ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the wave of urban riots that occurred in predominantly African-American neighborhoods during the 1960s. These events marked the twentieth century's high point of racial tension and civil disorder in the United States. An enduring irony of the 1960s is that the riots broke out just as the political system, in response to a nonviolent campaign for change, finally renewed the civil rights that had been promised 100 years earlier. The riots came soon after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which targeted discrimination in labor markets, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which sought to reverse the disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South. Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the period's third major piece of civil rights legislation, soon after the massive outbreak of riots in the wake of Martin Luther King's murder.
