The Watts riots also exposed divisions within the black community. Martin Luther King came to town and realized within minutes that the chasm that separated white America from the black ghetto also divided him from angry blacks. ("Black", by the way, is a new word. In Newsweek, the preferred word is "Negro" and is used extensively.)
Inside a faded, second-story meeting hall, King was quickly ringed by 300 angry Negroes. "The people don't feel bad about what happened," one soliloquized. "They had nothing to lose. They don't have jobs, decent homes. What else could they do?" "Burn, baby, burn," someone whooped, to a chorus of laughing applause... King finally got the crowd under control, but he wound up canceling other stops in the riot zone for "security reasons." Watts, clearly, was a battleground lost.
Of course, it was all repeated in May of 1992 after the verdict in the Rodney King trial. That year 58 people died, the National Guard went back on patrol, and many of the same complaints and arguments heard at Watts were heard again.
This 1965 Newsweek marks one of the first national appearances of the 60s phrase "Burn, Baby, Burn." Made infamous by the riots, it was first used by a disc jockey known as Magnificent Montague when he was working in New York and Chicago in '63 and '64. He's shout it any time a piece of soul music got him excited, and he brought it with him to Los Angeles where his listeners appropriated it for the arson that marked the riots. During those terrible days, his station manager and even Mayor Yorty asked Magnficent Montague to give up his slogan. He did, at least while the fires were hot, changing to: "Have Mercy, Los Angeles!"
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Instant History is all about the "first draft" of history. For over seven decades, both Time and Newsweek have provided a weekly snapshot of our lives — sometimes profoundly insightful and other times woefully inadequate but, in all cases, before conventional wisdom has time to set in. Like today's blogs...
Bryce Zabel is a working screenwriter/producer whose current credits include The Poseidon Adventure and Blackbeard. He was chairman of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences from 2001-2003. He maintains two other blogs: his flagship News! — Views! — & Schmooze! as well as his film criticism blog Movies-Squared.
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Article comments
1 - Aaman
Nice write-up, thanks for the report
2 - wenstar107
If whites hadn't keep their foot on the necks of the black community we could have prospered just fine. Blacks were doing much better than poor whites after reconstruction then came the KKK and all their supporters, Jim Crow etc. why can't you people take the blame for your part in this. You give the Jews the Arabs land, we send them billions every year to run their apartied state. How much reparations have the Jews been paid by Germany? Aren't they still paying? I think so. America is the biggest hypocrite of all.