Watts (Los Angeles, California)

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Watts is a residential district in southern Los Angeles, California. It is considered part of South Los Angeles.
The area now known as Watts began its modern history, after the arrival of Spanish-Mexican settlers, as part of the Rancho La Tajauta, which received its land grant in 1820. As on all ranchos, the principal vocation was grazing and beef production.
With the influx of white Americans into Southern California in the 1870s, La Tajuata land was sold off and subdivided for smaller farms and homes. In those days each Tajuata farm had an artesian well. The arrival of the railroad spurred the development of the area, and in 1907 Watts was incorporated as a separate city, named after Charles H. Watts, a landowner and civic leader. The city voted to annex itself to Los Angeles in 1926.
Along with more white Americans, Mexican and Mexican American railroad workers ("traqueros") settled in the community. Blacks came in later (many of the men were Pullman car porters and other railroad workers); schoolroom photos from 1909 and 1911 show two or three black faces among the 30 or so children pictured. By 1914, a black realtor, Charles C. Leake, was doing business in the area.
Watts was predominantly black by 1940. During World War II, several large housing projects (including Nickerson Gardens, Jordan Downs, and Imperial Courts) were built to house workers in war industries. These projects were nearly 100 percent black by the early 1960s as whites moved to new suburbs outside the central city.
Longstanding resentment by Los Angeles' working-class black community over treatment by police and what was seen as inadequate public services (especially schools and hospitals) exploded on August 11, 1965, into what were commonly known as the Watts Riots. The event that precipitated the disturbances, the arrest of a black youth by the California Highway Patrol on drunk-driving charges, actually occurred outside Watts, but the district was by far the area most damaged in the turmoil.
Watts suffered further in the 1970s, with gangs—not very active before the riots—gaining in strength. Between 1989 and 2005, police reported more than 200 homicides in Watts, most of them gang-related. Three of Watts' most notorious gangs—Grape Street Watts Crips, Bounty Hunter Watts Bloods, and PJ Watts Crips—formed a cease-fire agreement after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a pact that may have been tied to a decrease in crime in the area between 1992 and 2000.
Beginning in the 1970s, many African Americans left Watts for other parts of South Los Angeles, and later the Antelope Valley, the Inland Empire, Orange County, and even the San Joaquin Valley; they were largely replaced by immigrants of Ethiopian, Indian, Mexican and Central American ancestry. This process accelerated after the 1992 riots.
Neighborhood leaders have begun a strategy to overcome Watts' reputation as a violence-prone and impoverished area. Special promotion has been given to the museums and art galleries opened in the area surrounding Watts Towers around on 1765 East 107th St which is towards Imperial Highway towards surrounding suburb of Lynwood. This sculptural and architectural landmark has attracted many artists and professionals to the area.