Watts riots

The Watts riots (or, collectively, Watts rebellion) took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 17, 1965.

On August 11, 1965, a black motorist was arrested for drunk driving. A minor roadside argument broke out, and then escalated into a fight. The community reacted in outrage. Six days of looting and arson, especially of white-owned businesses, followed. Los Angeles police needed the support of nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard to quell the riots, which resulted in 34 deaths and over $40 million in property damage. The riots were blamed principally on unemployment, although a later investigation also highlighted police racism. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992.

Background

In the Great Migration of the 1920s, major populations of African-Americans moved to Northern and Midwestern cities like Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City to pursue jobs in newly established manufacturing industries; to establish better educational and social opportunities; and to flee racial segregation, Jim Crow Laws, violence, and racial bigotry in the Southern States. This wave of migration largely bypassed Los Angeles. In the 1940s, in the Second Great Migration, black Americans migrated to the West Coast in large numbers, in response to defense industry recruitment efforts at the start of World War II. The black population in Los Angeles leapt from approximately 63,700 in 1940 to about 350,000 in 1965, making the once-small black community visible to the general public.