Jahleel Logan, 3, poses with Santa, a.k.a. Langston Patterson, 77, at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, Dec. 7, 2013. Patterson has been Santa at the Plaza since 2004, with African American families coming at specifically just to visit him. “I just don’t want him to think that all greatness comes from a different race,” said Logan’s godmother, Arlene Graves, 45. “There are Santa Clauses his color doing good work too.” (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) Dressed in a red Santa suit, white beard and rimless glasses balanced on his nose, Langston Patterson sits on a velvet couch and waits for his adoring fans. Some call first to make sure he will be there. They come from Palmdale, Thousand Oaks and San Bernardino, driving past many shopping malls with Santas, but none that look like him. For nearly a decade, Patterson has been the main attraction at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza during Christmastime: a rare black Santa Claus in a sea of white ones.
The mall, located in the heart of black Los Angeles, is one of the few in the country with a black Santa Claus. Some say Patterson is the only black shopping-mall Santa Claus in the Los Angeles area. As visitors approached him on a recent afternoon, it was hard to tell who was more excited: the youngsters or the adults. The parents are the most loyal. They return with grandchildren, passing on a family tradition with a deep personal meaning.
“We need our kids to understand that good things happen in chocolate skin,” said Til Prince, 50, of Palmdale, watching her granddaughter, niece and her niece’s son pose with Patterson. “We are often bombarded with the opposite. We’re not trying to exclude anybody, but [instead] celebrate our chocolate skin.”
