Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)
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cops but from the Guard, which came in late and in too few numbers and behaved
like weekend warriors—panicky, poorly trained, and poorly led.
Americans wondered how this could happen in a decade that had seen the great-
est progress for blacks in American history. The McCone Commission blamed
high unemployment, bad schools, and inadequate living conditions. Although the
triggering event was the arres t of the Fryes, the causes the McCone commission
documented included p overty, racial discrimination, inequality, an d the Novem-
ber 1964 Proposition 14, which overturned t he Rumford Fair Housing Act and
equal opportunity for black home buyers.
The people we re upset about high unemployment and the lack of adequate
nearby medical care. The commission rec ommended a Watts hospital. A n eco-
nomic develo pment organization came i nto being after the riots. Disc rimination
in home loans was worked on. But it was all temporary. Over time the agencies left
and Watts remained an area of high black youth unemployment an d no commer-
cial development in many areas. The rioters were not the “riffraff” the McCone
commission reported. But the McCone view w ould prevail, J. Edgar Hoover’s
FBI would agree that communists were behind the riots, hundreds of riots would
ensue, and the problems of institutional racism in the ghetto would remain
ignored.
Watts brought violence into mainstream civil rights, replacing the nonviolent
gradualism of the old leadership. The message of the riots for young blacks was
that confrontation was better than constructive efforts. Watts was the first major riot
of the 1960s, but scores of cities experienced rioting and looting through the
remainder of the decade. Watts was typical of the changing urban setting in the
20th century. Before World War I, Watts was home to a few thous and European
immigrants as the black migration entered neighboring Furlough Track, also known
by the generic “Mudtown” that many northern black neighborhoods of shanties and
lean-tos shared. Furlough Track and Watts boomed during the war and they grew
together and merged as Los Angeles, moving south, annexed them. World War II
brought even more blacks to the area. After the war, black unemployment nation-
ally soared, with lack of jobs particularly severe for young men between the years
1954 and 1966. Politically, in the years between World War II and the riot, old
organizations—unions and civil rights organizations with progressivist roots—fell
to the Red Scare, leaving an opening for black nationalism as the dominant philoso-
phy of urban black young men. And the population became northern urban rather
than southern rural as migration slowed, the “New Urban Black” was better edu-
cated, a California native, under 30, alienated, and politically sophisticated. With-
out access to the political process, Watts’s mid dle - and working - cla ss resi de nts
were frustrated. With black nationalism came an ethic that legitimated violence as
a political tool, the same as the students and other protesters of the era.
968 Watts Riot (1965)
On October 17, a report appeared in the New York Times that the increased
public and private assistance to blacks after Watts was creating resentment in
the Mexican American community, and two weeks later an official of the Farm-
ers Home Administration attributed the problems in Watts to the lack of oppor-
tunity in rural America. By November 7, local blacks had created Self
Leadership for all Nationaliti es To day (SLANT). Then in December, the first
blue-ribbon commission, the McCone Commission, issued its report with recom-
mendations. In March 1966, riots returned to Watts, killing two and injuring 25
as 600 ran through the streets. The final McCone Commission report noted ris-
ing welfare l oads, scarce jobs, and a fairly sta ndard list of grievance s. It
appeared in August 1967.
Probably the most lasting change from the riot came from the media. KTLA
television used its helicopter to spot rioters and arsonists in the act. After the riot,
police and other media used helicopters. The triggering incident for the Watts riot
was nothing unusual. A white cop arrested a black driver for drunk driving in south
central Los Angeles. The perpetrator resisted arrest and went to jail. The incident
was common, but the result was different. Watts was the first urban riot caused
by blacks rather than whites.
To an outsider, Watts looked good in 1965. The National Urban League rated
Los Angeles in 1964 the best U.S. c ity for blacks. Moreover, the Great Society
was just beginning to take hold. The state commission blamed the riots on high
unemployment, bad schools, and generally inferior living conditions. It did little
to repair the damag es or deal with the und erlying conditions. Another cause of
the r iots was Proposition 14, the constitutional amendment the Cal ifornia Real
Estate Association backed that repealed the Fair Housing Act. White-black tension
and confrontation had been building, including a fight at a swim meet, one after a
football game, and other c onfrontations the previous year. The police inter vened
excessively in these cases, exacerbating hostility toward them. A near riot between
the people and the police in 1961 had the potential to blow up into Watts, but fell
short. Public space, where the people tended to go to escape their small homes,
was a battleground even before August 1965.
The civil rights episode in Selma, Alabama, resonated in Watts, where residents
faced similar difficulties, what some referred to as a “cotton curtain” that kept
them from the stores and jobs just a couple of miles away. Van de Kamps restau-
rant, Sears Roebuck, Safeway, and others practiced discriminatory hiring.
Malcolm X’s assassination was a fresh memory. The chair of t he Los Angeles
human rights commission indicated that black anti-Semitism was rising. Civil
rights protests took place in Marc h. The owner of the bus company that served
Watts noted that the city’s line refused to accept his transfers. Poor blacks in Watts
had relatively few cars. Grievances were growing.
Watts Riot (1965) 969
In the aftermath, Los Angeles added light rail from Watts to other parts of the
city where the jobs may be. Although blacks moved into the middle class, those
who remained poor and uneducated became more isolated than before, more likely
to riot from frustration and rage of the sort that fueled Watts and the national riots
of subsequent years and 1992 in Watts again. The white-black relations that
seemed so positive to whites in 1965 and made them so surprised at the Watts riot
were the relations of middle-class people either not of the ghett o or who escaped
from it. Even working-class people in Watts were unlikely to have contact with
the poor and disillusioned who were ripe for riot.
In 1992, when disturbances recurred, the white-owned businesses were gone, and
the damaged businesses belonged to Koreans who took over black-operated busi-
nesses in the 1980s. Those riots killed 24 and injured 900 with 400 arrests for loot-
ing (while hundreds of others looted with no regard for the law). T his time the
rioters were not just black; there were also Hispanics, whites, and Asian Americans.
The comment by black leaders during the riot was that their post office probably
had the highest number of PhD mail carriers of any post office. Forty years later,
Watts was 60 percent Latino, initially Mexican, then Central American. Hispanics
replaced Ko reans who had replaced Jews in Watts’s commercial activity. Older build-
ings that burned were replaced by “fortress” architecture, including low-co st housing.
The intersection of 103rd and Compton has a shopping center with controlled entry
and a security command post on the roof. The health care facility is operating and
the post office is new after the first burned down. The police force consisted of over
half women and minorities. Watts is part of South Los Angeles, the area whose image
consists primarily of urban blight and street crime. Frye’s mother, Rena Price, pled
nolo contendere, paid a $250 fine, and got two years’ probation. Forty years later,
she denied Marquette was drunk and claimed that he lost his spark after the riot
(which she had nothing to do with, being in jail and unaware of it).
—John H. Barnhill
See also all entries under Stono Rebellion (1739); New York Slave Insurrection (1741);
Antebellum Suppressed Slave Revolts (1800s–1850s); Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831); New
Orleans Riot (1866); New Orleans Race Riot (1900); Atlanta Race Riot (1906); Springfield
Race Riot (1908); Houston Riot (1917); Red Summer (1919); Tulsa Race Riot (1921); Civil
Rights Movement (1953–1968); Detroit Riots (1967); Los Angeles Uprising (1992).
Further Reading
Blohm, Kyle. “ Watts in Perspe ctive.” http://www.tcnj.edu/~blohm3/essay.htm (accessed
August 2009).
Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. The American West. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2000.
970 Watts Riot (1965)
Home, Gerald. Fire This Time: The Watts U prising and the 1960s. New York: Da Capo
Press, 1997.
Joiner, Lottie L. “Interview with Yvonne Braithwaite Burke. Q&A: Looking Back:
40 Years After the 1965 Watts Riots.” Crisis, July–August 2005.
Kenner, Ron. “40 Years Ago, Watts Riot Took Urban Vio lence to a New Level: Remem-
bering Watts, Part I.” American Reporter 11, no. 2,704 (August 18, 2005).
Reitman, Valerie, and M itchell Landsberg. “Watts Riots, 40 Years Later.” Los Angeles
Times, August 11, 2005.
Watts Riot (1965) 971
Arson
According to the Kerner Report, the police were slow to respond to the unfolding
events in Watts in 1965. Thinking that the disorder was handled, they left prema-
turely. Left on the streets, the crowds began throwing rocks at passing cars, beating
whites, and burning cars. The police remained hesitant, and approximately 30 hours
after the initial incident, the crowds began smashing windows, looting, and burning
buildings. Looting and r ioting were independent of one another, with different
crowds following differing paths to the two means of destruction. Rioters were selec-
tive in their targets rather than taking out frustrations on whatever was near. In Watts,
violence in one neighborhood did not necessarily spread to other neighborhoods.
In the months before the riot, residents complained about the lack of affordable
high-quality food; rather than supermarkets,theyreliedonsmallstoresthat
offered overpriced, inferior, and sometimes spoiled meat, produce, and baked
goods. Owners tended to be white absentees. The arsonists targeted white-owned
stores, particularly (according to anecdotal evidence not verified) those with Jew-
ish proprietors. An after-the-fact survey of owners revealed that over half the own-
ers were Jewish but non-Jewish whites suffered greater average monetary loss. The
data may be unreliable because of the small sample size and because of the likeli-
hood that residents of Watts labeled all whites as Jews. It is also possible that the
targets suffered more severe attacks because they were outsiders regardless of race.
Another reason is victimization perception, with rioters believing that the mer-
chants gouged on prices and credit or took money from the community to their
homes in the suburbs. They avoided schools and banks and houses, burning
instead consumer outlets such as l iquor, clothing, furniture, hardware, a nd food
stores. Some observers noted that looting and burning affected only white-owned
stores that charged inflated prices for sho ddy merchandise and were usurious in
their credit terms. The national Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders of
1968 did find widespread resentment of ghetto merchants’ business practices.
The riots also revealed that the black community was not one with the old civil
rights movement, with the black nationalist response to Martin Luther King’s visit
a mocking “burn, baby, burn.” The phrase first appeared after the riots, but it origi-
nated as a catchphrase of a local black disc jockey in 1963–1964. He changed to
“Have Mercy, Los Angeles,” until the fires cooled.
The riots damaged or burned 257 private buildings and businesses as well as 14
public ones. All of the 192 looted buildings were private, as were the 288 both
burned and looted. All but one of the 268 destroyed buildings were private. The total
loss was 977 buildings, only 15 of which were public. The rioters burned over 3,000
buildings at a cost of over $200 million as well as killing 34 and injuring 1,000.
973
Another source says arson destroyed or damaged 600 buildings at $35 million in
cost, and most of the businesses were those perceived by residents as unfair.
Two thirds of Watts’s housing in 1965 was rental, and absentee landlords gouged
tenants squeezed by de facto segregation that kept them from leaving. Some homes
burned but only because they were too near to businesses set afire. Only 27 people
were arrested for arson despite fire department claims that all fires were set.
—John H. Barnhill
Further Reading
Glaser, Mitch. “Paradox Unbound: The Watts Riots 40 Years Later.” MitchGlaser.com,
August 14, 2005. http://www.mitchglaser.com/journal/2005/08/watts-riots-40-years
-later.html (accessed July 22, 2010).
Stark, M. J. A., W. J. Raine, S. L. Burbeck, and K. K. Davison. “Some Empirical Patterns
in a Riot Process.” American Sociological Review 39 (1974): 865–876.
Tierney, Kathleen J., Lisa Reshaur, and David Ames. “Patterns of Property Damage in the
Los Angeles Unrest.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociologi-
cal Association, Los Angeles, CA, August 5–9, 1994. http://dspace.udel.edu:8 080/
dspace/bitstream/19716/588/1/PP203.pdf (accessed July 22, 2010).
Wasow, Omar. “What Effect Did Police Response Have on Urban Riot Severity? Investi-
gating the Consequences of Initial Police R esponse to the Urban Riots of the 1960s
and 1970s.” http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/ocvprogram/conf_papers/Wasow.pdf
(accessed August 2009).
Zabel, Bryce. “Watts Riots: “Burn, Baby, Burn.” August 18, 2005. http://
www.brycezabel.com/instanthistory/2005/08/watts_riots_40t.html (accessed
August 2010).
Looting
The Watts Riots lasted four days, August 13–16, 1965, but the actual rioting lasted
two day s. The largest n umber of arrests was fo r looting, not arson or shooting,
which totaled well under 100. Looting was inevitable given human nature and
the abundance revealed every day. Of the 3,438 arrestees, 1,164 had only minor
criminal records, and 1,232 had no prior arrests. All of the 192 looted buildings
were private, as were the 288 both burned and looted. All but one of the 268
destroyed buildings were private. The total loss was 977 buildings, only 15 of
which were public.
The looting and arson began on Friday evening as a guerrilla tactic in response
to the increased police presence. Looter s took advantage of the distraction and
anonymity of mobs hundreds or thousands. Looters ranged from small children
to senior citizens. Those who identified themselves as looters or burners were
974 Watts Riot (1965)
more likely to think that discrimination was the reason they didn’t have a better
job.Theyhatedwhitesaswellaswell-off blacks, and did not thi nk the United
States was worth fighting for. Rioters were more likely to be working poor rather
than undereducated and unemployed “riffraff.”
Looting inevitably called out the military and police, whose mission was to pro-
tect property. The police used insufficient manpower, and few were at the scene
when crowds gathered the morning after the incident, two miles from the original
location, and began looting. The first two days, the authorities were slow to send
adequate fo rces, and by the third day, the rioters had the firepower from looting
gun stores to enable them to fire on police helicopters. Without police, the looters
became bolder and began breaking into stores in a broader neighborhood. Initially,
the police had no clear guidance about deadly force, but some did shoot black loot-
ers. Black lives were of lesser importance than white refrigerators, at least accord-
ing to a leftist critique. Some wondered if the police would have shot a white
looter, and the dead black looters seemed to support that charge.
Some looter s were systemati c. A car would drive by a target, and passengers
would break windows then drive away. Other cars would follow, their passengers
grabbing the loot. Afterward, sometimes, arson would occur.
Looters were not necessari ly habitual criminals . Some looters wer e not taking
merchandise. Rather, they were removing credit files from unfriendly businesses.
More often looters were working- or middle-class people who took of the opportu-
nity to acquire a couch, a television, a dinette set that they could not afford other-
wise. The riots damaged or burned 257 private buildings and businesses as well as
14 public ones.
Motivation, for some at least, was a chance to get material goods or to express
anger. The looters were not engaged in random acts of rage. Rather, they bypassed
black-owned stores as well as the few white-owned businesses that gave fair terms
of credit. They targeted the stores that charged high prices and were hostile to
black customers—food, liquor, and c lothing stores as well as department stores
and pawn shops. When they broke into a liquor store, they more often destroyed
the inventory than stole it, and they left untouched the narcotics in the looted
pharmacies.
Not all the loot was taken for personal use. During the riots, young black toughs
organized regular distribution of looted food each day. One black girl noted that a
decade of looting would be insufficient to recompense the community for all that
had been taken from it. In the aftermath of the riot, one speaker at a street-corner
meeting disregarded the destruction and death, the end of the local shopping dis-
tricts, and claimed that the rioters won—they made the world pay attention to
them, including the mayor and police chief, who had never before visited Watts.
—John H. Barnhill
Watts Riot (1965) 975
Further Reading
“Burning All Illusions; LA Insurrectio n 1965/1992.” Do or Die 9 (2001). http://www
.eco-action.org/dod/no9/panthers_insurrection.htm (accessed July 22, 2010).
Home, Gerald. Fire This Time. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.
Lytle, Mark Hamilton. America’s Uncivil Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Norrell, Robert J. The House I Live In. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Rustin, Bayard. “The Watts.” Commentary, March 1966.
Excerpt from the Governor’s Commission Report
on the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, California (1965)
Reproduced here is an excerpt from the report entitled Violen ce in the City—An End or a
Beginning? which was compiled by the commission appointed by California governor Edmund
G. Brown to investigate the causes and course of the riots that erupted in the Watts district of
Los Angeles in August 1965. The governor also charged the commission, which was chaired by
John A. McCone, with deve loping recommenda tions for how to avoid simila r violen ce in th e
future. The following excerpt describes how the riot started and grew.
144 H
OURS IN AUGUST 1965
The Frye Arrests
On August 11, 1965, California Highway Patrolman Lee W. Minikus, a Caucasian, was ri-
ding his motorcycle along 122nd street, just south of the Los Angeles City boundary,
when a passing Negro motorist told h im he had j ust seen a car that was being driven
recklessly. Minikus gave chase and pulled the car over at 116th and Avalon, in a predomi-
nantly Negro neighborhood, near but not in Watts. It was 7: 00 p.m.
The driver was Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old Negro, and hi s older brother, Ronald,
22, was a passenger. Minikus asked Marquette to get out and take the standard Highway
Patrol sobriety test. Frye failed the test, and at 7:05 p.m., Minikus told him he was under
arrest. He radioed for his motorcycle partner, for a car to take Marquette to jail, and a
tow truck to take the car away.
They were two blocks from the Frye home, in an area of two-story apartment build-
ings and numerous small family residences. Because it was a very warm evening, many of
the residents were outside.
Ronald Frye, having been told he could not take the car when Marquette was taken to
jail, went to get their mother so that she could claim the car. They returned to the scene
about 7:15 p.m. as the second motorcycle patrolman, the patrol car, and tow truck arrived.
The original group of 25 to 50 curious spectators had grown to 250 to 300 persons.
Mrs. Frye approached Marquette and scolded him for drinking. Marquette, who until
then had been peaceful and cooperative, pushed her away and moved toward the crowd,
cursing and sh outing at the officers that they would have to kill him to t ake him to jail.
The patrolmen pursued Marquette and he resisted.
976 Watts Riot (1965)
The watching crowd became hostile, and one of the patrolmen radioed for more help.
Within mi nute s, three more highway patr olmen arrived. Minikus and his par tner were
now struggling with both Frye brothers. Mrs. Frye, now belligerent, jumped on the back
of one of the officers and ripped his shirt. In an attempt to subdue Marquette, one officer
swung at his shoulder with a night stick, missed, and struck him on the forehead, inflicting
a minor cut. By 7:23 p.m., all three of the Fryes were under arrest, and other California
Highway Patrolmen and, for the first time, Los Angeles police officers had arrived in
response to the call for help.
Officers on the scene said there were now more than 1,000 persons in the crowd.
About 7: 25 p.m., the patrol c ar with the prisoners, and the tow truck pulling the Frye
car, left the scene. At 7:31 p.m., the Fryes arrived at a nearby sheriff’s substation.
Undoubtedly the situation at the scene of the arrest was tense. Belligerence and resis-
tance to arrest called for force ful action by the officers. This brought on hostility from
Mrs. Frye and some of the bystanders, which, in turn, caused increased actions by the
police. Anger at the scen e escalated and, as in all such sit uations, bitter re crimination s
from both sides followed.
Considering the undisputed facts, the Commission finds that the arrest of the Fryes
was handled efficiently and expeditiously. The sobriety test administered by the Califor-
nia Highway Patrol and its use of a transportation vehicle f or the prisoner and a tow
truck to remove his car are in accordance with the practices of other law enforceme nt
agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department.
The Spitting Incident
As the officers were leaving the scene, someone in the crowd spat on one of them. They
stopped withdrawing and two highway patrolmen went into the crowd and arre sted a
young Negro woman and a man who was said to have been inciting the crowd to vio-
lence when the officers were arresting her. Although the wisdom of stopping the with-
drawal to make these arrests has been questioned, the Commission finds no basis for
criticizing the judgment of the officers on the scene.
Following these arrests, all officers withdrew at 7:40 p.m. As the last police car left the
scene, it was stoned by the now irate mob.
As has happened so frequent ly in riots in other cities, inflated and distorted rumors
concerning the arrests spread quickly to adjacent areas. The young woman arrested for
spitting was wearing a barber’s smock, and the false rumor spread throughout the area
that she was pregnant and had been abused by police. Erroneous reports were also
circulated concerning the treatment of the Fryes at the arrest scene.
The crowd did n ot di sperse, but ranged in small groups up and down the street,
although never more than a few blocks from the arrest scene. Between8:15p.m.and
midnight, the mob stoned automobiles, pulled Caucasian motor ists o ut of their car s
and beat them, and menaced a poli ce field command post which ha d be en set up in the
area. By 1:00 a.m., the outbreak seemed to be under control but, until early morning
hours, there w ere sporadic reports of unruly mobs, vandalism, and r ock throwing.
Twenty-nine persons were arrested.
Watts Riot (1965) 977