Watts riots in South-Central Los Angeles (that took place from August 11-17 in 1965) cost approximately $40 million in property damage and caused 34 deaths and over 1,000 injuries. This paper puts that horrendous event in perspective, from causes that led up to the riots, to the actual damage, and the government's response afterwards. What were the long-term causes of the social upheaval in Watts in 1965?

The social and economic conditions in South-Central Los Angeles well before the disturbances should be understood in terms of explaining why the tension had built up and why Watts was a tinder box ready to explode. Writer Josh Sules wrote a thorough background essay on the history of South-Central Los Angeles (in the book, Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History: A Reference Guide to the Nation's Most Catastrophic Events), pointing out that the " ... underlying causes" can be traced back to World War II.

Because so many men and women were involved overseas in the war effort, it opened up many jobs in Southern California. Hence, there was a period of "intense labor demand," and the management of numerous businesses " ... temporarily abandoned their decades-old practice" of racial discrimination against African-American employees (Sules, 2008). Blacks were welcomed into the Southern California workforce, and were needed to fill those positions left when the war broke out.

Prior to the war, African-American workers were given " ... low-paying jobs" that were demeaning, but once the war was on, the Black workers enjoyed " ... full employment in relatively well-paying and often unionized jobs" (Sules, 328). Meanwhile the images put forth by Hollywood, that the climate was splendid and there were few instances of race-related violence, along with word of good-paying jobs in Los Angeles, " ... triggered an unprecedented wave of migration" during and after WWII (Sules, 328). In fact, between the years 1940 and 1970, Los Angeles' population of Blacks grew from 63,744 to 763,000. Those that came west from oppressive social conditions in Texas and Louisiana enjoyed an improved lifestyle, but when they tried to buy homes soon realized that there was racial discrimination -- and they discovered the reality that there was...

chronic harassment from the Los Angeles Police Department" (LAPD) (Sules, 328).
Meanwhile the offspring of this migratory generation of African-Americans did not see the contrast between burdensome, Jim-Crow-type of racial discrimination in the South, and the far better conditions in Los Angeles. The children of the Blacks who moved to Los Angeles realized they were "second-class citizens" compared with their white and Mexican peers; they were "regularly passed over for promotions" just because they were black, and were "relentlessly harassed by white officers of the LAPD, whose duties explicitly included the enforcement of invisible racial lines in the city" (Sules, 329).

Further aggravation vis-a-vis the social / economic situation for the second generation of Black families included: a) poor public transportation; b) shabby public schools; c) too few public health facilities; and d) thanks to mayor Sam Yorty, the poor in Los Angeles did not see any funding from Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty (Sules, 329).

On the subject of Yorty, author Gerald Horne writes in his book, Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s that Yorty emulated Alabama Governor George Wallace by figuratively standing in the door of City Hall. Horne explains that Yorty blocked the fair distribution of antipoverty funds from the Office of Economic Opportunity to Watts and other blighted neighborhoods (52). Yorty's philosophy was "right-wing" and the mayor feared that if he shared OEO money with Watts, this reform "eventually could undermine him" (Horne, 52). There are many more circumstances that negatively impacted African-Americans in South-Central, including a UCLA study that revealed the " ... fantastic incidence of tuberculosis" in Watts, and the " ... interrelatedness of environment, income, and disease" in Watts (Horne, 52).

What were the precipitating factors the led to the riots?

In the previous two pages the background of frustrations and unfairness among the citizens of Watts was brought to light. But the spark that led to the start of the uprising happened on August 11, 1965, a day that was " ... uncommonly warm ... the continuation of a heat wave," wrote Horne (53). Some psychologists and analysts pointed…