Watts Riots began - August 11, 1965

On this day in 1965, the Watts Riots began in Los Angeles. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi there, Welcome to This Day in History Class,
where we sift through the artifacts of history seven days
a week. Today is August eleven. The day was August eleven, nineteen,

(00:27):
when a white California Highway Patrol officer arrested a black
man on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Tensions raised between
Los Angeles police and residents of the predominantly black Watts
neighborhood that night. Unrest bred riots in south central Los
Angeles that continued for several days. At the time, Los

(00:51):
Angeles was wrapped up in a web of social, economic,
and political issues. Schools were integrated, but of the students
that went to the high school that served Watts were black.
Jobs were scarce and poverty was rampant in Los Angeles.
There were discriminatory housing practices, White gangs and black gangs

(01:15):
fought as more black people moved into Los Angeles neighborhoods,
and numerous instances of discriminatory police force and police brutality
drew a clear division between law enforcement and black and
Latino residents of l A. Los Angeles Police Chief William
Parker used the term the thin blue line to describe

(01:37):
the role of the police as the barrier between civilization
and anarchy. All of this Los Angeles specific turmoil, on
top of the effects of the Great Migration and long
history of American racism, formed the backdrop for the riots
that broke out in Watts in nineteen sixty. On the

(01:57):
evening of August eleven, a caliph Cornia Highway Patrol officer
stopped Watts resident Marquette Fry and his brother Ronald for
alleged reckless driving. Marquette failed field sobriety tests, and the
officer arrested him. The Fries home was nearby, and soon
their mother, Rena Price, came to the scene of the incident,

(02:20):
at the intersection of Avalon Boulevard in one D and
sixteenth Street. The officer had called for backup and another
officer arrived. As the intensity of the struggle between the
Fries and the officers escalated, a crowd began to gather
at the scene. More officers had arrived and were hitting

(02:41):
the brothers with beaton's. An officer pulled out a gun
and Price jumped on an officer. In the end, Rena, Marquette,
and Ronald were arrested, but the crowd had grown confrontational.
People protested as the police cars drove away with the
Fry family. Anger directed towards the offending police officers turned

(03:04):
into general riding and watts and mostly black neighborhoods in
south central l A. The Fried family was released on
bail the morning after they were arrested. Community leaders and
police met to discuss the incident and quote unrest, but
the riding did not stop. Some residents went head to

(03:24):
head with l A police. Others targeted white motorists who
yelled racial profanities as them. White owned businesses that were
disliked in the communities were also targets of arson and looting.
The National Guard was called out to stop the riding.
Law enforcement put up blockades and threatened the use of

(03:44):
deadly force. Riders through molotov cocktails and shot at Firefighters
and police conducted raids and shot riders. Police even surrounded
a Nation of Islam mosque and shot hundreds of rounds
of ammunition inside, wounding nineteen people. A curfew zone of

(04:04):
more than forty six point five square miles was established
and being on the streets after eight pm became an
arrestable offense. By August fifteen, writing had largely ended. In
less than a week of writing, there were more than
one thousand injuries, nearly four thousand arrests, and thirty four deaths,

(04:26):
most of which were black people. The cost of damage
was estimated as tens of millions of dollars. Police Chief
Parker said the writers were like quote monkeys in a zoo.
The news media and authorities provided different opinions on the
causes and rationale of the riots. Detractors blamed them on

(04:47):
black criminals and the influx of black people, and said
that the looting in Arson was unwarranted and foolish. Some
said that the writing was incited by gangs or black Muslims.
Others pointed to the longstanding racial tensions in Los Angeles,
and some people noted the poverty, growing discontent with social conditions,

(05:10):
and alienation in the city that could give rise to
such an intense rebellion. After the riots, a commission was
formed to investigate the riot and its causes, and it
suggested improvements in schools, housing, healthcare, and other sectors. President
Lyndon B. Johnson called for a war on poverty, allocating

(05:31):
federal funds to reduce poverty, but there was not a
big push to address the problems listed in the report
or to rebuild the areas that were affected by the riots.
Significant efforts to combat police brutality and address social issues
gained steam through the activism of locals. I'm each stuff

(05:53):
coat and hopefully you know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. Keep up thus on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook at t D i h C podcast. Thanks
for joining me on this trip through history. See you here,
same place tomorrow. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

(06:19):
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