What was the Watts Riots?
I was working in Los Angeles in August of 1965, only 3 miles north of the Watts riot. I wrote a brief article on the event. The first major racially-fueled rebellion of the 1960s, an event that foreshadowed the widespread urban violence of the latter half of the decade. With the arrest of a 21 year old African American, Los Angeles’s South Central neighborhood of Watts erupted into violence. On August 11, 1965, a Los Angeles police officer flagged down motorist Marquette Frye, whom he suspected of being intoxicated. When a crowd of onlookers began to taunt the policeman, a second officer was called in. According to eyewitness accounts, the second officer struck crowd members with his baton, and news of the act of police brutality soon spread throughout the neighborhood. The incident, combined with escalating racial tensions, overcrowding in the neighborhood, and a summer heat wave, sparked violence on a massive scale. Despite attempts the following day aimed at quelling anti police sen
