At this year’s Juneteenth celebration in Leimert Park, a crowd gathered around Sika Dwimfo, known as the godfather of Leimert Park Village, in front of his jewelry and gift store on Degnan Boulevard. People gathering around Sika — both the man and his eponymously named store — was a daily occurrence on Degnan, a vibrant scene within a scene that for the last 30 years has been a defining feature not just of the village but of Black Los Angeles itself. But that day was special. People were there to formally christen the alley next to the shop Sika Dwimfo Corridor. Sika was finally getting his due.

The godfather was looking frail, seated in a wheelchair. But Sika, known for his fashion sense, was resplendent as ever in a hat with the stingy brim turned up, beaded necklace, graphic black and red print trousers. Even more striking was the official city sign that went up describing him as “Baba of Leimert Park Village.” That African honorific on a government sign felt hopeful, a suggestion that Black history in the deepest sense is not just being acknowledged, but instituted.  

Three days after that ceremony, Sika died at the age of 83. It was a fitting end to an expansive life as an artist, business owner and cultural ambassador in a city that, when it came to Black life, was much more focused on crime and public safety than on culture. 

Sika opened on the block in 1992 (the original name was BakTuJua), the year of the civil unrest, and immediately ran into the headwinds of racial strife. Black people were frustrated and angry, white people were anxious. But Sika was undeterred by it all, and he became the longest-residing merchant on Degnan. Along the way he was a symbol of Leimert, both its promise and resilience. He was a dreamer but also tough, pragmatic, focused on what needed to be done to stay in business and thereby on the path of cultural fulfillment. It was a balancing act that Sika managed easily, chiefly by standing his ground. “He was like a sequoia,” said Jackie Ryan, former owner of Zambezi Bazaar on Degnan. “He was staunchly committed to black art and artists in the community.”

Originally from New Orleans, Sika — né Norbert Wilkinson — lived in Chicago, where he honed his skills as a jewelry maker before permanently decamping to Los Angeles in 1971. Like many Black natives of the Crescent City, he spoke with a New Orleans lilt that never left him. He became absorbed into the Black arts scene in Leimert that had been cultivated by Alonzo and Dale Davis, brothers who ran the Brockman Gallery on Degnan and encouraged other Black artists to take up residence there. 

By ’92 the arts scene was expanding to include not just dance and music, but commerce; in addition to Sika, Ryan and her sister Mary opened their gift shop and community space, Congo Square (later Zambezi); Richard Fulton opened Fifth Street Dick’s, a jazz coffeehouse around the corner from Degnan on 43rd Place. 

Black culture rising phoenix-like from the ashes of Black frustration and economic stagnation was a powerful counternarrative to gang shootings, demographic shifts and other destabilizing elements in Black communities that dominated headlines in the ’90s and into the new century.

Sika became the face of Leimert Park’s survival, and its growth. After the collapse in 2010 of the African Marketplace, a huge annual event staged for 25 years in nearby Rancho Cienega, Sika helped launch the Leimert Park Village Art and Music Festival, which continued the Marketplace and gave Leimert Park new visibility and viability.  He did this without a lot of fanfare, which was typical; though his outfits spoke volumes, Sika was not a big talker. Yet he was never hesitant to express opinions, with little regard for diplomacy. At a meeting of the Leimert Park Village Merchants’ Association, Ryan remembered, he objected to a rule that members pay a certain amount of dues per annum. Mindful of how merchants on Degnan struggled with rent and other basics, Sika thought that those who couldn’t pay should be in the association anyway. “He didn’t want to exclude people,” said Ryan. “He didn’t get the money thing. He felt people could pay what they had.” 

Yet Sika was definitely a business, a homey but dazzling emporium of African-themed gifts, clothing, furnishings and collectibles that included the master jewelry maker’s bold signature pieces of sterling silver, gold and semiprecious stones. It was also the go-to place for ear piercings. But a good part of the business conducted at Sika had nothing to do with selling. On any given day, regulars congregated on the sidewalk outside of the shop’s open door or in the nearby alley, to talk or play cards or dominoes or simply hang out. Sika, like other storefronts in Leimert, “was not just a place to go buy stuff,” observed Ryan. “This was a space where you could say things you couldn’t say elsewhere. You could talk about what was going on at your job, about the discrimination you faced.” Serious conversation was always leavened by Sika’s sly sense of humor, which could surprise those who often saw him as sober or even prickly.

But even at his prickliest, Baba Sika was nothing less than a spiritual presence. My late father, who had moved to Los Angeles from New Orleans as a boy in 1942, was a regular at Sika, as a customer and a conversationalist. They were good friends. In his routine travels around the city, my father often ended up at the store, relaxing in a chair on the sidewalk amid the racks of clothing and other things for sale. For my father’s generation, Degnan had become what Central Avenue once was to Black folk in L.A.: a reliably nurturing place where economic, social and cultural life flourished together. Central Avenue started coming apart in the ’50s as Black people started leaving the area in droves, the result of the legal forces of segregation finally dissipating, opening opportunities to move to other neighborhoods. My father was banking on Degnan, buffeted in the last decade by the forces of gentrification that are creating a new kind of Black displacement, staying put. Sika’s greatest cultural contribution is that he did just that. “He was a rock,” said Ryan. “Whatever happened, even though he grew tired, he never talked about leaving.”