The University of Southern California has been my dream school since I was a freshman in high school. At fourteen years old, a family friend asked me what my dream career was, and I told her that I wanted to be a film director. She then recommended that I go to USC, because it’s the best film school in the world. So, I worked tirelessly throughout high school to affirm my admittance to USC. I wrote the most flawless essays, and cried through Honors Chemistry, just to get the chance to step foot on USC’s campus. But like anyone would on the journey to their dreams, I faced a lot of discouragement on the way here. From my peers implying that I wasn’t intelligent enough, to my guidance counselor saying that USC is too unrealistic for what I could afford, the people in my life would continually tell me USC wasn’t for me. However, one common (and strange) statement that I heard was that I should look at other options, simply because USC is in a “sketchy area.” They would passive-aggressively express concerns for my safety because USC is, according to my wealthy neighbors, “in the hood.”
As a Black girl, I know what a “sketchy area” means. The area is “sketchy” and unsafe because it is a working-class neighborhood that is composed of predominantly Black and brown residents. To label it as sketchy feels disrespectful to the people that call this area home. Our surrounding neighborhood may not be the beachfront, white picket fence properties that many USC students are used to, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worthy of respect and love.
What is shocking is that despite where it’s located, USC is one of the wealthiest universities in America. In fact, we’re ranked at number nineteen on the list of America’s wealthiest universities. We have $5.6 billion in wealth (Burch, 2022), and an $8.126 billion endowment fund (Haddad, 2022). The average income of USC families is $161,400 (The New York Times, 2022). Meanwhile, the average family income of families In South Central Los Angeles is $40,829. Many people living around this school are unhoused, and many of the unhoused are Black and brown families. To know that USC is a center of wealth within this working-class area is both perplexing and frustrating. How can a university with so much abundance exist in such a financially desolate area?
To add, there is also a stark racial difference between USC and South Central. 31% of the USC student body is made up of white students, while Black students only make up 6% of the school. On the contrary, Black people make up 15% of South Central Los Angeles’ population, and white people only make up 1% of that population. White people seemingly don’t belong in South Central, but they belong within the bubble that is USC. Celebrities and billionaires send their children to attend this school, attracting generous donations from the world’s wealthiest families. USC is a perfectly crafted, utopian-like bubble, isolated from the rest of Los Angeles. At USC, the sun is always shining, and the sky is a poignant blue. Our campus is always silent, and even the air seems crisp and clear. USC is the picture-perfect university, but the same can’t be said for South Central Los Angeles. But how did such a stark difference come to be?
As I continue to learn about the complex racial history in Los Angeles, it’s crucial that we look at our own university’s role in this history. In what ways have we harmed South Central? How have we helped the city thrive, if we’ve even helped at all? What role has USC played in the efforts toward social justice that took place in LA? This essay will investigate the beautifully complicated relationship between our university, and its home, South Central Los Angeles.
South Central Los Angeles is a region within southern Los Angeles County, with a population of 161,275 people. Contrary to popular belief, though, South Central isn’t one neighborhood. In fact, South Central is made up of twenty-eight different neighborhoods, and it takes up fifty-one square miles of land. USC is currently located in the University Park region, seated on the edge of Downtown Los Angeles and Koreatown.
The University of Southern California, otherwise known as USC, was founded in 1880 by Judge Robert M. Widney, (whom Widney Alumni Hall is named after) Orzo W. Childs, John G. Downey, and Isaiah W. Hellman. USC was founded with the goal of bringing more educated Anglo-Saxon migrants to Southern California, with the specific intent of drawing migrants from the city to the rural areas. By the 1880s, Anglo-Saxons had made up much of Los Angeles’ population, and ran local politics (Lyle Hernandez, page 55). USC had largely contributed to such dominion. Also, founder Robert Widney had helped expand the Southern Pacific Railroad into Southern California. Essentially, establishing USC was a way to bring more settlers from across the country to the area (Sanchez, pg. 3).
The intention that Widney set established a race and class divide, early in the university. Though the university didn’t discriminate by gender, and it didn’t explicitly discriminate by race, it was obvious who USC’s founders wanted to attend the University, over any other groups.
Judge Widney wanted USC to help elevate the area by bringing in white settlers, and he succeeded at that. From the beginning, there was a class divide within USC. Judge Widney succeeded at bringing in the settlers that he wanted, and pushing out the people that he didn’t. In fact, many of our surrounding roads were built by groups of incarcerated homeless men, or “tramps,” homeless, unemployed white men who were seen as dampers to Los Angeles’ “pristine” image. In turn, they were incarcerated to eliminate them from the streets, and were used to build the city of Los Angeles. As Kelly Lyle Hernandez said in City of Inmates, these inmates were used to “downgrade, fill, and gravel streets” around and within USC (page 59). Despite sharing the same race, poor, uneducated white people weren’t allowed to attend USC, while the educated, wealthy white people were allowed to attend. USC didn’t explicitly discriminate by race and class; However, they did not consider making the university more accessible to people of different racial and class backgrounds, such as tramps. Which is all so interesting, because at the same time, USC had aspired to interact with its surrounding community. However, it is important to acknowledge that this community was nothing like the surrounding community that we see around USC today. In fact, if the neighborhood looked how it does now, USC’s administration would have reacted differently—and when the population shifted within the coming decades, it did react differently. But until the late 1930s, USC’s surrounding neighborhood remained predominantly white and middle-class, and the relationship with that community was fairly positive. The 1920s saw some minority migration to South Central, however, they remained strictly segregated from the white majority population. In fact, at the time, USC implemented social work programs to help tackle the “minority problem.” However, most of the minority migration into South Central began at the turn of World War II. Most of the neighborhood changes—and the conflict that came with it—followed this period.
War-related labor demands caused more minority migration into the neighborhood surrounding USC (Sanchez, lecture). The ruling of Shelly vs. Kraemer (1948) banned restrictive housing covenants and allowed minorities to take up residences that they were previously banned from, and a massive white flight occurred throughout South Central. After Black residents began to move into areas such as Watts and Compton, white residents moved out of fear of losing profit. In turn, the property value went down in these areas, and the areas were invested in less and less, causing a deterioration of South Central’s once pristine neighborhoods. Then, racist redlining forced Black and brown people to live in neighborhoods that were not invested in, and were quickly deteriorating. The shift in neighborhood demographics is what caused USC to become more and more exclusionary towards its surrounding community. The university’s exclusionary intentions are also largely exemplified through their architectural decisions.
As the neighborhood around USC became less and less white, USC began to implement physical barriers to keep its surrounding neighborhood out of the campus. For example, Trousdale Road is now a wide walkway that cuts directly through the center of campus. But before 1953, Trousdale used to be open to cars. In 1953, as racial demographics in Los Angeles changed, USC quickly closed off its roads to traffic. We can see the remnants of this today, as the walkways on and around our Campus Center are extremely wide, as if they can fit cars– Because originally, they could (Arabella Delgado, lecture: A Racist Tour of USC). This was a clear attempt to keep USC’s neighbors outside of campus. Closing off the roads to cars made USC seemingly inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t a USC student.
To add to this structural exclusion effort, USC constructed “The Walls of Troy” in 1955, two years after USC’s roads were closed off to the public. The Walls of Troy were a part of USC’s 1960 Master Plan, which detailed USC’s plan to expand over the next decade (Delgado, 2021). The Walls of Troy currently surround our campus’ entire perimeter, creating a clear border between our university’s property and the outside community. Prior to The Walls, our campus was open and accessible. After the Walls were constructed, our campus was restricted to certain entry and exit points, making it more difficult to access our campus, creating a clear delineation between USC and South Central. The construction of The Walls, combined with the closing of Trousdale, sent a clear message to the South Central Community– The message was that the University’s administration did not want any type of merging between the USC community and South Central LA. Such choices created the bubble that USC is today. All the wealth and knowledge that could help South Central are kept in these walls, completely out of reach from the outside community that could have possibly rescued it from the state that it’s in today. The Walls also surround the USC Village, which was added via the Hoover Redevelopment Project of 1966.
The Hoover Redevelopment Project was a project that, according to CRLA, had the goal of the project to retain and develop affordable housing; To improve “community facilities” within University Park; And to promote economic development opportunities. However, most of the Hoover Redevelopment Project benefitted the university and harmed its neighbors. When the project was founded, USC’s surrounding neighborhood was deteriorating. And instead of being a helpful neighbor, USC decided to redevelop the neighborhood for itself, and labeled it as a neighborhood project. The project called for expanding USC’s territory, and revamping surrounding businesses. For USC, the Hoover Redevelopment Project was a success—it’s how we acquired the land for the Village, the Galen Center, and Gateway Apartments. However, despite its alleged intentions, the Hoover Redevelopment Project did little to nothing to benefit the neighborhood. In fact, the effort did more harm than good. It ended with 3,000 citizens displaced and without a home. The City Redevelopment of Los Angeles forum claims that the Redevelopment Project was set to aid the community through affordable housing and economic development opportunities. However, we must think about which community benefited—the answer to that consideration is clear. Through the project, USC was able to cherry-pick land through Los Angeles, and add to our assets, all while USC’s outside community suffered at the expense of USC’s victory. Our university was able to expand its reign over Los Angeles, taking land as it pleased. It’s quite ironic that one of our most well-known songs is titled “Conquest,” because that’s exactly what USC did to South Central via the Hoover Redevelopment Project.
This further emphasized the subordinate position of the Black and brown community outside of USC, USC had, and continues to have, an authoritative power that our neighbors do not. To our university, our Black and brown neighbors are a harmful nuisance. We closed off our roads, so that they couldn’t access our campus by vehicle. Then, we built walls around our university and restricted our access points, so that entering by foot wasn’t easy. The Walls were allegedly constructed in order to keep us protected from danger. However, the only “danger” that there is the working-class neighborhood that surrounds us. The Walls of Troy are a false sense of security that keeps us away from the issues that our university has internally created. The University hasn’t exactly been open to students of the community, either.
USC is considered a PWI, or a “predominantly white institution.” The first 54 USC students were only white students, and the entire faculty was as well. This is a trend that continues today. In 2022, Black students currently only make up 6% of the University, while white students make up 31%. As said before, USC has never explicitly discriminated against any racial minority, unlike schools in the Southeast, for example. However, USC’s administration rarely took explicit action to include students of color, either. In fact, it really took the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. for USC to admit a substantial number of Black students (Dr. Sanchez, lecture). But still, the amount of Black and brown students admitted, especially from the South Central community, remained small. There was an obviously strained relationship between the University and the city. This can be attributed to the previously exclusionary actions that USC has taken— the Walls of Troy, closing off the roads to cars, and stealing their land to expand the university. The surrounding community distrusted the university, and they had every reason to. To add salt to the wound, the University had also viewed South Central as a laboratory, instead of an actual community. Historically, USC had a program called the “Urban Semester,” where USC students were given the chance to study the racial issues of South Central. Yet, the victims of such racial issues weren’t given access to USC. Many students within the community would say that USC felt inaccessible to them (Sanchez, pg. 9). It’s interesting too, because USC only became more inclusive towards different race and class backgrounds because of the efforts of students. That is something that persists to this day. USC students created the Norman Topping Scholarship Fund, which is a fund that gives full-ride scholarships to deserving, yet underserved students in South Central. It was started in the 1980s, and still exists today (Sanchez, lecture). More contemporarily, an organization called Dirty Blossoms advocates for the rights of low-income students at USC. Founded by a USC student named A.J. Bexton, Dirty Blossom provides mutual aid, such as food and necessary supplies to USC students in need. There are many other student organizations that aspire to make USC accessible to everyone, regardless of their background. However, it’s important to note that these organizations were led, and have always been led by students, and not by USC. In a way, the philanthropic efforts of USC students may be the only thing that keeps a positive relationship between us and South Central.
To be honest, I’m not sure if USC will ever amend its relationship with South Central. I would like to remain hopeful and think that we’re making progress towards that, and the compassion of our student body is what makes me believe in that possibility. But from a pessimistic angle, I’d argue that USC will continue to expand its territory and will continue its war on South Central. I say this because the Hoover Redemption Project has been amended five times since its founding, and the most recent amendment extended the project until 2025. This means that USC will continue to have the opportunity to cherry-pick through South Central Los Angeles and expand the University’s territory. This also means that South Central residents will continue to be displaced at the hands of our school’s expansion efforts. USC’s already wealthy students and faculty will benefit, while South Central residents will suffer. In my opinion, the relationship between USC and its neighborhood will continue to strain until the string pops, and the relationship no longer exists. I’d go as far to predict a protest hosted by South Central residents, against USC’s action– There’s only so much more that our university can do before the community resists.
The University of Southern California has been my dream university since I was fifteen. But, investigating the relationship between South Central and USC has made me feel disdain towards the haven that USC is marketed to be. Don’t get me wrong, USC has contributed amazing things to our society, and has even changed my life. It’s a blessing to have the opportunity to receive such an excellent education. However, it’s hard to feel proud of my university when I know that people of my racial background have suffered losses so that students like myself can succeed. It’s disheartening to think about; However, I hope to use all the things that I learned at this university to help people who are in those positions. I also hope to be given the opportunity to educate others on these matters, so that large, predominantly white institutions like USC can’t continue its reign over minority, working-class communities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Haddad, C. (2022, August 23). Tuition, government funding and endowment rise from latest Financial Report. Daily Trojan. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from
https://dailytrojan.com/2022/08/23/tuition-government-funding-and-endowment-rise-from latest-financial-report/
Buchanan, L., & Aisch, G. (2017, January 18). Economic diversity and student outcomes at U.S.C. The New York Times. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-southern california
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Unknown. (2019, November 18). About USC: History. About USC. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from
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Delgado, A. (2022, July 5). The walls of troy: Exclusion and community in a pandemic. Home. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://www.historians.org/research-and publications/perspectives-on-history/summer-2022/the-walls-of-troy-exclusion-and community-in-a-pandemic
Hernandez, K. L. (2020). City of Inmates: Conquest, rebellion, and the rise of human caging in Los Angeles, 17711965. UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA PR.
Sanchez, George (2011). Norman Topping Student Aid Fund; A History of Family, Community, and Service. The University of Southern California.
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