42

Bud Gray

1925-2011

Watts Riots, Los Angeles Police Frisk Subjects. August 1965.

Silver print
With Gray's credit stamp, four Photo Trends stamps, a credit Photo Trends stamps with Gray's name in ink, a typed caption label, and another caption in ink, on verso.
The image 11 x 13 3/4 in. (27.9 x 34.9 cm.)

  • Provenance:
    A Country Called California: The Collection of Stephen White
  • Literature:
    Stephen White, foreword by Lynell George, A Country Called California, Photographs 1850s to 1960s (Angel City Press, 2022), p. 107
  • Notes:
    One of the most destructive events associated with civil unrest during the 1960s occurred after the arrest of an African American man by a white California Highway Patron officer on August 11, 1965. Sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, over the course of six days 34 people died, more than 1,000 were injured, and more than 40 million dollars in property was damaged. Entire city blocks were burned to the ground.

    "Public officials and news media offered conflicting interpretations of the Watts Riots in their immediate aftermath. Some conservatives and many city officials claimed that the violence had resulted from wanton lawlessness, and they pointed to the large number of minority men living in the inner city who had criminal records and to the influx of "outsiders" from the South. They observed that looters took far more goods from stores than they could possibly find useful and that it was irrational to burn down one's 'own' neighborhood. Some suggested that the riots were an insurrection fostered by urban gangs or by the Black Muslim movement, which the mainstream press then regarded as a radical cult. Others suggested that police-community relations in South-Central Los Angeles had long been uneasy and that those tensions had exploded into rioting. Finally, many federal officials and some reporters explained the riots as a protest against the poverty and hopelessness of life in the inner city, and they described the challenges of joblessness and the lack of basic services in South-Central Los Angeles." – Jill A. Edy, "Watts Riots of 1965," Encyclopedia Britannica
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February 12, 2026 12:00 PM EST
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