Graffiti from the Avenues, a racist Latino gang involved in an 'ethnic cleansing' campaign against blacks, abounds in northeastern Los Angeles. (Todd Bigelow)

Because Avenue 43 is one of the main roads in Highland Park, "43" is the signifier of the Avenues, also known as "Avenues 43." The gang goes back at least to World War II, when Highland Park was populated with a mixture of European and Latino immigrants. Now, about 75% of Highland Park residents are Latinos. Only 2% are black. The rest are white and Asian.

Highland Park has long had a reputation for gang problems that community boosters argue is undeserved. Their cause wasn't helped in 1986, when one of Highland Park's most famous residents, songwriter Jackson Browne, released the song, "Lawless Avenues," about the neighborhood's multi-generational gang: "Fathers' and sons' lives repeat/And something there turns them/Down those lawless avenues."

Although the Avenues gang goes back a half century, it only fell heavily under the control of the Mexican Mafia in the 1980s, eventually becoming fundamentally racist as a result. (Police point out that, ironically, the Avenues now sling dope for the Mexican Mafia, which the gang's leaders in decades past looked down upon as a "black thing.")

Still, at least some of the relatively few black Highland Park residents who've lived in the area for more than a decade don't report the same level of fear as others. "We love our neighbors. We love living in Highland Park," says Vernita Strange, who moved to Highland Park with her husband Al in the mid-1970s. "We've been treated warmly. We've been here 30 years, and that's all I have to say."

But Angel Brown, an African American, didn't experience that same kind of neighborly love when she and her teenaged son Christopher Bowser moved to Highland Park in 1998, in large part to get away from the black gangs in the Hoover Street area where he grew up. There, he caught a bullet in the leg in a drive-by and was beaten up and harassed by the Hoover Crips, who pressured him to join their set. "He knew early on that [gangbanging] was something he did not want to do," says Brown.

The pair was hoping to leave gang trouble behind, but soon after they relocated to Highland Park the Avenues targeted Bowser. "My son had problems because he's a young black man. The Avenues up there called him 'nigger' and stuff and chased him," Brown says. "He didn't bother nobody out there, all he did was walk around with his radio, singing and rapping. They didn't want him in their territory."

Testifying in the federal hate crimes trial against his former gang brethren, ex-Avenues member Jesse Diaz confirmed the Latino gangbangers were infuriated by the way Bowser bopped down the street, blasting rap music on his boom box.

He acted, Diaz testified, "like it was his neighborhood."

Murderous Prejudice
Until Anthony Prudhomme's murderers went on trial, it never dawned on his mother, Louisa, and his stepfather Lavalle, that the killing was racially motivated. "It wasn't until we went to the trial that we really began to understand that [race] was the reason," he says, "which seemed totally, for lack of a better word, stupid."

Since the trial, Louisa has become obsessed with the Avenues gang. She routinely drives Highland Park, looking for signs of the gang, talking to anyone willing to talk. She has homicide detectives, lawyers, and parole officers on her cell phone's speed dial. She's made numerous visits to the site of her son's murder, as well as the spots where Bowser and Wilson were shot down. Believing the gang member who actually pulled the trigger on her son has yet to be brought to justice, she posts reward signs throughout the neighborhood, usually right next to Avenues gang graffiti.

Unlike the mothers of other victims like Bowser and Wilson, Louisa Prudhomme feels relatively safe on streets claimed by the Avenues. That's because she's white. Her son Anthony had long, wavy hair and an auburn complexion. "As he grew up people thought that" he might have been some race other than black, says his stepfather Lavelle. "But you could tell by the way he dressed that he leaned more toward his African-American side."

That preference may well have cost him his life, something that infuriates his mother. "A friend of mine asked me do I hate Mexicans now," says Louisa. "I said, 'I hate murderers.' I am prejudiced … against murderers."

Driving through Highland Park one afternoon last October, Louisa headed up Avenue 43 toward Montecito Heights Community Center, a known Avenues congregation spot. She pulled up alongside a man loading lawnmowers into a huge shed. The man grabbed the left door, which was decorated with a full-length, spray-painted "4," and joined it with the right door, which was tagged with a matching "3." When the doors were closed, they created the "43" emblem of the Avenues.

Louisa asked the man, who was Latino, if he spoke English. He did, and they chatted for about five minutes about the infamous "Avenues 43" and the tattoos they leave all over the area he landscapes. Louisa walked away from him, laughing, before turning to say, "I hope they get them all. We want to get all of them off the streets."

But with the Mexican Mafia's shadow looming over Los Angeles, it may be a long time before the rapidly growing number of streets claimed by Latino gangs are safe for blacks, if ever.