Photographs taken by Mitchell Royel on a vibrant October day, 10/20/26, in Crenshaw, California, hold layers of stories within their frames – stories of resilience, rhythm, and unmistakable style. They capture the heart of a community standing tall and unapologetic under the California sun, every image a testament to lived experience. And as we take these moments in, we’re listening, once again, to the timeless melody of Jill Scott’s "Golden" – a classic anthem of strength and celebration, reminding us to live our lives like they’re golden.
Okay, so you gotta understand something about Sunday mornings at my house. Sunday is not a day of rest. I don't care what the Bible says. Sunday is the day my mama wakes up at six in the morning and starts ironing like she's mad at the clothes.
I'm talking steam everywhere. The whole kitchen smells like spray starch and Jergens lotion. And she's got the gospel station turned all the way up on the radio, singing louder than the lady on the radio, and the lady on the radio is a professional.
"Mitchell! Get up! I'm not gonna tell you again!"
She's gonna tell me again. She always tells me again. That's like the third "I'm not gonna tell you again" before seven o'clock.
So I get up, and my dress shirt is already laid out on my bed. White. Stiff. So stiff it could stand up and go to church without me. And my slacks are the dark navy ones with the crease down the middle so sharp you could cut a sandwich with it. And then there's the shoes. The church shoes. Shiny black shoes that pinch my pinky toe so bad I walk like a penguin with a secret.
My little sister Keisha gets to wear a dress with a big bow on the back, and everybody says, "Awww, look at baby girl." Nobody ever says "Awww" to me. They just say, "Boy, tuck in your shirt."
Now, this particular Sunday, Ms. Denise rode with us.
Ms. Denise is not my auntie. Everybody thinks she's my auntie because I call her Auntie sometimes, and she calls me "baby" and "nephew" and "Mitch-Mitch," which I hate, but I let her because she brings Popeyes. But she's not related to us. She's my mama's friend from back when they worked together at the bank on La Brea. She's been around since before I was born, so she's basically family. Just not blood family. You know what I mean.
Ms. Denise is loud. Like, she whispers louder than most people talk. And she wears these big gold earrings, and when she laughs, the earrings shake like they're laughing too. She smells like cocoa butter and peppermints, and she always has peppermints in her purse. Always. That purse is like a candy store with a zipper.
That Sunday she had on her good church clothes — a cream lace dress, matching from top to bottom, with a pearl bracelet on her wrist and a big wide-brimmed burgundy hat with a fabric rose on the side. She looked like she was ready to receive an award from the Lord personally.
So we all pile into Mama's Camry. Mama's driving, Ms. Denise is in the front seat, and me and Keisha are in the back. Keisha keeps kicking my leg on purpose and then saying, "I didn't do nothing." We drive down Crenshaw Boulevard with the windows cracked because the AC only works when it wants to. I can see the palm trees going by, and the swap meet, and the man who sells oranges on the corner, and the barbershop with the spinning pole.
And then we pull up to church.
Greater Faith Missionary Baptist Church. It's a big tan building with a cross on top and some tall windows on the sides. The windows are mostly stained glass, with purple and gold and red pictures of Jesus and sheep and stuff. But there's one window on the left side near the back where a piece of the colored glass got broken a long time ago, and they just put clear glass in there instead. So it's like Jesus, sheep, sheep, Jesus, and then one little square where you can see the gas station across the street.
Remember that window. It's important.
So we walk in, and it's already going. The organ is going WHOOOM WHOOOM, and the drummer is a teenager named Darnell who hits the drums like they owe him money. The choir is in their maroon robes with the gold stripes, and they're swaying side to side, all together, like one big maroon ocean.
And the song is "Total Praise," or maybe it was "Oh Happy Day." I can't remember, because the choir does like nine songs back to back and they all kind of melt together. But I know Sister Patterson was leading. Sister Patterson is like a hundred years old, and she's tiny, maybe as tall as me. But when she opens her mouth? Whoo. The walls shake. The ceiling fan shakes. My teeth shake.
Everybody's standing up. Everybody's clapping. Old ladies in big church hats are waving those paper fans with the funeral home ad on the back. One lady in the front caught the Holy Ghost and started running up and down the aisle, and the ushers in the white gloves had to follow her with a little blanket so her legs didn't show when she fell out.
And Ms. Denise? Ms. Denise is clapping off beat. Every time. Clap... clap... clap-clap. I don't know what song she's listening to, but it's not the one we're hearing. But she's happy, and she's got her eyes closed, and she keeps saying, "Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Mm-hmm. Yes."
I'm clapping too. Kinda. I'm doing the little-kid clap where your hands don't really touch all the way. Mama sees me and gives me the look. You know the look. So I clap for real.
Okay, so here's the part I was scared about.
Before we left the house, Mama gave me a five-dollar bill. One whole five-dollar bill. And she said, "This is for the offering. Not for the ice cream truck. Not for Pokémon cards. The Lord's money. You hear me?"
And I said, "Yes ma'am."
But listen. Listen to me. Five dollars is a lot of money when you're ten. Five dollars is a whole pack of Pokémon cards and a bag of Hot Cheetos and a Sunny D. Five dollars could change my LIFE.
So when Pastor Henderson stands up and says, "Church, it is now time for us to give back to the Lord what is already His," I feel that five-dollar bill in my pocket get heavy. Like it weighs a hundred pounds. Like it knows.
The ushers come down the aisle with these gold buckets. They're not really buckets, they're more like big round bowls with velvet on the inside. And they pass them down the rows, person to person. You hear the coins clinking, and you see people putting in envelopes, and old Brother Wallace always puts in a check and makes a big deal about it like he's on TV.
And the bucket's getting closer. Three rows away. Two rows. The choir is singing, "Give and it shall be given unto you..." and I swear they're looking right at me.
I pull the five out of my pocket. It's all folded up into a tiny square because I've been squeezing it for an hour. I'm unfolding it real slow, and Keisha is watching me. Mama is watching me. Ms. Denise is watching me.
The bucket comes to our row. Ms. Denise puts in an envelope with a kiss on it, like an actual lipstick kiss. Mama puts in her envelope. Keisha puts in a quarter like she's a millionaire.
And then it's me.
I'm holding the five-dollar bill over the bucket, and in my head I'm saying goodbye to my Pikachu card. Goodbye, Hot Cheetos. Goodbye, Sunny D. And I kind of shuffle it around, flip it over once, flip it over twice, like maybe the bucket will give me change. It doesn't.
So I drop it in. And I feel... honestly? I feel kinda good. Like, proud. Mama pats my knee. Ms. Denise leans over and whispers, "God sees you, baby." Except she whispers it so loud that the whole row hears, and the man in front of us turns around and nods at me. So I guess God and the man in front of us both saw me.
Then Pastor Henderson gets up to preach.
Pastor Henderson is a big man. Tall, wide, with a gray beard and glasses that slide down his nose when he gets excited. He wears a black robe with purple on the sleeves, and he always carries a white handkerchief because he will sweat. That's not a maybe. That's a guarantee.
He starts off real calm. Real quiet. He opens his big Bible and says, "Turn with me, if you will, to the book of Psalms."
And everybody's flipping pages. Fwip fwip fwip. That's the sound of church.
"The Lord is my shepherd," he says. "I shall not want."
"Well!" somebody yells.
"He maketh me to lie down... in green pastures."
"Take your time, Pastor!"
And he IS taking his time. He walks slow across the stage. He takes off his glasses. He puts them back on. And then he starts going faster. And louder. And the organ player starts hitting little notes after every sentence. Dun! "Yea, though I walk through the valley!" Dun-dun! "Of the shadow of death!" DUN!
By now he's sweating, and he's wiping his forehead with the handkerchief, and he's doing that thing where he breathes real hard in between words. "I will fear — HUH — no evil — HUH — for THOU — HUH — art with me!"
And the church goes crazy. People are standing up. Ms. Denise is waving her hand in the air. Mama is saying, "Preach!" Even Keisha is clapping, and she doesn't even know what "thou" means.
And I'm into it. For real. I'm sitting on the edge of the pew. My church shoes are still pinching, but I don't even care, because Pastor is preaching about how you don't gotta be scared, because somebody's always watching over you, always looking out for you, always —
And that's when I looked at the window.
I don't even know why I looked. I just did. You know when you feel like somebody's looking at you? Like the back of your neck gets all tingly? That's how I felt. So I turned my head to the left, toward that one clear square of glass in the back.
And I saw a man standing across the street by the gas pumps.
At first I thought, that's just some guy. But then I looked again. And he had on a light gray jersey. And I know that jersey. I know it because I have the same one hanging in my closet at home.
ALL NET BASKETBALL.
It was Coach Kyle.
My basketball coach. From the league. The league that's all the way out in the Valley, where we play on Saturdays in the big gym with the squeaky floors. Coach Kyle is like twenty-five. He's white, with short brown hair that sticks up a little in the front, and he always chews gum, and he blows his whistle way too much. He calls me "Mitchie Money" because I made a three-pointer one time. One time.
And he was just... standing there. Not pumping gas. Not going in the store. Just standing by his car, looking across the street. At the church.
I squinted. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was somebody else in an All Net jersey. But then he lifted his hand to block the sun, and I saw his face. It was him.
I must've made a noise or something, because Ms. Denise leaned over and said, "What you looking at, baby?"
And I said, "That's my coach."
She turned around and looked through the window. And her eyebrows went all the way up. "That young white man over there? In the basketball jersey?"
"Yeah. Coach Kyle."
Ms. Denise grabbed her purse. Mama said, "Denise, where you going?" And Ms. Denise said, "I'm gonna go say hi to the man. He came all this way."
Then she looked at me and pointed her long pink fingernail. "And you come with me. Be polite, Mitchell. Hear me? Be polite."
So me and Ms. Denise slid out of the pew and walked down the side aisle. The ushers gave us a look, but Ms. Denise just smiled and said, "Bathroom," which was a lie, in church, during the sermon. I'm just saying.
We pushed open the big wooden doors, and the sun hit us right in the face. It was hot outside. Crenshaw hot. The air smelled like gas and hot asphalt and somebody's barbecue a few blocks away.
Ms. Denise didn't even wait for the light. She stood right on the church steps, put one hand on her hip, and hollered across the street:
"EXCUSE ME! YOUNG MAN!
IN THE JERSEY!"
Coach Kyle jumped. Like, jumped. Like when you're sneaking cookies and your mama flips on the kitchen light.
He looked over. He saw Ms. Denise. Then he saw me. And his face did something weird. It went kind of white. Well, whiter.
"Come on over here, baby! I don't bite!"
He walked over real slow. Crossed the street. Came up to the bottom of the church steps. He waved at me. "Hey... hey, Mitchie Money."
"Hi, Coach," I said. Polite. Like she told me.
Ms. Denise stuck out her hand, and he shook it. "I'm Denise. I'm a family friend. You coach my nephew here. Well, he's not really my nephew, but he's my baby. You coach him in that All Net league, right?"
"Yes ma'am. Yeah. He's, uh, he's a good player."
"Mm-hmm." Ms. Denise looked at him for a long time. And then she smiled. But it was a different smile. Not her church smile. Not her Popeyes smile. It was the smile Mama does when she already knows you broke the lamp.
"Now let me ask you something, sugar," she said. "What are you doing on this side of town? Mitchell's mama told me you live out in Woodland Hills, baby. What are you doing all the way down here in Crenshaw with us?"
And that's when he did the thing.
He had something in his hand already. Something small and dark. I didn't see it good. It was there and then it wasn't. He kinda shuffled his feet and turned his body a little and slipped it into his pocket real quick, like a magic trick. Like he didn't want us to see.
"Oh, I, uh," he said. He laughed, but it wasn't a real laugh. "I was getting gas. Across the street. And I saw the church, and I just... I heard the music, and I thought, you know, I'd check it out. I've never been to a church like this before."
"You drove all the way from Woodland Hills," Ms. Denise said slowly, "to get gas in Crenshaw?"
"I was... in the area."
"Mm."
"Visiting a friend."
"Mm-hmm."
Nobody said anything for a minute. A bus went by. Inside the church, I could hear Pastor Henderson yelling, and the organ going DUN-DUN, and the people saying "Amen."
"Well," Ms. Denise finally said, "you're welcome to come inside, baby. The Lord's house is open to everybody."
And I don't know why — I still don't know why — he said yes.
So Coach Kyle came inside. Right down the center aisle of Greater Faith Missionary Baptist Church in his gray mesh All Net Basketball jersey and dark shorts, walking past all these people in their Sunday best like it was the most normal thing in the world. People looked. Of course they looked. But nobody said anything, because that's not what you do in church.
After service, when people were milling around talking and the organ player was doing that slow wind-down thing, Ms. Denise pulled out her little camera. The kind with the film you had to rewind.
"Y'all come here," she said. "Stand together. Right here in the aisle."
And that's how me and Coach Kyle ended up standing side by side in the middle of Greater Faith, right there on the red carpet with the dark wooden pews on both sides of us. The stained-glass windows were glowing on the right wall, and the brass light fixtures were hanging above us, and there were a few congregation members still moving around in the background.
I had on my white button-down dress shirt — all stiff and tucked in like Mama required — and my dark navy slacks with that sharp crease. My church shoes, pinching my pinky toe as usual. Coach was right next to me in his gray mesh jersey with the bold dark blue letters across the front. ALL NET. BASKETBALL. Right there in the house of God. He had on dark shorts too. I mean, the man came dressed for a pickup game, not a praise and worship service, but here we were.
He put his arm around my shoulder, and I smiled at the camera. A real smile, not a fake one. He smiled too. And for a second, it just felt normal. Like, of course my basketball coach is in my church in Crenshaw on a Sunday. Of course he is. Nothing weird about that.
Ms. Denise said, "Say cheese!"
And the camera flashed.
We went back to the pew while people were saying their goodbyes. Ms. Denise didn't say anything on the ride home. She didn't clap off beat. She didn't pass out peppermints right away. She just held her purse real tight in her lap and stared out the front window.
After church, in the parking lot, I heard her talking to Mama by the car. Real low. Lower than I've ever heard Ms. Denise talk in my whole life. I only caught pieces.
"...didn't sit right with me..."
"...had something in his hand..."
"...how he even know which church..."
And that last part got stuck in my head. Like gum on the bottom of your shoe.
Because I never told Coach Kyle what church we go to. I don't think I did. Did I? Maybe I said "Crenshaw" one time at practice. Maybe I said "Greater Faith." I don't know. I don't remember. I've been trying to remember all week, and the harder I try, the foggier it gets.
On the ride home, I sat in the back seat and watched out the window. Palm trees. Swap meet. The orange man. The barbershop pole spinning.
And a gray car, two cars behind us.
It turned off at Slauson. I think. Probably. It was probably nothing. Lots of people have gray cars.
Mama turned the gospel station back on. Keisha fell asleep with her mouth open. Ms. Denise finally passed me a peppermint, but she didn't look back when she did it.
I looked down at my stiff white shirt. Still tucked in. Still pressed. And I thought about that photo. Me in my church clothes. Coach in his basketball jersey. Standing together in the middle of the aisle like everything was fine.
And I thought about what Pastor said. About how somebody's always watching over you.
Always watching.
I used to think that was a nice thing to say.
-Mitchell +
Deck (of Mitch Leyor)
Epilogue
And that’s the thing about being watched. It can mean protection — like someone holding you steady when the world gets shaky. But it can feel different, too, depending on who’s watching and why. Across lives and neighborhoods, across races and histories, the meaning of that gaze shifts. Sometimes it's curious. Sometimes it's skeptical. Sometimes it’s heavy with the weight of what you’re supposed to prove.
But what happens after we notice we’re being seen depends on us. Do we freeze up, trying to fit their picture of us? Or do we stand tall, shoulders squared, and show what that picture doesn’t capture? When a moment feels strange — like Coach Kyle on Crenshaw, like Ms. Denise’s stare locking onto something deeper — it asks for more from us. It asks us to see each other clearly in return, past the assumptions, past the fear, and through all the uneven layers of history that brought us here.
Because to be watched isn’t just to be seen — sometimes it’s a chance to shift the way the story gets told.