Dollarhide attended the Metropolitan Business College, Long Beach City College, and La Salle University Law School, where he received a law degree. He was elected to Compton City Council in 1963, serving as the first African American chairman of the councilโs finance committee and representing the city at the League of California Cities. Following his three terms as city council member, Dollarhide, a Democrat, was elected as Compton’s first African American mayor in June 1969. He served one term until 1973 when thirty-seven-year-old Dorris Davis defeated him. During his time in office, the city became the first municipality in California to have a Black majority; African Americans comprised 65 percent of the population by 1970.
During Dollarhideโs first few years as mayor, significant changes took place in Compton. The city, like many urban areas in the nation at the time, underwent white flightโthe exodus of middle-class white residentsโand a corresponding influx of African Americans, many of whom had been displaced by the 1965 Watts riot (the Watts section of Los Angeles bordered Compton) and others who sought a suburban lifestyle. White flight contributed to Comptonโs transformation from an overwhelmingly white city, which in the 1950s had been home to the family of future President George H. W. Bush, into a predominantly Black city by the time of Dollarhideโs election. Whites who left Compton eventually ended up in surrounding suburbs, which often vowed to limit or exclude Black residents. Dollarhideโs administration also had to contend with rising crime rates, which undermined the cityโs reputation, forced property values down and became the reason for more white flight.
By the 1980s, Compton had become a city best known for rap artists N.W.A., who, in their 1988 album Straight Outta Compton, described the consequences of two decades of social and economic deterioration. By that point, Compton was dominated by the crime and gangs described in the rap groupโs controversial and provocative lyrics.
Despite the decline of Compton in the 1970s and 1980s, many California politicians remember Dollarhide as a trailblazer and pioneer for later Black officeholders. The city named Comptonโs Dollarhide Neighborhood Center after him. Douglas Dollarhide died at age 85 on June 28, 2008, in his home in the Northridge section of Los Angeles.
