Column: A Compton native and academic legend tells his story to a new generation

Albert M. Camarillo is as old school Compton as they come.

His father migrated from the Mexican state of Michoacán as a teenager in 1914, when the Hub City was mostly farmland.

Camarillo remembers when the first Black families moved into once-segregated neighborhoods in the 1950s. He served as student body president at Dominguez High, as Compton was turning into a nexus of Black life, and focused his first major college paper on the city’s transformation.

Since leaving Compton over 50 years ago, he became a legend for his work on Mexican American history and diversifying academia — but his hometown never left him. The retired Stanford professor’s recent memoir, “Compton in My Soul: A Life in Pursuit of Racial Equality,” is a paean to a frequently stereotyped place that changed dramatically again during his time away, from overwhelmingly Black to overwhelmingly Latino. Camarillo traveled across California this summer to talk about his book, making his stop in Compton on Saturday as full circle of a moment as one could script.

The location: Color Compton, a nonprofit in a strip mall that uses art and history to engage local youth.

“I wish it was here when I was a kid!” Camarillo said of the group to co-founder Abigail Lopez-Byrd, as they looked at photos of the city’s long-gone downtown and of the Compton Cowboys, a Black equestrian club with the motto “Streets raised us. Horses saved us.”

“Most of the artists and photographers are from Compton,” Lopez-Byrd said of the artwork displayed throughout the multiroom space.

Camarillo flashed the first of many grins that would come that day. The 78-year-old is tall and fit and sports a bushy mustache and helmet of white hair that makes him look like a nicer Mike Ditka. He had shown me an early draft of his book and thanked me in the acknowledgments for the suggestions I made.

Lopez-Byrd, 33, is herself a native of the Hub City, so named because of its central location.

“It’s inspiring for young people to learn from folks who came from the same place,” she replied when I asked why Color Compton was hosting an event for Camarillo. “It makes goals so much more attainable when you’ve seen people like you who have done the work.”

Albert Camarillo signs copies of his memoir.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“I need to help them get a big grant to invest in what they’re doing,” Camarillo said as Lopez-Byrd excused herself to talk to a volunteer. Earlier in the summer, Camarillo had hosted a group of Color Compton youth at Stanford. “This is the stuff of corazón. God’s work,” he told me.

We walked down the hall to a gallery featuring photos by participants in Color Compton’s community archives fellowship. In front of the exhibit were comfy seats surrounded by lamps, where Lopez-Byrd and Camarillo would chat. Before them sat about 25 young people, most of whom were Black, Latino or both.

“How are you guys today!” Camarillo exclaimed before asking what high schools they attended and receiving only a few, whispered responses.

Anyone from Dominguez?” A few hands went up.

“All right, Dominguez High!” Camarillo said with a fist pump.

“It’s special for me to be here today, because this is where I’m from, so we’re all connected,” he began. “I don’t want you to think of me as the professor from Stanford. I’m one of you — but I’m way older.”

The audience laughed. Any generational skepticism that might have existed vanished.

Camarillo proceeded to tell his Compton story — how his family settled in a barrio in the western part of town before an older sister bought a house in the white part, in an effort to assimilate. How he grew up in an era of “Jaime Crow” and how white flight happened “almost overnight.” He shouted out the schools he attended: Longfellow Elementary. Walton Middle School. Dominguez High, then UCLA.

The profe was never patronizing, crusading or showy, letting the course of his life provide all the drama and humor. By the time he said that leaving Compton allowed him “to understand where I came from” and inspired him to open the proverbial doors for others, the youth were nodding in agreement and leaning in for every word.

Outsiders have long pegged Compton as a problem: a cautionary tale of changing demographics, a code word for inner-city violence, a warning of what happens when minorities win power. Camarillo and his crowd know a different Compton: a place of talent, pride and hope.

“You have an obligation to give back in whatever way you can,” he concluded. “That’s how change occurs. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. … It’s your responsibility to change the narrative of Compton.”

Albert Camarillo, right, speaks to a group of young adults at Color Compton.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Lopez-Byrd asked if anyone had thoughts.

“I retired eight years ago,” Camarillo quipped. “I miss being in the classroom. I need input!”

There were questions about how he wrote the book and about his memories of the early days of the Chicano movement.

Courtney Watson, a 17-year-old Westchester High senior, asked about the time Dominguez High administrators tapped Camarillo to stop daily brawls between white students and the Black students who were integrating the school.

First, he recalled, all the jocks gathered at his invitation to talk out their differences. Then, he called for a lunchtime assembly. At the tense gathering, a Black female student said the legacy of slavery was why Black people continued to suffer discrimination. A young Camarillo dismissed her theory as bogus.

The audience gasped with sympathy as Camarillo threw up his arms in disbelief. “I was so stupid, so naive!”

“Why did you say that?!” Courtney responded, incredulous but forgiving.

“I wish I could return to that moment as an adult and tell me —“

“ — to don’t say that!” Courtney added as her peers laughed.

Someone else wondered how Camarillo was able to reestablish relationships in Compton after being gone for decades.

Residents “can see when you’re not authentic and a phony,” he acknowledged. One of his sons began teaching in the Compton schools in the early 2000s, and another — former NFL wide receiver Greg Camarillo — created a nonprofit that has helped local student-athletes. The profe also connected with former Stanford students who, like him, were from Compton, a network that he noted was bigger than one might think.

“If you can gain [the] confidence” of community members, he concluded, “you can help build something.”

Everyone gathered for a group photo, then Camarillo went to another room to sign copies of his memoir. An hour later, he was still signing books, engaging in deep conversations with each attendee.

“He mentioned things I never knew before about my community,” said Daira Castro, a 17-year-old Compton High senior.

“It was nice to see someone from the community who’s been doing things for a long time at his level,” said 23-year-old Compton resident Elvis De La Rosa. “Everything he said was on point. Every generation has new struggles to be had, and new opportunities to be had, and new ways to do them.”

Lopez-Byrd then asked Camarillo to hear from the community archives fellows who had taken the photos in the gallery. The Comptoner from another era stayed for yet another hour. Not once did he check his phone or wristwatch as the young photographers discussed their work. Not once did his bright eyes and warm smile dim.

“It gives me inspiration and a sense of hope to see them so excited about [documenting] and living here,” Camarillo said when the presentation ended and the room — now packed with family members and friends of the photographers — burst into applause. “That’s what I’ll leave with from here today.”

Lopez-Byrd had one final invite. We went downstairs to the Compton Art & History Museum, which she co-founded with her husband, Marquell Byrd. Photos, paintings and multimedia works by Black, Latino and Asian American artists addressed the idea of Compton’s “one narrative” of violence and racial strife. Camarillo put on his reading glasses and slowly made his way around the gallery.

“This resonates with what I said, what I wrote,” he finally said, beaming anew. “Super creative stuff here. It’s awesome!”