The Road from Watts
The week of August 11 to 14 reverberates still from the uprising in Watts. Part of a long history of resistance and rebellion, this uprising, sparked by police brutality, ushered in a period of intense urban rebellions as the long, hot summers from 1965 in Watts to Omaha in 1969 engulfed the country.
In July of 1967, while Detroit was in the midst of what would become the most deadly of these rebellions, President Lyndon Johnson established the Kerner Commission to answer three basic questions: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it happening again and again? The report, issued in February of 1968 famously warned, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one white and one black—separate and unequal.”
Much to the President’s distress, and far beyond what many of us predicted would be possible, given the makeup of the commissioners, white racism was identified as a major cause of the uprisings. The report advocated the creation of new jobs, building affordable housing, massive spending in urban centers, emphasis on education, and the end of housing segregation. Most of these claims fell on deaf ears.
Far beyond the meager policy initiatives that flowed from this period, people in cities began to think about their ability to create a different kind of future, based on values that rejected the militarism, materialism and racism of US society.
Some of this rethinking was framed by Dr. King, who was shaken to his core by how young people on the streets of Watts rejected his message of non violent action. Much of it was framed by the accelerating Black liberation consciousness as Black Power and the Black Panther Party, formed in October of 1966 in Oakland, CA advocated community self-determination and self-defense. Pan African organizations and African and African American centered ideas shaped organizations, educational efforts, artists, and activists. Throughout the country, cities, often abandoned by the white power structure and its resources, began to experiment with different ways of living. Many of these new ways of living drew deeply on the African American experience.
In Detroit, as in many cities around the country, African Americans asserted formal political power, claiming elected offices in city councils, school boards and police commissioners. Schools, libraries and virtually all public services began to shift out of white control.
For Dr. King, the rethinking sparked by Watts drove him to Chicago and to consider what he needed to learn in order to advance the struggle for justice. In 1967 he published Where Do We Go from Here: Community or Chaos? He argued that we needed to provide our young people in our “dying cities” with direct action programs that would be both self-transforming and structure-transforming.
Dr. King Recognized that by enlisting the energies and imaginations of young people in addressing the problems of our cities, we could provide ways for them to develop their intellectual abilities, passions, and practical skills in meaningful ways.
In reflecting on the best of what emerged from those long summers and what followed, Grace Lee Boggs wrote in The Next American Revolution:
Just imagine what our neighborhoods would be like if, instead of keeping our children isolated in classrooms for twelve years and more, we engaged them in community-building activities with the same audacity with which the civil rights movement engaged them in desegregation activities fifty years ago. Just imagine how safe and lively our streets would be if, as a natural and normal part of the curriculum from K-12, schoolchildren were taking responsibility for maintaining neighborhood streets, planting community gardens, recycling waste, rehabbing houses, creating healthier school lunches, visiting and doing errands for the elderly, organizing neighborhood festivals, and painting public murals. (158)
All around our city these new ideas are coming to life. Committed adults and engaged, creative youth are creating art, harvesting gardens, telling stories, sharing skills, and reshaping visions of who we are becoming. The long road from Watts is leading toward a future of unlimited possibilities, based on values that affirm the best in our troubled past.