In the 1980s, with Compton being increasingly associated with gang culture (due to its prominence in rap music), various southern California cities started renaming Compton Blvd.
Compton Blvd ran west from Compton all the way to the coast, ending up in pricey Manhattan Beach.
Manhattan Beach was the first city to rename it "Marine Ave", but then others followed. Lawndale was next, which was somewhat of an insult, since it wasn't a particuarly good area itself. Gardena renamed it after that, again being a city with its own gang issues. Finally, in 1990, Redondo Beach renamed its 1-mile stretch of Compton Blvd near the 405 freeway, making it entirely Marine Ave once you went west of the 110 freeway. It remains like that today.
Some complained at the time that this was racist, but cities responded that they were simply responding to concerns of residents, who felt that their home values were dropping because they were near Compton Blvd, after Compton had been glorified for its gang violence.
There was a similar push for Redondo Beach to rename Inglewood Avenue, for similar reasons. However, Inglewood didn't have the same notoriety as Compton, and mainly had notoriety because it was near the Forum (where the Lakers and Kings played at the time), and that was known to be a bad neighborhood. It was never renamed.
Shortly before Compton Blvd was renamed, someone spray-painted the N-word on a Compton Blvd sign in Redondo Beach, which oddly wasn't fixed for quite some time.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...300-story.html