“The Great Gentrification”

Two Venice veterans examine Oakwood’s division and development.

From the Boardwalk to Abbot Kinney to the beach, Venice, CA is a world-famous landmark known for its eclectic people, sightseeing, and to some, its wealth. Venice is, as my great-grandfather has called it, “the only Black neighborhood by the beach from Canada to Mexico,” and while I don’t know if this is completely accurate, I do know that, at one time, Venice was 51% Black-owned, and the other 49% was mostly made up of other minorities, namely the Latine population. 

Today, Venice is filled with young, white couples with babies in strollers, expensively-dressed joggers, and small, overpriced coffee shops taking up space that used to be occupied by minority-owned businesses. Why is the Venice that four generations of my family have grown up in turning into a tourist hotspot, leaving no room for the locals? To this question, the answer is simple: gentrification. While Venice as a whole is a victim of this ruthless process of displacement, the community of Oakwood has been specifically targeted. Located just a block away from Abbot Kinney, the strip created by a developer of the same name, who sought to develop the “Venice (Italy) of America,” Oakwood has been invaded and flipped upside down since the 1950s and 60s.

“Gentrification is a statistically planned process,” says Mike Bravo, a 5th-generation Venetian and civil rights activist. His experience is an essential factor in the overall understanding of a deeper problem of gentrification and the implications of rushed political activism, as well as the erasure of his community nationwide. His Venice legacy is longer than my own, his family arriving in the 1920s, before owning properties during the 1940s. His work advocates for the Indigenous/Chicano population of Venice, and focuses on “empower[ing] and bring[ing] truth to non-colonial based families.”  

Recently, a small group of petitioners campaigned to have Oakwood Park, the community park and recreation center that is quintessential to every local’s childhood experience, renamed to “Tabor-Reese Recreation Center.” This change comes after an initiative to give recognition to the Black families who founded the Venice that minorities know and love. Tabor and Reese are the last names of two Venice trailblazers, cousins Irving Tabor and Arthur Reese, two of the first African-Americans to live in the area. Tabor became Abbot Kinney’s chauffeur and then inherited his house after his death in 1920. Because of redlining and discrimination, Tabor was not allowed to live in the area of Venice where the house was located, so he decided to move his house to Oakwood, where his family established The First Baptist Church. Reese is regarded as “The Wizard of Venice,” and worked closely with Abbot Kinney to develop the area. Tabor and Reese were two of the first Black home and business owners in Venice, and many argue that the name change is not a significant enough recognition of the impact that they have had, advocating for a more public display of their achievements.

But what is Oakwood, if not just a park and basketball gym on the corner? My neighbor and activist Stanley Mitchell, creator of the culture-intensive film “Venice, America,” doesn’t believe that the Oakwood name is that significant. “Oakwood was given to us by the cops… they wanted to assign a name to crime,” Mitchell said. Previously referred to as Ghosttown, Oakwood resides in the space between Abbot Kinney to Lincoln Boulevard and California to Rose Avenue. This 1.1 square mile of land was assigned to Black people, barring the community from the rest of Venice. At the time, Venice had a reputation for crime, but again, it was one that was forced upon it, not decided by its residents. Oakwood was “infamous before it was desirable,” Mitchell said, pointing to the hypocrisy of gentrification. Nobody wanted to live in “Black Venice,” hence the redlining. They were kept in a small box and were at risk of possibly fatal brutality if one were to step outside of these boundaries. Despite its reputation, Venice remained the second-most popular tourist attraction next to Disneyland, due largely in part to the media’s lack of coverage on what was happening in the streets, specifically the violence between Latino and Black youth. 

Mitchell illustrates the division amongst different racial groups in Venice, namely the Latino and Black populations, claiming that “[Latino] history in Oakwood didn’t really start until the 90s,” and that they “felt excluded” by this name change. Oakwood was a majority Black park, almost entirely due to redlining, and the fact remains that Black people weren’t allowed to cross Lincoln Boulevard, while the Latino population could. The ability to move freely through Venice means that they were able to occupy other areas, such as Penmar Park. Mitchell recounts Venice’s integration history, saying that 1977 was the first time that the Latino community was integrated into Oakwood, specifically. This assertion accompanies his claim that Latino history in Venice started just before that of white people, an inherent division that is impossible to ignore. In a way, both parties inexplicitly agree that there is a sense of invisibility for Latino people, but disagree on its validity in relation to the Oakwood Park situation.

In the 90s, during the peak of the ‘War on Drugs’ and the crack cocaine epidemic, tensions were high, leading to a surge in gang-related violence between the Latino and Black populations of Venice. In just nine months, 74 people were shot and 19 were killed, although this event rarely reached the media outside of the local news. Both Mitchell and Bravo agree that this event, which took place in 1993, had a huge effect on the acceleration of gentrification in Venice. Because Venice’s geographic and commercial appeal had become so desirable, developers looked past what was happening to the communities living within it. As more people died, more Black families began moving elsewhere, out of fear or the grief of losing their children. Property values in this now violence-stricken area went down three times their original value, which allowed developers to take advantage of a clearly broken town. 

The division between the Latino and Black communities is not new, although the origins of what may seem like petty prejudice are unknown to many, even to those living within them. A major component of Mitchell’s work is the psychological effects of culture, the idea that we have certain urges and practices that are based on our history, whether or not we can actually put a name to them. His documentary, “Venice, America” focuses on the idea of showing true Black culture in order to heal Black people. For example, Mitchell shares the psychology behind physical discipline. Mitchell explains that prior to colonization, African parents did not hit their children and that this behavior was learned through the whippings they endured during slavery. The psychological urge to hit one’s child is a manifestation of generational trauma and the process of relearning history and unlearning colonial behavior. This concept can be easily applied to the violence between Black and Latino people in Venice. 

Psychologically, Black and Latino youth are ignorant of their histories prior to colonization, causing a sense of confused frustration, which translates to fighting, a type of fighting that Mitchell says took place once a year, every year when he was a child. The unique thing about this event, though, is that the kids fighting each other were the same ones who ate lunch together at school. They were friends, yet they were fighting each other, for seemingly no reason. Mitchell asserts that a lot of this confusion arose from the often poor and uneducated generation that their parents came from, leaving kids generationally traumatized and unsure of how to process their experience. Mitchell continues to recount times of fighting, specifically in 1977, when a week-long gang war broke out in Oakwood. During this time, four people were killed, and Mitchell himself was shot at. 

My own family has been living in Venice for over 70s years, our origins stemming from Hope, Arkansas, a small town just outside of Little Rock. Out of fear of being lynched, my great-grandfather, Chester Powell, joined six million others in The Great Migration, often called The Black Migration, on their journeys out of the racist Southern United States. As a young Black man, he wasn’t allowed to ride on many trains, so he was forced to hold onto the tops of train cars and barter his way into meals, rides, and work. His tumultuous journey led him to cotton picking in Northern California before he was able to move to Venice, accompanied by my great-grandmother, Annie-Mae Powell. Here, they built their home from the ground up, purchasing the land for just $5,500 and raising eight children while establishing themselves as vital members of the Venice community. 

My Venice perspective inevitably relies on the lived experiences of three generations and, after speaking with someone living right next door to me, my perspective has become increasingly informed. In full transparency, I was not aware of the park name change until another neighbor mentioned it to my dad. Initially, I had virtually no feelings towards the initiative, yet Mitchell’s observations have helped me assign reason to my gut reaction. With all of the discourse, it is clear that the community is still divided, and while maybe not as fatally as it was in the 1990s, the people native to the area disagree on how to honor those who were instrumental in creating the Venice that we all know and love. 

It is hard to tell whether or not the Oakwood Park name change is especially significant, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Venice continues to be the place that has seen generations of my family work through hardship and achieve triumph, and I am proud to be a part of this legacy and the history that is being written here, whether it be a park sign or another display of activism, I am convinced that Venice will continue to be a place of great significance to Black people in Los Angeles, and that no name changes or new policies will impact this. “History is still being told,” Mitchell said, noting that the least told of Venice’s history is that of the Black and Latino populations, which I believe leaves it to the residents to write the history they choose to be remembered by.