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Watts is a 2.12-square-mile neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, within the South Los Angeles area. It is a high-density, youthful neighborhood with a large household size and with the highest percentage of families headed by single parents in the city.〔 The district was once a separate city but was consolidated with Los Angeles in 1926. As a major junction of railroad lines, Watts attracted many railroad workers as residents. The Watts railroad station is on the National Register of Historic Places. Watts is noted for the Watts Towers and for the 1965 Watts Riots. The neighborhood also has a number of youth gangs. Residents engage in civic activities such as bicycling, a toy drive, a Christmas parade and an athletic tournament. There is a local theater and a dance company. There is one library branch, and there are four high schools. Watts has been the site of motion picture filming. ==History== The area now known as Watts is located on the 1843 Rancho La Tajauta Mexican land grant. As on all ranchos, the principal vocation was at that time grazing and beef production. With the influx of European American settlers into Southern California in the 1870s, La Tajuata land was sold off and subdivided for smaller farms and homes, including a 220-acre parcel purchased by Charles H. Watts in 1886 for alfalfa and livestock farming. In those days each Tajuata farm had an artesian well. The arrival of the railroad spurred the settlement and development of the area. Most of the first residents were the traqueros, Mexican and Mexican American rail workers who constructed and maintained the new rail lines. With this new growth, Watts was incorporated as a separate city, taking its name from the first railroad station, Watts Station that had been built in 1904 on 10 acres of land donated by the Watts family. The city voted to annex itself to Los Angeles in 1926.〔 Watts did not become predominantly black until the 1940s. Before then, there were some African American residents, many of whom were Pullman car porters and cooks. Schoolroom photos from 1909 and 1911 show only 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.〔 World War II brought the Second Great Migration, tens of thousands of African American migrants, mostly from Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas, who left segregated Southern states in search of better opportunities in California. During World War II, the city built several large housing projects (including Nickerson Gardens, Jordan Downs, and Imperial Courts) for the thousands of new workers in war industries. By the early 1960s, these projects had become nearly 100 percent black, as whites moved on to new suburbs outside the central city. As industrial jobs disappeared from the area, the projects housed many more poor families than they had traditionally. Longstanding resentment by Los Angeles's working-class black community over discriminatory treatment by police and 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. Mobs did the most property damage in Watts in the turmoil. Watts suffered further in the 1970s, as gangs gained strength and raised the level of violence in the neighborhood. Between 1989 and 2005, police reported more than 500 homicides in Watts, most of them gang-related and tied to wars over control of the lucrative illicit market created by illegal drugs. Four of Watts's influential gangs— Watts Cirkle City Piru Bloods, Grape Street Watts Crips, Bounty Hunter Watts Bloods, and PJ Watts Crips—formed a Peace Treaty agreement on April 26, 1992 following just over 4 years of peace talks which were initiated in July 1988 with the support of the local community and mosque, Masjid Al Rasul (where talks had been conducted and the treaty was finalized). The spokespersons for the groups taking part in the peace talks were Imam Mujahid Abdul-Karim (of Masjid Al Rasul) and gang members, Twilight and Daude.〔 Twilight and Daude photos from the 1988 Peace Talks press conference were printed on the front pages of regional and local newspapers and their interviews with TV news crews were on every news channel. In the months and years to follow, Twilight would appear on National TV talk shows, radio talk shows, and speak at several college and university campuses. Both Twilight and Twelve received death threats due to misinterpretation of newspaper articles by their peers, many of whom would join the peace movement in the months and years to come. After four years of peace talks, the Peace Treaty would be drafted and then agreed the day before the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The pact, supported by community-based education initiatives and private investments from prominent members of the community e.g. Jim Brown, continues to contribute to the decrease in gang-related death in Watts and the greater South Los Angeles area since 1992. Key hallmarks of the pact continue to influence life in Watts to date, with colors and territory having little to do with gang-related crime. Beginning in the 1980s, those African Americans who could leave Watts moved to other parts of South Los Angeles and suburban locations in the Antelope Valley, the Inland Empire, the San Gabriel Valley, Orange County, and the San Joaquin Valley. The black population in Watts has been increasingly replaced by other demographic groups, primarily Hispanic immigrants of Mexican and Central American ancestry, as well as by a smaller proportion of Ethiopian and Indian ancestry. This demographic change accelerated after the 1992 riots. In addition, there has been a net migration of African Americans out of California to return to the South in a New Great Migration. From 1995–2000, California was a net loser of African-American residents. With new jobs, Southern states have attracted the most black college graduates since 1995. Neighborhood leaders have begun a strategy to overcome Watts's reputation as a violence-prone and impoverished area. Special promotion has been given to the museums and art galleries in the area surrounding Watts Towers at 1765 East 107th St, near the Imperial Highway and suburb of Lynwood. This sculptural and architectural landmark has attracted many artists and professionals to the area. ''I Build the Tower'', a feature-length documentary film about the Watts Towers and their creator, Simon Rodia, provides a history of Watts from the 1920s to the present and a record of the activities of the Watts Towers Arts Center. Watts is one of several Los Angeles neighborhoods with a high concentration of convicted felons.〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Watts, Los Angeles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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