August 11, 1965: The Watts Riot

August 11, 1965, 60 years ago: A race riot breaks out in Watts, in South Central Los Angeles.

Like the connected Brooklyn neighborhoods of Flatbush, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick and East New York, Watts had been a white and Jewish neighborhood before World War II. But when the returning veterans took advantage of housing opportunities to move to nicer places, poor black people moved in, and found it harder to move up. 

There had already been a black community in Los Angeles, having arrived there as a result of what's known as the Great Migration. In the 1910s and '20s, thousands of black people left the South, and headed for the industrial cities of the Northeast and the Midwest, and some went to Los Angeles, looking for jobs without segregation, with limited success.

Then came another migration, this time of white people out of the South. The Great Depression, its bank foreclosures on farms, and farms rendered useless by the Dust Bowl forced a lot of people out of the Southern States of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

These people, derisively nicknamed Okies and Arkies, headed west on U.S. Route 66, and looked for farm jobs in the interior of California. Some of them kept going and reached Los Angeles.

Ray Manzarek, keyboard player for the Los Angeles-based rock band The Doors, made the point that some of these migrants joined the Los Angeles Police Department, bringing their Southern attitude with them. This manifested itself in the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, when LAPD officers joined with white soldiers and sailors from the South, stationed in LA, to attack Mexican American teenagers wearing the fancy suits of the period.

As is so often the case, once a family enters law enforcement, it stays there, and the rednecks-turned-cops of 1940s L.A. had sons who became urban racist cops in the 1960s. And the already-present conservative oil and film industry executives of the city were all too happy to accept this.

By 1965, Southern California was more Southern than white liberal America realized, or perhaps was willing to admit. Indeed, to this day, many people, including LAPD officers, call Southern California "The Southland."

As with the race riots in Harlem and North Philadelphia the year before, and the Newark and Detroit in 1967, the event that sparked the Watts Riot was an act of white police brutality on a black person. 

On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, 21, was pulled over for perceived drunken driving. After he failed a field sobriety test, officers attempted to arrest him. He resisted arrest, and was hit in the face with a baton. 

A crowd of onlookers had gathered. As with the Newark Riot two years later, an erroneous belief that the situation was even worse then it was led to the start of civil unrest, which in this case lasted six days.

The riots were finally suppressed by the California National Guard, and led to 34 deaths, 3,438 arrests, and $40 million in property damage -- about $408 million in 2025 money.

Marquette Frye found it difficult to get a job after the riots, even using his mother's maiden name for a time, before he finally found a living as a motivational speaker, on the subject of civil rights. But his health was not good, and in 1986, only 42 years old, he died of pneumonia. He did not live to see the beating of Rodney King in 1991, the travesty of a verdict a year later, and the even worse race riots that followed that.

August 11, 1965 was a Wednesday. Actress Viola Davis was born.

August 28, 1964: The North Philadelphia Riot

August 28, 1964, 60 years ago: A race riot breaks out in North Philadelphia, lasting 3 days, and revealing to the nation a latent racism that had infected "The City of Brotherly Love," and the birthplace of the nation and its Constitution.

At the time, the population of Philadelphia was a shade over 2 million, making it the 4th-largest city in the country behind New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The city was about 65 percent white, 33 percent black, and almost no Hispanics or Asians lived there. About 2/3rds of the city's black population lived in North Philadelphia, with most of the rest in West Philadelphia.

But being "the Birthplace of Liberty" didn't help much. When Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947, it was the city's baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies, that offered the loudest and most noxious resistance. In 1950, the Phillies, with a young team known as the "Whiz Kids," became the last all-white team to win the National League Pennant. They didn't integrate until 1957, the last NL team to do so.

By 1964, the Philadelphia Police Department had made a conscious effort to hire black cops, and sending integrated patrol car units in black neighborhoods: One white uniformed officer, one black uniformed officer. And a civilian review board had been established to handle cases of police brutality. And with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 having just been passed, hopes were high.

But New York's Harlem had broken out in a race riot a few days before, following a case of police brutality. And it would be one of those that would spark the riot in North Philadelphia -- and another in Watts in Los Angeles the next year, and another on the East Side of Cleveland and another on the West Side of Chicago the year after that, and others in Newark and Detroit and other cities the year after that.

Still, this had been a good Summer for Philadelphia. There hadn't been much rain, the Jersey and Delaware beaches were clean in those days, and the Phillies were in first place. But things had already begun to go wrong on many fronts, and this riot was a convenient historical landmark.

On August 28, 1964, Odessa Bradford was driving her husband Rush Bradford, both of them black, and they started arguing. She pulled over at the corner of 22nd Street and Columbia Avenue. A police car pulled up to Ms. Bradford's car. Inside were black officer Robert Wells and white officer John Hoff. Ms. Bradford, still angry, began taking her anger out on the officers. They tried to remove her from her car. A man came to her aid by attacking the officers, and he and Ms. Bradford were both arrested.

As would later happen with Watts in 1965 and Newark in 1967, a rumor spread that a black person taken into custody by the police had been killed by them. In this case, the rumor was that it was a pregnant black woman, beaten to death. As with those two later cases, the rumor wasn't true, but by the time anyone found out, it was too late. Ms. Bradford was neither pregnant nor beaten, but she did say, "If that policeman had only treated me like a human being, none of this (rioting) would have happened."

Indeed, once she was released, Cecil B. Moore, President of the city's chapter of the NAACP, drove her around the neighborhood on a truck with a loudspeaker, allowing her to say, "I'm alive! I'm alive!" But it did no good.

I have looked for a reference as to whether Ms. Bradford is still alive, but I haven't found it. I have found 50th Anniversary articles on the riot from 2014, and none had an interview with her, so I suspect she was already dead by that point. Moore was elected to the City Council in 1976, and died in office in 1979. In 1987, Columbia Avenue was renamed Cecil B. Moore Avenue in his memory.

Cecil B. Moore

Moore's efforts were in vain. As with Harlem, many of the businesses in the mostly-black neighborhood were mostly-white-owned. (This led black business owners in later riots to paint "SOUL BROTHER" on their windows, in the hopes of their stores being spared.)

Depending on whose story you believe, nobody died in the rioting, or one person did. (If there was one, it was not Odessa Bradford.) There were 341 injuries, 774 arrests, and 225 stores damaged.

The epicenter, 22nd and Columbia, was about a mile south of Connie Mack Stadium, home of the Phillies since 1938, and home of the now-departed Philadelphia Athletics from 1909 to 1954. It had been named Shibe Park until 1953. The epicenter was also 7 blocks east of the site of the 1st home of the A's, Columbia Park, where they played from 1901 to 1908.

The Phillies were in Pittsburgh at the time of the riot, so it didn't result in any games being postponed. But it scared white fans, who may already have been wary of getting mugged coming down Lehigh Avenue out of the subway, or of their cars getting vandalized if they drove in.

The Phils had 15 home games left, not counting 2 rainout makeups, and the average attendance was 21,265. They really didn't have a home-field advantage the rest of the way, and this may have contributed to the 10-game losing streak that took them from being 6 1/2 games in 1st place with 12 games to go, to finishing 1 game out.

Philadelphia has had racial tension since. In 1971, Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo was elected Mayor on an openly racist platform. In 1975, despite having been caught in corruption, he ran for re-election on white backlash, and won again. He knew he couldn't run for a 3rd term, partly due to his 1977 overreaction to the black nationalist group MOVE. But the city's 1st black Mayor, Wilson Goode, had an even worse overreaction to them in 1985.

Today, the population of Philadelphia is about 1.6 million, ranking 6th behind New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston and Phoenix. It's about 40 percent black (mostly living west of Broad Street in North, West, and Southwest Philly), 37 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent Asian. It is more diverse than ever before. But that underlying tension remains.

July 18, 1964: The Harlem Race Riot

July 18, 1964, 60 years ago: A race riot begins in Harlem in Upper Manhattan, lasting 6 days. It begins "a chain reaction of riots" that would include, among others, North Philadelphia the next month, Watts in Los Angeles in 1965, Chicago and Cleveland in 1966, Newark and Detroit in 1967, and many American cities in 1968.

The riot began when a policeman, Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, shot and killed 15-year-old James Powell. Gilligan said that Powell had a knife. Powell was hardly a threat to Gilligan. He turned out to be the only death in the riots, but 118 people were injured, and 465 were arrested.

There had previously been riots in Harlem, America's best-known mostly-black neighborhood, in 1900, 1935 and 1943. This time, however, there were television cameras, and people saw things they had previously only read about in the newspaper. And, depending on their political views, they "saw what they wanted to see."

The event helped to mark 1964 as a turning point in New York. It included what turned out to be the last Pennant of the old Yankee Dynasty, and the opening of Shea Stadium, the new home of the Mets and the Jets. A World's Fair opened in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park in Queens, across Roosevelt Avenue from Shea.

It was the year that The Beatles excited the country, especially New York, as they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in Midtown Manhattan. And it was one of the last great years of the Broadway stage, as Fiddler On the Roof, Funny Girl, Golden Boy, What Makes Sammy Run? and Hello, Dolly! premiered.

But it was also the year of the most notable, if not the most damaging, of the Harlem riots, and also of the murder of Kitty Genovese in the Kew Gardens section of Queens. Two weeks after her murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 witnesses either saw her stabbing or heard her screams, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.

The murder and the race riot raised the idea that New York was in a crime wave that was getting out of control, and that idea lasted 30 years, until the 1994 Crime Bill.

45 vs. 46, 1814 in 2021, But 270 at 25 or 6 to 4

There was a time, early in his term, when it would be remarked by people in the media -- usually by someone who knew that Donald Trump was politically unqualified and mentally unfit for the Presidency, but couldn't bring himself or herself to say that Hillary Clinton was the better candidate -- when Trump would say something, and then, those media people would say, "Today is the day when Donald Trump 'became President.'"

Every time that happened, it was a loathsome thing to say, about a loathsome person.

Yesterday, January 6, 2021 -- as today's front page of the New York Daily News correctly says, echoing the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt following the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy" -- may well be the day that Joe Biden became the 47th President of the United States.

Because, for what he did yesterday, and for what he allowed to happen, there is still time for the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach the 45th, Trump, again, and for the Senate to remove him, making Vice President Mike Pence the 46th, and briefest-serving, President. 

That probably won't happen, leaving Biden to become the 46th President, and Trump will almost certainly get to serve out the last 315 hours of the term he never should have had. But he should be constitutionally removed for what he did yesterday.

(UPDATE: Congress did impeach him, but the trail didn't happen until after he was out of office. And the Cabinet, which could have invoked the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, Section 4, and removed Trump for Pence, did nothing.)

George W. Bush, a Republican and the 43rd President, would never have done this. Nor would his father, George H.W. Bush, a Republican and the 41st President. Nor would Ronald Reagan, the 40th President, a Republican, and the icon of "the conservative movement."

Even Richard Nixon, a Republican and the 37th President, as paranoid as he was, would have told his supporters to accept the results and move on, had he, instead of winning the 1972 election in a landslide, lost his bid for re-election -- or if he had lost the close election of 1968 that got him his first term. 

We know this because that's exactly what he did the first time he ran, in 1960, losing a close race. And then had to do on January 6, 1961 what Pence did last night; what Biden did on January 6, 2017; what Dick Cheney did on January 6, 2009; what Al Gore, who should have been doing so in his own favor, did on January 6, 2001; what Dan Quayle did on January 6, 1993; what Walter Mondale did on January 6, 1981; what Nelson Rockefeller did on January 6, 1977; and what Hubert Humphrey, who should have been doing so in his own favor, did on January 6, 1969: 

Take up one of his ceremonial roles as the Vice President of the United States, and stand before a joint session of Congress, and preside over the reading of the Electoral Votes that made someone else the official next President of the United States.

Had Nixon's supporters -- in the 1960 that we know, or in the 1968 or the 1972 that could have been -- tried something like what Trump's fans did anyway, he would have come forward and demanded that they stop.

No previous President, of any Party, no matter how bitter about himself, or the nominee of his Party, having lost the election, has ever done this. Donald Trump did this.

Anybody who still supported him yesterday morning, in spite of everything he had already done, and is not now saying, "Oh my God, this is too far, even for me, and I can't support him any further," you have lost the last of your right to complain when Democrats call you "deplorable" or worse. 

This is deplorable. It is inexcusable. And it is un-American.

What's more, it was futile. In spite of being pushed back by the insurrectionary riot at the Capitol, and a lengthy objection to the Electoral Votes of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, overnight, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. of the State of Delaware was confirmed by Congress -- as he previously had been by the voters and by the Supreme Court of the United States -- as the rightly-elected, and, now, the officially elected, next President of the United States.

It finally happened overnight, with the certification of the Electoral Votes of the State of Vermont giving Biden the 270 Electoral Votes he needed, at 3:34 AM -- as the rock band Chicago sang in 1970, in a song about being awake with writer's block in the middle of the night -- "25 or 6 to 4."

You would think that Republicans would stop doing something once they realized that it wasn't working, if for no other reason than inefficiency. Well, they still cut taxes for the rich, claiming that it will create jobs, when it kills jobs every time it's tried.

That's a good reason to vote an incumbent President out of office. But Donald Trump needs to be put in prison, for actual crimes, which have gotten people killed.

During yesterday's proceedings -- in which the thugs did what no other enemy, not even the British troops who burned the building on August 24, 1814, managed to do, which was use violence to bring the flag of an enemy nation inside the Capitol itself -- 4 more Americans died, for reasons that had nothing to do with COVID-19. Although you can be sure that many of the participants will die from it. It might have been the ultimate "super-spreader event."

(UPDATE: A 5th death, due to the attack, was later confirmed. There is no way to know how many of those people contracted COVID, or how many died from it.)

Here is the death toll:

* 9/11 attack, 2001: Osama bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans.

* Korean War, 1950-53: Kim Il-Sung killed 37,000 Americans.

* War of the American Revolution and War of 1812: King George III, and his Parliament, killed 40,000 Americans.

* Vietnam War, 1959-75: Ho Chi Minh killed 59,000 Americans.

* World War I, 1917-18: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany killed 116,000 Americans.

* World War II, Pacific Theater, 1941-45: Hideki Tojo killed 161,000 Americans.

* World War II, European Theater, 1941-45: Adolf Hitler killed 243,000 Americans.

* American Civil War: Jefferson Davis killed 365,000 Americans.

Donald Trump has killed 370,000 Americans. Compared to Trump, they are all beginners.

(UPDATE: As of August 2021, the number had risen to 630,000. By the end of 2023, to 1,165,000. There are 8 States with fewer people than that. It's more than all but 9 cities in the country: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego and Dallas. And it's more than all those other guys I mentioned, combined.)

Now, his revels will end. And he will face justice. For all that he has done. For all that he may have done. And for all that he has left.

315 hours in office. Tick tock, traitor.