Watts Riots Remembered
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50 years after Watts: 'There is still a crisis in the black community'
In 1965, as Watts erupted in violent unrest, Tony Welton and his teenage friends walked by a market on Avalon Boulevard and Imperial Highway. They cursed it for the way it sold spoiled meat and rotten fruit to customers without the money or means to shop elsewhere. The thought crossed their minds...
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Stunned by the Watts riots, the L.A. Times struggled to make sense of the violence
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Inside the Watts curfew zone
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Viewing the Watts riots through different eyes
The curious thing about riots is that they tend to erupt around a chance moment -- a perceived threat, a lone miscarriage of justice, one arrest too many, or a single act of violence freighted with history. Which means a riot can symbolize many different and sometimes contradictory things, depending...
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Has the LAPD changed enough since the Watts riots?
It's tempting to look at recent headlines about unarmed African Americans dying at the hands of police officers and conclude that little has changed since 1965, when a traffic stop and the arrest of Marquette Frye triggered what became known as the Watts riots. Six days of mayhem from Aug. 11-17,...
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Documents: How the L.A. Times covered the 1965 Watts Riots
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Watts' elders reflect on riots' legacy: Too much change or not enough?
Progress can be a touchy subject for black people who came of age in South Los Angeles during the era of the Watts riots. The uprising that started 50 years ago Tuesday exposed rampant disadvantage and raging anger — and spawned a host of programs that were supposed to remedy both. But once the...
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10 ways to explore the complicated legacy of Watts through literature
The Watts riots, which began 50 years ago, on Aug. 11, 1965, were sparked by a traffic stop. This they share in common with the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Unlike that later disturbance, however, Watts provoked a literary foment as the city struggled — and in many ways continues to struggle — with...
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50 years after Watts riots, not enough has changed
The small city of Watts offered African American workers an island of relatively affordable housing, unrestricted by racial covenants, in the early decades of the 20th century. But its wells ran dry, and Los Angeles — which was piping in abundant water via the Owens Aqueduct and already stretching...
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Joseph Wambaugh: The Watts riots — from inside a black-and-white
At 7 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 12, 1965, about 2,000 people gather at 116th and Avalon. Tension is still high after the mob violence of the previous night following the arrest of an alleged drunk driver, but the people are not rioting. A short time later, random shots are fired at a police vehicle...
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Watts: Remember what they built, not what they burned
As we mark 50 years since the Watts riots, expect endless newsreel footage of buildings aflame and National Guard units occupying Central Avenue, experts rattling off gruesome statistics, eyewitness accounts of that stifling hot night on Aug. 11, 1965, when Marquette Frye's drunk driving arrest...
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Watts riots still mostly off Hollywood's radar after 50 years
The last few years have brought a spate of films about the civil rights movement, with the Birmingham campaign in Alabama, the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and some plucky Mississippi maids all taking center stage in Hollywood. As commemorations for the 50th anniversary of the Watts riots begin...
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To go further
Maurice James, a young Watts resident, and Stalin Medina, owner of the Watts Cyclery, reflect on challenges facing black and Latino youth in the neighborhood, and how access to bicycles can be a vehicle out of the community.
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Interfaith service honors those killed in Watts riots
They were as old as 67 and as young as 4 — a firefighter, a sheriff's deputy, innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. Fifty years ago this week, 34 people were killed in the Watts riots. During those six days of unrest, more than 1,000 were injured and 200 buildings were destroyed. On Sunday,...
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After the Watts riots, a transformative shift in Inglewood
Columns of smoke darkened the sky along the Harbor Freeway as 11-year-old Richard Rankin rode home to Inglewood through South Los Angeles. His father shushed him from the driver's seat when he asked about the fires. It would have been awkward to explain a race riot to a trio of sixth-grade boys...
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Latinos now dominate Watts, but some feel blacks still hold power
The women set out on a brisk walk every Friday morning — past broken bottles, graffiti, an occasional stray dog and the smell of marijuana. They circle the rim of their home, the Jordan Downs housing project, not just for the sake of exercise but to show the world that Watts, these days, is brimming...
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Watts Riots: Traffic stop was the spark that ignited days of destruction in L.A.
It all started with a traffic stop. On Aug. 11, 1965, California Highway Patrol Officer Lee Minikus responded to a report of a reckless driver in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Shortly after 7 p.m., he pulled over 21-year-old Marquette Frye near 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard. Frye failed...
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50 years later, images from the Watts riots still startle
A short article in the Aug. 11, 2006, Los Angeles Times reported on the origins of the 1965 riots in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood: "Aug. 11, 1965: At 7:19 p.m. in Watts, a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer named Lee Minikus pulled over 21-year-old Marquette Frye on suspicion of...
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Watts riots shifted state to the right, but new demographics pushed it left
The embers of Watts had cooled as Ronald Reagan raced toward his first election as California's governor, a year after riots scarred southern Los Angeles. Yet Watts remained an ominous political presence. As Reagan took on two-term incumbent Pat Brown in what was then an overwhelmingly white and...
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Watts Riots: Then and now photos
A look back at scenes from the Watts Riots. Drag the slider to compare the images.
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Watts theater founder Lynn Manning: Blinded by bullet, inspired for the stage
Lynn Manning overcame blindness from a barroom bullet to forge a 30-year career as a champion athlete, poet, actor, theater company founder and, especially, playwright inspired by his own harshest experiences and the social problems of south Los Angeles. Manning died Monday at age 60 after a yearlong...
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Before Watts '65: A black cop's view of the LAPD
Fifty years ago, five days after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act to guarantee black Americans a voice at the ballot box, other black voices made themselves heard in Los Angeles. By the time the Watts riots were over, 34 people were dead. Watts was Norman E. Edelen's neighborhood...
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Eyewitness to Watts riots won't give in to discouragement
Larry Aubry and I met at Century and Western, near where, a week earlier, two children and an 18-year-old woman were shot in what has been a bloody summer in South Los Angeles. City officials and community leaders have been strategizing to try to restore calm, but that's hard to do when the underlying...
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Watts riots, 50 years later: What has L.A. learned, and done?
We look to anniversaries of momentous events — the beginning of World War I (100 years, last July), the end of the Civil War (150 years, in April), the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., (50 years, in March) — to note the passage of time, to measure the progress of the generations,...
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How Watts and the LAPD make peace
Police killings and resulting protests have sparked a national debate about the enmity among communities of color and the officers charged to serve and protect them. But in the South L.A. neighborhood of Watts, against all odds, police and residents have forged positive relationships that are lowering...