponsored by Curiosity Stream.
If you've heard of Compton, California,
it's probably thanks to the album, "Straight Outta Compton,"
released by the group N.W.A in 1988.
The album popularized the subgenre of hardcore gangster rap
and launched the careers of Dr. Dre and Ice Cube.
The lyrics of the tracks on the album
portrayed their lives in Compton
as filled with violence and conflicts with police.
While some have called these depictions exaggerations,
Ice Cube defended the album and genre as reality rap
and coming from the lived experience in Compton, California
at that time.
I don't doubt N.W.A's depiction of Compton,
as the violent crime statistics of the time backed them up.
It was the murder capital of the U.S. back then,
and it's still in the top 10 in California today.
But this video is all about asking a simple question
that often gets overlooked
when thinking about bad places like Compton.
Why? Was Compton always bad?
Will it always be this way?
I can give you a hint of an answer
to the second question, no.
Today, it's a majority Hispanic community,
and much of the gangster rap history
of Compton is disappearing.
I recently visited the site of N.W.A's
first shows in Compton, Skateland roller rink.
Today, it's been torn down,
and new housing in a gated community are going up.
But why did Compton get so bad that it inspired gangster rap
and launched the Bloods, like the gang the Bloods?
The answer surprisingly has a lot to do
with municipal tax policy.
I'll explain after the bike bell.
(bell rings)
Compton is located here,
just south of the city of Los Angeles
if you don't count the port extension of the city limits.
It's initial European settlers arrived in 1866,
and it quickly became a farming community.
Residents raised hogs, cows, and beets.
- Bears. - Beets.
"Battlestar Galactica."
- Compton had Southern California's largest cheese factory
so it was off to a good start,
at least to me, a native Wisconsinite.
Compton was growing at the same time
as another LA County community, Pasadena.
And they offer an interesting contrast.
Residents in Pasadena grew citrus
and set up resorts to cater
to the growing Southern California tourism industry.
Today, Pasadena is wealthy, home to Caltech,
and has one of the most charming downtowns
you'll find anywhere.
Compton residents, on the other hand,
had no such interest in being fancy.
Downtown Compton served the locals and that was about it.
Downtown Compton never grew very large
because even in the early days,
the city had good rail access
to neighboring Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Residents not engaged in agriculture
or working in local businesses
would just commute to work in other cities.
Compton residents were dead set
on living in an insular suburban experience
and were always wary of outsiders.
For residents of the time,
it meant keeping the community white
in the face of Chinese immigration.
There was even a riot in 1893 to expel Chinese residents.
I mentioned in the beginning of this video
that municipal tax policy would play a role,
and I think now is a good time to introduce that topic.
Local governments earn money through taxes and fees
which they then spend on municipal services like police,
fire, and road maintenance.
Property taxes generate a large share of the local tax base
but local sales taxes also contribute.
I'm speaking generally,
but business uses generate more property taxes
per land area than residential uses.
Furthermore, businesses can generate
local sales tax revenue.
Other districts like school districts
also rely on property tax revenues to pay for services.
So cities are incentivized to zone land
for businesses to generate more tax revenues.
This is why an auto mall or an outlet mall is a big win
from a local government perspective.
This business orientation also contributes
to a lack of housing, exacerbating the housing crisis.
This is important to our story
because Compton really only wanted to be a bedroom community
and it did little to attract businesses or jobs,
a cheese factory notwithstanding.
The city grew and grew in population,
but being an affordable working class suburb
does not generate a lot of local tax revenue.
You can see this becoming a problem right away for Compton.
By 1900, the city still didn't have a city hall,
police station, fire station, paved roads, or utilities.
Around this time, local government leaders
realized they needed to pass some taxes
to pay for these missing municipal services.
They did so, and about 80% of the landowners in the city
disincorporated themselves from Compton.
That's how bad they didn't want to have to pay taxes.
By 1906, the now former residents of Compton
finally realized they wanted paved roads
and other amenities,
and decided to reannex their land back into Compton,
restoring the city to it's former glory.
But all of their progress came crashing down literally
on March 10th, 1933.
The Long Beach earthquake struck Southern California,
with Compton getting the worst of it.
In 13 seconds, the quake destroyed city hall,
and the police station, and damaged many other buildings.
Students couldn't return to school for weeks,
as most of the school buildings
were uninhabitable and unsafe.
Aid poured in from around the region and nation
to get Compton and other Southern California cities
back on their feet.
But Compton's lack of a tax base,
and they would never fully recover from the earthquake.
Their schools would be crowded and inadequate
from 1933 to the present.
The crowding was made worse because in the 1940s,
Compton was one of the fastest growing cities in the region.
And most of that new development
were neighborhoods full of single-family homes.
And that development type is one of the worst
for municipal finances.
It was at this point in the post-war years
that the phenomena known as white flight
further drained Compton's resources.
The nearby LA neighborhood of Watts was primarily Black,
and Compton's low-cost, single-family homes
were attractive to Black families there.
Compton's real estate agents worked to ensure
that homes had racially restrictive covenants,
meaning that homeowners could only sell to white families.
A 1948 Supreme Court decision invalidated
racially restrictive covenants,
so residents relied on old-fashioned intimidation.
Bottles of paint were thrown at the houses of Black families
or white families that were willing to sell
to Black families.
And for a time it worked.
Compton had only six non-white residents in 1944,
but integration was coming.
Black residents of low-income neighborhoods
saw Compton as a step up to the American Dream.
Compton schools were overcrowded,
but still way better than anything
found in Central Los Angeles school districts.
They began to buy houses in Compton,
primarily on the west side.
That side also happened to be the side
where the city continued to annex land.
They did so to shore up their tax base
and provide relief to municipal budgets and school budgets.
But that opened up even more land for Black homeowners.
In 1955, Compton's residents were 17% Black.
And by 1960, it was 40% Black.
Predictably, a rapid integration led to conflicts.
White residents that could afford to move did so
and took their businesses with them.
But Compton was a low-income suburb,
and many didn't have the means to move out.
Cross burnings, rocks through windows,
and picket lines in front of homes
greeted new Black residents.
Despite these tactics,
Compton's percentage of Black residents only increased.
Their increased population led to increased political power,
and soon the city council and school boards
had Black representatives.
The period between 1965 and 1970
was a turning point for Compton.
The Watts riots sped up the flood of white residents
leaving the city.
And even middle and upper class Black Comptonites
left to other suburbs.
By 1970, Compton was the first majority Black city
in Los Angeles County.
It was still considered a better Black city
than the Watts neighborhood,
but economically, it was on a downward trajectory.
This period also saw a rise in gang violence,
crime, and drug use.
The first gangs in Compton
actually consisted of white residents
as they patrolled the streets
to try to keep Black residents out.
Young Black men in turn formed gangs to defend themselves.
"West Side Story" could apply to Compton
as well as New York.
Later, as Compton's white residents fled,
Black gangs began to fight each other.
The infamous Crips gang was founded
in South Central LA around 1969.
And the rivals, the Bloods, were founded in Compton in 1972.
That same year, 42 people were murdered in Compton,
making it the per capita murder capital
in the United States.
Local politicians aimed to promote law and order,
but didn't even start
a full-time gang task force until 1974.
And the law and order posturing led to police brutality,
often against unarmed residents
that further fanned the flames of violence.
This was the environment Andre Young,
now known as Dr. Dre, grew up in.
He was born in 1965,
and by the time he was a teenager at the end of the '70s,
Compton had been redefined.
Once a working-class white suburb,
had become a low-income Black area
known for gang violence and police brutality.
It's no surprise that the album "Straight Outta Compton"
came to exemplify the gangster rap subgenre,
as Compton was really at the epicenter of gang activity
in the United States.
Compton's association with violence was further solidified
during the riots following the Rodney King trial in 1992.
A jury acquitted the police that beat King,
and LA's Black community saw it
as yet another instance of unchecked police brutality.
Angry, they took to the streets in Koreatown,
South Central Los Angeles, and Compton.
But to read the event as a Black-only protest
would be simplifying things,
as half of all rioters arrested were Hispanic.
And indeed, by 1990, Latino residents
made up a third of Compton's population.
just as integration proved difficult
between white and Black residents,
Hispanic residents found it hard to integrate
into Compton's communities and schools
as Black residents held on tight to political power,
jobs, and what prosperity they had.
The 1990s were a decade where Compton desperately tried
to pull itself out of its death spiral
of small tax base, crime, and violence.
Some advocated for the state of California to build a prison
within the city limits to provide recession-proof jobs.
But ultimately, local leaders felt
it would reinforce Compton's negative image.
In 1995, a new casino in Compton
failed to provide much prosperity to local residents.
Now in the 2000s, Compton still hasn't had a major rebound.
The municipal tax base issue
coupled with perceptions of violence remain.
It's less dangerous now than it was back in the N.W.A days,
but crime is still unacceptably high.
Compton may feel like a unique case,
but it's actually just an extreme example
of the challenges facing inner ring suburbs.
Inner ring suburbs are suburbs located
near a city center like Compton,
where there's an aging population, aging housing stock,
and a situation where most of the people
who wanted to leave already did.
If you're interested in learning more
about inner ring suburbs
and the challenges and opportunities they have,
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