RUNNING HEAD: Watts and the 1965 Los Angeles riots
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On Wednesday, August 11, 1965, Marquette Fry, a 22-year old Black resident of
the South-Central section of Los Angeles, had a few drinks, known at the time as
“screwdrivers”—a vodka and orange juice mix—while visiting an acquaintance. Toward
the end of the day he decided to return back home, situated about 2 miles south of Watts,
at the time a preponderantly Black area of Los Angeles. His driving was quite erratic. In
fact, his sense of direction was so bad it made other motorists nervous. One of them, also
a Black resident of South Central, tipped off Lee Minikus, a California Highway Police
patrolman. Fry was stopped just two blocks away from his home, at the corner of the
116
th
Street and Avalon Blvd. As back-up police cars arrived at the scene, Fry’s
neighbors or random pedestrians stopped by what seemed to had become a little bit of an
event. Here, Fry exchanged for a while humorous one-liners with the police. The lively
exchange seemed to lead to the peaceful and final arrest of the motorist and to the
impounding of his car. The events took, however, a dramatic turn when Fry’s mother,
warned by the neighbors that her son was in trouble, arrived at the scene. She vigorously
scolded her son for driving the car inebrietated. Probably to show his mother that he is
not a child anymore, Marquette became un-cooperant with the police. He lost his temper
and started to resist the officer’s attempt to restrain and put him in the car. A scuffle with
the police followed. This instantaneously sparked in the crowd memories of a long
history of past and present police injustice and brutality. The crowd surrounded the police
officers, whose number escalated as the situation became tenser. Soon, the issue was not
Fry anymore. It was the raw confrontation between a crowd of about 1,000 Black
residents of the area and the symbols of the White establishment of the city. The crowd
started throwing empty bottles, sticks and stones at the retreating police cars. Once the
Convention