Recalling the Riots With Pride and Regret : Urban revolt: As Watts marks 25th anniversary of the violence, some blacks say they were glad they participated; others note that problems prevalent in ’65 still exist.

Call it insight to riot.

Standing amid a row of merchants’ tents set up at the Watts Festival on Saturday, Tommy Jacquette grinned and spoke proudly of the carnage and flames and gunfire that 25 years ago engulfed the south Los Angeles community he calls home.

“It was a revolt, a rebellion against racism,” explained Jacquette, reprimanding a man who had referred to the 1965 upheaval as a riot. “I participated 100%, and I’m proud of it. If America isn’t ashamed of racism and oppression of black people, then blacks shouldn’t be ashamed of participating in a revolt against racism and oppression.”

Such talk was not uncommon Saturday. As African-Americans throughout the city marked the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots--which started after the arrest of a Watts man--conversations were rife with fond reflections on the black rage that for six days had shaken the city.

All over South Los Angeles, members of the African-American community gathered in homes, at community centers and around cultural landmarks to explore the impact and implications of the riot that became the precursor to the urban revolts that swept the nation during the late 1960s.

“We were not just rebelling against white people and their system,” said Father Amdetsion, a poet and community priest who joined about 200 people at the “Watts ‘65” symposium at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research in South Los Angeles.

“We were rebelling against our parents and all the other people among us who had said that (blacks) were nothing,” Amdetsion said. “We were the generation who said, ‘I’m black, and I’m proud of it.’ ”

For many, Amdetsion and others at the symposiums said, the riots are seen as tools that activists tried to use to raze and redo America’s social landscape.

“There was a real sense that ‘Now we can do something; now we can be in control of our lives,’ ” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, publisher of Impact! Publications and a moderator at the library forum. “The fear factor--fear of the police and of the merchants--was gone.”

But while many looked back on the revolt with nostalgia and a smidgen of romance, others remembered the period with a mixture of regret, fear and anger.

For example, Harold Charlot and his wife, Helen, recalled the upheaval as a sad aberration from a history of serenity in their South Los Angeles neighborhood.

“It was a shame,” said Harold Charlot, who lives with his wife mere yards from the intersection of 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard--where the riots started.

“There were not many jobs around for a lot of blacks. People were sitting around idle and frustrated. When you go looking for a job and can’t find one, you get mad. Sooner or later you reach a breaking point.”

The breaking point for Los Angeles’ black community came shortly before 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 11, 1965.

That evening, California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer Lee Minikus pulled over 21-year-old Marquette Frye on suspicion of drunk driving. As Minikus questioned Frye and put him through a battery of sobriety tests, a crowd gathered to watch.

After the test, the officer determined that Frye was legally drunk and prepared to arrest him. But an argument broke out between Frye and Minikus, who had been joined by other CHP officers. The argument turned into a scuffle between Frye and the officers, who beat the Watts man.

Enraged at the beating, the crowd closed in on the officers, and someone spit on one of the patrolmen. The officer blamed a nearby woman--who was wearing a barber’s smock that had mistakenly led those in the crowd to think her pregnant--and tried to arrest her.

Further outraged by what they figured was the manhandling of a pregnant woman, the crowd reacted violently. They threw bottles and rocks, and soon the violence escalated to looting and the burning of stores and cars.

From Aug. 11 to Aug. 16, South Los Angeles burned. In an effort to contain the violence and eventually restore order, the National Guard and the Los Angeles Police Department cordoned off a 43-square-mile area of South Los Angeles.

Although the upheaval is often called the Watts Riots, said black activists Saturday, it didn’t actually reach Watts until the third day.

When the violence finally ended, government officials said 34 people had died, 1,032 were hurt and another 3,952 were arrested. In addition, about $40 million in property was destroyed or damaged.

“Whites couldn’t come into this area without being attacked,” said Charlot, 69. “I remember seeing a white man running down the street, being chased by four blacks. He tried to hide up under a white Mercury, but they pulled him out from under it and started kicking him and hitting him.”

Charlot said he and his wife pulled the man out of the crowd and led him to their home. There, they tended to his wounds and gave him fresh clothes.

“I remember trying to get a policeman to take him to the hospital,” said Charlot. “The guy (the officer) didn’t know he was white, so he said, ‘You people started this; you take him to the hospital.’ Those were the type of attitudes you had then.”

Many blacks contended Saturday that such attitudes--as well as the Third World-type social conditions that were at the root of the riots--remain as widespread as they were a quarter-century ago.

“The issues of police abuse, educational neglect, welfareism--all of those issues still exist,” said Hutchinson, speaking at the forum at the social studies library. “If anything, they have probably gotten worse.”

But though the conditions persist, said many of the community activists, the community’s collective will to protest them has been sapped by drugs and gangs. In addition, they said, the black community has suffered what Hutchinson refers to as a “brain and resource drain.”

“What happened was that many of the poor people were left behind as many blacks from the community and from the movement of the ‘60s joined the middle class,” Hutchinson said.

As a result, he and other activists said Saturday, the black community in Los Angeles has been left with a diminished sense of unity and direction. There is little chance, many said, of a repeat of the 1965 upheaval.

“I don’t think there will be another riot,” Hutchinson said. “The community is just too divided. I’m no prognosticator, but I don’t think so.”

Some African-Americans disagreed, though. They said that the rage of the 1960s may again boil over--and sooner than many political and social pundits think.

“Plenty of people would come out (for a riot), because plenty of black people are still angry,” said Jacquette, tapping a foot to the beat of a reggae song booming from a loudspeaker at the festival. “I know I would be right there in the middle of it. I would be with it 100%--and, yes, I would be proud to participate.”