The earliest residents of what is now Inglewood were Native Americans who used the natural springs in today’s Edward Vincent Jr. Park (known for most of its history as Centinela Park). Local historian Gladys Waddingham wrote that these springs took the name Centinela from the hills that rose gradually around them and which allowed ranchers to watch over their herds “(thus the name centinelas or sentinels)”.: unpaged
Waddingham traced the written history of Inglewood back to the original settlers of Los Angeles in 1781, one of whom was the Spanish soldier Jose Manuel Orchado Machado, “a 23-year-old muleteer from Los Alamos in Sinaloa”. These settlers, she wrote, were ordered by the officials of the San Gabriel Mission “to graze their animals on the ocean side of Los Angeles in order not to infringe on Mission lands.” As a result, the settlers, or pobladores, drove some of their cattle to the “lush pasture lands near Centinela Springs”, and the first construction there was done by Bruno Ygnacio Ávila, who received a permit in 1822 to build a “corral and hut for his herders.”: unpaged The area that is now Inglewood was divided into two rancho grants: Rancho Sausal Redondo and Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela.
Later Avila constructed a three-room adobe on a slight rise overlooking the creek that ran from Centinela Springs all the way to the ocean. According to the LAOkay web site, this adobe was built where the present baseball field is in the park. It no longer exists.
In 1834, Ygnacio Machado, one of the sons of Jose Machado, built the Centinela Adobe,: unpaged which sits on a rise above the present Interstate 405 (San Diego Freeway) and is used as the headquarters of the Centinela Valley Historical Society. Two years later, Waddingham writes, Ygnacio was granted the 2,220-acre (9.0 km) Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela even though this land had already been claimed by Avila.
Daniel Freeman acquired the rancho and was a founder of the Centinela-Inglewood Land Company in 1887, which developed the city. That year it was reported that
Inglewood Park Cemetery, a widely used cemetery for the entire region, was founded in 1905. The city has been home to the Hollywood Park Racetrack from 1938 to 2013, one of the premier horse racing venues in the United States.Fosters Freeze, the first soft serve ice cream chain in California, was founded by George Foster in 1946 in Inglewood. Inglewood was named an All-America City by the National Civic League in 1989 and yet again in 2009 for its visible progress.
Ku Klux Klan activities in Inglewood during the 20th century were highlighted by the 1922 arrest and trial of 37 men, most of them masked, for a night-time raid on a suspected bootlegger and his family. The raid led to the shooting death of one of the culprits, an Inglewood police officer. A jury returned a “not guilty” verdict for all defendants who completed the trial. It was this scandal, according to the Los Angeles Times, that eventually led to the outlawing of the Klan in California. The Klan had a chapter in Inglewood as late as October 1931.
“No blacks had ever lived in Inglewood”, Gladys Waddingham wrote,: 59 but by 1960, “they lived in great numbers along its eastern borders. This came to the great displeasure of the predominantly white residents already residing in Inglewood. In 1960, the census counted only 29 ‘Negroes’ among Inglewood’s 63,390 residents. Not a single black child attended the city’s schools. Real estate agents refused to show homes to blacks. A rumored curfew kept blacks off the streets at night. Inglewood was a prime target because of its previous history of restrictions.” “Fair housing and school busing were the main problems of 1964. The schools were not prepared to handle racial incidents, even though any that occurred were very minor. Adults held many heated community meetings, since the Blacks objected to busing as much as did the Whites.”: 61 In 1969, an organization called “Morningside Neighbors” changed its name to “Inglewood Neighbors” “in the hope of promoting more integration.”: 63
On February 3, 1969, Harold P. Moret (of Louisiana Creole Ancestry) became Inglewood’s first black police officer. A full year later Jimmy Lee Worsham became the second. He was followed by Barbara Harris, the first black female officer, then Otis Hendricks, Melvin Lovelace and Eugene Lindsey. The seventh black officer was James T. Butts Jr. He became Inglewood’s first black Motorcycle Traffic Enforcement Officer, first black lieutenant, captain and only black deputy chief in the history of the department. Butts left Inglewood in September 1991 at the age of 38 to become the first person of color to command the Santa Monica Police Department as Chief of Police, and the youngest ever to do so. Twenty years later, on February 1, 2011, Butts returned to Inglewood by being elected as its fourth black mayor.
On July 22, 1970, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Max F. Deutz ordered Inglewood schools to desegregate in response to a suit filed by 19 parents. At least since 1965, said Deutz, the Inglewood school board had been aware of a growing influx of black families into its eastern areas but had done nothing about the polarization of its pupils into an eastern black area and a western white one. On August 31, he rejected an appeal by four parents who said the school board was not responsible for the segregation but that the blacks “selected their places of residence by voluntary choice.”
The first black principal among the 18 Inglewood schools was Peter Butler at La Tijera Elementary,: 66 and in 1971, Waddingham wrote, “Stormy racial meetings in 1971” included a charge by “some real estate men in the overflowing Crozier Auditorium” that the Human Relations Commission was acting like “the Gestapo”.: 67 In that year, Loyd Sterling Webb, president of Inglewood Neighbors, became the first black officeholder when voters elected him to the school board.
In 1972, Curtis Tucker Sr. was appointed as the first black City Council member.: 69 That year composer LeRoy Hurte, an African-American, took the baton of the Inglewood Symphony Orchestra and continued to work with it for 20 years.: 75 Edward Vincent Jr. became Inglewood’s first black mayor in 1983. In that decade, whites left the city in increasing numbers, and Inglewood became the first city in California to declare the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a holiday.: 76 Since the term of Edward Vincent Jr. (1983–1997), Inglewood has consecutively elected African-American mayors: Roosevelt F. Dorn (1997–2010), Danny Tabor (2010–2011), and James T. Butts Jr. (2011–present).
The 1990 census showed that Latinos in Inglewood had increased by 134 percent since 1980, the largest jump in the South Bay. Economic factors apparently played a role in where new arrivals settled, said David Heer, a USC professor of sociology and associate director of the university’s Population Research Laboratory. “Housing is generally less expensive here than elsewhere . . . and I would say that they receive a warmer welcome here”, said Norm Cravens, assistant city manager in Inglewood, where the White population dropped from nearly 21 percent in 1980 to 8.5 percent in 1990.
In the 2000 census, Blacks made up 47 percent of the city’s residents (53,060 people), and Latinos comprised 46 percent (51,829), but the Census Bureau estimated that in 2007 the percentage of Blacks had declined to 41 percent (48,252) and that Latinos were at 52.5 percent (61,847). The White population declined from 19 percent (21,505) to 17.7 percent (20,853).
But that year, only one of the city’s five City Council members was Latino: Jose Fernandez. There were no Latinos on the five-member Board of Education.
In 2007, the area served by the Inglewood post office (including Lennox) had 98 churches, temples, mosques, chapels and other houses of worship, according to the AreaConnect.com website.
The first church service was held on April 22, 1888, in the Inglewood House hotel on Commercial Street (today’s La Brea Avenue), popularly called Mrs. Belden’s Boarding House, when Inglewood had only 300 residents and 112 registered voters. Later services were in Bucephalus Hall, but eventually the congregation moved to Hyde Park, which left Inglewood with no church. On January 19, 1890, Inglewood’s first permanent church – Presbyterian – was established on Market Street. A bit later the [United] Brethren constructed a building on South Market Street.: 6, 10, and 17
In 1907, a group of Episcopalians began services in a private home, and a few years later the first Catholic services were held in Bank Hall. In 1910, the Presbyterians moved their two buildings, a sanctuary and a manse, to the corner of Grevillea and Nutwood “because the streetcars [on Market Street] were so noisy and threw so much dust and sand fleas in the windows.”: 14 and 17
In 1923, St. John Chrysostom Catholic Church was founded. The current church at the intersection of Centinela and Florence was built in 1959 and is the tallest point in the city. It is the largest congregation in the city, consisting of almost 10,000 registered families. Next door is St. John Chrysostom School, educating children since 1927 from Pre-K through 8th grade.
By 1940, the Methodists had built a structure at Manchester and La Brea, but in that year they moved to a new building at Kelso and Spruce.: 46 and 57
The deaths of Kisha Michael, 31, a single mother of three sons, and Marquintan Sandlin, 32, a single father of four daughters, occurred on February 21, 2016, when police responded to a call of a suspicious vehicle parked on Manchester Boulevard around 3:10 am. When police arrived, they engaged in a 45-minute-long standoff before opening fire on the man and the armed woman inside the vehicle, killing them both. Michael was shot thirteen times and pronounced dead at the scene. Sandlin was shot eight times and died at a hospital shortly thereafter.
Law enforcement officials involved in the shooting have claimed that Michael had a gun in her lap, although authorities have not stated whether either victim reached for or touched the weapon. There has also been no indication that the victims’ vehicle was used in a violent manner toward the officers.
Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said that the couple were unconscious when police first encountered them.
After an investigation, the City of Inglewood fired the five officers involved in the shooting in May 2017, while the district attorney’s office had yet to reach a decision regarding criminal liability of those officers.
In 2018, an investigation began into a 2012 trash hauling pact contract. The contract, valued at $100 million, went to a bidder with connections to current mayor James T. Butts. The bidder, Consolidated Disposal Services, secured the contract soon after hiring Michael Butts, brother of Mayor Butts, as an operations manager.
