High temperatures, poor living conditions, low employment rates, racial tensions, and police brutality all lead to the Watts riots or Watts uprisings. Book Referenced in video can be found here in paperback and hardcover: Burn Baby Burn: The Los Angeles Race Riot, August 1965 by Jerry Cohen and William S. Murphy Email me at Historywithnochaser@gmail.com Fb messenger at Nico Boom Boom Jefferson

1965 THROWBACK: “MLK GOES TO WATTS AFTER RIOTS”

On 17 August 1965, Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the riots. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his growing conviction that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) should move north and lead a movement to address the growing problems facing black people in the nation’s urban areas. While deploring the riots and their use of violence, King was quick to point out that the problems that led to the violence were ‘‘environmental and not racial. The economic deprivation, social isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair of thousands of Negroes teeming in Northern and Western ghettos are the ready seeds which give birth to tragic expressions of violence’’ (King, 17 August 1965). Although California Governor Edmund Brown hoped King would not go to Watts, King went to support those living in the ghetto who, he claimed, would be pushed further into ‘‘despair and hopelessness’’ by the riot (King, 17 August 1965). He also hoped to bolster the frayed alliance between blacks and whites favoring civil rights reform. He offered to mediate between local people and government officials, and pushed for systematic solutions to the economic and social problems plaguing Watts and other black ghettos.