Watts riots

Watts riots
	Burning buildings during the riots
Date	August 11–16, 1965
Location	Watts, Los Angeles
Methods	Widespread rioting, looting, assault, arson, protests, firefights, property damage, murder
Casualties
Death(s)	34
Injuries	1,032
Arrested	3,438

The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion,^[1] took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965.

On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist on parole for robbery, was pulled over for reckless driving.^[2]^[3] A minor roadside argument broke out, and then escalated into a fight with police.^[2] Community members reported that the police had hurt a pregnant woman, and six days of civil unrest followed.^[3] Nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard helped suppress the disturbance, which resulted in 34 deaths^[4] and over $40 million in property damage. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992.

Background[edit]

In the Great Migration of 1915-1940, major populations of African-Americans moved to Northeastern and Midwestern cities such as Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City to pursue jobs in newly established manufacturing industries; to cement better educational and social opportunities; and to flee racial segregation, Jim Crow Laws, violence and racial bigotry in the Southern states. This wave of migration largely bypassed Los Angeles.

In the 1940s, in the Second Great Migration, black Americans migrated to the West Coast in large numbers, in response to defense industry recruitment efforts at the start of World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 directing defense contractors not to discriminate in hiring or promotions, opening up new opportunities for minorities. The black population in Los Angeles dramatically rose from approximately 63,700 in 1940 to about 350,000 in 1965, rising from 4% of LA's population to 14%.^[5]^[6]

Residential segregation[edit]

Los Angeles had racially restrictive covenants that prevented blacks and Mexican Americans from renting and buying property in certain areas, even long after the courts ruled such practices illegal in 1948 and federal civil rights legislation was passed in 1964. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Los Angeles has been geographically divided by ethnicity. In the 1910s, the city was already 80% covered by racially restrictive covenants in real estate.^[7] By the 1940s, 95% of Los Angeles and southern California housing was off-limits to African Americans and Asians.^[8]^[9] Minorities who had served in World War II or worked in L.A.'s defense industries returned to face increasing patterns of discrimination in housing. In addition, they found themselves excluded from the suburbs and restricted to housing in East or South Los Angeles, which includes the Watts neighborhood and Compton. Such real-estate practices severely restricted educational and economic opportunities available to the minority community.^[8]

With an influx of black residents, housing in South Los Angeles became increasingly scarce, overwhelming the already established communities and providing opportunities for real estate developers. Davenport Builders, for example, was a large developer who responded to the demand, with an eye on undeveloped land in Compton. What was originally a mostly white neighborhood in the 1940s increasingly became an African-American, middle-class dream in which blue-collar laborers could enjoy suburbia away from the slums.^[8]

Suburbs in the Los Angeles area grew explosively as black residents also wanted to live in peaceful white neighborhoods. In a thinly-veiled attempt to sustain their way of life and maintain the general peace and prosperity, most of these suburbs barred black people, using a variety of methods. White middle-class people in neighborhoods bordering black districts moved en masse to the suburbs, where newer housing was available. The spread of African Americans throughout urban Los Angeles was achieved in large part through blockbusting, a technique whereby real estate speculators would buy a home on an all-white street, sell or rent it to a black family, and then buy up the remaining homes from Caucasians at cut-rate prices, then sell them to housing-hungry black families at hefty profits.

The Rumford Fair Housing Act, designed to remedy residential segregation, was overturned by Proposition 14, which was sponsored by the California real estate industry, and supported by a majority of white voters. Psychiatrist and civil rights activist Alvin Poussaint considered Proposition 14 to be one of the root causes of black rebellion in Watts.^[10]

Police discrimination[edit]

Because of discrimination Los Angeles' African American residents were excluded from the high-paying jobs, affordable housing, and politics available to white residents; moreover, they faced discrimination by the white-dominated Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).^{[citation needed]} In 1950, William H. Parker was appointed and sworn in as Los Angeles Chief of Police. After a major scandal called Bloody Christmas of 1951, Parker pushed for more independence from political pressures that would enable him to create a more professionalized police force. The public supported him and voted for charter changes that isolated the police department from the rest of the city government. In the 1960s, the LAPD was promoted as one of the best police forces in the world.

Despite its reform and having a professionalized, military-like police force, William Parker's LAPD faced repeated criticism from the city's Latino and black residents for police brutality—resulting from his recruiting of officers from the South with strong anti-black and anti-Mexican attitudes. Chief Parker coined the term "Thin Blue Line", representing the police as holding down pervasive crime.^[11]

Resentment of such longstanding racial injustices are cited as reasons why Watts' African-American population exploded on August 11, 1965, in what would become the Watts Riots.^[12]

Inciting incident[edit]

On the evening of Wednesday, August 11, 1965, 21-year-old Marquette Frye, an African-American man driving his mother's 1955 Buick, was pulled over by California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer Lee Minikus for allegedly reckless driving .^[13] After administering a field sobriety test, Minikus placed Frye under arrest and radioed for his vehicle to be impounded.^[14] Marquette's brother, Ronald, a passenger in the vehicle, walked to their house nearby, bringing their mother, Rena Price, back with him to the scene of the arrest.

When Rena Price reached the intersection of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street that evening, she scolded Frye about drinking and driving, as he recalled in a 1985 interview with the Orlando Sentinel.^[15] But the situation quickly escalated: someone shoved Price, Frye was struck, Price jumped an officer, and another officer pulled out a shotgun. Backup police officers attempted to arrest Frye by using physical force to subdue him. After community members reported that police had roughed up Frye and kicked a pregnant woman, angry mobs formed.^[16]^[17] As the situation intensified, growing crowds of local residents watching the exchange began yelling and throwing objects at the police officers.^[18] Frye's mother and brother fought with the officers and were eventually arrested along with Marquette Frye.^[19]^[20]

After the arrests of Price and her sons the Frye brothers, the crowd continued to grow along Avalon Boulevard. Police came to the scene to break up the crowd several times that night, but were attacked when people threw rocks and chunks of concrete.^[21] A 46-square-mile (119 square kilometer) swath of Los Angeles was transformed into a combat zone during the ensuing six days.^[17]

Riot begins[edit]

Police arrest a man during the riots on August 12

Soldiers of the California's 40th Armored Division direct traffic away from an area of South Central Los Angeles burning during the Watts riot

After a night of increasing unrest, police and local black community leaders held a community meeting on Thursday, August 12, to discuss an action plan and to urge calm. The meeting failed. Later that day, Los Angeles police chief William H. Parker called for the assistance of the California Army National Guard.^[22] Chief Parker believed the riots resembled an insurgency, compared it to fighting the Viet Cong, and decreed a "paramilitary" response to the disorder. Governor Pat Brown declared that law enforcement was confronting "guerrillas fighting with gangsters".^[4]

The rioting intensified, and on Friday, August 13, about 2,300 National Guardsmen joined the police in trying to maintain order on the streets. Sergeant Ben Dunn said: "The streets of Watts resembled an all-out war zone in some far-off foreign country, it bore no resemblance to the United States of America."^[23]^[24] By nightfall on Saturday, 16,000 law enforcement personnel had been mobilized and patrolled the city.^[4] Blockades were established, and warning signs were posted throughout the riot zones threatening the use of deadly force (one sign warned residents to "Turn left or get shot"). 23 of the 34 people killed during the riots were shot by law enforcement or National Guardsmen. Angered over the police response, residents of Watts engaged in a full-scale battle against the law enforcement personnel. Rioters tore up sidewalks and bricks to hurl at Guardsmen and police, and to smash their vehicles.^[4]

Those actively participating in the riots started physical fights with police, blocked Los Angeles Fire Department personnel from using fire hoses on protesters, or stopped and beat white motorists yelling racial slurs in the area. Arson and looting were largely confined to local white-owned stores and businesses that were said to have caused resentment in the neighborhood due to low wages and high prices for local workers.^[25]

To quell the riots, Chief Parker initiated a policy of mass arrest.^[4] Following the deployment of National Guardsmen, a curfew was declared for a vast region of South Central Los Angeles.^[26] In addition to the Guardsmen, 934 Los Angeles police officers and 718 officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were deployed during the rioting.^[22] Watts and all black-majority areas in Los Angeles were put under the curfew. All residents outside of their homes in the affected areas after 8:00pm were subject to arrest. Eventually nearly 3,500 people were arrested, primarily for curfew violations. By the morning of Sunday, August 15, the riots had largely been quelled.^[4]

Over the course of six days, between 31,000 and 35,000 adults participated in the riots. Around 70,000 people were "sympathetic, but not active."^[21] Over the six days, there were 34 deaths,^[27]^[28] 1,032 injuries,^[27]^[29] 3,438 arrests,^[27]^[30] and over $40 million in property damage.^[27] Many white Americans were fearful of the breakdown of social order in Watts, especially since white motorists were being pulled over by rioters in nearby areas and assaulted.^[31] Many in the black community, however, believed the rioters were taking part in an "uprising against an oppressive system."^[21] In a 1966 essay, black civil rights activist Bayard Rustin wrote:

The whole point of the outbreak in Watts was that it marked the first major rebellion of Negroes against their own masochism and was carried on with the express purpose of asserting that they would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life.^[32]

Despite allegations that "criminal elements" were responsible for the riots, the vast majority of those arrested had no prior criminal record.^[4]

Parker publicly said that the people he saw rioting were acting like "monkeys in the zoo."^[25] Overall, an estimated $40 million in damage was caused ($320,000,000 in 2018 dollars), with almost 1,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Homes were not attacked, although some caught fire due to proximity to other fires.^{[citation needed]}

Businesses and private buildings	Public buildings	Total
Damaged/burned: 258	Damaged/burned: 14	Total: 272
Looted: 192		Total: 192
Both damaged/burned & looted: 288		Total: 288
Destroyed: 267	Destroyed: 1	Total: 268
Total: 977

After the riots[edit]

Debate rose quickly over what had taken place in Watts, as the area was known to be under a great deal of racial and social tension. Reactions and reasoning about the riots greatly varied based on the perspectives of those affected by and participating in the riots' chaos.

National civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke two days after the riots happened in Watts. The riots were partly a response to Proposition 14, a constitutional amendment sponsored by the California Real Estate Association and passed that had in effect repealed the Rumford Fair Housing Act.^[33] In 1966, the California Supreme Court reinstated the Rumford Fair Housing Act in the Reitman v. Mulkey case (a decision affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court the following year), declaring the amendment to violate the US constitution and laws.

A variety of opinions and explanations were published. Public opinion polls studied in the few years after the riot showed that a majority believed the riots were linked to communist groups who were active in the area protesting high unemployment rates and racial discrimination.^[34] Those opinions concerning racism and discrimination were expressed three years after hearings conducted by a committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights took place in Los Angeles to assess the condition of relations between the police force and minorities. These hearings were also intended to make a ruling on the discrimination case against the police for their alleged mistreatment of members of the Nation of Islam.^[34] These different arguments and opinions are often cited in continuing debates over the underlying causes of the Watts riots.^[25]

McCone Commission[edit]

A commission under Governor Pat Brown investigated the riots, known as the McCone Commission, and headed by former CIA director John A. McCone. It released a 101-page report on December 2, 1965 entitled Violence in the City—An End or a Beginning?: A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965.^[35]

The McCone Commission identified the root causes of the riots to be high unemployment, poor schools, and related inferior living conditions that were endured by African Americans in Watts. Recommendations for addressing these problems included "emergency literacy and preschool programs, improved police-community ties, increased low-income housing, more job-training projects, upgraded health-care services, more efficient public transportation, and many more." Most of these recommendations were never implemented.^[36]

Aftermath[edit]

Marquette Frye died of pneumonia on December 20, 1986 at age 42.^[37] His mother, Rena Price, died on June 10, 2013, at age 97.^[38] She never recovered the impounded 1955 Buick which her son had been driving, because the storage fees exceeded the car's value.^[39]

Cultural references[edit]

The 1972 music festival at Los Angeles Coliseum known as Wattstax, and its follow-up 1973 documentary film, were created to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the riots.^[40]
The Hughes brothers film Menace II Society (1993) opens with images taken from the riots of 1965. The entire film is set in Watts from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Frank Zappa wrote a lyrical commentary inspired by the Watts riots, entitled "Trouble Every Day". It contains such lines as "Wednesday I watched the riot / Seen the cops out on the street / Watched 'em throwin' rocks and stuff /And chokin' in the heat". The song was released on his debut album Freak Out! (with the original Mothers of Invention), and later slightly rewritten as "More Trouble Every Day", available on Roxy and Elsewhere and The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life.
Phil Ochs' 1965 song "In the Heat of the Summer", most famously recorded by Judy Collins, was a chronicle of the Watts Riots.
Curt Gentry's 1968 novel, The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California, dissected the riots in detail in a fact-based semi-documentary tone.
Charles Bukowski mentioned the Watts riots in his poem "Who in the hell is Tom Jones?" and briefly mentions the events towards the end of Post Office.
The 1990 film Heat Wave depicts the Watts riots from the perspective of journalist Bob Richardson as a resident of Watts and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
The 1994 film There Goes My Baby tells the story of a group of high school seniors during the riots.
The producers of the Planet of the Apes franchise stated that the riots inspired the ape uprising featured in the film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.^[41]
In "Black on White on Fire", in the television series Quantum Leap episode aired November 9, 1990, Sam Beckett shifts into the body of a black man, who is engaged to a white woman, while living in Watts during the riots.
Scenes in "Burn, Baby, Burn", an episode of the TV series Dark Skies, are set in Los Angeles during the riots.
The movie C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America mentions the Watts riots as a slave rebellion rather than a riot.
Walter Mosley's novel Little Scarlet, in which Mosley's lead character Easy Rawlins is asked by police to investigate a racially charged murder in neighborhoods where white investigators are unwelcome, takes place in the aftermath of the Watts riots.
The riots are depicted in the third issue of the Before Watchmen: Comedian comic book.
The riots are referred to in the 2000 film Remember the Titans. An Alexandria, Virginia school board representative tells head football coach Bill Yoast that he would be replaced by Herman Boone, an African American coach from North Carolina, because the school board feared that otherwise, Alexandria would "...burn up like Watts".
In Chapter 9 of A Song Flung Up To Heaven, the sixth volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography, Angelou gives an account of the riots. She had a job in the neighborhood at the time and was there as they played out.
Joseph Wambaugh's novel The New Centurions (1971), and the 1972 movie adaptation of the same name, are partially set during the Watts riots.
The arrest of the Frye brothers and the riots are referred to by the character George Hutchence in the second volume of the comics miniseries Jupiter's Circle, as an example of class struggle.^[42]
O.J.: Made in America, 1st episode
The riots are mentioned in Richard Powers' novel The Time of Our Singing (2003).
The riots are mentioned in Michael Connelly's lost chapter of his 1999 novel Angels Flight, as well as his 2005 novel The Closers
The titular song from American hip hop group Cypress Hill's 2010 album Rise Up opens up with the line "Not since the Watts Riot of 1965, has the city seem so out of control. Los Angeles is still on edge".