Watts 1965: Marquette Frye's Traffic Stop and the Ignored McCone Report

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On Wednesday, August 11, 1965, California Highway Patrol officer Lee Minikus stopped 21-year-old Marquette Frye on suspicion of drunk driving in his mother's 1955 Buick near Avalon Boulevard, and six days of unrest followed across 46 square miles of Los Angeles. The episode lays out the pressure behind it: the Black population of Los Angeles grew from about 64,000 in 1940 to roughly 350,000 by 1965, Watts became over 80 percent Black, and blockbusting, mortgage denials and exclusionary associations kept residents confined despite the 1948 ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer. In 1964 voters passed Proposition 14, overturning the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Chief William H. Parker, who popularized the phrase thin blue line, ran an LAPD that recruited heavily from the South and faced long-standing brutality complaints.

Frye's mother, Rena Price, arrived and scolded her son, a scuffle broke out, an officer used a baton, and a rumor spread that police had kicked a pregnant woman. Rocks and concrete followed, and community meetings the next day failed. Parker called in the California Army National Guard, and up to 16,000 law enforcement and military personnel patrolled under an 8 p.m. curfew while officials compared the fight to battling the Viet Cong. Thirty-four people died, 23 at the hands of police or Guardsmen, nearly 3,500 were arrested, and damage topped $40 million. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to Proposition 14 and poverty, while many white Americans blamed outside agitators. Governor Pat Brown's McCone Commission, led by a former CIA director, cited unemployment, schools and housing, but most of its recommendations went unimplemented.

• The CHP officer was a rookie motorcycle patrolman, and Frye failed a field sobriety test before the arrest.
• Rioters targeted white-owned businesses seen as charging high prices or paying low wages, and some blocked fire hoses.
• Most of the 3,500 arrests were curfew violations, and most of those arrested had no prior criminal record.
• The McCone Commission's 101-page report recommended literacy programs, better police community ties, low-income housing and public transit.
• The unrest accelerated white flight from neighborhoods near South Los Angeles.