It was a hot summer night 40 years ago when an urban uprising
was just beginning to be quelled in South Central Los Angeles, a
six-day event that led to 34 deaths, more than 1,000 injuries and
over $40 million in property damage. Now referred to as the Watts
Riots of 1965, the events that began Aug. 11 of that year were an
amalgam of looting, Molotov cocktails, slogans of “Burn, baby
burn!” and media soundbites that described Watts as “an
anarchy-ridden area” where police were “out-manned and
out-gunned.” For many of those remembering the events that
transpired in Watts 40 years ago, the anniversary marks a
significant point in the history of the civil rights movement, when
the people of Watts responded to the socioeconomic inequality and
persistent trend of police brutality in their neighborhoods with
cries of defiance. One year after the landmark introduction of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, similar uprisings were occurring all over
the United States as mainly urban populations responded to
continuing impoverishment, disparity and racial discrimination.
Watts was the largest and costliest that summer, with other
uprisings occurring in Detroit and Newark, N.J. And yet while
lessons were learned and attempts at alleviating the situation were
made, much remains the same in Watts today, according to the UCLA
faculty, staff and students who commemorated the events last week
at various talks and discussions. “For me to say nothing has
changed would be wrong, but it’s not nearly enough. … If
people think the era of massive violence is over, they better think
that over carefully. If it were to happen in the near future, it
would not surprise me,” said Paul Von Blum, a senior lecturer
for the interdepartmental program for Afro-American studies at
UCLA.
A spark becomes a flame In the 1960s Watts was one of the larger
communities within Los Angeles, with two-thirds of its population
being black. It was also a population that was steadily growing.
W.E.B. Dubois, a prolific black author and civil rights leader, was
impressed with the overall make-up and economic potential of the
metropolis when he visited Los Angeles in 1964, calling the city a
“mecca.” It was against this backdrop that an influx of
blacks from the Deep South arrived, said Brenda Stevenson, chair of
the Afro-American studies program. “But they soon found out
it was not so fabulous. The police were thought of as a terroristic
force. The LAPD would drive their cars on the sidewalks. … There
was a sense of disconnect between African Americans and the justice
system,” Stevenson said. It was because of this
disenchantment with law enforcement and the fact that over
one-third of the adults in the neighborhood were unemployed that
the riots began. On the night of Aug. 11, a white California
Highway Patrol officer pulled-over Marquette Frye, a young black
man, at the corner of 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard in Watts.
Suspecting that Frye had been driving under the influence, the
simple stop soon escalated. As a crowd of more than 200 gathered to
witness the confrontation, Frye’s mother entered the scene in
an attempt to calm the situation. In the face of his mother’s
questioning, Frye became more belligerent and another police
officer who had arrived hit Frye with a bat. At that moment, what
Stevenson calls “the spark moment,” chaos ensued, and
while Frye and his mother were taken to a local police station, the
rioting began. What resulted was over 25,000 residents actively
participating in looting, burning, fighting, throwing rocks and
shooting, and the need for over 1,000 men of the 40th Division of
the National Guard to restore calm. In the 40 years since then,
scholars and community leaders alike have been studying the causes
of those six lawless days in Watts. “People have to believe
in their society. If you don’t believe in the basic fairness
of a society, why would you settle? … Here the people said,
“˜We don’t consent to adhere to the laws,'”
said Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for
African American Studies at UCLA.
Riot or revolution? At the time, the riots were portrayed by the
media and city officials as senseless and thoughtless. But later
surveys showed that 62 percent of the residents saw the rioting as
a form of political protest and 42 percent even believed they were
steeped in revolutionary rhetoric, Hunt said. The political nature
of the uprising is also one of the many reasons some prefer to call
it the “Watts Rebellion” or “Watts Revolt,”
akin in its purpose to revolutionary events such as the Boston Tea
Party. “Rebellions always have a criminal component. … Just
because some people were just there to steal doesn’t mean it
wasn’t political,” Stevenson said. Today, scholars tend
to agree that the events of that summer were largely a political
response, as the people of Watts realized the general inequality of
the law as applied to them. While a student at UC Berkeley, Von
Blum spent the summer of 1964 working for the Congress of Racial
Equality in Watts and witnessed the situation first-hand.
“There was a lot of tension a year before the uprising.
Almost everywhere I went I encountered people with stories of
police harassment and brutality. There was lots of discussion about
discrimination generally. So when a year later it exploded, I
wasn’t even remotely surprised,” Von Blum said. In an
attempt to respond to the frustrations of the Watts residents, a
number of institutions were created soon after the riots, including
the Watts Summer Games and the King/Drew Medical Center. But even
such concrete examples of the change that was instituted have
fizzled over the years. Last year it was revealed that the
King/Drew Medical Center was riddled with corruption and
inefficiency, and as a result the hospital lost numerous
accreditations. Now the King/Drew Medical Center is close to being
completely shut down, leaving Watts and surrounding neighborhoods
without a hospital. Throughout the month of August and September,
the UCLA Film and Television Archive Research and Study Center at
Powell Library will have available two news documentaries of the
Watts uprisings, including the highly acclaimed “Hell in the
City of Angels.” Both selections are free and available to
the public on a walk-in basis.