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Little Marvin admitted that it could be grim work immersing himself in such ugly chapters of American history while working on Them-but important work nonetheless. When he dreamed up the series, several years back, “it was literally every day that I was reading about something which got me thinking about my own experiences being followed in stores, my own experiences being watched when I’m in a ‘wrong neighborhood.’ Those experiences extend all the way back through my life, but they also extend all the way back to the history of this country.”

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And in 1952 with a series of new developments, the demographics change almost overnight.”īeyond this slice of history, Marvin told Vanity Fair that he was overwhelmed with contemporary inspirations for Them. There was a brief, harmonious inflection point in Compton, a moment when the racially restrictive covenants were banned, said historian Josh Sides-“where Blacks and whites coexisted quite peacefully in Compton.” But the moment did not last long, per KCET: “When the legality of racially restrictive covenants was destroyed, white developers with the primary goal of turning a profit looked to creating affordable housing for aspiring middle class African Americans who wanted to move to Compton. Little Marvin was clear that Compton, with its intense segregation tactics, was far from an outlier at the time: “Compton was emblematic of an experience of it happening across the country.”

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“Anything from acts of vandalism, like burned-down salons, nails up and down the driveway, windows being destroyed to really psychologically terrifying tactics.”

Urban League had actually identified, I want to say, 26 or 27 types of tactics that Black folks experienced,” Little Marvin said. In one act of startling aggression, white neighbors set up chairs outside the Emorys’ new home and blast radios. The first season of Them takes place across 10 days in East Compton, chronicling how the Emory family is met with shocking hostility from their neighbors. There was no more effective tool in 20th America than the racially restrictive covenant in terms of keeping neighborhoods white.” As historian Josh Sides similarly pointed out in an interview with KCET, “It’s difficult to overstate how white Compton was in the early ’50s and late ’40s…exclusively white with an extraordinary web of racially restrictive covenants with a very aggressive policing strategy about keeping Black people out.

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