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1. 1 2018-08-15T07:48:35-07:00 Phil Ethington e37d40405599cccc3b6330e6c4be064cc03ef7a5 1960s Phil Ethington 1 Decadal Tag vistag 2018-08-15T07:48:36-07:00 Phil Ethington e37d40405599cccc3b6330e6c4be064cc03ef7a5

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• 1 2017-08-01T17:02:30-07:00 The Watts Rebellion of August 1965 1 Section plain 2017-08-01T17:02:30-07:00

  The Watts Rebellion of August 1965

  President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965.  Eight days later the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles erupted into a social rebellion against police brutality that lasted from 11 to 17 August.  The immediate trigger was an instance of police harassment by the California Highway Patrol, but all police departments were the targets of the rebellion, none more deserved than the LAPD and the LA County Sheriff.  Symbols of authority or perceived injustice were targeted, such as white-owned businesses who did not hire non-whites were, as were government buildings.  The Watts Rebellion was remarkably straightforward: African Americans vented anger at racial exclusion and injustice.  There can be very little doubt that the origins of the mass violence was a reaction to generations of racist policing, severe segregation and denial of equal access to all the resources that matter: good jobs, good education, healthy neighborhoods, and good representation in government, and good protection by the police.  
  
  The August 1965 Watts Rebellion is well known and full documented by many major studies.  This is not the place for a full review of those days of collective and state violence.  We can encapsulate the macro pattern of this rebellion however, by visualizing the race-ethnic demographic geography of 1960 and 1970 in relation to the "Quarantine Area" established first by the LAPD and then by the U.S. Army, from to August 1965.  This containment are almost perfectly circumscribes the African-American population, of all socioeconomic levels, throughout the 1960s.  That line was much older than 1965, however.  Chief William Parker had enforced racial apartheid and policed this same approximate boundaries in the 1950s, and before that, the HOLC "Redlining" maps also targeted these same spaces.  An area subjected to many decades and generations of discrimination and police harassment, and containment of sex and drug trades, exploded with rebellious counter-violence after the provocation of the California Highway Patrol's treatment of Marquette Frye and his mother.
  
  The Watts Rebellion exploded in the pinch of a mighty vice of racial segregation and police brutality.  It was the penultimate year of the long and transformative career of Chief William Parker.  Parker, who had served on the LAPD for fifteen years prior to service in the Second World War, brought the idea of military-style discipline to the LAPD police academy when he rose to Chief in 1950. Instead, the LAPD under Parker continually patrolled the Eastside, now called South LA, as an occupied territory, were all, especially young men, were suspect.  
  
  WATTS MEDIA HERE *** 
  
  Completely avoiding the of systematic police violence, segregations, and territorial impoverishment, white politicians and the white press focused on the immediate lawlessness as the beginning and end of the matter.  From liberal Democratic Governor Pat Brown to his hated rival Richard Nixon, the response was identical: lawlessness must not be tolerated, a firm military response is warranted. Nixon found an ideal issue in the Watts Rebellion and any urban violence in the coming years, culminating in his "Law and Order" campaign of 1968.
  
  The map of the November 1964 vote to repeal the Rumford Fair Housing Law shows voting to be strictly territorial. Almost strictly on racial, territorial grounds, a massive white voting majority of both Democratic and Republican loyalties, voted to deny Black and Latinos fair housing protection, as though racial discrimination were necessary freedom.  The votes neatly circumscribed the South Central LA and East LA, following racial majority lines almost exactly. Those votes must be recognized as equally threatening to minorities as hostile police departments, and everyday denials of equal rights.  To all people of color, the behavior of the white government and white voting majority was aggressive, prior to the August Rebellion.  Violence is always to be deplored, but all people have a right to self-defense.  In democratic societies, they have this right as well, when they are systematically denied the protections of that government.  Indeed, the violence of the Uprising itself was not symmetrical.  The majority of the deaths were at the hands of the police.