African Americans and Japanese Americans were able to occupy and buy into spaces when it served a purpose for the dominate society.  To turn Little Tokyo into Bronzeville was convenient.  African Americans were able to pay the rents uncollectable when the President issued Executive order 9066.  African Americans supplied the much needed labor in the defense plants for WWII.  Once the war was over and Little Tokyo-Bronzeville was not erupting in race riots between the African Americans and the returning Japanese Americans, Anglo landlords already facing overcrowded living condition made business decisions to put themselves in the most profitable position.  The Anglos helped spin the model minority myth and renewed leases to Asians, who were dramatically less in number than African Americans.  The city working with its Caucasian contractor decided to build a new police headquarters.  Police headquarters and jails are not constructed on the more valuable property.  Little Tokyo-Bronzeville became the target site for Parker Center and that essentially ended the community.

Both the Japanese and the African Americans migrated westward.  The Crenshaw district became the new enclave where one noticed African Americans and Japanese Americans living, working and playing together building a strong community.  The Crenshaw district withstood the moments of civil unrest but could not withstand urban abandonment.

After the children grew up and went off to college, for the most part, they could then live anywhere. They did not return to the Crenshaw district.  This was true of both African Americans and Japanese Americans but of Japanese Americans especially.  Unlike the model minority myth, African Americans had the harder time breaking redlining and racial covenants so they had a harder time moving out of the community.  Also the demographics in the Crenshaw area show that most of the Japanese residents who moved into the Crenshaw district after internment got into the fast growing business of gardening.  With it being a majority white neighborhood, they were able to support themselves working in their own community.  Over the years however employment in the community declined for the Japanese Americans.   African Americans in the Crenshaw district were more likely to hold professional and semi -professional jobs.  Many of their children returned to live in the prestigious hills of the Crenshaw district.

White owned larger business chains did not move into the Crenshaw district.  Those chains which were located in Crenshaw district did not keep its stores up to par as in White areas.  Often left over merchandise that was not selling in the white area was dumped into the Crenshaw stores most often dirty and damaged.  For example the oldest outdoor mall in the United States has been left to decline.  Developers seem to only want to invest in malls a little above a strip mall for the area.  While the Japanese have moved away the African Americans have supported the Ladera Fox Hills shopping mall which received money supporting its growth, development and sustainability.  For the most part, the Ladera Fox Hill area is African American.  This is why the question arises was the neighborhood decimated on purpose because it was the greatest example of integration of two minorities working together? When African Americans led the way for Civil Rights and Asian Americans joined forces with their neighbors for African American Civil Rights and having done so, paved the way for them working for their own Asian Civil Rights, was that the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Was its success its ultimate downfall?