Like the connected Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick and East New York, Watts had been a white and Jewish neighborhood before World War II. But when the returning veterans took advantage of housing opportunities to move to nicer places, poor black people moved in, and found it harder to move up.
There had already been a black community in Los Angeles, having arrived there as a result of what's known as the Great Migration. In the 1910s and '20s, thousands of black people left the South, and headed for the industrial cities of the Northeast and the Midwest, and some went to Los Angeles, looking for jobs without segregation, with limited success.
Then came another migration, this time of white people out of the South. The Great Depression, its bank foreclosures on farms, and farms rendered useless by the Dust Bowl forced a lot of people out of the Southern States of Oklahoma and Arkansas.
These people, derisively nicknamed Okies and Arkies, headed west on U.S. Route 66, and looked for farm jobs in the interior of California. Some of them kept going and reached Los Angeles.
Ray Manzarek, keyboard player for the Los Angeles-based rock band The Doors, made the point that some of these migrants joined the Los Angeles Police Department, bringing their Southern attitude with them. This manifested itself in the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, when LAPD officers joined with white soldiers and sailors from the South, stationed in LA, to attack Mexican American teenagers wearing the fancy suits of the period.
As is so often the case, once a family enters law enforcement, it stays there, and the rednecks-turned-cops of 1940s L.A. had sons who became urban racist cops in the 1960s. And the already-present conservative oil and film industry executives of the city were all too happy to accept this.
By 1965, Southern California was more Southern than white liberal America realized, or perhaps was willing to admit. Indeed, to this day, many people, including LAPD officers, call Southern California "The Southland."
As with the race riots in Harlem and North Philadelphia the year before, and the Newark and Detroit in 1967, the event that sparked the Watts Riot was an act of white police brutality on a black person.
On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, 21, was pulled over for perceived drunken driving. After he failed a field sobriety test, officers attempted to arrest him. He resisted arrest, and was hit in the face with a baton.
A crowd of onlookers had gathered. As with the Newark Riot two years later, an erroneous belief that the situation was even worse then it was led to the start of civil unrest, which in this case lasted six days.
The riots were finally suppressed by the California National Guard, and led to 34 deaths, 3,438 arrests, and $40 million in property damage -- about $345 million in 2022 money.
Marquette Frye found it difficult to get a job after the riots, even using his mother's maiden name for a time, before he finally found a living as a motivational speaker, on the subject of civil rights. But his health was not good, and in 1986, only 42 years old, he died of pneumonia. He did not live to see the beating of Rodney King in 1991, the travesty of a verdict a year later, and the even worse race riots that followed that.
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August 11, 1965 was a Wednesday. Actress Viola Davis was born.
It was the offseason for the NFL, the AFL, the NBA and the NHL. These Major League Baseball games were played on that day:
* The New York Yankees the Minnesota Twins 5-4 at the old Yankee Stadium. Mel Stottlemyre outpitched Jim "Mudcat" Grant. This was unusual, because this was the year the Yankee Dynasty collapsed, and the Twins went on to win their 1st Pennant since 1933, as the Washington Senators. The Twins went 12-5 against the Yankees that year.
* The New York Mets lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 1-0 at Dodger Stadium. Don Drysdale pitched a 5-hit shutout, and Jim Gilliam singled home the winning run in the 7th inning.
Dodger Stadium is 11 miles north of the epicenter of the riot, which was weighing heavily on the mind of Dodger catcher John Roseboro 11 days later, when he had his confrontation with Giants pitcher Juan Marichal. He had a similar situation on his mind, the civil unrest in his native Dominican Republic. Their tempers boiled over, resulting Roseboro hitting Marichal's ear with a throw back to pitcher Sandy Koufax, and Marichal retaliating by Roseboro on the head with his bat.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 8-3 at Fenway Park in Boston.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the California Angels, 6-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Luis Tiant pitched a 3-hit shutout.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-2 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.
* The Detroit Tigers swept a doubleheader from the Kansas City Athletics at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Tigers won the 1st game 6-2, and the 2nd game 5-4, on a Don Wert RBI single in the 10th inning.
* A doubleheader was split at Comiskey Park in Chicago. In the 1st game, The Washington Senators beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-2. The Pale Hose won the 2nd game 7-0, as Juan Pizarro pitched a 1-hit shutout.
* The Milwaukee Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Houston Astros, 5-1 at the Astrodome in Houston.
* And a game was rained out Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game, 4-3. The San Francisco Giants won the 2nd game, 5-2.
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