This week, 55 years ago, the Watts Uprising in Los Angeles began amidst a traffic incident with a black motorist and the California Highway Patrol in the South Central neighborhood of the bustling city.
Listen:https://bit.ly/WattsUprising55GandR
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrgQOeDt4PA&t=214s
By the end of the week, 34 had been killed, hundreds injured, over $40 million in property damaged and destroyed, 16,000 national guardsmen and police deployed to quell the uprising and a new chapter in black radicalism began. A popular saying after Watts and after similar uprisings in in Detroit and Newark, NJ in 1967 became popularized– “Burn, baby! Burn!”
Green and Red dives into the Watts uprising and talks about parallels to 2020’s summer uprisings.