Watts riots

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TIME cover from August 20, 1965 featuring Los Angeles Riot

The Watts Riots were a large-scale civil disorder lasting six days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in 1965. During the riots, 34 people were officially reported killed, 1,100 people were injured, 4,000 people were arrested, 600 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and an estimated $100 million in damage was caused.

1 Background
2 Destruction
3 Government intervention
4 Media coverage
5 Cultural References
6 See also
7 Further reading
8 External links

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Background

The riots began on August 11, 1965, in Watts, when Lee Minikus, a white California Highway Patrol officer on a motorcycle, pulled over African American Marquette Frye who someone reported was driving erratically. While police questioned Frye and his brother Ronald Frye, a group of people began to gather. A struggle ensued shortly after Frye's mother Rena arrived on the scene, resulting in the arrest of all three family members. Police used their batons on Frye and his brother during questioning, angering the growing crowd. Someone threw a bottle which hit a police car fender. Shortly after the police left, tensions boiled over and the rioting began. Through five days, $200,000,000 dollars in destruction of property occurred, even though the Voting Rights act had been signed five days earlier guaranteeing Blacks equal voting rights. One out of eight adults lacked a high school education, drugs were rampant throughout the neighborhood, poverty and unemployment were higher in this section of Los Angeles than any other neighborhood. Police brutality and racism were openly prevalent and although the neighborhood was 99% African American, only 5 of the 205 police officers assigned to the neighborhood were African American. A common practice amongst police was to arrest blacks for minor infractions while calling them the word "nigger". The only other non-blacks in the neighborhood were a few people of Hispanic origin, and several Jewish store owners. These store owners were later replaced by Korean store owners after their stores were burned down and anti-semitic and anti-white attitudes arose in the community due to the Nation of Islam preachings led by Malcolm X and growing Black Militant attitudes. This pattern of rioting and anti-white racism continued all across the country in African American neighborhoods in cities such as New York in 1964 and 1968, Detroit in 1967, San Francisco in 1966, Washington, DC in 1968, Baltimore in 1967 and 1968, and Chicago and Cleveland both in 1968.

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Destruction

Most of the damage was confined to businesses that had caused resentment in the neighborhood due to the perception of unfairness. Homes were not attacked, although some caught fire due to proximity to other fires.

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Government intervention

Eventually, the National Guard put a cordon around a vast region of South Los Angeles. A gubernatorial commission investigated the riots, identifying the causes as high unemployment, poor schools, and other inferior living conditions. The government made little effort to address the problems or repair damages. The riots were also a response to Proposition 14, a constitutional amendment sponsored by the California Real Estate Association that had in effect repealed the Rumford Fair Housing Act.

The Black Panther Party of Self-Defense formed in Oakland, California, approximately one year after the riots.

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Media coverage

Los Angeles TV station KTLA covered the riots live using its station's helicopter, on more than one occasion spotting rioters and arsonists in the act. KTLA was the only station with a helicopter and therefore the only station to show air coverage of the riot. The use of a helicopter in both news coverage and in tracking activities led to increased use of the vehicles by law enforcement and other media broadcasters.

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Cultural References

The Mothers of Invention released a song on their debut album, Freak Out!, called "Trouble Every Day" which was a lyrical commentary on the Watts Riots.
The title article in Tom Wolfe's The Pump House Gang is about a group of surfers from Windansea Beach in La Jolla, California who "attended the Watts riots as if it were the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena." (see [1] for an excerpt)

N.W.A also created the song 'Fuck The Police' after the riots, hinting many of the lyrics to the the riots such as "they have the authority to kill a minorty" "a young nigger got it bad cause im brown"

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