Annotated Bibliography

Blumberg, Rhoda Luis.  Civil Rights:  The 1960s Freedom Struggle.  New    York:  Twayne Publishers, 1991.               

A valuable introduction to the Civil Rights era, this book devotes an entire chapter to the topic of the race riots which struck America between 1964 and 1968 in general, but focuses especially on the Watts Riot.  Clearly written and easy to read, each section of the discussion is clearly labeled and given equal treatment.  A participant in the Civil Rights movement herself, Blumberg utilizes not just personal experience, but also major primary documents from the era.  Like many authors writing on the Civil Rights movement in the last two decades, Blumberg is especially interested by recently released documents spelling out the full extent of FBI involvement in movement disruption.  This chapter’s aftermath section provides information on the federal response to the riots. 

Conot, Robert.  Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness:  The Unforgettable Classic Account of the Watts Riot.  New York:  William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1968. 

Taking with a grain of salt this book’s rather sensational title, Conot’s narrative on the Watts riot does in fact remain canon literature on the uprising.  While the style of the book, approaching that of a novel at times, may seem to suggest a work of historical fiction, this is not at all the case.  The author conducted extensive interviews both immediately following the riot and over a broad period of time afterwards in order to capture first-hand accounts of the riot’s unfolding and impact.  While it is the account of the riot itself which initially draws the most attention, Conot’s section on the legacy of the riot is equally valuable and provides a forgiving defense of the McCone Commission.  That Rivers of Blood reads more like a novel than a historical document may throw some readers off, it is testament to the depth of the interviews the author conducted. 

Fogelson, Robert M.  “White on Black:  A Critique of the McCone Commission Report on the  Los Angeles Riots.”  Mass Violence in America:  The Los Angeles Riots.  Ed. Robert M. Fogelson.  New York:  Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969.  111-143. 

Fogelson’s essay marks one of the first criticisms of the Governor’s Commission on the Los Angeles Riot, the McCone Commission, to have access to the records of the report.  It is extremely valuable, therefore, for all of the evidence it reveals the commission to have suppressed.  Testimony from blacks, city officials, and visiting observers alike which did not conform to the McCone Commission’s view of the riots was simply omitted.  Having little good to say about the report, Fogelson criticizes not only the haste with which the commission worked, but also questions the motives of many prominent sworn witnesses.  For the McCone Commission to ignore the testimony of participants and witnesses and favor instead the declarations of those in power, those who had the most to lose if Watts was viewed as legitimate political protest and the most vested interests in creating a negative image of the rioters, was irresponsible, Fogelson says. 

Governor’s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots.  “Violence in the City:  An End or a Beginning?”  Mass Violence in America:  The Los Angeles Riots.  Ed. Robert M. Fogelson.  New York:  Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969.  xi-110. 

Chaired by a former director of the CIA and staffed chiefly by conservatives and moderates, this first commission on the Watts riot has been criticized for viewing the riot in terms of the values of middle-class white America.  Effectively, the McCone Commission reached the conclusion that what happened in Watts could not be construed as a viable form of political expression against legitimate grievances.  In some cases, such as the issue of police brutality, the commission seemed to suggest that the community’s grievances are, in fact, not legitimate.  Despite these flaws, the McCone Commission was still the first major report on one of the largest race riots in American history.  Its files and records have become extremely useful to later students of the riot, and the fact remains that this report was something different than the standard print-out of facts and figures from a government commission.  For better or worse, the McCone Commission was a new type of government document. 

Horne, Gerald.  Fire This Time:  The Watts Uprising and the 1960s.  Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. 

Like much of Horne’s work, this book focuses on establishing a connection between the events of the 1950s and their aftermath in the 1960s.  Major political happenings, like the Red Scare, came to shape the subsequent decade.  Horne provides an extensive history of the Watts area, putting special emphasis on the periods between World War II and the end of the 1950s economic recession.  Fire This Time helps to reveal a link between the “conservative” 1950s and the “liberal” 60s that common consensus has never realized.  If it seems that the author overemphasizes the influence of Communism, and the backlash against it, have had on both America in general and the Civil Rights movement, this worry is dispelled by the extensive research done on the subject.  

O’Reilly, Kenneth.  “The FBI and the Politics of the Riots, 1964-1968.”  The Journal of American History.  75:1 (June, 1988):  91-114. 

Kenneth O’Reilly’s article provides two different levels of information about the response of the United States government to the race riots of the later half of the 1960s.  In addition to outlining the decisions and policies of the federal government with regard to these disturbances themselves, the piece also captures the ongoing conflict between the Johnson administration and the Hoover FBI.  This internal wrangling helps to explain much of the official and public opinion about these race riots, including the persistence of a belief in some external agitation despite the repeated failure to find any evidence of such a plot.  O’Reilly is yet another author whose work has been greatly enriched, and in this case made possible in the first place, by the declassification of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s records of its involvement in the Civil Rights movement. 

O’Toole, James.  Watts and Woodstock:  Identity and Culture in the United States and South Africa.  United States:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1973. 

This study compares the effects of two different systems of discrimination:  South Africa’s apartheid and the Jim Crow laws (along with continued racism) found in the United States.  Woodstock and Watts, respectively, are chosen to represent the life and situation of blacks in each nation for purposes of the evaluation.  While there is little empirical data, the author spent enough time dealing with each area to consider this a reliable account of subjective experience.  O’Toole founded and directed a tutorial project in Watts while an undergraduate at USC, and spent much of 1968 in Africa studying apartheid.  The parallels between cultural nationalist movements found in South Africa and among American blacks are interesting, and this volume was especially useful for its history of Watts. 

Rustin, Bayard.  “The Watts ‘Manifesto’ and the McCone Report.”  Mass Violence in  America:  The Los Angeles Riots.  Ed. Robert M. Fogelson.  New York:  Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969.  145-164. 

An early critic of the McCone Commission, Rustin deconstructs both the language and the tactics of the document.  The words chosen throughout what was, at the time, the official record of the Watts riot, clearly reflect the value systems of the report’s authors.  The picture painted within of the rioters does more than strip their actions of political significance; it also reveals the biases of the commission’s members.  While Bayard Rustin does concede that the McCone Commission did acknowledge the problems of ghetto life, he calls the report to task for providing no concrete solutions for these problems.  Ultimately, the author reaches the conclusion that the McCone Commission placed the onus of responsibility on the residents of Watts, absolving the majority of white America from responsibility in having contributed to the difficulties and hardships of life in Watts. 

Sears, David O. and John B. McConahay.  The Politics of Violence:  The New Urban Black and the Watts Riot.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973. 

Utilizing subjective self-reporting techniques and objective data, this report is perhaps most significant for shattering many of the statistics provided by the McCone Commission.  Even by the conservative definitions of “riot participation” Sears and McConahay used, a much larger percentage of the ghetto’s inhabitants were involved in the riots than the officials would have liked to believe.  Putting forth a thesis on the nature of the “New Urban Black,” the two researchers discover much about the state of life and politics within the Watts community by asking the sort of questions no one had yet thought to ask in Watts.  This is simply further testament to the preconceived notions held by the staff of McCone Commission.  Very importantly, Sears and McConahay provide a full breakdown of their methodology and openly admit that the data does not support each and every aspect of their hypothesis. 

Sugrue, Thomas J.  “Crabgrass-Roots Politics:  Race, Rights, and the Reaction Against  Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964.”  The Journal of American History.  82:2 (September, 1995):  551-578. 

Though this article focuses chiefly on Detroit, the point the author makes is one that holds valid for many cities of the American North and West during the period between World War II and the Civil Rights era.  Sugrue deflates many of the popularly held assumptions about the strength of liberal convictions in this region long considered to have provided New Deal-era policies with their strongest support.   The author reveals a surprising level of reactionary behavior taking place in the supposedly progressive urban centers of America.  In addition to providing a valuable link between the 1960s and what came before them, the racist housing practices discussed in this piece are reminiscent of those which resulted in a racially segregated area of Watts.  Somewhat significantly, Detroit would also be struck by a race riot despite being considered a model of race relations.

I apologize for the technically incorrect format of these citations.  The difference in layout between Microsoft FrontPage and most Internet browsers makes the standard MLA practice of indenting the second and subsequent lines of a citation extremely difficult.