19 November 2018

The Watts Riots, Rodney King and Me


I cannot tell a lie, this piece has been published before in a couple of different places. Nonetheless, it has a lot of personal meaning for me, as well the larger societal context. My novel White Heat was partly inspired by the Rodney King riots and both that and the Watts Riots have helped to shape L.A. as it is today.

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When people think of Watts they think of the Watts Towers—and the Watts Riots of August, 1965. That year, while the Beatles sang about Yesterday, another chant went up in South Central Los Angeles.
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1965: "Burn, baby, burn!" is the anthem that many remember the Watts Riots by. It is the chant shouted by people as the city burns. The spark that sets off the riots is a black man being stopped for a traffic ticket. Long-simmering frustration boils over and the city ignites. Thirty-four people are killed, a thousand-plus are wounded and almost four thousand arrested. Tensions in Los Angeles are as high as the smoke rising from the smoldering city streets.

Los Angeles is burning.

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1991: Another motorist is stopped for speeding and evading the police. His beatdown is caught on video:

1992: The cops accused of beating Rodney King are acquitted. People pour into the streets. Looting.
Assault. Arson. Murder. Fifty-three dead. Twenty-three hundred injured and sixteen-hundred buildings damaged or destroyed.

Los Angeles is burning.

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I was in Los Angeles in both ’65 and ’92. I remember the smoke, the fear permeating every quarter of the city.

During the Watts Riots, we were lucky to be able to watch it on TV and not be in the middle of it. My then-girlfriend's cousin was a National Guardsman assigned to patrol Watts during the riots and what he saw was so horrible he would never talk about it.

But I have a different memory of Watts. It isn't of the riots, but occurred during another hot summer, not long after.

I met a boy named Walter in class. Unlike everyone else in the class and just about everyone in the school, he was black. And he wasn't a local, but was on some kind of student exchange program from Jordan High in Watts.

I'm sure we were as much a curiosity to him as he was to us. After all, we were the privileged white kids and he was the angry young black man. Only he didn't seem angry. He seemed like just another nice guy with glasses. He invited a group of us to come down and see where he lived: Watts. A word that sent shivers down a lot of Angelinos' spines in those days.

We were a little apprehensive about going down there, especially as Walter had told us to come in the crappiest cars we had. No shiny new cars. There were six or eight teenaged boys and girls in our little caravan of two crappy cars. But crappy in our neighborhood meant something different than it did in Walter's.

Our caravan weaved its way through the Los Angeles streets until we were just about the only white faces to be seen. We finally came to Will Rogers Park (known today as Ted Watkins Park). Mind you, this is not the Will Rogers Park on Sunset where the polo ponies play on Sundays. This park is in the heart of South Central and I can say that all of our hearts were beating faster than normal.

Watts Riots - 1965

We parked nearby and walked as a unit to the park, as if we were a military outfit. People looked at us—we didn't look at them. But maybe because we looked like hippies and we were young nobody bothered us.

We met Walter in Will Rogers Park in South Central Los Angeles and sat under a shady tree, a bunch
of white kids and one black guy. We sat, just rapping—in the vernacular of the time—talking about music and houses and politics. We stood out like the proverbial sore thumb and people started coming over. Big dudes, little dudes. Cool dudes. Girls. No one seemed to resent our being there. In fact, they seemed glad to have us. Glad to be able to share with us and have us share with them. There was no sense of rancor or resentment. Just curiosity—a curiosity that went both ways. This was a time when people wanted to come together, not be separated. None of them knew Walter and they certainly didn't know us. But they joined our group and we rapped on.

After a while we got up and played a game of pickup basketball—try doing that in a pair of cowboy boots.

Then Walter said, "You want to see where I live?"
Jordan Downs Housing Project

Of course we did. So he took us to the projects—Jordan Downs. We drove past burned out buildings and vacant lots that not so long ago had had buildings on them. And we saw how the other half lived.

"It's not the best place in the world to live," Walter said. "But it could be a whole lot worse."

Watts Towers

Our last stop was a trip to the Watts Towers, those soaring spires of glass, steel and concrete built by Simon Rodia. They are a monument to what anyone can do if they put their mind to it.

We finally returned to our cars and, to our relief, they hadn't been stolen. And, corny as it might sound, I think we all learned that we're more alike than different, with the same aspirations, hopes and fears.

That day was one of the most memorable experiences of my life—one that I wouldn't trade for anything. It was a wonderful day and we all went home full of hope for the future. We just wanted to get to know each other. Ultimately I think Rodney King had it right when he said, "Can we all get along?"

Why the hell can't we?

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8 comments:

  1. You are absolutely right that so much depends on meeting ( and seeing) other people as people. I suspect much of your writing was influenced by this event.

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  2. Thanks for your comment, Janice. And both my writing and my life are influenced by that event.

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  3. Great post, Paul. It's all about meeting and talking and hanging out with people from every race, creed, ethnicity, etc. I think the reason we can't get along is (1) everyone sinks into their little enclaves (especially these days on-line) and don't want to budget and (2) original sin. There is a flaw in the human character that keeps looking for someone to blame.

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  4. And if I may add (3) to what Eve said, the person occupying the White House seems to enjoy getting people all stirred up.

    My parents were really weird people in a lot of ways & did a lot of things wrong but they didn't raise me or my sisters to be racists. I often wonder how we would have turned out if they had.

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  5. I lived in the midst of the Detroit riots in 1968. I did not live in the burbs & watch it on tv as my friends did, but in its midst --- walking around on three inches of broken plate glass and burning buildings, unafraid. I knew the rioting black people emerging from store-fronts with armfuls of whatever goods the store had sold had nothing against me. And I laud your altruism, certainly more of it is needed. But my experience was that I was pissed, especially about all my friends calling me from the burbs, "Are you okay?" "I heard there are tanks in the street." (The national guard was called in.) They worried about me, but "safe" behind their red-lined communities where they could send their children to "safe" schools. The hypocrisy still frosts me, and I know it when I see it. It's as common nitrogen in the air. Like you, I have written often about the experience, and though I am a self-professed "conservative," I have never chosen a "safe" neighborhood or community.

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  6. Fantastic Blog, Paul!

    You always capture the essence of LA, and her people. Thank you for capturing a little more of her hidden history for the rest of us to read.

    -Sally

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  7. I remember those hard times and worry about our future with such divisive anger and narrow-minded stupidity today.

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  8. Thanks, Eve. Totally agree with what you say.

    Thanks for your comments, Elizabeth.

    Lanny, thanks for your comments. Having experienced all that, how can it not inform your writing?

    Thanks, Sally.

    Thanks for your comment, O’Neil. I worry, too.

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