The Hippest Trip in America Read Online Free PDF

Marquette told the officer he wasn’t intoxicated, and an argument began. Marquette’s brother Ronald, who’d been in the car, ran to get his mother from their nearby home. The patrolman called for backup. As the Frye family argued with police, a growing crowd of the family’s predominantly black neighbors gathered to protest what they deemed police harassment. Locals tossed bottles at the police. The entire Frye family was arrested. More police arrived on the scene. So did more angry Watts residents.
    Years of tension between the police and the black population came to a head that August night in 1965. Led by Chief of Police William Parker, the LAPD had recruited southern-born whites and developed a militarized, confrontational philosophy toward young black men that was a motorized version of the twenty-first century’s stop-and-frisk. Parker encouraged police authorities in Los Angeles, whether the LAPD, the CHP (California Highway Patrol), or members of the sheriff’s department, to err on the side of suspicion and intimidation in any interaction with young black males.
    Though segregation was not officially on the books in LA, the city’s residency laws were full of “covenants” that restricted sales of homes in desirable areas to blacks, Hispanics, or Asians, forcing them to live primarily in East LA, Compton, South LA, and Watts. This is the backdrop for six days of fighting, shooting, and burning that would result in thirty-four deaths, the deployment of 3,900 national guardsmen, and $40 million in property damage. The 1960s would see race riots break out in many big cities around the United States, most triggered by a similarly combustible mix of aggressive policing and black resentment. But few were as brutal as the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965.
    Many of the thousands who participated in the Watts rebellion shouted “Burn, baby, burn!”—a slogan used by local DJ the Magnificent Montague to hype a hot record he was spinning and, like much soul radio slang, also a sexual double entendre. However, in the riot’s wake, Montague was accused by LA mayor Sam Yorty of inciting local blacks to riot with his phrase “Burn, baby, burn!” In the sixties there were many urban riots and many serious-minded official reports issued in their aftermath. Watts was no exception. A former CIA director was called in and would issue a report outlining all of the racial and institutional reasons for the riots. But as was typical of the time, the report’s recommendations for change were resoundingly ignored by LA’s city fathers: issues with the police were brushed aside (later igniting the 1992 riots), and restrictive real estate policies took decades to loosen. However, a few positive things came out of the immediate official reaction. Just two years after the Watts riots, Alain Leroy Locke High School, named after the Harlem Renaissance poet, was opened at 325 East 111th Street in Watts. The school was clearly a peace offering to a community that was overpoliced and underserved. While the school did not make the neighborhood any safer or the policing any less intrusive, it did become a magnet for talented young people seeking a career in music. Locke High School would go on to nurture several generations of top musicians, including smooth jazz saxophonist Gerald Albright, drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler (who’d play on Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”), vocalist-actor Tyrese Gibson (a staple of the Fast & Furious franchise), and pianist-vocalist Patrice Rushen.
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    Patrice Rushen danced on the show as a teen and returned years later as a performer.
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    Rushen was a petite, precocious talent who’d become one of Locke’s most beloved musicians, evolving from a teenage keyboard prodigy into a singer and recording artist with the signature eighties hits “Remind Me” and “Forget Me Nots” (both of which would