Country Club Park

Country Club Park was developed between the 1910s through the 1930s. Although initially segregated, barriers to the community fell as celebrated and affluent African Americans from professional, judicial, legal, medical, religious, and entertainment fields discovered the area. Among the music industry icons who once resided here were gospel great Mahalia Jackson, Lou Rawls, Lena Horne, Cindy Birdsong of the Supremes, and Hattie McDaniel, who was also known for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Religious leader Thomas Kilgore-also an esteemed and influential force in the Civil Rights movement-made Country Club Park his home, as did Civil Rights leader and Tuskegee Airman Celes King. Legal icon Crispus Wright, who endowed his law school at USC with $2 million to establish a scholarship fund, was a neighbor, as was Victor Nickerson, whose family founded the first black-owned insurance company.