...Civil Rights Diary - Watts Riots Brad Ellis HIS145 July 31, 2013 Alice Jones Civil Rights Diary - Watts Riots Sunday August 15, 1965: It has been a few days since I last wrote in my diary. It has been very busy around the entire city of Las Angeles. It started on Wednesday August 11th. I had just got home from working at the Douglas Outlet Co. and was looking forward to writing in my diary about the raise I got from my boss. Then I heard my neighbor Ronald yelling for his mom. He was yelling, “Mom they are going to take the car and Marquette.” I went outside and saw a large amount of people, more than I could count, running down the street toward Avalon Blvd. When I got to the corner of 116th street and Avalon Blvd, I saw Marquette, Ronald’s brother getting a yelling at from his mother Rena Price. Then it started to get wild! Somehow Rena got pushed and Marquette got hit by someone. The policemen started to fight with Marquette and Ronald and their mother Rena jumped on the backs of the policemen. By this time, the crowd had doubled or tripled in size. The crowd was not happy about the situation. It took about five minutes for the police to put all three of my neighbors under arrest. Once they had them in the back of the police car, they left as fast as they could. There were still a couple of policemen there, and they went to leave but the crowd started to hurl rocks and bricks at their car as they left. The policemen stopped the car and went to arrest another women...
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...Imagine living in the Civil Rights Era where racial tensions between African Americans and White Americans were very high. Your race determined what jobs you could and weren’t allowed to get. If you weren’t dressed nice as an African American restaurants could deny you service. Transportation was much longer since only a few taxi cabs will pick you up if you were African American. Real estate agents would direct you to neighborhoods based on your color of skin. Despite finally achieving equality life was very segregated. This built up anger is one of the few reasons for the cause of the Watts Riots. On August 11, 1965 an African American man by the name of Marquette Frye was arrested for drunk driving by California highway patrolman Lee...
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...were multiple riots in the predominantly black Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. These were the most fatal riots in the LA history (before the Rodney...
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...Introduction The Watts Riots were caused by a roadside argument when a black man, Marquette Frye, was arrested for speeding. Frye had been drinking, and was driving with his brother, Ronald, in the car, when the two were pulled over two blocks from their home. While Marquette was being arrested, Ronald retrieved their mother from her house. When Mrs. Frye saw her son being forcibly arrested, she fought with the arresting officers, tearing one officer’s shirt. An officer then struck Marquette’s head with his nightstick, and all three of the Frye’s were arrested. By the time the Frye’s were arrested, hundreds of onlookers had been drawn to the scene. Anger and rumors spread quickly through the black community, and residents stoned cars and beat...
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...six days here in Watts have been almost unbearable for me. I take pen in hand to record the events of this past week to have a written account of the horrific things I have witnessed. The Civil Right Act that was passed last year had given me as well as others the hope that the United States was finally on its way to racial equality, but the condition of Watts has not changed for the better. There is high unemployment, substandard housing, and inadequate schools in this district. This has lowered the self-esteem and raised the tempers of the people here. Last Wednesday on the 11th I opened my store as usual at 8am and set about my daily routine. The day progressed normally until I had to leave the store for a bite to eat. As I walked toward the diner I noticed a group of people across the street gathered around something. I could not see what it was as I was still several yards away. As I came closer I realized that a highway patrolman had pulled a car over to the side of the street. My curiosity peaked and I stopped to see what would happen. A white patrolman had a young black motorist on the sidewalk and was administering a sobriety test. I could hear words bantered back and forth between some of the onlookers and the patrolman. Tensions escalated when the patrolman proceeded to put handcuffs on the motorist. I watched as words were growing in volume as well as anger when suddenly the patrolman struck an onlooker with his club. This triggered riots allover Watts and sent the people...
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... Racism and Discrimination The novel Southland by Nina Revoyr is a very emotional story about a family that has many more problems than what meets the eye. The story jumps through the perspectives of characters like Jackie, Lois, Rose, Frank, Curtis and many more. Two concepts that seemed to be focused on were racism and discrimination. Throughout the novel there are many events that occur that show both racism and discrimination, Jackie uncovers many of her families secrets and even figures out who killed the four boys in her grandfather’s store in Crenshaw, California. This story takes place different places of Los Angeles for example, Gardena, "Compton, Watts, Crenshaw, and even in the bay area like San Francisco and Oakland. However, there were many things that were being kept a secret because of racial connections, whether it was one race with another or even interracial. Some things were kept secret due to the judgment from society or even judgment from ones family. There is still racism and discrimination that occurs now in everyday life. In Southland, the main character Jackie shows some forms of racism, she had arranged to meet with James Lanier who was the cousin of one of the boys who was found in the freezer of Frank’s store. While “sitting in the lobby of Marcus Garvey Community enter, Jackie couldn’t recall a time she felt more out of place. More like an overseas visitor, scared...
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...1960s Diary Entries Lashanda Sanford HIS/135 Karen Rogers 1960s Diary Entries African-American student enrolling in Ole Miss October 1, 1962 The history of America has been far from fair for minorities and we have not been treated equally. We have fought very hard for our rights and many people have lost their lives trying to gain equality for all races. I had always dreamed about going to Ole Miss and after the Supreme Court ruled in James Meredith’s favor in September, my dream finally came true. I never thought that I would have a fair chance at education and I am excited to have the opportunity to be enrolling at such a great university. I will be the first person in my family that is going to attend college and for that, I am grateful. Times have not always been easy especially facing segregation and racial discrimination. James Meredith constantly applied to enroll at Ole Miss but each and every time he was turned down because of the color of his skin. So he did what he had to do and got the NAACP involved and the Supreme Court finally decided to rule in his favor. That moment was very important to me and my family members. Our ancestors were not allowed to learn or attend college simply because of their race, but we now have a chance to make history and make a change! I will be the first to admit that when I heard about the integration of the schools and colleges I did not think...
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...organize a march from Selma to Montgomery, to demand voting rights for black people. Martin turned around the first Selma march as the result would be murder by the state troopers and he could not risk the safety of the marchers. On March 21 the second Selma march set 25,000 strong with multiracial support. The 25,000 strong handed a petition to Governor George Wallace, demanding voting rights for black Americans. Then on August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The Selma freedom marchers had gotten what they had fought for (Bader 77-81). The Watts Riots were using violence by using the teachings of Malcolm X. Poverty was a main reason for these riots and why they took place. The riots took place in August 1965 in a Los Angeles Neighborhood called Watts (Bader 84). Frustrated and angry mobs ran through the streets of Watts throwing rocks and bottles. They broke store windows and set fires. The riots went on for 6 days, until finally the U.S. army was called in to stop the violence (Bader 84-87). On July 26, 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. led a march to the Chicago city hall to attack the root of the problem: poverty. Martin moves his family to Chicago in 1966, and lived in a rundown, four-room apartment for ninety dollars a month. He felt the need to show his family how too many black people were living (Bader 89). Martin led many marches in Chicago in the summer of 1966. He marched to Chicago City Hall, and he posted a list of demands on the door for Mayor Richard...
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...Professor Cedillo Sociology 100 2015 October 23 Race Race is defined as a category or group of people having hereditary traits that set them apart. While race revolves around the idea of biological traits, ethnicity is based on a shared cultural heritage. Sociologists and other social scientists believe that race is a socially constructed concept. It is an idea that was created in society to justify inequality. One way that race perpetuates itself in society is through stereotypes. A stereotype is an oversimplified set of beliefs about people from a certain group in society. There are numerous stereotypes for people of all racial and ethnic categories. While most of these stereotypes are negative, the stereotypes for some groups are much more damaging than others. For instance, whites have always been stereotyped as being racist, greedy, and bad dancers. Compare this to some of the more damaging stereotypes of African Americans which include uneducated, violent, and unemployable. Clearly, these stereotypes are much more damaging. Nina Revoyr’s novel, Southland, provides a glimpse into the injustice, scandal, and struggle in Los Angeles from the 1940s to the 1990s due to its racial composition. The novel contains a unique cast of characters who, although often times interact with conflict, are forced to live side-by-side one another in their separate attempts to attain the American Dream. Southland proves to be a story that illustrates how ethnic, racial, and...
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...In some ways Black Power groups did help the civil rights movement however in some ways it did hinder the civil rights and cause some problems for the other civil rights campaigners. Black Power groups were militant type groups who did not agree with Martin Luther King’s non-violence beliefs. MLK said that if they did use violence it would give the white racist an excuse of attacking law abiding blacks. However Black Power groups believed they could use violence in self-defence but MLK said you should never use violence. Black Power groups where often associated with black Muslims, but by the mid-1960s many of the activist in the SNCC and CORE had both moved away from their traditional views of non-violence, and joined the views of Black Power groups such as the Black Panthers. Black Power groups did help the civil rights movement because it forced the civil rights movement up the agenda, so it made the president make take faster action to try and get the civil rights bills passed through congress quicker so that the violence between the Blacks and the whites would stop. Another reason why the president wanted the laws to be passed was because of all the bad press America was receiving, mainly the communist USSR, who were saying things like how you can fight for freedom when you don’t even have freedom in your own country. This was a problem for America as they did not want people to stop believing in the capital system and join a communist system. Black power groups did cause...
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...several eyewitnesses have claimed seeing the 18-year-old girl at the crime scene, and she is therefore our prime suspect.” The London police department have apologized to the deceased mans family for taking so long to start the investigation, even though he already was reported missing Saturday evening. However, because of the riot that broke out on Oxford Street the London police said it would have been an impossible task to find Jeff Lee’s corpse, before Tuesday morning. Initially it was suspected that the man had been killed during the riot, but Springfield University Hospital could after their post-mortem examination announce that he died just few hours before the riot. They also announced that the cause of death was a stab wound to his throat. “This was a very violent and cold blooded killing, the perpetrator must have been in a very angered state to deliver such a wound “ - said Dr Martin to The Local. The London police are investigating on a theory that there are more suspects who are involved in the killing as recently found evidence points towards more than one person. A female eyewitness has also informed the police that just before the riot she saw two or...
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...love, murder and history, against the backdrop of an ever-changing Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four African-American boys were killed in the store Frank owned during the Watts Riots of 1965. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, Jackie tries to piece together the story of the boys’ deaths. In the process, she unearths the long-held secrets of her family’s history. Southland depicts a young woman in the process of learning that her own history has bestowed upon her a deep obligation to be engaged in the larger world. And in Frank Sakai and his African-American friends, it presents characters who find significant common ground in their struggles, but who also engage each other across grounds—historical and cultural—that are still very much in dispute. Moving in and out of the past—from the internment camps of World War II, to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s, to the streets of Watts in the 1960s, to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s—Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms. Nina Revoyr is the author of The Necessary Hunger ("Irresistible."—Time Magazine). She was born in Japan, raised in Tokyo and Los Angeles, and is of Japanese and Polish-American descent. She lives and works in Los...
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...1. Celcil Foster’s thesis was to show that racism is still alive and well, and it often goes un-noticed. He mentions the Rodney King verdict, and how it triggered the worst outbreak of violence since the Watts riots of 1965. The Rodney King riot started because Rodney King, an African American, was badly beaten by some officers of the Los Angeles Police Department. Rodney soon became a focal point showing how bad racial issues are. The public got angry about police brutality and racism, and some went around starting fires, damaging and breaking into businesses and stealing merchandise. This caused many riots across the United States, and even one in Toronto, Ontario. 2. The first example Foster gives is when he visited Canada during the Montreal...
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...Diary Entries Week 4 1960s Diary Entries Witness and store own to Watts Riots Aug. 13, 1965 I am fearful of the riots that have been growing now for a couple of days. They are getting more violent and have heard that they are looting stores. I am more afraid that they may try and get into my store and take everything. There are signs that there was some looting already on this street. There are many youths, standing on the streets still littered with broken glass and debris from the previous night’s melee. The crowd stared unsuspectingly at me whenever I come out of my store to gauge how things are. Around 4 pm a car had stopped in the street, blocking traffic after being hit repeatedly by rocks and bricks. A police car raced down the street by my store, rounding up three youths. A car drove by a short time later driven by a white man and I heard someone yelled out, “It’s a white man, get him.” A barrage of bricks and rocks struck the car, knocking out windows and leaving ugly dents. The driver lowered his head from sight and accelerated. Thank goodness he was able to get away. Aug. 14 1965 Today is not looking any better than it did yesterday. More and more people are loitering in the streets. I went to go outside and heard remarks that maybe they should start looting the stores. Well I rushed back inside and locked up. I had a gun under the register that I got out so I could scare of anyone who tried to break in. A short time later, a group of about 20...
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...The civil rights movement changed during the mid-1960's.The civil rights movement became a crisis when it went from demanding access to schools, voting booths and public facilities to economic disparities between whites and blacks. During the mid-1960's, economic problems became a priority of the civil rights movement. In northern ghettos, violence was focused on racial injustice and inequalities in jobs, housing and education. The end of legal segregation never solved this growing problem. The hostility of later race relations surfaced from many whites’ belief that blacks had gotten enough equality in civil and voting rights laws and didn't need anything else. On the other hand, while blacks were demanding for more government action because...
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