On 11 August 1965, after an altercation during the arrest of a young Black motorist by Los Angeles police officers, LA’s Watts neighbourhood exploded into six days of rioting with mass looting and anti-police violence in the biggest rebellion of the civil rights movement. Residents in the mostly working class, Black, South Central area of the city expropriated goods from groceries, department stores and pawnshops, overturned cars and battled police and 14,000 National Guard troops. To repress the movement, authorities declared a 45 mile curfew zone, arrested nearly 4,000 people, and killed 23. Over 1,000 people were also injured. Gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin described the uprising as the "first major rebellion of Negroes against their own masochism and was carried on with the express purpose of asserting that they would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life."
1965 Watts Riots - WCH | Stories
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