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Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. It was incorporated on February 14, 1908. In 2006, its population was estimated at 129,900.

Pre-American era

The earliest residents of what is now Inglewood may have been indigenous people 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)."

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 one Ygnacio Avila, who received a permit in 1822 to build a "corral and hut for his herders."
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,[4] 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,which sits on a rise above the present 405 San Diego Freeway and is used as the headquarters of the Centinela Valley Historical Society. Two years later, Waddingham writes, Ygnacio was granted 2,200 acres (9 km2) of the Centinela Springs rancho even though this land had already been claimed by Avila
    * Inglewood Park Cemetery , a widely used cemetery for the entire region, was founded in 1905.
    * Inglewood has been home to the Hollywood Park Racetrack since 1938.
    * 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.

An article by Dennis Romero in Los Angeles CityBeat magazine of November 6, 2003, quoted three sources as saying that Hispanic gangsters in that year were moving to Inglewood as a result of higher rents, or "gentrification," and increased police presence in West Los Angeles districts where they had been living.

 African-American influence

“No blacks had ever lived in Inglewood,” Gladys Waddingham wrote, but by 1960, “they lived in great numbers along its eastern borders. , , 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.” In 1969, an organization called “Morningside Neighbors” changed its name to “Inglewood Neighbors" "in the hope of promoting more integration.”

The first black principal among the 18 Inglewood schools was Peter Butler at La Tijera Elementary, 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.”

In 1972 Curtis Tucker Sr. was appointed as the first black City Council member.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. Edward Vincent became Inglewood’s first black mayor in 1980. In that decade Inglewood became the first city in California to declare the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a holiday.

In the 2000 census, blacks made up 47 percent of the city's residents (53,060 people), and Hispanics made up 46 percent (51,829), but the Census Bureau estimated that in 2006 the percentage of blacks had declined to 40 percent (52,228) and that of Hispanics had a percentage increase (69,090). The white population declined from 19 percent (21,505) to 16 percent (20,627).

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglewood,_California