Title: Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s
Author: Gerald Horne
Year of Publication: 1995
Thesis:
Argues that, similarly to what took place in Detroit, deindustrialization, high unemployment, low wages, high rents, and the weakening of the left by anti-Communist repression and prominent African Americans distancing themselves from it from it gave rise to Black Nationalism (focused in three areas - NOI, “Cultural Nationalism,” and the BPP. Police brutality was the immediate catalyst (rumors of a pregnant woman being attacked exacerbated local reactions, though police brutality was common) of an insurrection in Watts in 1965, but it cannot be understood without paying attention to global (Vietnam War recruiting young Black men, anti-Communism), national, and local politics leading up to it. Highlights the gendered components of the insurrection and the role of gangs. Results were mixed, with some concessions made and more accurate social science data on the Black experience in the U.S. in exchange for the rise of the conservative right.
Time: 1960s
Geography: U.S., primarily
Organization:
Abbreviations
PART ONE: CONTEXT
Introduction
- Watts - Most people killed were black; most property damaged was white owned (3)
- 3 major strands of Black nationalism after left collapses - NOI, "cultural nationalism," & BPP (5)
- Sammy Davis Jr. (7)
- Civil Rights Congress (CRC) (7)
-> integrated group, legal issues, police brutality, shut down by anti-Communist repression & FBI inflitration
- Black people also pushed out of Hollywood (9)
- Discussion of gangs feeding into the BPP/BN groups (11-12)
- History of Watts is also history of global political economy. (16)
- Ronald Reagan's antiracist radio show (18)
- Concerns by white elites about Asians and Mexicans seeing example of militant Black strategies working (19)
1. Toward Understanding
- Compounded racism
- Strong segregation; Watts annexed to pay for water, though lots small (27)
- Working-class folk live in suburbs (29)
- Lighter-skinned African Americans tend to get jobs (30)
- Interpeted as an insurrection, not a riot (37)
- Economic analyses point to lack of Black employment means lack of purchasing power/detriment to the economy (38)
- Argues social science research is a benefit (39)
PART TWO: UPRISING
2. Rising Up
- Parks a site of interracial conflict (46)
- Many people trying to figure out what precipitated the riot (heat, etc.) It seems beyond obvious it was police brutality in a larger context of racial caste repression and unlivable conditions (53)
- Traffic stop, police violence, altercation with people, insurrection
3. Death in the Afternoon, Evening, and Morning
- Killing as somehow stopping the violence - logic seems pretty problematic.
- Guerrilla tactics
4. Fire/Guns
5. "The Hearing Children of Deaf Parents"
PART THREE: CONFLICT
6. Black Scare
7. Iron Fist
PART FOUR: IMPACT
8. The Old Leadership
9. The New Leadership
10. The State and Civil Society
PART FIVE: CLASS VERSUS CLASS
11. A Class Divided by Race
12. Right, Left, and Center
13. Politics: Local and Beyond
14. Business
15. Representing Rebellion
PART SIX: MEANINGS
16. After the Fire
- Perceptions that concessions would be made b/c of militancy (339)
- Some people advocating that residents be forced to clean up city (340)
- Gun sales go up (340)
- Fearmongering grows about violencer leaving South L.A. amidst random & repressive crackdowns (339-340)
- Ford Foundation fronts the bulkof the money to study the riot under McCone, a former CIA director & appointed by Gov. Brown for appearances/political expediency (341-342)
- Commission report bland and incomplete. Blames "riffraff" for violence (343)
- "lure of welfare" is a myth (346)
- Interestingly, W.F. Buckley and R. Kennedy endorse the McCone report (347)
- "As it turned out, the weak recommendations did not forestall future eruptions but may have incited them." (347)
- Some new jobs and better job access opens up (350)
- Private business has no incentive to invest; public is dependent on shifting politics (350)
Epilogue: The 1990s
Notes
A Note on Sources
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
See: A note on sources: Governor's Commission report on LA Riots. LAPD, Thomas Rees / Yvonne Brathwaite papers, UCLA archives w/McCone panel. CSU papers for Mervyn Dymally / John Holland. Schomburg & NYPL - Pettis Perry, Civil Rights Congress. See more for details, but Commission Report is main piece.
Historiography:
"Thus far, those who have examined a question of similar epochal signifi- cance—the dismantling of legalized racial segregation—have avoided, for the most part, incorporating in their analysis broader questions of political econ- omy and the global correlation of forces, despite the fact that this dismantling took place as the Cold War began and as policy makers admitted freely that their actions were motivated by global developments." (16)
Keywords:
compounded racism - refers to anti-Black racism by non-Black POC
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"Still, the Red Scare took its toll. It was well recognized that disaffected blacks were a prime recruiting target for Communists, and this realization led directly to anti-Jim Crow concessions; but the price paid for these conces- sions was the weakening of the left and strengthening of the ultraright, espe- cially within the Los Angeles Police Department, which proceeded to run rampant without fear of challenge. In South LA, the behavior of the LAPD was more closely akin to that of marines than of social workers." (9)
"Black nationalism, in part, represented an attempt to create a bond be- tween darker- and lighter-skinned blacks and to curb tensions that had devel- oped because, among other reasons, employers ofwhatever hue often favored the latter over the former. Similarly, societal norms infected by white suprem- acy dictated to darker women and men that through skin lighteners and hair straighteners they should mimic their lighter counterparts." (12)
"Unlike many in the middle class, they did not wear suits and ties daily because their employment did not require it or allow it. Unlike those bourgeois leaders at the apex of the NAACP leadership, they did not have deep roots in Southern California. Year-of-arrival consciousness became a substitute for class consciousness." (14)
"I have argued that just as the conflict between capitalism and slavery led to the abolition of bonded labor, the conflict between capitalism and the possibilities of socialism led to the abolition of formal Jim Crow. I am certain that at some point in the twenty-first century, historians will be obligated to tackle this important question—the dismantling of legalized segregation— by reference to the Cold War. Similarly, I am convinced that these future historians will be captivated by the apparent paradox that as Jim Crow sub- sided, black nationalism grew; and, concomitantly, that as the presumed liberalizing influence of anti-Jim Crow measures were exerted, conservatism be- gan to grow. My thesis is that the solution to these seeming conundrums can be found by examining the declining fortunes of the left." (16)
On the necessity for a global context:
"we must acknowledge that considering the African-American experience while ignoring the looming presence of the rest of the world does a disservice to all sides, including the U.S. experience as a whole."^® In the pages that fol- low I sketch the impact of race, region, class, gender, age, and the like on postwar Los Angeles; but all of these factors must be considered in the light of developments in Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, Africa, the world."
On the meaning of an insurrection:
"Uprisings like those in Watts in 1965 are akin to a toothache in that they alert the body politic that something is dangerously awry. Their dramatic nature grabs and holds attention and can motivate sweeping social reform and/or repression. Uprisings also can be inspirational. The character and tac- tics of the Jamaican slave rebels of 1831 were strikingly similar to those of the Swing Uprising just months earlier.^^ The character and tactics ofWatts 1965 were imitated in Newark, Detroit, and a host of other cities." (41-41)
On efforts to pacify:
"Since youth were disproportionately involved in the revolt, many of the programs were aimed at them. The government was not unresponsive to the new spirit of militance; in fact, it tried to channel that spirit in a direction it found congenial. This was where the cultural nationalists were useful, for their growing ideological hegemony and their stress on African names and dress were not frowned upon. Many of them wound up being hired by the government and were paid to spread their ideas." (351-352)
On the potential for community policing:
"The Christopher Commission made a number of recommendations, most notably its call for “community policing.” If implemented, this model would do away with Chief Parker’s old idea of treating South LA as a community that needed to be subdued. Instead, community policing would focus on crime prevention, with officers becoming quasi-social workers, working closely with residents and merchants in solving problems rather than just ar- resting criminals.^ The local elite finally was determining that it might be better if the LAPD emulated social workers rather than Marines." (358)
Notes:
To pay attention to:
- Ronald Reagan
- Tom Bradley
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Edmund G. Brown
- NAACP
- BPP
- NOI
Proposition 14 - rolls back anti-discrimination in housing laws (Rumsford Act).
https://www.c-span.org/video/?327542-5/washington-journal-gerald-horne-50th-anniversary-watts-riots