Nipsey Hussle tried to stop it. Gentrification in Los Angeles is real, but one community center stands firm on not being removed.
Just at the crossing where Crenshaw Boulevard meets Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles, exists one of the few remaining important African American cultural locations in the city. The AFIBA has consistently offered Black and African-centered programming to a neighborhood and the larger Black Los Angeles.
It is the intersection ushering into several middle-class Black communities, as well, it serves as critical corridors housing Black businesses from eateries to art galleries, affordable and mixed housing, and everything in between.
Annual parades and festivals have passed through these parts, including the once famous Sunday night cruising on Crenshaw. But for years, that reality has dwindled in the crushing economic takeover known as gentrification. With the coming LAX/Crenshaw metro rail line running through this popular district, the decreasing part of the area that is still black-owned and operated, is now under a serious battle to survive.
The AFIBA Center discovered that it sat in the cross hairs of a project earmarking the grave changes in the community. That project is called Destination Crenshaw. Here is their side of the story of Saving the AFIBA center.
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