By Carla Woodson

Hello everyone. You may remember me from a recent episode of The Journey Show that focused on fashion. Gideon (the Traveler) tapped me to become a regular contributor to the Journey, and I was very much looking forward to covering a subject I'd recently become quite excited about: comic books.

But last week, hell broke loose, and I've spent the last few days stressed out and scared. So instead of comics, I want to tell you about the days that have rocked Los Angeles, an event that will go down in history.

Tensions reached their boiling point in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, just two hours' drive north of my home in San Diego. On August 11th, a mother and her two sons were arrested. Marquette Frye had been stopped by a CHP officer on suspicion of driving drunk in his mother's 1955 Cadillac. Ronald Frye, Marquette's brother and passenger, alerted their mother, Rena Price, that his brother had been stopped and the car was to be impounded. Price arrived at the scene and scolded her son, and things got a bit hairy. Someone got shoved, and another officer pulled a shotgun out. Crowds grew, and the situation intensified with people yelling at officers and throwing things at them. The Frye brothers and Ms. Price were arrested, yet the crowd stayed, enraged.

The next day, my great-aunt called up to tell us “If you see our city on the news, know we'll be ok.” Worried, I asked what happened, and my heart sank as she told me.

With crowds increasing in the area, on August 13th over 2,300 National Guardsmen were called in by the Chief of Police, William Parker, to break them up and help the police officers maintain some semblance of order. He likened the riots to an insurgency, and the Governor of our fair state, Pat Brown, said “law enforcement is confronting guerrillas fighting with gangsters.” Protesters continued to clash with the men in power, and in the evening, a death occurred: a Black person was shot during a shoot-out with Guardsmen, police, and the protesters. By that time, in my little area of San Diego, new riots began to rear their heads. Thankfully, they were small compared to the ones in Watts and other Southern California areas, but they were still terrifying.

In the Los Angeles area, law enforcement set up blockades in certain areas to protect people and property. The signs they erected were crude but effective.

More of the rioters, still incensed with the way they were being treated by the police and National Guardsmen, began to take their anger out on the firemen and ambulances being sent out. Streets and sidewalks were destroyed to give ammo for them to throw at the approaching vehicles. In some areas, white owned businesses and shops were burned and looted due to resentment over price disparity. Many (but not all) of the Black owned ones were spared and protected.

Chief Parker decided to enact a curfew to help settle things. Anyone in the surrounding area of Watts, and any other Black-majority area of Los Angeles, who was out of their home after 8pm would be arrested. Some 3,500 people were arrested for breaking that curfew. By Sunday August 15th, the riots were largely over, mostly due to this tactic.

Though there were 34 deaths, many as a result of police brutality, I derive great comfort from knowing that my family in the area were safe, just as they hoped they would be.

But Watts is only the beginning. Though the riots are a terribly fresh wound in our minds, and we know their immediate cause, the underlying fuel for that spark has been piling up for years. Many of the older people say it started because of events last year, with the repealing of the Rumford Fair Housing Act. The Rumford Fair Housing Act provided that landlords could not deny people housing due to ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status. The repeal of this Act kept Black people in Black-majority areas, and with no chance of upward mobility in terms of housing. It also affected where children could go to school, as well as many other socioeconomic disparities between Blacks and whites.

Others say it was due to police brutality and racial profiling. Marquette Frye was possibly targeted because he was a Black man in a nice, albeit older car. Too many Black men and women are harassed by police and it is very frustrating to witness, frustrating to be told from a young age how you have to go about your life so as not to have this happen to you, frustrating in general.

I have to hope that the events of last week, which were as much a rebellion as a riot, will shine a bright light on these endemic issues so that they can be addressed. I want to hope that one day, in the future, that we can live in unity, celebrating our differences and similarities. That Black people can go about their day without having racial epithets screamed at them, and without being harmed physically and mentally. 

I wanted to thank Gideon for giving me the opportunity of sharing this story with you all. For now, I'm going to try to read something to relax my mind. With luck, my next article will be the one I'd originally intended.

Be safe.