Code 77: A Report from Watts
Jacobs, Paul
The looted stores are still vacant and the burned-out ones still heaps of rubble. But an ironic and ludicrous quality pervades Watts, for hoardes of investigators, analysts and reporters...
...By the end of March, 14,000 people had applied for work, many of them coming into a government office for the first time in their lives...
...Watts II was triggered by three incidents: the beating and shooting of two Negroes by a group of Mexican-Americans the night before the trouble broke out, a Negro youth hurling a rock through the window of a white teacher's car, and the killing of a Mexican-American truckdriver by another Negro...
...the Negro community is equally convinced it was only the prompt action of the Negro leaders in getting the people off the streets that averted a repetition of Watts I. And the Negro leaders are furious at the statements made by John McCone when he blamed them for being irresponsible and causing Watts II...
...There were no teenage recreation facilities before August and there are none now...
...McCone, who had been appointed by Governor Brown to head the commission investigating Watts I, issued statements of the same stupid and vulgar nature that characterized the Commission's report...
...Mobs of Negroes were supposedly tearing through the streets of Watts, burning and looting...
...Watts has also become a stop for foreign visitors, on State Department tours of the U.S...
...And no new hospital is being built in the area either...
...At times it seems as if the temporary investigative population of the area outnumbers the real residents...
...Meanwhile the MexicanAmerican truckdriver was killed by a Negro, and a small group of Negroes began looting a few stores...
...in fact, the only incident was a totally unrelated fight between two men on a bus far away from the scene...
...The Negroes have learned to give "proper responses...
...But jobs had been found for less than 1,300 of the 14,000...
...After the August, 1965 events were over, a service center was opened by the state government in Watts where, for the first time, the people who lived in the area could come to one centralized place to seek jobs and get advice on welfare or housing problems...
...But because the anti-poverty program is caught in a morass of local, state and national politics...
...Perhaps soon some enterprising Negro will open up a central casting agency so that a constant supply of "resentful" or "hopeful" Negroes will be on hand to satisfy whatever the different scripts require...
...in fact, the streets were totally deserted...
...The Watts II script was as nothing compared to Watts I; indeed, if the action hadn't taken place in Watts, it would never have gotten such wide publicity...
...What might have become a thoughtful analysis of the Watts revolt was turned into a device for saving everybody's face...
...has a high percentage of Negroes from the South, cut off from their family ties and uncertain of the customs in Los Angeles...
...The police were convinced that their prompt action in pouring hundreds of men into the area had solved the problem...
...Rumors spread all over the city, given credence by the TV and radio reports and by the first editions of the newspapers...
...But no one knows how many more such men have not received unemployment insurance for the same reason and did not protest, and no one knows how many mothers receiving aid-toneedychildren grants have grievances but don't know how to take them up with the city officials...
...They still have to travel hours because no new transportation system has been brought into the area, so that if you want to get from 103rd and Avalon to the L.A...
...What will Watts III be like...
...Yes, they are bitter, yes, they are resentful, yes, they are the products of a matriarchal family structure in which no workoriented father image has existed, yes, they aspire to participate in a new value structure and yes, you dumb white motherfuckers, if you keep ask ing me these damn fool questions, I'll keep giving you these damn fool answers...
...Before August, 1965, the people who lived in the ghetto had to travel hours, if they had no car, to get to the only hospital that served the area...
...Each week, two or three such groups troop into some agency office, and the staffs take time out to politely explain the operation to the interpreters, who translate the explanations to the foreign visitors...
...Nothing has altered the employment situation, either...
...In a long career of making pusillanimous decisions, Governor Brown's appointment of McCone as head of the investigating commission was a new low...
...and the 1,300 might have been the people who would have found jobs even without the help of the service center...
...The others, kept from jobs by lack of skills and by arrest records (even though they may not have been convicted), walked out of the center frustrated and bitter...
...No one knows, but in Watts everybody worries...
...The two Negroes were wounded on a Monday night when they were hit by a shotgun blast from a car with three Mexican-Americans intent on avenging a beating given the brother of two of them earlier that evening...
...because the Great Society is demonstrating that, while it can build a field hospital virtually overnight in Vietnam, it may never build one in Watts...
...Gangs of Negroes were allegedly roaming the downtown streets, beating up whites...
...But a few changes are taking place and they give a little hope, at least...
...The brother had gotten into a fight with a Negro man outside a liquor store...
...The looted stores are still vacant and the burned-out ones still heaps of rubble...
...It was reported, falsely, that the Mexican-American truckdriver had tried to get help at four or five homes after he'd been shot, and had been turned away each time...
...Bureau officials from caseworkers to the top administrative echelons have learned that they must listen, too, and that they can even learn something about how their "clients" see the BPA's role...
...Then, after an hour or so, with bright smiles and hearty handshakes, the visitors go off, perhaps to Disneyland...
...Nothing fundamental has changed in Watts...
...So, too, the quality of day-to-day life has changed very little in Watts...
...instead, a bond issue has been placed on the June primary ballot to allow the voters to decide whether or not a new hospital should be fl nanced in the area...
...And because too many people in Los Angeles think that Code 77, rather than jobs, is the answer, it is almost certain that history will repeat itself...
...A crowd gathered around, the new Los Angeles police call—Code 77 —went out, and half of the available police cars in the city sped down to the scene, carrying helmeted officers with shotguns protruding out the windows...
...The director of the state service center fights and wins a case for a man who was refused unemployment insurance because he hadn't reported for work and hadn't reported in while he was under arrest, falsely, as it turned out...
...There were no movie theaters in the area before August and there are none now...
...General Hospital, you must take two or three busses and walk ten or twenty blocks between the bus lines...
...And because the Los Angeles ghetto, unlike Harlem or the South Side of Chicago, has little or no community life, just as the city itself has none, the new Negro migrants remain bewildered and uncertain until they turn angry...
...Then on Tuesday afternoon came the rock-hurling incident which resulted in the teacher calling the police, who attempted to arrest the boy allegedly guilty of throwing the rock...
...And the bond issue may very well lose, too...
...Watts H was a minor skirmish, blown up for a short time into the beginning of another Watts I, until, very quickly, it cooled out...
...The southeast part of L.A...
...for the insurance companies are insisting that anyone opening a store in the area must pay at least five times the normal premiums...
...But an ironic and ludicrous quality pervades Watts, for hoardes of investigators, analysts and reporters have descended upon the area with clip boards, tape recorders and questionnaires...
...By the afternoon of the next day it was all over and everybody gave a sigh of relief, including perhaps even the TV men who saw their good story disappearing...
...Right behind the police came the TV camera crews, the newspaper reporters and photographers intent once more on getting the pictures and stories of another "riot...
...Some of the people whose income is derived from the Bureau of Public Assistance have begun to organize themselves into groups and speak out...
...There were no decent shopping facilities then, and there still aren't any, nor is it likely that there will be...
...One Negro was killed on the streets, although it is uncertain whether he was shot by a sniper, as the police claim, or by a cop, as some Negro leaders assert...
...in fact, he had been killed instantly...
Vol. 13 • May 1966 • No. 3
