Fire this time : the Watts Uprising and the 1960s
In August 1965 the predominantly black neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles erupted in flames and violence following an incident of police brutality. This is the first comprehensive treatment of that uprising. Property losses reached hundreds of millions of dollars and the official death toll was thirty-four, but the political results were even more profound. The civil rights movement was placed on the defensive as the image of meek and angelic protestors in the South was replaced by the image of "rioting" blacks in the West. A "white backlash" ensued that led directly to Ronald Reagan's election as governor of California in 1966. In Fire This Time Horne delineates the central roles played by Ronald Reagan, Tom Bradley, Martin Luther King, Jr., Edmund G. Brown, and organizations such as the NAACP, Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, and gangs. He documents the role of the Cold War in the dismantling of legalized segregation, and he looks at the impact of race, region, class, gender, and age on postwar Los Angeles. All this he considers in light of world developments, particularly in Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and Africa
Print Book, English, 1995
University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1995
443 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
9780813916262, 0813916267
31969082
Toward understanding
Rising up
Death in the afternoon, evening, and morning
Fire/guns
"The hearing children of deaf parents"
Black scare
Iron fist
The old leadership
The new leadership
The state and civil society
A class divided by race
Right, left, and center
Politics : local and beyond
Business
Representing rebellion
After the fire
Epilogue : the 1990s
Map of Watts and California on endpapers