This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

1965 - The Watts Uprising

Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles)

Article extracted from
The Martin Luther King, Jr.
Research and Education Institute

DATES:
August 11, 1965 to August 16, 1965

On Wednesday, 11 August 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old black man, was arrested for drunk driving on the edge of Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. The ensuing struggle during his arrest sparked off 6 days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, nearly 4,000 arrests, and the destruction of property valued at $40 million. On 17 August 1965, Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the riots. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his growing conviction that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) should move north and lead a movement to address the growing problems facing black people in the nation’s urban areas.

Frye had been drinking and was driving with his brother, Ronald, in the car, when the two were pulled over two blocks from their home. While Marquette was being arrested, Ronald retrieved their mother from her house. When Mrs. Frye saw her son being forcibly arrested, she fought with the arresting officers, tearing one officer’s shirt. An officer then struck Marquette’s head with his nightstick, and all three of the Fryes were arrested.

By the time the Fryes were arrested, hundreds of onlookers had been drawn to the scene. Anger and rumors spread quickly through the black community, and residents stoned cars and beat white people who entered the area. A neighborhood meeting called by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission the following day failed to quell the mounting tension, and that evening rioting resumed. Firemen attempting to put out blazes were shot at by residents, and looting was rampant. All day Friday the riots intensified, prompting the California lieutenant governor to call in the National Guard. By Saturday night a curfew had been set, and nearly 14,000 National Guard troops were patrolling a 46-mile area. By the time King arrived on Tuesday, having cut short his stay in Puerto Rico, the riots were largely over and the curfew was lifted. Fueling residual anger, however, police stormed a Nation of Islam mosque the next night, firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition into the building and wounding 19 men.

While deploring the riots and their use of violence, King was quick to point out that the problems that led to the violence were “environmental and not racial. The economic deprivation, social isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair of thousands of Negroes teeming in Northern and Western ghettos are the ready seeds which give birth to tragic expressions of violence” (King, 17 August 1965). Although California Governor Edmund Brown hoped King would not go to Watts, King went to support those living in the ghetto who, he claimed, would be pushed further into “despair and hopelessness” by the riot (King, 17 August 1965). He also hoped to bolster the frayed alliance between blacks and whites favoring civil rights reform. He offered to mediate between local people and government officials, and pushed for systematic solutions to the economic and social problems plaguing Watts and other black ghettos.

King told reporters that the Watts riots were “the beginning of a stirring of those people in our society who have been by passed by the progress of the past decade” (King, 20 August 1965). Struggles in the North, King believed, were really about “dignity and work,” rather than rights, which had been the main goal of black activism in the South (King, 20 August 1965). During his discussions with local people, King met black residents who argued for armed insurrection, and others who claimed that “the only way we can ever get anybody to listen to us is to start a riot” (King, 19 August 1965). These expressions concerned King, and before he left Los Angeles he spoke on the phone with President Lyndon B. Johnson about what could be done to ease the situation. King recommended that Johnson roll out a federal anti-poverty program in Los Angeles immediately. Johnson agreed with the suggestion, telling King: “You did a good job going out there” (Branch, 308).

Later that fall, King wrote an article for the Saturday Review in which he argued that Los Angeles could have anticipated rioting “when its officials tied up federal aid in political manipulation; when the rate of Negro unemployment soared above the depression levels of the 1930s; when the population density of Watts became the worst in the nation,” and when the state of California repealed a law that prevented discrimination in housing (King, “Beyond the Los Angeles Riots”).

After SCLC initiated its Chicago Campaign that fall, King asked an audience there: “What did Watts accomplish but the death of thirty-four Negroes and injury to thousands more? What did it profit the Negro to burn down the stores and factories in which he sought employment? The way of riots is not a way of progress, but a blind ally of death and destruction which wrecks its havoc hardest against the rioters themselves” (King, 12 March 1966).

This page has paths:

Located at the Watts Labor Community Action Center (WLCAC) 10950 S Central Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90059 - The Resurrection of Watts by Ras Ammar Nsoroma (There has been a long history of social, racial, economic and political injustices for African American communities in Los Angeles. Fifty years ago, in the neighborhood of Watts—on August 11, 1965—these injustices erupted into the six-day Watts Riots/Rebellion. The Riots/Rebellion served as a crucial turning point in LA’s Civil Rights Movement and is now recognized as one of the most severe civil unrests in the history of the City.)
Contents of this path:
Contents of this path:
6. 1965 First Watts Festival, boys climbing a tall chainlink fence First Watts Festival - After the revolt, Central Los Angeles, California, 1965. A black-and-white photograph of approximately twenty boys climbing or attempting to climb a tall chainlink fence. Joe Schwartz, Folk Photography: Poems I've Never Written (2000), 39.3. The Watts Summer Festival was founded by community activist Tommy Chaquette, whose shrewd organizational skills helped make this event a success (https://www.marquette.edu/haggerty-museum/documents/watts_catalogue.pdf).
10. 1963 A police officer in Birmingham, Alabama, frisks a demonstrator after an attempted sit-in
12. 1963 Birmingham "Demonstration: Dogs and Hoses Repulse Negroes at Birmingham" Civil Rights Movement: Firemen turn hoses on demonstrators, Birmingham, Alabama - IRMINGHAM, Ala., May 3 -- Fire hoses and police dogs were used here today to disperse Negro students protesting racial segregation. Three students were reported to have been bitten and to have required hospital treatment. Two firemen and a news photographer were injured by bricks and broken bottles thrown from the top of a Negro office building near the major encounter, at 17th Street and Fifth Avenue North. [In Washington, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy warned that ``increasing turmoil'' would be made inevitable by a refusal to grant equal rights to Negroes, United Press International reported. But he questioned the timing of the demonstrations.] Marchers Are Dispersed This was the second day of major demonstrations by the students here. Yesterday, more than 900 students were sent out from the Negro section in groups of 10 to 50. Some succeeded in reaching City Hall and several downtown corners. More than 700 were arrested. Today, with the dogs and fire hoses, the police were largely successful in dispersing the student marchers before they left the Negro section. Fewer than 500 were able to leave the 16th Street Baptist Church before the police sealed its doors. Only two groups won their way through the police lines. One group of 20 reached City Hall, where they were arrested. Another group of 10 got as far as the bus depot on 19th Street, where they also were taken into custody. In all, more than 250 persons were reported arrested today. The demonstrators today appeared to be older than those who marched yesterday. They appeared to be mostly high school and college students. All the demonstrations were held between 1 and 3 P.M. They followed by less than three hours a declaration by the two principal leaders of the month-old direct action campaign against segregation here. The leaders said that the demonstrations would continue with increasing intensity until there were both ``promise and action'' from the city authorities and white merchants to start to end segregation. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Atlanta, Ga., and the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, head of the local affiliate, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, made the announcement. They told the news conference that they had no intention of relaxing the pressure without such action. ``We are ready to negotiate,'' Dr. King said. ``But we intend to negotiate from strength. If the white power structure of this city will meet some of our minimum demands, then we will consider calling off the demonstrations, but we want promises, plus action.'' Both said there was no lack of recruits from among the Negro community of 140,000 persons here. If there ever was any division within it over the timing of the campaign, it now has disappeared, they declared.
13. 1963 How The Civil Rights Movement Was Covered In Birmingham
14. 1961 Burning Greyhound bus pictured here carried Freedom Riders into Anniston on May 14, 1961 Photo courtesy of the Birmingham Public Library Archives: The burning Greyhound bus pictured here carried Freedom Riders into Anniston on May 14, 1961, as part of an effort to test a newly enacted integration law regarding bus stations in the South. After the riders were attacked at the station in Anniston, the bus was firebombed after breaking down several miles outside the city. Many of the riders were beaten, with several being severely injured, by a white mob as they departed the bus.
16. 1960 Sit-in movement sparks social change Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson and Mark Martin sit at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 2, 1960. A day earlier, four African-American college students made history when they sat at the same Woolsworth's counter. Service never came for the "Greensboro Four," as they came to be known, and their peaceful demonstration drew national attention and sparked more sit-ins in Southern cities. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images People protest outside a Woolsworth's in Pittsburgh. Charles 'Teenie' Harris/Carnegie Museum of Art/Getty Images Dion Diamond is harassed during a sit-in at the Cherrydale Drug Fair in Arlington, Virginia. He was part of a small group called the Non-Violent Action Group. Some people threw lit cigarettes at group members, while others kicked them. The two-week protests in June 1960 led to the integration of restaurants in Arlington. Restaurants soon followed in nearby Alexandria and Fairfax. Gus Chinn/Courtesy of the DC Public Library Washington Star Collection/Washington Post Activists would often undergo tolerance training to prepare themselves for what they might encounter during a sit-in. Here, NAACP student adviser David Gunter, left, and Leroy Hill blow smoke into the face of Virginius Thornton. Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Trainers in Petersburg, Virginia, use newspapers to swat volunteers in the head and prepare them for harassment they might encounter during a sit-in. Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Students wait in vain at a Greensboro Woolsworth's in April 1960. Greensboro News & Record/AP Woolworth's temporarily closed a store in Atlanta after Harold Sprayberry sprayed insect repellant above the heads of nearly 100 sit-in protesters in October 1960. He was arrested, and the store reopened about an hour later. Horace Cort/AP People poured sugar, ketchup and mustard over the heads of Tougaloo College students who were conducting a sit-in at a Woolsworth's in Jackson, Mississippi, in May 1963. Sitting at the counter, from left, are Tougaloo professor John Salter and students Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody. Fred Blackwell/Jackson Daily News/AP A police officer in Birmingham, Alabama, frisks a demonstrator after an attempted sit-in on April 15, 1963. AP Protesters fill a jail cell in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1963. A year later, the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination in public places and facilities and banned discrimination based on race, gender, religion or national origin. The News & Observer
17. 1968 MLK Assassination Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil rights advances for African Americans. His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among Black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era.

Contents of this path:

This page has tags:

Contents of this tag:
4. 1961 Members of CORE Raise Funds in Pacoima, Los Angeles for Freedom Riders CORE members pass out pamphlets in Pacoima protesting the jailing of Freedom Riders. From left, Michael Haimovitz, 19, Stevie Lipney, 17, and Ernie Dillard, 23. Mike Davis and John Weiner: "Members of CORE raise funds in Pacoima for jailed Freedom Riders, July 24, 1961. LA CORE sent five integrated groups of Freedom Riders to challenge segregation in Southern train and bus terminals. Most of them were jailed at Mississippi's Parchman Farm, perhaps the scariest prison in North America. "
5. James Lawson - Training for Nonviolent Resistance ICNC - International Center on Nonviolent Conflict -"The Worst thing that happens is bombing... a boy or girl would wrap a stone or marble... and throw them... and it really hurt.... she walked into her english class and a bomb went whizzing by her ear... missed her and hit the wall. She was trembling and thought what can I do. She picked up the bomb and went back to the room and she smiled at the boy who threw it as she placed it on his desk. He turned a number of colors. She smiled at him. Students laughed nervously. The next english class, that boy greeted her at the door and said Good Morning Melba. He never again was found harassing her."
9. 1963 Birmingham "Demonstration: Dogs and Hoses Repulse Negroes at Birmingham" Civil Rights Movement: Firemen turn hoses on demonstrators, Birmingham, Alabama - IRMINGHAM, Ala., May 3 -- Fire hoses and police dogs were used here today to disperse Negro students protesting racial segregation. Three students were reported to have been bitten and to have required hospital treatment. Two firemen and a news photographer were injured by bricks and broken bottles thrown from the top of a Negro office building near the major encounter, at 17th Street and Fifth Avenue North. [In Washington, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy warned that ``increasing turmoil'' would be made inevitable by a refusal to grant equal rights to Negroes, United Press International reported. But he questioned the timing of the demonstrations.] Marchers Are Dispersed This was the second day of major demonstrations by the students here. Yesterday, more than 900 students were sent out from the Negro section in groups of 10 to 50. Some succeeded in reaching City Hall and several downtown corners. More than 700 were arrested. Today, with the dogs and fire hoses, the police were largely successful in dispersing the student marchers before they left the Negro section. Fewer than 500 were able to leave the 16th Street Baptist Church before the police sealed its doors. Only two groups won their way through the police lines. One group of 20 reached City Hall, where they were arrested. Another group of 10 got as far as the bus depot on 19th Street, where they also were taken into custody. In all, more than 250 persons were reported arrested today. The demonstrators today appeared to be older than those who marched yesterday. They appeared to be mostly high school and college students. All the demonstrations were held between 1 and 3 P.M. They followed by less than three hours a declaration by the two principal leaders of the month-old direct action campaign against segregation here. The leaders said that the demonstrations would continue with increasing intensity until there were both ``promise and action'' from the city authorities and white merchants to start to end segregation. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Atlanta, Ga., and the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, head of the local affiliate, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, made the announcement. They told the news conference that they had no intention of relaxing the pressure without such action. ``We are ready to negotiate,'' Dr. King said. ``But we intend to negotiate from strength. If the white power structure of this city will meet some of our minimum demands, then we will consider calling off the demonstrations, but we want promises, plus action.'' Both said there was no lack of recruits from among the Negro community of 140,000 persons here. If there ever was any division within it over the timing of the campaign, it now has disappeared, they declared.
10. Plantation Capitalism Article by Reverend Jim Conn: Lynd Ward, "Wild Pilgrimage" My friend, mentor and colleague, Rev. James Lawson, calls our economic system “plantation capitalism.” Lawson was the nonviolent strategist for Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement and the key figure in the desegregation of Nashville. His reference, of course, pulls forward the image of enslaved field workers in the Old South. The image chafes in my mind. Yes, slavery, but today’s workers are not slaves. They are not the landless peasants or sharecroppers that emancipated slaves were forced to be. They are not the low-level, below-the-standard-wage employees that Southern blacks became when they migrated to the steel cities of the North. They are not second-class citizens isolated into segregated neighborhoods and limited to menial jobs. Except, there is a growing body of evidence showing that this is exactly what a majority of workers of all colors is becoming. Between 1965 and 2011, while the top 10 percent gained an inflation-adjusted annual income increase of $116,000, the other 90 percent received a paltry $59. No wonder 75 percent of families report living paycheck to paycheck, and one in four Americans report using payday loans, pawn shops, auto-title loans and tax-refund loans to make ends meet. It’s why working people depend on check-cashing stores, purchase cars from “buy here/pay here” dealers and get re-treads from rent-a-tire shops. People who depend on such high-interest businesses to make it feel a lot of anxiety. Some 59 percent of Americans who think of themselves as middle class fear falling out of their class. Half of working-age Americans skipped necessary medical care in 2012 because it was too expensive. Even people with health insurance postponed care because of the cost of co-pays. Nearly a quarter of Americans report struggling to put food on the table. Meanwhile, women have moved into the breadwinner position. More than 40 percent of families say the woman is the sole earner. Yet a wage survey indicates that a mother is paid five percent less per child than her female counterpart without children, and women on the whole receive lower wages than their male colleagues. While moms in many states can now take an extended maternity leave without fearing losing their jobs, most do not. These patterns did not result from worker choices, but resulted from employer policies. Now they pile on more. Employers monitor employees in ways only technology could provide. Companies measure the keystrokes of data-entry workers. The phone message “this call may be monitored for quality assurance” is heard everywhere, all the time. Warehouse workers wear head phones that direct them to their next task and tell them how much time they have to finish it. The delivery guy sets a timer, then runs to leave the package and jogs back to his truck. Piece-work quotas are up, and managers even time bathroom breaks. As one worker put it, “I’m worn out. I get home and I can barely stand up.” With the constant threat of downsizing, layoffs and pay cuts – while a long line of the unemployed waits to take any available job – employees find themselves less and less willing to voice complaints or even talk among themselves about grievances. Since 92 percent of private-sector wage workers have no union or worker/peer means of redressing egregious circumstances on the job, people self-censor. They check their civil liberties at the door and take their bitterness home. A job, for most workers, means go to work, keep your head down, close your mouth, work to exhaustion, then go home and try to meet your family’s needs by going into debt. No wonder this generation of young people is not making long-term buying decisions on new cars and houses. They face the anxiety and stress of life-long financial insecurity. I think that is what my friend means by “plantation capitalism.”
11. 2013 The Black Lives Matter Movement
12. 1965 Charcoal Alley - The Watts Riots
13. Jim Lawson Nonviolent Civil Rights Workshops Simulating Violent Reactions im Lawson, pioneering expert on nonviolence and teacher to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, led civil rights workshops simulating violent reactions of white people at lunch counters. This was to train the nonviolent resisters not to react with violence. Lawson also discusses the importance of discipline in nonviolent movements: "You cannot go on a demonstration with 25 people doing whatever they want to do. They have to have a common discipline… The difficulty with nonviolent people and efforts is that they don’t recognize the necessity of fierce discipline and training, and strategizing, and planning, and recruiting, and doing the kind of things you do to have a movement. That can’t happen spontaneously. It has to be done systematically." Lawson is the voice in the video, the facilitator of the workshop, and the person interviewed at the end. This clip taken from "A Force More Powerful", an excellent documentary on the history of nonviolent movements, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpBoH....
14. 1965 Watts Writers Workshop
15. Oral History Interview with James Lawson Nonviolence Workshops & Lunch Counter Sit-ins Organizing 1957-1969: Lawson is involved with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), 8 a pacifist organization founded in Europe at the outbreak of WWI and the oldest pacifist organization in the U.S. 9 He serves as a southern director of FOR and begins organizing workshops on nonviolence for community members & students at Vanderbilt and the city’s four black colleges (Tennessee State University, Fisk University, Meharry College, and American Baptist College). 10 He then enrolls at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville. As of 2011, Lawson identified himself as a member of FOR. From Jan.-May in 1958 Lawson held nonviolence workshops in Little Rock, a year after the Little Rock Nine had begun desegregation of the local high schools. In 1959, Lawson alongside Diane Nash, Marion Barry, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, & James Bevel plan nonviolent From Jan.-May in 1958 Lawson held nonviolence workshops in Little Rock, a year after the Little Rock Nine had begun desegregation of the local high schools. In 1959, Lawson alongside Diane Nash, Marion Barry, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, & James Bevel plan nonviolent demonstrations in Nashville & conduct test sit-ins. These organizers are met with resistance and considered “radical” in Nashville as the belief was that Nashville was a “moderate” city with “the best working relationships with Black people and that in fact the sit-in was not the way to do it.” In 1958, Lawson attended his first meeting with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) where he met with King and led his first workshop on nonviolence. Following the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins in 1960, Lawson and other activists launched similar protests in downtown Nashville. More than 150 students were arrested before the city began desegregating lunch counters. First sit-in in Nashville on February 13th 1960. The city of Nashville officially desegregated its downtown lunch counters in May of 1960. In 1960, Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt due to involvement with the desegregation movement.
17. 1964 Civil Rights Act Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act establishes affirmative action programs, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender, creed, race, or ethnic background: "to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers that have operated in the past" (Title VII). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is also established through Title VII to prevent job discrimination. The Bracero Program, the government program initially put in place during WWII, ends. It brought Mexican laborers into the country to replace the American men who were fighting overseas. When the war ended the program continued.
18. 1960 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Maurice Dawkins peacefully picket outside a Woolworth store Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Maurice Dawkins peacefully picket outside a Woolworth store. Rev. Maurice Dawkins, chairman of the California Christian Leadership Conference, and the participants marched in support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). SNCC and SCLC spearheaded the national “sit-in” movement at dime store lunch counters.
21. 1965 Watts Renaissance
24. 1967 Miss Watts in Watts Festival Parade

Contents of this tag:

FILE - In this Aug. 12, 1965, file photo, demonstrators push against a police car in the Los Angeles area of Watts. Watts has been associated with an uprising in 1965 that led to burned-down buildings and bloodshed. But when some protests against racial injustice in 2020 devolved into vandalism and looting, Watts has been peaceful. (AP Photo/File) https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-watts-riots-explainer-20150715-htmlstory.html

This page references:

1965 The Watts Riots On Wednesday, 11 August 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old black man, was arrested for drunk driving on the edge of Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. The ensuing struggle during his arrest sparked off 6 days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, nearly 4,000 arrests, and the destruction of property valued at $40 million. On 17 August 1965, Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the riots. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his growing conviction that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) should move north and lead a movement to address the growing problems facing black people in the nation’s urban areas. Frye had been drinking and was driving with his brother, Ronald, in the car, when the two were pulled over two blocks from their home. While Marquette was being arrested, Ronald retrieved their mother from her house. When Mrs. Frye saw her son being forcibly arrested, she fought with the arresting officers, tearing one officer’s shirt. An officer then struck Marquette’s head with his nightstick, and all three of the Fryes were arrested.
Watts Uprising
Watts Uprising