The headline reads: On Wednesday, 11 August 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old black man, was arrested for drunk driving on the edge of Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. The ensuing struggle during his arrest sparked off 6 days of rioting. Looting was rampant. All day Friday the riots intensified, prompting the California lieutenant governor to call in the National Guard. By Saturday night a curfew had been set.
FAST FORWARD:
The headline reads: On Saturday, August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, and 18 year old black man was fatally shot in Ferguson, MO. Missouri National Guard soldiers sent by the governor began to arrive on a hot and humid Monday afternoon, hours after earlier policing efforts failed to quell violence related to ongoing protests. The curfew was in effect between midnight and 5 a.m. on Sunday and Monday following looting and other vandalism on Friday night. But the past two nights saw violent clashes between protesters and police in the hours just before the curfew took effect.
Forty Nine years almost to the day, we’re seeing the same headlines. For me, this is a stark realization that as a people , as a nation, we have not moved the needle. Law enforcement is still harassing and killing our black men. Our people are still reacting with violence, looting and unfocused chaos! What did the riots in Watts accomplish 49 years ago? Did all that took place in Watts change the situation? Unemployment was high, there was no hospital, and the police force was mostly white. Today most of the population of Watts is Latino with many residents from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although the population has changed, many of the issues of poverty, alienation and discrimination still plague the community today. The people changed, the process remains the same.
As we see this scenario again being played out in Ferguson, I give you the words of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King.
Malcolm X states: “You’ve got some Gestapo tactics being practiced by the police department in this country against 20 million black people, second class citizens, day in and day out – not only down South but up North. Los Angeles isn’t down South. Los Angeles isn’t in Mississippi.
King asked an audience: ‘‘What did Watts accomplish but the death of thirty-four Negroes and injury to thousands more? What did it profit the Negro to burn down the stores and factories in which he sought employment? The way of riots is not a way of progress, but a blind ally of death and destruction which wrecks its havoc hardest against the rioters themselves’’
How far have we come? And where do we go from here?
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