Introduction
On August 11, 1965, pulled over a motorcyclist, which was believed was under the influence. Tensions grew as the by standing family and neighborhood grew angry due to the arrests and police force. Over the next day's riots sparked around the Watts neighborhood, which left 34 dead, hundreds wounded, and millions in damage. After the riots, Governor Pat Brown issued a commission to study the riots; the report highlighted that the riots were part of racial tensions and systematic political implementations.
Watts riots took place for six days in the present day Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood that was predominantly occupied by black Americans. The riots had a substantial impact in the society and including the 34 deaths, over 4000 arrests, 1000 buildings destroyed, 1032 out of the 34,000 people involved sustained injuries and the total damage of the riot amounted to 40 million. The Watts Riots highlighted deeper problems in society, there are so many efforts and mechanisms that have been put in place to deal with inequality and prevent a similar event to happen in future.
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Background
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by the Congress in July that year to serve as a landmark for U.S labor laws and civil laws. The act outlawed the discrimination of any U.S citizen or any individual based on their race, sex, religion, country of origin or color. The act was a guideline to eradicate the social, economic and political inequalities that were dominant in the U.S society.
Residential segregation was very prominent in the days in Los Angeles. The Rumford Fair housing act was drafted by William Byron Drumford who was the first African American to serve in the legislature. The housing act aimed at ending the racial discrimination from landlords and property owners who refused to rent or sell land to the colored people. The 1964 proposition 14 was an amendment that attempted to re-legalize the discrimination by property owners and landlords in the area at that time.
Police discrimination in Los Angeles was dominant and Martin Luther Kng Jr was once quoted saying there is unanimous feeling there has been police brutality in Watts. The police chief at that time William Parker was an acrimonious person who likened the rioters to "monkeys in a zoo". The police discriminated people mostly on the bases of their race. This inequality by the police force which is expected to hold the highest ethical standards and equality was a recipe for brewing anger among the Watts residents and consequently lead to the riots.
How the Watt Riots Happened
The Watts Riots started as a low-key traffic on a Wednesday evening roughly at 7 p.m. local time. A white officer of the California Highway Patrol pulled over Marquette and his stepbrother Ronald Frye near the Avalon Boulevard corner. The stepbrothers were driving their mother's car on 116 Street in Los Angeles Watts neighborhood. Marquette panicked when he was arrested after failing a sobriety test. The thought of jail made his anger to rise and the fracas broke out between one of the police officers and Marquette in the process of arrest. Ronald joined the scuffle to protect his brother as well as protest the arrest of Marquette.
As the commission was taking place, a crowd of bystanders started to gather at the scene. Based on the assumption the swelling crowd was hostile, back up police arrived at the scene and this led to a fight between a police officer and one of the people in the crowd. Another police officer who had just arrived on the scene used his riot baton to thrust Ronald in the stomach before he moved to intervene in the fracas between the other police officer and Marquette.
The newly arrived police then knocked down Marquette with the riot baton; they handcuffed him and he was taken to the police car. Ronald Frye stepmother, Rena, arrived at the scene and rushed to pull off the officers off Marquette believing that he was being abused by the police officers. This resulted in another fight at the scene. The officers arrested Rena and forced her into the police car despite her resistance to the arrest. Ronald was also handcuffed for his peaceful attempt to intervene during the arrest of his stepmother and he was also taken into the police car.
The crowd got angrier about the scene that was unfolding before their eyes and this led to many highway patrol police officers to arrive at the scene. The officers used shotguns and riot batons to keep the multitude away from the police car. The sirens made more hundreds of people to come and explore what was happening.
Two motorcycle police officers attempted to get away from the scene and one was spat on as they were leaving. They stopped and pursued a woman they assumed was responsible for spiting. This made the crowd converge around them and more officers were sent to assist the officers within the crowd. More police car arrived at the scene to deal with the unfolding series of events. The two police officers found Joyce Gaines and tried to arrest her for spitting on one of them. She resisted the arrest and the police officers dragged her out of the crowd. The crowd became very angrier since they believed that Joyce Ann Gaines was pregnant. The riot was in full force by around 7: 45 p.m. and rocks, bottles and more objects were being thrown into the cars and busses that had been held in traffic due to the ever-increasing incident.
The night after arresting a lot of commission was witnessed in the area. Crowds of people attacked motorists with rocks and bricks. White drivers were pulled out of their cars and they were beaten up. A community meeting was held by Watts's leaders the following morning including church representatives, the NAACP, the local government and the police also attended. The meeting was aimed at bringing the situation back to the normal calm state. Rena, Marquette, and Ronald had been released on bail that same morning and she attended the meeting to persuade the crowd to calm down.
The meeting turned out to be a barrage of complaints about the government treatment and the police discrimination on the black American citizens in latest antiquity then. A teenager rioter grabbed the microphone immediately after Rena's statement and announced that the rioters were planning to move into Los Angeles' white sections.
The local leaders suggested that more black police officers to be dispatched but William H. Parker who was the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department turned down the suggestion. William Parker was prepared to call the National Guard. William Parker's decisions and the teenager's tirade greatly contributed to the escalation of these riots. By overnight, the streets had been engulfed by violence. The multitudes were clashing with the police officers, stores were being looted as well as buildings and cars were being set on fire. The firefighters that tried to put out the fires were also attacked by the crowds and this hindered their efforts to prevent damage to property and life.
The rioting had covered a section of 50 miles in Los Angeles and 14000 national guards had been dispatched to erect barricades in the city. There were other several clashes such as sniper fire at Guardsmen and police officers, Molotov cocktails and police raids on apartments and cars. For three more days, the violence continued and Watts seemed a war zone.
Commissioner William Parker's statement scoffing rioters as "monkeys in a zoo" and inferring that Muslims were agitating and insightful provoked the rioters and made the situation to worsen. On the final day of the riots, police officers surrounded a mosque and this resulted in gunfire and the people inside the mosque were arrested. The police ransacked a building next to the mosque and in order to prevent anyone from escaping, they teargased the sewers. In the process, two fires broke up and the mosque was destroyed. Although charges against the arrestees were dropped, the police department was accused by the Muslim community for using the riots just as a scapegoat to destroy their place of worship.
After the Watts Riots
Majority of the 34 dead people were black Americans. Among the casualties, two were police officers and one was a firefighter. 26 deaths were considered to be justifiable homicides by the National Guard and the police department in Los Angeles. A commission was put in place to research on the causes of the report. The report came up with suggestions to improve the community in terms of schools, healthcare, employment, housing and the police department in Los Angeles.
Governor Edward Brown is the one who created the commission that constituted of influential prominent local citizens. The commission was headed by John A. McCone. The commission was to investigate the causes of the riots and prescribe remedies to prevent such an incident from occurring in future. The McCone report sympathetically discussed the problems at Watts's community. The report identifies the problems such as unemployment, dilapidated housing, and inadequate schools. The report seems to be leading to constructive programs to solve the problems but it shies away from explicitly bringing up the problems. Although the report suggests the creation of 50 jobs to reimburse for the "spiral of failure", the report does not outline how these jobs should be created. The report does not comprehensively confront the thorny issue of unemployment among the Negroes. The report also does not deal with the segregation facto in the community.
Causes of the Riots
Most people consider the cause of the riots to be the agitation of the crowd, but the real cause of the riots can be associated to the continued dissatisfaction of the locals to the living standards, chances, and opportunities and the accumulating tension between residents and the police officers. In 1961, a black male was arrested in Griffith Park for not having a ticket while riding a merry-go-round. This incident made the witnessing crowd to throw stones at the police officer. In 1962 the police raided a mosque and an unarmed man was killed in the event. This resulted in a mass protest by the local people. Within two years prior to the Watts riots, the police had shot 65 black residents and 25 among them were unarmed. The local people had held about 250 demonstrations within the same period but nothing had been done to improve the situation. These series of inequality and discrimination mounted on the locals greatly contributed to the riots.
Conclusion
The Watts Riots have become a symbol of civil unrest due to inequality in the community. The racial discrimination, religious discrimination, poor living standards, unemployment and the police brutality displayed by the Los Angeles Police department greatly contributed to the riots. The inequality was a recipe to brew anger among the locals since the local leadership did not consider their concerns in any way. The discrimination created enmity between the black Americans and the white citizens. Commissions have been set in place to investigate the social, political and economic problems facing the Watts residents in Los Angeles. Although several suggestions have been brought up by these commissions, not all of them have been implemented. Some, if not all of the reports, has shown some degrees of bias in investigating the causes of the riot and coming up with possible remedies to prevent similar incidents in future. Some mechanisms have however been put in place to ensure there is no segregation in the area and discrimination is eliminated as much as possible.
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