Watts Riots
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The term Watts Riots refers to a large-scale riot which lasted five days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in August 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 $35 million in damage was caused.
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[edit] Background
The riot began on August 11, 1965, in Watts, when Lee Minikus, a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer, pulled over Marquette Frye, whom Minikus believed was intoxicated because of his observed erratic driving. While police questioned Frye and his brother Ronald Frye, a group of people began to gather. A struggle ensued shortly after the brothers' mother Rena arrived on the scene, resulting in the arrest of all three family members. Someone threw a bottle which hit a police car fender. Shortly after the police left, tensions boiled over and the rioting began. Over six days, $35,000,000 in destruction of property occurred. The neighborhood was 99% black. The only other non-blacks in the neighborhood were a few people of Hispanic origin, and several Jewish store owners. The community believed racially motivated police brutality was rampant.[citation needed] Only 5 of the 205 police officers assigned to this neighborhood were African American. Police were accused of the rape of black women, epithets, and use of excessive force in arrests. In the Watts area, one out of eight adults had a high school education, and poverty and unemployment were higher in this section of Los Angeles than any other neighborhood. This pattern of rioting continued all across the country in cities such as New York in 1964, San Francisco in 1966, Detroit and Newark in 1967, Baltimore in 1967 and 1968. New York again, Washington, DC, Chicago and Cleveland in 1968.
[edit] 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. [citation needed]
[edit] Government intervention
Eventually, the National Guard put a cordon around a vast region of South Central Los Angeles. A gubernatorial (Governing) 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Cultural references
- The novel The New Centurions, by Joseph Wambaugh, not only culminates in the Watts Riot but examines the negative impact of police in minority communities in the years preceding it.
- Frank Zappa wrote a lyrical commentary inspired by the Watts Riots, entitled "Trouble Every Day", containing 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 originally 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, among other albums.
- The title article in Tom Wolfe's collection of essays, 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.)
- In the U.S. television series, Quantum Leap, an episode called "Black on White on Fire" features Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) put into the body of a black medical student who is in love with the white daughter of a police captain. This episode begins on the eve of the Watts riots.
- The rallying cry of "burn, baby, burn" came from KGFJ radio personality Magnificent Montague. Montague was not directly responsible; he was fond of yelling "Burn!" when he played a record that particularly interested him and his listeners followed suit when they called him on the air.
- "Burn, Baby, Burn" is also the title of an episode of the television series Dark Skies, which takes place in the midst of the Watts riots.
- A fictitious version of the Watts riots are depicted in the NBC miniseries The '60s.
- The Movie "Menace II Society" also made mentioning of the infamous riots in the beginning of the film as a precursor to the slowly emerging drug and gang culture in Los Angeles.
- Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air says he was at the Watts Riots
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Cohen, Jerry and William S. Murphy, Burn, Baby, Burn! The Los Angeles Race Riot, August, 1965, New York: Dutton, 1966.
- Conot, Robert, Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness, New York: Bantam, 1967.
- Guy Debord, Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy, 1965. A situationist interpretation of the riots
- Horne, Gerald, "Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s," Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995.
- Thomas Pynchon, A Journey into the Mind of Watts, 1966. full text
- Violence in the City -- An End or a Beginning?, A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, 1965, John McCone, Chairman, Warren M. Christopher, Vice Chairman. Official Report online\
- David O' Sears "The politics of violence;: The new urban Blacks and the Watts riot"
- Clayton D. Clingan "Watts Riots"
- Paul Bullock "Watts: The Aftermath" New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1969
