By Lynell George
FROM: L.A. Times

Back in the 1990s, in certain neighborhoods across L.A. County, if the term “Wild West” popped up in casual parlance, it had nothing to do with cowboys.

The phrase was insider shorthand, distinct from the euphemistic terms—“urban” or “inner city”—imposed from the outside to denote the neighborhoods black and brown people called home.

In certain parts of South L.A., “wild” was a power flex, a way to self-name. As writer and photographer Walter Thompson-Hernández illuminates in his ambitious new book, “The Compton Cowboys,” the bedroom community of Compton had been many things in its century-long history—an agriculture hub, a brief home base for George H.W. Bush — but by the ‘90s it was “in complete upheaval. Gang violence led to high murder rates, the ‘crack’ cocaine epidemic was destroying families.”

Driven by substandard housing and failing schools, this “upheaval” was nothing less than the destruction of an American dream for the generation of the Great Migration—African American families who, in candid moments, sometimes wondered if they might have fared better back in their ancestral homes. Read Rest of Book Review Here