Marking 50 years since Watts riots

When Frye’s mother came to the scene to yell at her son for drinking, a crowd formed and then tensions mounted.

In the ensuing scuffle, a patrolman struck Frye in the head with a baton and his mother jumped on another officer. A crowd of spectators gathered near the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116 St.to watch the arrest, and soon grew angry by what they believed to be yet another incident of racially motivated police abuse.

The Watts Rebellion erupted after the DUI arrest of a Marquette Frye, 21-year-old black man, who was pulled over by a white CHP officer in Watts on August 11.

One day later, the crowd of protesters swelled to 200 to 300 youths, who fired on police officers, burned cars, and hurled rocks and bottles. The riots had begun. The black population in Los Angeles leapt from approximately 63,700 in 1940 to about 350,000 in 1965, making the once small black community visible to the general public, although politically unrepresented. Of 18 boxes of negatives, only the three from 1965 were found. From the distance of 50 years it would appear that the hope embodied in the recently signed Voting Rights Act and the passage of Medicare and Medicaid did not translate to confidence at the street level that things were looking up. “You have all this progressive change taking place, but not necessarily reflected in the daily lives of people, which I think also helps to feed the frustration”. AP Firefighters battle a blaze set in a shoe store during the Watts riots.

The events have always been dubbed riots, though Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston, prefers the term uprising.

Chris Jordan, another community organizer from Watts, says he still sees the scars the riots left on his community.

Most of the businesses looted and torched were owned by whites.

Recommended: Can you pass the written police officer exam? Of those who died in the riots, 23 were killed by Los Angeles police officers or National Guardsmen.

In an interview with CBS News, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, the president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable called it the “granddaddy of civil disturbance”. “You know, little things like that – just more service”.

Firefighters were attacked and shot at as they tried to douse the flames. More than $40 million of property had been destroyed. The commission, led by former Central Intelligence Agency Director John McCone, returned a report in December of that year, largely blaming high unemployment, poor education and substandard living conditions among the African-American communities for the riots.

Relations have improved with police and the department’s force is now diverse.

Many other negatives stored by the department were lost.

Even though Detroit rioting in 1967 surpassed the death and damage toll in Los Angeles, Watts remains a common reference point when protests against police turn violent.

The modern chapter of rebellion against police violence and poverty unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri a year ago, triggered by the police killing of 18-year old Michael Brown.