ABSTRACT
The deadly killing fume, LeRoi Jones described, was evident in virtually every black slum in the country. By the time of the Watts riot in 1965, not only Los Angeles but every city where significant numbers of blacks lived had become a ticking timebomb of fear, frustration, and hatred. The problems and frustrations blacks had endured for generations were compacted in a highly volatile mass in the core of the nation’s major cities. Urban blacks were stirred less by the successes of the civil rights movement, which eluded them completely, than the savagery they witnessed inflicted by Southern whites, especially men who wore uniforms and badges. Later 1964 nearly ten thousand blacks rampaged through South-Central Los Angeles after police used what witnesses considered excessive force when arresting a drunk driver who was black. Although blacks of both sexes and all ages participated in the rioting, the typical rioter was a young, black male, aged fifteen to thirty, who was single.
