The little white Methodist church at Normandie Avenue and 38th Street in Los Angeles is grimed and paint-peeled on the outside, dusty and scuffed within. For years the neighborhood, none too prosperous to begin with, has been sliding downhill: property values dropped, and, taking advantage of low rents, Negro families moved in until they now make up about 60% of the area's population.
But the 43 members of the Normandie Avenue Methodist Church's congregation remained solidly white, and the 30-odd who went to services regularly were cool to the few Negroes who dropped in. Thirty churchgoers are not very many. In the...
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