1961 "Riot" at Safeway primes the LAPD for retaliation against the local NOI
While this was a trivial incident, Parker took this an an omen of what's to come.
TEMPLE No. 27 - 1962 - cops observed two men taking some clothing out of the open truck of a car, parked about a block and a half from Temple No. 27. One worked at a dry cleaner where he acquired unredeemed or damaged clothes to sell to fellow Muslims, who, of course, had to conform to a rigid dress code. The other was examining an item for sale. it was past eleven in the evening, and a service at the mosque had just ended. Neither man ran away, or, for that matter, acted suspiciously, yet the two officers approached them as if they were burglary suspects. After Frisking them and finding nothing, the cops called in a license check. The car was clean. Refusing to give up the cops decided to interrogate them individually. "Let's separate these niggers," one sad to the other. When one of the Muslims expressed outrage, he was put in a choke hold and slammed face first on the hood. The other man broke loose to come to his aid, and a brawl developed. Meanwhile, the congregation leaving the mosque saw the commotion, and some of them ran down the street to see what was happening. At this point, according to oral histories gathered years later by JONAH EDELMAN, a security guard from a local bar, probably a little addled, attemtped to helpthe cops by firing a warning shot in the air. When that failed to back up the gathering group of Muslims, the panicky guard fired again and wounded Roosevelt X Walker, a young sanittion worker. A Muslim wrestling with one of the cops, meanwhile, pried the officer's gun away and shot him in the shoulder, but an off-duty cop arrived just in time to rescue his colleagues and call for aid.
Walker, meanwhile, staggered back to the mosque, where Malcolm's friend Ronald Stokes assisted him while John X ( Shabazz) went to call an ambulance. At this point, furious LAPD reinforcements began to arrive-- but they went to first to the temple, rather than the fight scene up the block. The situation was especially chaotic because Muslim escorts were simultaneously trying to evacuate women from the mosque while husbands were arriving to pick them up. People inside had no idea what happened up the street. Some began to chat, "Why? Why?" According to trial testimony from the wounded Walker, Stokes and others were trying to carry him outside when they were attacked by two white cops screaming, "You niggers get up against the wall." One swung his billy club, but the other-- Officer Donald Weese - just opened fire. Stokes put up his hands, Walker later explained, and said to the officer that was shooting, "Stop. Stop. Don't shoot any more." His hands were in the air when he was shot to death by Weese. Four others were wounded.
- "Gods Angry Men": The Black Muslims 1962 - John Wiener and Mike Davis - Set the Night on Fire LA in the Sixties
