Los Angeles, California, in the mid-1960s was a place of racial tension. Since the Second Great Migration in the early 1940s, African-American families had settled on the west coast of the United States. They had moved there originally due to the influx of industrial and factory jobs available during World War II, but they also moved to escape the racial segregation and the bigotry they were experiencing in the Southern United States. They thought life there would be better.
This wasn’t the case. In the city of Los Angeles, many laws kept minorities from owning their own property or renting homes and apartments in certain areas, affecting the African-American and Mexican immigrant populations in the area. They were only allowed to rent or buy homes in certain areas of the city, severely restricting their access to good jobs and schools. By the 1960s, Los Angeles was racially segregated, with minorities living in particular areas of the city, like the Watts district.
The Los Angeles Police Department was also notorious for their discrimination and harsh treatment of minorities. On August 11, 1965, a traffic stop involving an African-American driver led to a fight between the man and his family with the police, who used physical force to arrest them. Word spread throughout the neighborhood, resulting in a large-scale five-day riot that required the presence of extra police and the National Guard. Fed up with the brutality and prejudice that they received from the Los Angeles Police Department every day, crowds assembled in the streets and began attacking officers, throwing rocks and concrete at them and their cars. Buildings were looted, whole city blocks went up in smoke, and the demonstrators attacked police and stopped the fire department from extinguishing the flames. By the end of the riots five days later, over 1,000 buildings were destroyed, and 34 people were dead.
The press heavily covered the Watts riots. These photographs may be difficult to look at, but the camera doesn’t lie. The images are shocking: they show members of the Watts community being arrested, police and National guard with guns, and smoking and burning buildings. The photographs document the worst case of unrest in Los Angeles until the Rodney King riots, almost thirty years later. These images are harrowing in that they bring recent events to mind: Ferguson, Baltimore, and St. Louis. When looking at the photographs, the one question we need to ask ourselves is, has anything really changed?