'An Outpost of Strength': the Los Angeles Times performs law and order versus chaos during the Watts Rebellion of 1965.

ON August 12, 1965 the Los Angeles Times ran a brief news item about a riot sparked by the arrest of Marquette Frye, an African American man stopped for speeding. (1) Pulled over by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in his neighborhood of Watts, Frye good-naturedly submitted to a sobriety test, but turned sour after his mother and brother arrived on the scene to witness his humiliation. Under the watchful gaze of a growing crowd, the Frye family became enmeshed in an altercation with the attendant white patrolmen, who promptly arrested them all. Calling for backup, the police then arrested several more onlookers who had entered into the fray. As the night drew on, the violence spread.

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Despite the involvement of 1000 people in Wednesday's rioting, the story didn't make the front page. It instead appeared on page three, alongside an item about the dangers lightning posed to drought-stricken Southern California. The accompanying photograph, a dramatic nighttime scene of lightning bolts racing toward a house, power lines and trees, ominously prefigured the forthcoming violence in Watts that was so blithely downplayed by the Times. As Times' patriarch Otis Chandler later put it: the Los Angeles Times was staunchly "a WASP paper." (2) An unidentified staff member, basking in the racism his anonymity allowed him, bluntly revealed the paper's attitude toward black Angelenos during the 1960s. Apparently strife in Watts was routinely dismissed at the Times as the makings of "a bunch of black jigaboos." (3) Whether expressed with a veneer of politesse or vulgarly proclaimed, the racist sentiments of the Times would affect their coverage of what was then the worst riot in American history.

The five days of rioting dubbed the "Watts Rebellion" resulted in the death of 34 people, over 1000 injuries and almost 4000 arrests. Extensive arson and rampant looting came with a price tag of 40 million dollars. (4) The dazzling display of heat lightning given prominence on August 12 soon yielded to photo-coverage of the arson that swept through Los Angeles' poverty-stricken terrain. The fear provoked by drought had nothing on the fear provoked by the specter of young black men chanting, "Burn, baby burn!" Photographs taken from street-level documented firefighters struggling against out-of-control fires, while aerial photographs further testified to the fragility of Los Angeles' social order: blobs of black smoke marred the grid of the urban landscape. The editors of the Times had long fed the Chandler empire's self-satisfied view of Los Angeles as the ultimate dream town for white, affluent Protestants. The Watts Rebellion would, in retrospect, mark a turning point for the Times: the paper became increasingly liberal during the 1970s. Its riot coverage, however, could be characterized as the mutterings of someone having a nightmare yet somehow determined to control the terrible surreality of the dreamscape.

With the springtime influx of 200,000 U.S. troops into Vietnam and the dispatch of Marines to quell an uprising in the Dominican Republic, the United States' military interventions had become daily fare for the national papers. By August Los Angeles Times' readers had grown accustomed to representations of militaristic violence against racial others, albeit safely displaced onto foreign soil. War photography in the Times, such as August 12's front page image of a machine gun aimed toward snipers hidden in the Vietnamese landscape (taken from a military helicopter), now gave way to images of armed National Guardsmen and police officers patrolling the streets of Watts (Fig. 3). In place of patriotic depictions of wounded American soldiers, the Friday, August 13 edition of the Times offered a front page diptych of a white policeman being treated for injuries "suffered when his patrol car was stoned by the mob." The accompanying article told of "bands of Negro youths and adults" who "roamed the turbulent neighborhoods." (5) Looted rifles and machetes, chillingly reminiscent of the Viet Cong, were now in the hands of ghetto folk. Saturday's front page photo completed the Vietnam-Watts circuit. Captioned "Warlike Scene," John Malmin's now iconic image of National Guardsmen posted at even intervals along a nighttime street dominated the page as the banner screamed "GUARD MOVES IN." If Friday's injured policeman called for sympathy, then Saturday's deployed guardsmen offered reassurance. The formal logic of Malmin's picture restored the orderly urban grid so rudely disrupted by images of fire, billowing smoke, and angry young black men running in the streets. Outlined in the halo of streetlamps, the guardsmen resembled pieces on a chessboard, or actors in a tableau vivant of war.

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August 15, Sunday's paper greeted readers with the spectacle of armed white guardsmen and police arrayed in a strange chorus-line as they strode down Avalon Boulevard, in what the Times described as a "sweep and clear" formation. Front row coverage of the performance being played out in the East Asian theater of war--the cold turned hot war against communism--had been temporarily supplanted by intensive coverage of racialized civil revolt. Like the opposing rictuses of sorrow and laughter emblazoned on the theatrical masks of the ancient Greeks, the chaos of revolt versus the order of law was being staged for the readers of the Los Angeles Times.

The term "staged" is used deliberately here, and the aforementioned theatrical analogies operate as more than a rhetorical conceit. Obviously, the Watts Rebellion was real. Yet the structural and metaphorical similarity between the war photography and riot photography displayed in the Los Angeles Times, coupled with the militaristic phrasing of certain headlines, transformed the terrible reality of the rioting into a socially and politically conservative construct that equated poor urban African Americans with communist Asians. The beautiful rigidity of a machine gun thrust into mid-air over the dense Vietnamese jungle morphed into the beautiful rigidity of national guardsmen posted to the asphalt jungle of the Southern Californian ghetto. Articles and editorials that had previously demonized the North Vietnamese now assailed the "hoodlums" of Watts.

While the Vietnam War has long become accepted as a failed war (to the point that the current Iraqi conflict can be glibly referred to as "another Vietnam"), most Americans in 1965 strongly supported the war. The build up of troops in April produced what historians and political scientists term the "rally around the flag response." (6) In 1965, even the American intelligentsia temporarily accepted East Asia as a threat. (7) It would take several years before the public could conceive of the Vietnamese conflict as a war fought by lower income whites and minorities while the middle and upper classes went to college. (8) Moreover, white Americans, generally conservative, disapproved of public outbursts that violated social norms, whether it was in protest against the war or in favor of civil rights. The news media both turned a contemptuous eye on war protestors and fell in line with the government's official war policy. The news media criticized the war only after public perception began to shift, and after certain military officials openly disagreed with policy. (9)

After the riot was over, sociologists found that black Angelenos expected whites to be more aware of and more sympathetic to their plight, while whites professed to a hardening of their views of blacks' demands. (10) But even given this perceptual gap, and the climate of fear among whites during and after the rioting, the Times' coverage was outrageously conservative. Every front-page photograph from August 13 through August 16 was presented strictly from the perspective of the law, never from that of the rioters. Not one photograph, even the interior images, depicts the law in an unsympathetic manner. In contrast, the Chicago Tribune's front page photo of Sunday, August 15 was a shocking image of a "blood-soaked suspect" who had just been "shot by police." (11) The Los Angeles Times visually muzzled the rioters by banishing them from the paper's most important page. To recap: Friday's injured white police officer receiving medical treatment was succeeded by Saturday's photograph of the guard enforcing curfew, which was followed by Sunday's guardsmen and policemen striding down the streets. All visible faces were white. The Times' social conservatism goes beyond a preservation of social order to a pitting of the interests of whites against blacks; and the middle against the working and lower classes.

The Times' law and order bias was completely enmeshed in its racially biased representation of the city's black minority. Years of blatant neglect of the black community warped its coverage of the riot. (12) Certain articles by the all-white staff acknowledged the difficulties facing black Angelenos, but were not adequately supported with images. For example, the page three headline for August 13, "Negro Heroism Saves Whites in Riot Danger" had no accompanying image. The mere presence of this story represents an effort to remind white readers that not all of Los Angeles' black population was out to get them. (However, the editors quickly succumbed to sensationalism: Saturday's front page headline blared "'Get Whitey,' Scream Blood-Hungry Mobs.") Given that the Times identified and interviewed the valiant citizens in question, it should not have been out of the question to include their photographs. After all, the Times had never shied away from including pictures of smiling white locals. Instead the Times flanked "Negro Heroism" with two separate images of disgruntled residents. The shirtless black man pictured next to "Residents Put Blame on Police for Uproar" would likely not be credible to middle class eyes of 1965. More striking was the image of an injured white city official "seen through the smashed windshield" of his vehicle. The radial pattern of the shattered glass and bandaged head of the bureaucrat undercut the black "heroism" documented in the article below this picture. One reads about black heroism, but sees the fruits of black lawlessness.

Given the conservative history of the Chandler-owned Los Angeles Times, it is hardly shocking that its coverage of rioting African Americans would favor the forces of law. What is fascinating to parse out are the ways in which the Times staged this tableau of "Law and Order" by building upon existing photo and news coverage of Vietnam, and by playing upon white peoples' (and arguably middle class blacks') existing fears of and stereotypes about poor blacks. (13) How did the Los Angeles Times, through images, walk a fine line between exalting the order of law and fanning the flames of white hysteria?

First let's rewind the microfilm reel to Thursday, August 12, and sample the Hollywood flavor of the Times' coverage of the issue of African American voting rights. (In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed into law the Voting Rights Act.) While Wednesday night's rioting had warranted only cursory attention, greater space was allotted to "Negro Voters Sign Up Smoothly in Louisiana: But Whether their Smiles Will Fade Later is Question Back of Federal Registration." As reporter Paul Weeks later revealed, the Times was extremely parsimonious in its coverage of the black community. Weeks' series on the Civil Rights Movement (begun in 1963) had been canceled in 1964 when his editors reassigned him to the "War on Poverty" beat, explaining that the paper couldn't cover both topics because it would entail disproportionate coverage of black issues. (14) Perhaps that's why "Negro Voters" opens like Gone with the Wind: One Hundred Years Later: "The toothless old Negro smiled broadly as he walked along the crowded, steaming hallway shaking every hand he could reach." This sentence fits in neatly with the Hollywood and white American fantasy of African Americans: smiling, grateful and harmless. The article's second sentence even dishes up a "Negro" dialect: "'It's jus' great,' he said as he walked toward the entrance way in the manner of a man who had won a rare and wondrous prize."

"Negro Voters" was the Times' swan (or should I say "Swanee River"?) song of shuffling, head scratching affability. On Wednesday night in Watts this Hollywood view of the "Negro" had gone up in flames and would burn for five days straight. Focusing on the backward South instead of the trouble on its own doorstep, the article indicates the depths of the Times' willful blindness with regard to Los Angeles' imminent racial crisis.

During the worst of the rioting, this notion of the harmless and affable old Negro would prove to be unsustainable, although the Times returned to it with gusto during the last two days of riot coverage. Below Monday, August 16's banner "Compassionate Scene" on page three, (Fig. 2) the Times gives us a ghetto version of the Boy Scout helping the old lady cross the street. This time it's a white National Guardsman in the role of protector as a frail, elderly black woman smiles gratefully. The image both represents the National Guard in a favorable light and implicitly warns the reader that ghetto occupants fall into two categories, either good or bad. The bad kind are young men running through the streets with loot, screaming "burn baby burn!" (15) The good kind are the elderly God-fearing Negroes who would never dream of causing any trouble. In image after image, the viewer has beheld the "forces of law" armed and in action. Not until day five of the Times' coverage--when the rioting was all but over--does the viewer glimpse the law's gentler, protective side. The photograph manages to both be a public relations piece for the law, and a nostalgic fantasy about the bygone benevolent order of race relations.

Between August 12 and August 17, the LAPD, the National Guard and the Los Angeles Times all worked to contain the flames of rebellion spreading throughout Watts. On Chief William Parker's and Governor Pat Brown's command, the police and guard enforced a curfew, arrested or shot rioting suspects, and searched for snipers attacking police, firemen and civilians. The Times worked the court of public opinion by offering photographs and news coverage sympathetic to the siege-state mentality of the powers that be. Saturday's and Sunday's front page headlines spat out anti-white invective attributed to the rioters: "'Get Whitey,' Scream Blood Hungry Mobs" and "'Burn, Baby Burn' Slogan Used as Firebugs Put Area to Torch." The authenticity of quotation marks and repeated use of black street vernacular left no room for doubt: the rioters were young, black and their anger was directed at whites.

On Sunday's front page Robert Richardson breathlessly announced that the "rioters were burning their city now, as the insane sometimes mutilate themselves." This melodramatic disavowal of the economic and social factors underlying the rioting in favor of pathologizing the rioters represents an about-face of the previous day's background piece on the area's terrible living conditions. "Scene of Rioting is Substandard District" reeled off poor housing statistics, dropout rates, divorce rates and crime rates. Eighty-seven percent of the area's homes were of pre-War construction. Victims of "redlining," the practice of denying mortgage and equity loans based on an area's racial or ethnic make-up, the black homeowners of Watts faced discrimination by Los Angeles banks. Moreover, Proposition 14 had recently repealed the 1963 Rumford Fair Housing Act. Passing by three million votes, Proposition 14 sent a chilling message to black Californians.

In Watts, absentee landlords owned two-thirds of the area's residential properties. Forced into overcrowded, overpriced, substandard housing, Watts residents--who made up almost one-sixth of Los Angeles County's African American population of 523,000--shopped at largely white-owned local stores, which sold substandard, overpriced goods and food. Because the streetcar industry had gone belly-up by 1961, many people in Watts were forced to rely on costly, crowded buses.

For many residents, contact with whites was limited to the LAPD. During the two years leading up to the riot, police violence had exploded. Police officers fatally shot 60 African Americans, 27 of whom were shot in the back or side. Twenty-five of these people were unarmed. (16)

The conditions were obviously ripe for conflict, but for two years the Times had ignored the warnings of Paul Weeks, the only reporter who had noted the mounting tension. (17) When the inevitable finally occurred, the Times confined its coverage of residents' accusations of police harassment and frustration about housing to its interior pages. Its editorial board fueled white panic by running hysterical editorials on its front page. August 14's "Anarchy Must End," fittingly placed below Malmin's iconic image of National Guardsmen standing watch at night, cried that "[t]errorism is spreading" and warned that "the sternest possible steps must be taken to quell the madness before mob violence becomes mass murder." (18)

While "white panic" is a fitting characterization of the sentiments trumpeted by the Times' all white editorial board, Robert Richardson--credited with "Get Whitey" and "Burn, Baby Burn"--was black. The Times editors, who had nary a black reporter on their staff, eagerly prefaced Richardson's debut article of Saturday, August 14 with the information that "Robert Richardson, 24, a Negro, is an advertising salesman for the Times. He witnessed the rioting in South Los Angeles for nearly eight hours Thursday night." Richardson had approached the city editors with the idea of his phoning in nightly reports because the all-white staff could not venture into the riot areas after dark. The "re-write men" then transformed Richardson's excited phone calls ("They're shouting 'burn, baby burn!'") into front page news. As Bob Gottlied and Irene Wolt have documented in their history of the Times, the editors repaid Richardson for his service with a juicy promotion to staff reporter. (19) Richardson's byline also appeared in the Chicago Tribune's and the New York Times' coverage of the riots. Richardson's meteoritic rise as the Los Angeles Times' first black reporter was quickly succeeded by his fall: arrested for breaking and entering within a few months of his promotion, Richardson lost his job.

The Times co-opted Richardson to lend support to its view that the rioters were mindless troublemakers or criminals. The hyperbolic language and near hysterical tone of certain headlines and articles courted the fears of middle class readers--and increased the paper's circulation. At the same time, other headlines and images emphasized military and police might. (Saturday's "21,000 Troops, Police Wage Guerrilla Warfare: 8 p.m. Curfew Invoked" encapsulated both approaches.) The tension between social/political conservatism and the bottom-line value of sensationalism becomes increasingly evident when following the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the Watts Rebellion. Riot-related images showcase an armed and confident police and military presence, aggressive without being brutal. "Forces of Law Move In," a two-page photo-spread published on Sunday, August 15, includes a raid on a warehouse and National Guardsmen sitting on the sidewalk by a jeep under the Times' news banner reading, "An Outpost of Strength." It also includes a photograph of two black men, one shirtless, calmly leaning against their automobile as helmeted patrol officers briskly frisk them for weapons. The caption claims that, "Hoodlums in autos widened danger area as violence continued into fourth night." Neither caption nor image confirms the presence or absence of weapons. The word "Hoodlums" ascribes a mindless criminality to the alleged perpetrators that other more neutral words would not (say, for example, "looters" or "rioters."). Lacking the social decorum of a shirt, the driver's naked torso reinforces the lawlessness implied by "hoodlum."

A United Press International (UPI) photograph on the opposite page of the layout shows a young black man gripped in a chokehold by a white officer (Fig. 1). Both men present calm visages to the camera; the suspect's hat remains firmly planted on his head. The image seems to be more an illustration of the LAPD's chokehold maneuver than an action photograph of a violent rioter brought under control. The caption states, "A police officer subdues a looting suspect before hauling him off for booking ..." In this "Outpost of Strength" there is no need to lose one's cool: lawmen and perpetrators proceed in an orderly fashion.

Compare this to a photograph of a similar arrest, not published in the Times. Also a UPI photo, this image taken on August 13, 1965 depicts a shirtless black youth, his face contorted in pain, being shoved into a squad car by two policemen, one of whom carries his legs, the other of whom carries him--solely by the neck--using the chokehold maneuver (Fig. 4). The benign chokehold showcased in the Times has been replaced with something much more violent and sinister. The huge white forearm across the youth's throat blocks his air passage; the ham--like fist clutching the back of the youth's neck painfully forces his head back. The arching neck, naked torso and suspended body of the youth recall lynching photographs; the white forearm and knotted fist of the officer becomes the hangman's noose. The officer's free hand is pulling open the car door: it is inescapable to the viewer that the black youth must be in considerable pain and unable to breathe. Did he survive? Dark splotches appear on his pants: are they bloodstains? The photograph is visual evidence that certain allegations of police brutality during the rioting must be true. It is a precursor to the Rodney King beatings of 1992, and testimony to the controversial nature of the well-known LAPD chokehold maneuver that came under fire after the Rodney King incident.

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But no such images appeared in the Times, which instead repeatedly quoted white and black "experts" about the "Negro Family Failure" and "Self-Hatred" as responsible for the "Outburst." Both of these headlines appeared in the August 14, "Get Whitey" edition, and thus must be considered to be crucial in setting the tone of the Times coverage. What if the Times had run the violent UPI photo, or one like it, next to "Get Whitey" on the front page, or next to "Feelings Behind Rioting Analyzed" on page three? Or even the day before next to "Residents Put Blame on Police for Uproar?" Recall that the "Residents" page showed an artful photo of a white bureaucrat behind a shattered windshield, and some half-dressed black men gathered on the street. If the Times had presented a more balanced visual record of the rioting, would white readers have rushed out so quickly to buy guns? (20) The Times did not acknowledge its own role in building what it described as "waves of fear." It did report Chief Parker's endorsement of white citizens' gun buying spree and Governor Brown's discouragement of this action. (An historical footnote: Brown lost the next election to Ronald Reagan, while Parker remained in power.)

On Tuesday morning August 17, Times' readers finally awoke to good news. Saturday's shocking banner, "21,000 Troops, Police Wage Guerrilla Warfare: 8 p.m. Curfew Invoked" had been replaced with the words most Angelenos wanted to read, "Brown Declares: Riot is Over." As with preceding disasters in U.S. history, and setting the tone for the urban turbulence to come during the "long, hot summers" of the 1960s, Tuesday's paper conveyed the end through images of ruin. The National Guard had finally departed. Who remained were two black ladies, properly attired in blouses, skirts and hats, picking their way around the rubble, returning to the necessities of life (Fig. 5). One lady carried a handled shopping bag, the other--her obvious elder--walked behind her, stoop-shouldered, heavy-set and plodding. As they walk away from the camera, a patrol car cruises past on the opposite side of the street. Minimal police presence and God-fearing ladies offer reassurance that order has been restored even though the ghetto is now in ruins. Notably absent are black men and youth. Even in defeat they cannot be shown on the front page.

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The Los Angeles Times' obvious comfort with racial tropes considered non-threatening to whites of the period finds full expression within the paper. While page one boldly estimates damage at a staggering $200 million, a single photograph on page 24 holds out hope that enterprising blacks will recover from the carnage. "Back in Business" proudly showcases "Tony's Shoe Shine Stand" as a model for black Angelenos to emulate: a customer, perched on a chair elevated on a makeshift stand in the rubble at the edge of a sidewalk, watches as Tony shines his shoes. Head bowed, Tony stoops over his client's shoes, intent on his work. Jumbled detritus discarded by fire and disdained by looters surrounds the men. The setting is one of abject poverty and misery, yet the upbeat caption tells us that even victims of disaster need a good shoeshine. The Times had finally found some black men it could embrace. Like the "old Negro" voter and church ladies, the black shoe shine man fits into the Hollywood view of the "Negro." Back in business, indeed.

The Times' photo attempts to recreate the pre-riot social order. However, this image is rather like the shoe-stand carved out of the rubble: it emblematizes something not meant to last. This image is a shining gem among the rubble of words already pointing to the discordant future: "BLACK MUSLIMS Continued from Third Page" and "'Guidebook' Tour: Police Break Muslim Taboo, Enter Temple." The former article manages to imply that "Black Muslims" had a hand in the rioting without actually stating so, while the latter article gives a "tour" of the "fanatical Black Muslims" mosque shot up by police, who had received an anonymous tip that weapons were cached there. (No weapons were found and the LAPD eventually had to release the men without charge.) Like the police, white readers could now force their way into the inner sanctum of a black and Muslim-only holy space. Despite the reporter's hushed promise of great things: "The officers never had been inside the temple, but they knew what to look for," the article is merely a recitation of the scattered remnants left around a defiled religious institution: spilled ink, the discarded shoes removed by the mosque's supplicants, broken chairs and charred paper. It was a scene more in keeping with the post 9/11 world, than of the Vietnam War era. The malicious tongue-in-cheek humor of "'Guidebook' Tour" betrayed a viciousness not even allowed to creep into the Times' more belligerent expressions towards the rioters (because most of them were presumably Christian, while Muslims in 1965 were beyond the pale). Like the Viet Cong, militant black Muslims promised to provide mainstream Americans with a new, alien and frightening foe. While the Times' treatment of the mosque's raid by the LAPD anticipated the news media's disgusted take on "Black Power" during the second half of the 1960s, the Times' photo of Tony's Shoe Shine Stand took one last, loving look at the past now literally in ruin.

NOTES

1. "1,000 Riot and Battle Police in Watts Area," Los Angeles Times (August 12, 1965).

2. Bob Gottlieb and Irene Wolt, Thinking Big: the Story of the 'Los Angeles Times', its Publishers, and their Influence on Southern California (New York: Putnam, 1977), p. 343.

3. Ibid., p. 377.

4. Violence in the City--An End or a Beginning? A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots. December 2, 1965.

5. Jack McCurdy & Art Berman, "Police Move against Mobs; Shops Looted; Shootings Reported," Los Angeles Times (August 13, 1965), p. 1.

6. William L. Lunch and Peter W. Sperlich, "American Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam," The Western Political Quarterly. 32.1 (March 1979), pp. 21-44.

7. John E. Mueller, "Trends in Popular Support for the Wars in Korea and Vietnam," The American Political Science Review. 65.2 (June 1971), pp. 358-75.

8. Ebony didn't probe the racial make-up of the ground troops until 1968. As later research would show race and education would affect attitudes toward the war, but in 1965 blacks and whites didn't noticeably deviate in their perception of the conflict. Scott Sigmund Gartner and Gary M. Segura, "Race, Casualties, and Opinion in the Vietnam War," The Journal of Politics. 62.1 (February 2000), pp. 115-146.

9. Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986; Melvin Small, Covering Dissent: The Media and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.

10. The literature documenting this racial divide after Watts is mountainous. See David Sears classic text, The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Violence and the Watts Riot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

11. Chicago had its own not to contend with during the same period. Perhaps the LAPD's troubles mitigated those of Chicago's white establishment represented by the conservative Tribune.

12. Paula B. Johnson, David O. Sears, John B. McConahay, "Black Invisibility, the Press, and the Los Angeles Riot," The American Journal of Sociology. 76.4 (January 1971), pp. 698-721.

13. Digging into the Times coverage reveals intra-racial tensions rooted in the class differential. One story reports that after black ministers rescued two badly beaten white men, the furious "crowd called the ministers hypocrites. They cursed them and spit on them." Another article soberly noted that "churches were not spared." Dick Gregory, described as a "Negro comedian" and "hero of the civil rights movement," was shot in the thigh when he attempted to "calm the mobs." Other reported comments by middle class blacks and community leaders indicate conflicting attitudes toward the civil unrest. Charles Hillinger, "Burning Buildings Symbolize Spirit of Hate Underlying Violent Rioting," Los Angeles Times (August 14, 1965), p. 2.

14. Gottlieb and Wolt, p. 345.

15. "Boy's Booty," photographed by Webster Thompson, Los Angeles Times (August 14, 1965), p. 3.

16. Anthony Oberschall, "The Los Angeles Riot of August 1965." Social Problems. 15.3 (Winter, 1968), pp. 322-341. Oberschall's trenchant analysis of LAPD-Watts relations is a more reliable source for information than the official inquiry, the so-called McCone Commission, which let the police off the hook.

17. Gottlieb and Wolt, pp. 343-344.

18. Editorial, "Anarchy Must End," Los Angeles Times (August 14, 1965), p. 1.

19. Ibid., pp. 378-79.

20. Harry Trimborn, "Fear of More Violence Causes Rush for Guns," Los Angeles Times, (August 15, 1965), C.

WEENA PERRY is living in Jersey City where she is working assiduously on her dissertation, "America in Ruins: Making National Meaning from Images of Urban Destruction."