Los Angeles: The Far Country

To white Los Angeles, Watts is as much as ever a far country, inacces sible, invisible, incomprehensible. Yet in the six weeks since the ugliest riots in U.S. history made Watts a household word, city, state and federal agencies have worked overtime in a belated at tempt to understand and help the Negro community.

Last week a blue-ribbon commission appointed by Governor Pat Brown held the first of many closed-door sessions aimed at analyzing Watts’s social and economic problems. A new city anti-poverty board had received $7,400,000 in federal funds, much of it to be spent in Watts. Fifty Los Angeles Negro businessmen started a drive to establish more Negro-owned stores in the community. The state opened headquarters in Watts to receive requests for social services.

Even so, their efforts were dwarfed by the herculean task of processing the 2,221 Negroes who were charged with felonies during the rioting. More than 800 remain behind bars, either denied bond or unable to post it. Some 65% of the hundreds of misdemeanor cases have already been disposed of, but the first of the felony defendants—most of them charged with burglary—will not go on trial until late this month, when proceedings will begin in 21 court rooms.

Yet, whether he was handing out fines or relief checks, the white man was still trying to solve Watts’s ills from without, not from within. And Watts residents themselves were skeptical.

Unstructured. A handful of white workers in Watts do in fact exert considerable influence. One of the most effective is Sue Welch, 26, a schoolteacher who runs a federally financed “Teen Post” set up this summer to keep Watts’s kids off the streets. Her post is always jammed; she is affectionately called “Sue Baby.” “When I first started working here,” says Sue Baby, “white people must have figured I was a nymphomaniac with a special interest in Negro men—or even something farther out. It takes a while to be accepted here: these people have been fooled too many times.”

At another youth post, by contrast, the white supervisor works in terror, complains that her Negro assistants ignore her. They have their own complaints. Says one: “The kids want to see Disneyland; instead she goes to the art museum. They want to take boat rides at MacArthur Park, so she takes them to the Hollywood Bowl. She’s always talking about ‘structured programs’—but she forgets these ain’t ‘structured’ kids.”

Call Her Mrs. Most of them have never even known normal family life. Of 334 families in one apartment project, only eleven are headed by men. Out of consideration, most unwed mothers are called “Mrs.,” but a resident warns: “You don’t ask a Negro woman about her husband. If she’s married, she’ll tell you.” The ghetto’s children, in particular, regard the riot leaders as freedom fighters. Those at the forefront of the chaos have hardly been chastened by such irresponsible post-mortems as Senator Robert Kennedy’s verdict: “There is no point in telling Negroes to obey the law. To many Negroes the law is the enemy.” Boasts one husky youth: “If we don’t get things changed here, we’re gonna do it again. We know the cops are scared, and now all of us have guns. Last time we weren’t out to kill whites. Next time is going to be different.”

Though tensions have eased, little else has noticeably changed since the riots. Not only are most of Watts’s pillaeed stores still closed, but the slum is still without a single restaurant, bowling alley, roller rink or movie theater (the nearest cinema is a 60¢, four-mile round-trip bus ride away). Men loll in clusters on front porches drinking Colt .45 beer. When a white man passes, a lanky teen-ager taunts him: “Better not be here at 5. That’s when the riot’s gonna start all over again.” A police car drives by, and no one on the sidewalk flicks a glance in its direction; it does not stop.

Belonging. The tragedy of Watts was pinpointed last week by Mrs. Guy Miller, a Negro housewife with eight children: “I was born and bred in Watts,” she said, “and I’m proud of it. Some of us could move to neighborhoods in Pasadena or on the west side. But we can talk our kind of talk in Watts. Living in Watts gives you a feeling of belonging to something, not always trying to do what white people do.”

“Yet,” she sighs, “everybody wants to leave. Nobody wants to stay in Watts and help build it up.”