Talk:Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles, California

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It's good to see some else has also found the Baldwin Hills article and is working on improving it. I just found it yesterday, but was trying to do some research before doing any editing. The bit about LA being racially integrated, for example, doesn't belong in this article since it is about LA, and is balderdash anyway. It wasn't until 1964 (?) that the California Supreme Court struck down covenants on the deeds of property that said no purchases by Blacks, Mexicans, Jews and/or Catholics. LA has always been relatively ethnically diverse, but it has been a mosaic, rather than being intergrated.

I am still trying to determine some sensible boundary for Baldwin Hills. LA County has an unincorporated area they call Baldwin Hills (see [1]) that is next to Ladera Heights and Windsor Hills, but the City of Los Angeles also calls a section of the city they call Baldwin Hills as part of the West Adam - Baldwin Hills - Leimert Community Plan (see [2]). The LA City part of Baldwin Hills I had assumed was the triangular area between the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Plaza and the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area--an area one website called "the Dons" because of all the streets that begin with Don, such as Don Lorenzo Drive. On the other hand, LA City's Baldwin Hills Recreation Center is near the intersection of La Cienega and Jefferson.

I also haven't been able to find any good history for the area on the internet, so it looks like a visit to the library might be required (or perhaps even a visit to the California African American Museum. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 09:54, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

whew - I'm glad there are many hands working on this one. Baldwin Hills deserves a good article. You can tell I bailed out on defining the boundaries. The grim truth about L.A. is that the realtor-shorthand for neighborhoods is zipcodes, and also now neighborhood councils. So many overlapping boundaries! There may be old census data on the past integration of neighborhoods - that'd be interesting! The B.H. Village is a National Historic Site. - need to work that in.Willmcw 10:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've been poking around various topics related to the Los Angeles area in the last few days, and so many of the articles are a mess. Some of them are horribly inadequate stubs, others are ladden with POV, too many are just poorly written, some need better organization, and even a few have the facts wrong. There are plenty of people editing the LA area articles, but I think that there could be some better organization, and I've have started thinking that what might be needed is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Los Angeles.

User:Jengod has worked on the L.A. neighborhoods, and might be able to offer suggestions or help. I'm sure I'd contribute - though I sometimes feel guilty lavishing attention on L.A. when some other deserving localities have even greater needs. Willmcw 23:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't understand why this has been moved back to Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles, California from Baldwin Hills, California. Since there are both LA County and LA City neighborhoods that are called Baldwin Hills, isn't it better to use the more general, rather than the more specific designation as the primary title?

Also: Baldwin Hills is named after "Lucky Baldwin", who apparently was quite a character and deserves his own Wikipedia article (see [3]). [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 07:00, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Racial covenant court cases

1948 is indeed the watershed year in many cities' history for desegregation because SCOTUS, in its ruling on Shelley v. Kraemer, barred state enforcement of segregation covenants. While a white family could still refuse to sell to a black homeowner until 1964, Shelley essentially froze enforcement of deed covenants. As most of you are well aware, I'm sure, "block-busting" (and resulting white flight) started well before 1964 in most American cities. See JimCrowHistory.org for more details.

Is there a direct tie-in with the history of Baldwin Hills? Was it under restrictive covenants? Thanks -Willmcw 06:41, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Indeed there is, given the above comments--there wasn't a neighborhood south of the 10 and east of the 405 that wasn't experiencing at least the beginning stages of white flight by 1964, when the official ban on segregation covenants came down. Restrictive covenants were the norm in pretty much every residential development in Los Angeles until that time.

So should this go into the History of Los Angeles, California? -Willmcw 20:24, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Baldwin Hills Dam Disaster, 1963

The article at present has a paragraph on the 1963 dam disaster. I was going to improve it with additional material, but on reflection I think it deserves its own article. Unless there are really convincing objections, I plan to do that, and replace the dam disaster paragraph with a sentence and reference to the separate article. I also plan to confirm the source of the dam photos, to meet Wikipedia image status requirements, and then move them to the new article. (I lived in Baldwin Hills from 1960-1964, and was there for the dam disaster - we evacuated to a relative's house, and ours turned out to be undamaged.) If I can find some original photos my parents and I took they can be scanned and contributed. --MCB 22:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Planned city (category)

I removed [[Category:Planned cities]] from the article. Baldwin Hills was not a planned city; the vast majority of it is simply an ordinary urban residential neighborhood. The only "planned" aspect would be the Village Green development, which was innovative in its design, but (1) it's a small part of Baldwin Hills as a whole, and (2) it is not at all a true planned city in that it is only a housing development, and lacks commercial, retail, office, or industrial districts. MCB 21:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)