text: 'It was a terrifying time' - latimes
  August 04, 2010|By Scott Gold and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times
  Serial killers: In Wednesday's Section A, a map that accompanied an article about serial killers in South Los Angeles mislabeled the community of Walnut Park as Walnut. —
  Jobs had vanished. Crack cocaine, a new drug so powerful and profitable it was worth dying over, ravaged the neighborhood. Gangs carved up the streets. The LAPD recorded a violent crime every eight minutes. It was a world, the prosecutor told the jury, in which "life itself is degraded."
  South Los Angeles was once a storied African American community. The nation's first hotel financed by African American businessmen was built in 1928 on South Central Avenue. West Coast jazz was pretty much invented in the surrounding clubs, and a revolutionary notion — of middle-class African American families — was nurtured there.