What Factors Contributed to the Watts Riots of 1965?
Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries
On Wednesday, 11 Baronial 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-yr-old black man, was arrested for drunk driving on the edge of Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood. The ensuing struggle during his arrest sparked off vi days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over i,000 injuries, nigh 4,000 arrests, and the destruction of property valued at $40 1000000. On 17 August 1965, Martin Luther Male monarch arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the riots. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his growing conviction that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) should motion northward and pb a motility to address the growing bug facing black people in the nation'south urban areas.
Frye had been drinking and was driving with his brother, Ronald, in the motorcar, when the 2 were pulled over 2 blocks from their home. While Marquette was being arrested, Ronald retrieved their mother from her house. When Mrs. Frye saw her son being forcibly arrested, she fought with the absorbing officers, tearing 1 officeholder'due south shirt. An officer so struck Marquette'south head with his nightstick, and all 3 of the Fryes were arrested.
By the time the Fryes were arrested, hundreds of onlookers had been drawn to the scene. Anger and rumors spread quickly through the blackness community, and residents stoned cars and vanquish white people who entered the area. A neighborhood meeting called by the Los Angeles Canton Human Relations Commission the following day failed to quell the mounting tension, and that evening rioting resumed. Firemen attempting to put out blazes were shot at by residents, and looting was rampant. All twenty-four hour period Friday the riots intensified, prompting the California lieutenant governor to call in the National Baby-sit. By Saturday night a curfew had been ready, and nearly 14,000 National Baby-sit troops were patrolling a 46-mile expanse. By the time King arrived on Tuesday, having cut short his stay in Puerto Rico, the riots were largely over and the curfew was lifted. Fueling residual anger, nonetheless, law stormed a Nation of Islam mosque the next night, firing hundreds of rounds of armament into the building and wounding 19 men.
While deploring the riots and their employ of violence, King was quick to point out that the problems that led to the violence were "ecology and non racial. The economic impecuniousness, social isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair of thousands of Negroes teeming in Northern and Western ghettos are the set up seeds which give nativity to tragic expressions of violence" (Rex, 17 August 1965). Although California Governor Edmund Brown hoped King would not get to Watts, King went to support those living in the ghetto who, he claimed, would be pushed farther into "despair and hopelessness" by the anarchism (Male monarch, 17 Baronial 1965). He also hoped to eternalize the frayed alliance betwixt blacks and whites favoring civil rights reform. He offered to mediate between local people and authorities officials, and pushed for systematic solutions to the economic and social issues plaguing Watts and other black ghettos.
King told reporters that the Watts riots were "the beginning of a stirring of those people in our society who have been by passed by the progress of the past decade" (King, xx August 1965). Struggles in the Northward, Rex believed, were really about "dignity and work," rather than rights, which had been the main goal of black activism in the South (King, twenty August 1965). During his discussions with local people, King met blackness residents who argued for armed coup, and others who claimed that "the but mode we can ever get anybody to listen to u.s. is to first a anarchism" (Male monarch, 19 August 1965). These expressions concerned King, and earlier he left Los Angeles he spoke on the telephone with President Lyndon B. Johnson about what could exist washed to ease the state of affairs. King recommended that Johnson gyre out a federal anti-poverty program in Los Angeles immediately. Johnson agreed with the suggestion, telling Rex: "You did a adept job going out in that location" (Branch, 308).
Later that fall, Rex wrote an article for the Saturday Review in which he argued that Los Angeles could have predictable rioting "when its officials tied upwards federal aid in political manipulation; when the rate of Negro unemployment soared above the low levels of the 1930s; when the population density of Watts became the worst in the nation," and when the country of California repealed a constabulary that prevented bigotry in housing (Rex, "Beyond the Los Angeles Riots").
Subsequently SCLC initiated its Chicago Campaign that fall, Rex asked an audience there: "What did Watts accomplish but the death of 30-4 Negroes and injury to thousands more? What did it turn a profit the Negro to fire the stores and factories in which he sought employment? The way of riots is not a mode of progress, but a bullheaded ally of decease and destruction which wrecks its havoc hardest against the rioters themselves" (King, 12 March 1966).
Source: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/watts-rebellion-los-angeles
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