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Watts Riots and the Younger Generation
"Youth living in Watts today are 40 years removed form the riots in 1965, so their information is second or third hand. "
By Natalia Brown
Rioting, looting and violent protesting in the street lasted for six days and left behind 34 dead, over 1,000 wounded and an estimated $100 million in property damage. Youth Radio's Natalia Brown visited Yo! Watts Youth Center to find out how the legacy of the riots lives on -- or doesn't-- with the young people who live there today.
I never learned anything about the Watts riots of 1965, so I was curious to find out what young people from Watts know about the legacy. Youth living in Watts today are 40 years removed form the riots in 1965, so their information is second or third hand. Many of the young people I spoke with at the Yo! Watts community center tended to romanticize and glorify the period before the riots. They depicted Watts as a vibrant and economically stable community, but older people remember difficult times even before the riots. For an example, click here to hear what Angela Jones age 18 had to say.
Listen
to Angela's point of view
Many young people seem to identify that one event as an economic turning point for the community. Others, like Juan Jimenez, age 18, point to police brutality as something that lives on between the community and the authorities. For him the memory is clear. When asked what first comes to mind upon hearing the words, “Watts Riots,” he described cops beating up black and Mexican people.
But the truth is that I was very surprised to find that most kids at the youth center had little information about the riots. The information that they had was passed down through family members, school and hearsay, and each time it was disjointed and incomplete. That’s why one former youth turned staff, Keith Henderson, age 26, cautions us to focus on the aftermath and not the actual event because of all the missing details.
Listen
to Keith's point of view
Another reason many young people felt distant from the history is because most of their parents didn’t live in Watts at the time of the riots. Since the time of the riots, a great number of Latino immigrants came to Watts, drastically changing the demographics. All of the African-American youth I interviewed don’t want to be stuck in the past, but felt as though the riots were an important moment in their town’s history. But on the other hand, the Latino youth felt as though the riots were just something that happened in the past and should stay there. Donna Duran, age 19, gave a response that was typical of the Latino youth that I interviewed.
Listen
to Donna's point of view
No one discredited the riots, but the young people whose parents came after 1965 felt today’s problems are more important than those that happened in the past.
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