‘Burn, Baby, Burn!': The Watts Riot 50 Years Later

Fifty years ago, on a hot August day in the Watts district of Los Angeles, a white police officer pulled over a black motorist for drunk driving. That encounter sparked a riot that lasted five days and resulted in the destruction of 600 stores and over thirty deaths. Watts was the first major riot in the era of televised news; the nation was transfixed and wanted to know why blacks were rioting in what became known as the “looter’s playground.”

The political and media elite explained the “root cause” of the Watts unrest as black protest against “the system.” This became the standard explanation for three hundred riots that broke out in cities nationwide during the “long, hot summers” of 1965 to 1968. This script was replayed to explain the Rodney King riots in 1992 and more recent disturbances in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland.

In truth, the so-called “rebellions” were opportunistic free-for-alls, carried out “mainly for fun and profit,” as political scientist Edward Banfield aptly put it. Rioters sacked thousands of small businesses, regardless of the owner’s race. In Detroit, nearly half the 2,500 businesses looted were owned by blacks. The primary targets indicated a desire for quick gain: pharmacies, liquor stores, and pawn shops.

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