The Watts Riots, The McCone Commission, And The 1992 Riots

The 1965 Watts riots were spurred by the arrest of Marquette Frye, an African American motorist. However, the combination of segregation, rising unemployment, and racial tension were the underlying reasons for the eruption of this rebellion. The watt riots lasted for six days which included the deaths of 34 people and priority damage that totaled an upwards of $40 million. But was their any change that came from this rebellion or was it just the beginning of racial violence and unrest?

The Watts riots were hold significance for the LA riots in 1992 because the injustices of police discrimination and residential segregation were thrown into the spotlight which led to further unrest and eventually, the 1992 riots. After the Watts riots came to an end, a commission under Governor Pat Brown was implemented in order to investigate the riots. Titled the McCone Commission, it released a report which identified some of the causes of the riots as high unemployment, poor schools, and inferior living conditions of African Americans in Watts. The commission posed solutions for these issues such as implementing preschool programs, improving police-community ties, increasing low-income housing, upgrading health care services and more. However, many of these recommendations were either enacted and scaled back, allowed to die out, or ignored altogether. The futility of the commission’s recommendations did nothing to ease the city’s racial climate. The continued injustices faced by the black population continued and the failure of the McCone Commission only showed more and more people the city’s lack of effort in creating change. The tension continued to rise after the Watts riots and fed into the 1992 riots.

Sources 

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-08/local/me-455_1_watts-riots

https://daily.jstor.org/did-the-1965-watts-riots-change-anything/

-Dante Luis-Brown