Today is the 55th anniversary of the start of the
Watts Riots in Los Angeles, California. At the time, it was the largest and
most destructive riot in California. By the end of the five-day riot, 31-35,000
have said to have participated with 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests
and approximately $40 million in damages. Growing up I had heard about the
riots but never heard about what led to the riots. When I realized that the
anniversary was coming up, I felt the need to read about it further. To
understand the causes, the event as well as the aftermath. Understand that the
information I present here is just an overview. As with any important event,
there is so much more information that I couldn’t possibly cover it here in a
simple blog post.
To understand the riots, we need to go back in history. The
Great Migration (1915-1940) saw large populations of African Americans moving
to Northeastern and Midwest cities, i.e. New York City, Chicago, and Detroit,
to pursue jobs in manufacturing industries, better educational and social
opportunities and to flee racial segregation. Jim Crow laws, violent and racial
bigotry in the Southern states were at a fever pitch. Los Angeles saw little of
this migration until the Second Great Migration in the 1940s. As black workers
and families moved to the West Coast in great numbers, largely due to the
defense industry recruitment efforts as WWII created the need for more workers.
President Franklin D Roosevelt signed an Executive Order No. 8802 which
prohibiting defense contractors from discrimination in hiring or promotions.
However, restrictive laws prevented specific minorities from renting and owning
property in certain areas, even after the courts ruled it illegal (Shelley v
Kraemer, 1948) and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Approximately, 95% of LA was off-limits and minorities found themselves
restricted to the East and South LA areas (Bernstein, 2010). Tensions ran even
higher when California voters passed Proposition 14 in 1964 which overturned
the Rumford Fair Housing Act. The Rumford Act was designed to remedy
residential segregation. Civil Rights Activist Alvin Poussaint considered
Proposition 14 as one of the root causes of the riots (Theoharis, 2006).
To say that police discrimination was prevalent in LA would
be a vast understatement. On August 11, 1965, a minor roadside argument broke
out and escalated into a fight with the police. That night, Marquette Frye was
pulled over by CHP Officer Lee Minikus for reckless driving. After failing a
series of sobriety tests, Frye was placed under arrest for drunk driving.
Ronald Frye, his brother, was in the car with him and ran home to tell their
mother, Rena Price. According to Minikus, it was a normal, routine traffic stop
and everything was going well until Rena Price showed up to scold her son, Frye
then turned surly and began resisting arrest (Dawsey, 1990). Eventually, Frye,
his brother and his mother were arrested. The mounting tensions in the
community finally exploded as community members reported police brutally including
injuring a pregnant woman. Six days of unrest followed and resembled an all-out
war zone. Nearly 14,000 members of the California National Guard were called in
for suppression by LA Chief of Police William Parker. Rioting had spread
throughout other areas and into other cities, including Long Beach, and even as
far as San Diego, although, compared to Watts, they were very minor. According
to essayist Bayard, “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” (1966).
In the aftermath, debates quickly began about the events in
Watts, its origins and what do after. The California Supreme Court reinstated
the Rumford Fair Housing Act in Reitman v Mulkey (1966). Governor Edmund
Brown ordered an investigation into the riots, headed by John McCone. The
McCone Commission released a 101-page report, Violence in the City- An End
or a Beginning? on December 2, 1965. In in, the commission identified high
unemployment, poor schools, and related inferior living conditions as roots to
the rising tensions and eventual riots in Watts. Recommendations were made to
address these issues, however, none of them implemented (Dawsey, 1990). For
instance, the commission recommended job creation; however, it did nothing to
suggest how jobs would be created or obtained (Rustin, 1966). The commission
stated the untrained black man had a harder time holding on to jobs as
industries improved machines to take over for even the skilled worker (McCone
Report, 1965). Chief Parker was the focal point of grievances within the Watts
community and despite statements from the community, the commission deemed that
Parker was not a racist man (McCone Report, 1965). What happened to the man
whose arrest was the final spark? Marquette Frye admitted he was drunk that
night and had been shunned by some in his community and elevated to folk hero
by others (Dawsey, 1990). Sadly, Frye died December 24, 1986 from pneumonia.
In conclusion, when I set out to learn about the Watts
riots, I thought I was just going read about a historical event. However, I could
not shake that the unrest of the riots is still the unrest of today. In his
essay, Bayard Rustin finishes with a simple but profound statement, “And what
is most impractical and incredible of all is that we may very well continue to
teach impoverished, segregated, and ignored Negroes that the only way they can
get the ear of America is to rise up in violence” (1966). Have the people
learned that the only way to get the attention of those in charge is to be
violent? Recent events with rising violence certainly make it seem so. While I
have no answers or solutions to stop such a cycle, I find it interesting that
the lesson learned was violence as the only answer.
References
Bernstein, Shana (2010). Bridges of Reform: Interracial
Civil Rights Activism in Twentieth Century Los Angeles. Oxford University Press.
Retrieved August 9, 2020.
Theoharis, Jeanne (2006). The Black Power Movement:
Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era. (New York: Routledge). Retrieved
August 9, 2020.
