Los Angeles: Reprise of a Nightmare

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Red riot flares sputtered in the dusk.

Shards of glass littered the sidewalks.

Platoons of police with shotguns at the ready prowled nearly deserted streets.

And in the midst of the anger and desolation that is Watts, a Negro wom an cowered inside a store and sobbed:

"It's like a nightmare happening all over again."

For a few tense hours, it seemed so.

It was the second time in seven months that the Los Angeles slum had erupted in anarchy. Though last week's rioting in Watts appeared almost mild compared with the six-day wave of savagery that left 35 dead, 1,032 injured and more than $40 million in property damage last August, the latest uprising showed that little has happened since in the Negro suburb to defuse a lethal psychosis fed by race hatred, deprivation and contempt for law.

"Riot! Riot!" It all started when two men-Joe Garcia, 26, a Mexican-American, and Dwayne Graves, 16, a Negro-bumped into each other outside a Watts liquor store. Between the Negro ghetto and the Mexican colony clustered in nearby East Los Angeles, there is a tradition of jealous rivalry, and tensions have been rising. Negroes, who resent the light-skinned Mexicans because they find it easier to get jobs, had stabbed several of their rivals in the previous riots. Mexicans, for their part, regard themselves as better-educated and racially superior to their Negro neighbors, whom they accuse of monopolizing anti-poverty funds.

After last week's sidewalk encounter, a scuffle ensued. Graves and a fellow Negro were subsequently wounded by shotgun blasts from a car; accused of the shooting were Garcia's brothers, Carlos and Robert, who were later charged with assault with intent to kill. Word swiftly spread through Watts. Next afternoon, Negro dropouts hanging around a high school began lobbing rocks at Mexicans and other Caucasians driving by. One stone hurled by a Negro struck a white speech-correction teacher in the head, and-said onlookers-when police dragged the suspect from a barbershop, he yelled, "Police brutality! Riot! Riot!" A crowd of Negro teen-agers took that as an order.

Looting & Molotovs. Swelling into the hundreds, a mob stormed through the twelve-block area that still bears the scars of what Watts calls "the Au gust revolution," overturning vehicles, smashing store windows, pommeling and stabbing whites. A Mexican-American truck driver, Lawrence Gomez, 30, was surrounded, beaten, and shot to death. Negro Joe Crawford, 33, for no apparent reason was killed by a sniper. Molotov cocktails started a dozen fires while looters pillaged stores. Having learned their lesson in August, when police initially pulled out in hope that the violence would die down, more than 200 cops swept through the streets in prowl cars or twelve abreast on foot. After four hours, a tenuous calm was restored. The toll: two dead, 26 injured, 34 arrested, 15 buildings damaged.