On November 5th, 2020 – during the Covid 19 pandemic – I volunteered for a day of documentation photography in Watts to support the nomination of the Watts Happening Cultural Center and the Mafundi Mural located at East 103rd Street in Los Angeles. It was a sunny day working with Rita Cofield and the staff at the WHCC. We were filmed by Parker Collins, a reporter from Spectrum News 1, who did a nice story about Rita and the significance of the Mafundi Center in Watts history. Here's a link to the new story and some of the nomination photographs from the Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument application. (The Mafundi building also is featured in the Preserving Los Angeles book section on SurveyLA).
Here are some of the nomination photographs of the building. From Rita's report: "The Watts Happening Cultural Center was built by Black architect Arthur Silvers. Silvers was born and raised in South Los Angeles just outside of Watts with his family. He moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and returned to Los Angeles in 2007. He attended the University of Southern California School of Architecture and was a member of Scarab (Architecture Fraternity)."
I'm Looking forward to the Watts Cultural Center and Mafundi Mural becoming a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument in 2021, and I'm glad I was able to be a part of the HCM nomination.