Reprise of a Nightmare

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.

Governor Pat Brown, who was flying home from Washington when the disorders began, made the unfortunate admission that he had been warned of impending trouble. G.O.P. Gubernatorial Candidate Ronald Reagan and Los Angeles' Mayor Sam Yorty, Brown's rival for the Democratic nomination, both seized the opportunity to fault the Governor for keeping the tip from Los Angeles officials. In fact, Negro leaders have repeatedly warned that Watts would erupt again unless a major effort was mounted to correct its social and economic problems.

"Watts Happening." Anti-poverty officials have rushed through a $40 million crash allocation for Los Angeles County, half of it earmarked for Watts. A discount store blackened from Au gust's arson has been made over-and appropriately renamed "Watts Happening"-as a Government-financed coffeehouse for idle youth. A new $800,000 training center offers classes in grammar and Negro history for 200 students. But the overall program has been snarled by political rivalry and bureaucratic delays, and visible accomplishments so far are few. A new Head Start project for preschool youngsters got under way only last month; a Job Skills Center for 1,400 is yet to open.

The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce claims to have found jobs for 4,000 employable Wattsians, but even so, the community is worse off than ever. Unemployment still runs close to 30% ; many residents are out of work because none of the chain stores destroyed last year have been rebuilt; insurance rates for some Watts businesses have quintupled. As evidence of the risk, Sol Goldman, one merchant who did rebuild his burned-out clothing store, saw it ransacked again last week. With 1,000 newcomers a week arriving in Los Angeles, Mayor Yorty complained, "The city just doesn't have the financial resources to provide the number of jobs necessary. This must be done on a state and federal level."

"Unwillingness to Accept." A recent survey under the auspices of the Office of Economic Opportunity reported that the annual purchasing power of the average Watts family has actually declined 8% or $400 since 1959, during a period in which the typical U.S. family's income rose 14% and that of nonwhite families elsewhere jumped 24%. Thus Watts has changed little-but its illness goes deeper than poverty. Such, at least, was the view of former CIA Director John A. McCone, who headed a commission that conducted an exhaustive investigation of the August riots. Said McCone: "This is one more evidence of an unwillingness by Negroes to accept responsibilities as law-abiding citizens. Until this changes, it's going to be very difficult for anyone in the community to change things."

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