by Paul D. Marks
I previously published this piece at SleuthSayers. But with everything happening in the country today I thought it worth another look. It’s mostly about a trip some friends and I took to Watts not long after the Watts Riots. It’s a day I remember well and that made a lasting impression on me. I don’t want to sound corny, but what I really got out of that experience is that we are truly much more alike than different. And I’m sad to see that it looks like we’ve taken some steps backward in how we relate to one another.
When people think of Watts, they think of the Watts Towers–and the Watts Riots of August, 1965. That year, while The Beatles sang about “Yesterday,” another chant went up in South Central Los Angeles.
1965: “Burn, baby, burn!” is the anthem that many remember the Watts Riots by. It is the chant shouted by people as the city burns. The spark that sets off the riots is a black man being stopped for a traffic ticket. Long-simmering frustration boils over and the city ignites. Thirty-four people are killed, a thousand-plus are wounded, and almost four thousand arrested. Tensions in Los Angeles are as high as the smoke rising from the smoldering city streets.
Los Angeles is burning.
1991: Another motorist is stopped for speeding and evading the police. His beatdown is caught on video:
1992: The cops accused of beating Rodney King are acquitted. People pour into the streets. Looting. Assault. Arson. Murder. Fifty-three dead. Twenty-three hundred injured and sixteen-hundred buildings damaged or destroyed.
Los Angeles is burning.
I visited Los Angeles in both ’65 and ’92. I remember the smoke, the fear permeating every quarter of the city.
During the Watts Riots, we felt lucky to watch it on TV and not be in the middle of it. My then-girlfriend’s cousin was a National Guardsman assigned to patrol Watts during the riots and what he saw was so horrible he never talked about it.
But I have a different memory of Watts. It isn’t of the riots, but occurred during another hot summer, not long after.
I met a boy named Walter in class. Unlike everyone else in the class and just about everyone in the school, he was black. And he wasn’t a local, but was on some kind of student exchange program from Jordan High in Watts.
I’m sure we were as much a curiosity to him as he was to us. After all, we were the privileged white kids and he was the angry young black man. Only he didn’t seem angry. He seemed like just another nice guy with glasses. He invited a group of us to come down and see where he lived: Watts. A word that sent shivers down a lot of Angelinos’ spines in those days.
We felt a little apprehensive about going down there, especially as Walter told us to come in the crappiest cars we had. No shiny new cars. There were six or eight teenage boys and girls in our little caravan of two crappy cars. But crappy in our neighborhood meant something different than it did in Walter’s.
Our caravan weaved its way through the Los Angeles streets until we became just about the only white faces to be seen. We finally came to Will Rogers Park (known today as Ted Watkins Park). Mind you, this is not the Will Rogers Park on Sunset where the polo ponies play on Sundays. This park is in the heart of South Central, and I can say that all of our hearts beat faster than normal.
We parked nearby and walked as a unit to the park, as if we were a military outfit. People looked at us–we didn’t look at them. But maybe because we looked like hippies and we were young, nobody bothered us.
We met Walter in Will Rogers Park in South Central Los Angeles and sat under a shady tree, a bunch of white kids and one black guy. We sat, rapping–in the vernacular of the time–talking about music and houses and politics. We stood out like the proverbial sore thumb and people started coming over. Big dudes, little dudes. Cool dudes. Girls. No one seemed to resent our being there. In fact, they seemed glad to have us. Glad to share with us and have us share with them. There was no sense of rancor or resentment. Just curiosity–a curiosity that went both ways. This was a time when people wanted to come together, not be separated. None of them knew Walter and they certainly didn’t know us. But they joined our group and we rapped on.
After a while we got up and played a game of pickup basketball; try doing that in cowboy boots.
Then Walter said, “You want to see where I live?”
Of course we did. So he took us to the projects–Jordan Downs. We drove past burned-out buildings and vacant lots that not so long ago had buildings on them. And we saw how the other half lived.
“It’s not the best place in the world to live,” Walter said. “But it could be a whole lot worse.”
Our last stop was a trip to the Watts Towers, those soaring spires of glass, steel, and concrete built by Simon Rodia. They are a monument to what anyone can do if they put their mind to it.
We finally returned to our cars. And, corny as it might sound, I think we all learned we’re more alike than different, with the same aspirations, hopes, and fears.
That day was one of the most memorable experiences of my life–one I wouldn’t trade for anything. It was a wonderful day and we all went home full of hope for the future. We just wanted to get to know each other. Ultimately, I think Rodney King had it right when he said, “Can we all get along?”
Why the hell can’t we?
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