Research Catalog

Title

Rivers of blood, years of darkness, by Robert Conot.

Author

Conot, Robert E.

Publication

Toronto, New York, Bantam Books [1967]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 497 p.; 18 cm.

Summary

During the sultry evening of August 11, 1965, a Los Angeles policeman flagged down a 21-year-old African American man for speeding. It was this seemingly trivial incident, followed by a series of tragic misunderstandings, that erupted in the conflagration known as the Watts Riot. In the ensuing battle between the ghetto and the police, who were aided by 14,000 National Guardsmen, 34 persons died, 4,000 were arrested and property damage totaled $35 million (over $260 million in 2015 dollars). America's long, bitter summers had begun. In his introduction to his extraordinary reconstruction of the riot, journalist Robert Conot points out that future historians will 'regard Watts as significant a turning point in black-white relations as John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. "Just as Brown's raid polarized opposing forces in the slavery struggle," the author writes, "the Los Angeles riot symbolized the end of the era of Negro passivity--passivity that took the form of the doctrine of non-violence, and the acceptance of white leadership in the civil rights struggle." He adds that in Los Angeles the blacks were going on record that, frustrated and goaded, they would strike back whether or not the response of violence was appropriate. In this book, Conot takes us into the very eye of racial violence so that we see the tragedy as if we had been there. And we get to know intimately, through sharply limned vignettes, both the police and the rioters. Perhaps for the first time we begin to understand the despair and the anguish that suffuses life in the black ghettos and 'why so many African Americans will no longer passively accept a white racist society.--Adapted from book jacket.

Subject

• African Americans > Los Angeles
• Watts Riot, Los Angeles, Calif., 1965
• Los Angeles (Calif.) > History > 20th century

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 493-497.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

LCCN

^^^67023524^//r863

OCLC

• 236346
• SCSB-12684663

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library