An altercation during the arrest of a Black motorist for drunk driving drew a crowd and quickly escalated into widespread violence, looting, and arson across Watts. Over six days, 34 people died, more than a thousand were injured, and roughly $40 million in property was destroyed. The riot forced national attention onto the economic despair and police mistreatment festering in America's segregated inner cities, just days after the Voting Rights Act was signed.
The spark was almost mundane: California Highway Patrol officers pulled over Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old Black man, on suspicion of drunk driving. A crowd gathered as the arrest grew physical, rumors spread that police had roughed up a pregnant woman, and by nightfall bottles and rocks were flying. What began as a single incident metastasized over the following days into arson, looting, and gun battles across a 50-square-mile swath of South Central Los Angeles.
Governor Pat Brown eventually deployed nearly 14,000 National Guard troops to seal off the area. When the smoke cleared six days later, 34 people were dead, over 1,000 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested, and more than 600 buildings damaged or destroyed.
The timing was bitterly ironic: Lyndon Johnson had signed the Voting Rights Act just days earlier, yet Watts made clear that legal enfranchisement alone could not address entrenched poverty, housing discrimination, and hostile policing. The McCone Commission that investigated the riot found high unemployment, poor schools, and inadequate city services, but few of its recommendations were meaningfully implemented, and similar uprisings would recur in Detroit, Newark, and other cities within two years.