Here it comes in all its burning
Cat Power, “Sun”
On a trouble day in 1960’s America, civil rights leader and Nobel laureate Dr Martin Luther King Jr. takes a phone call from a nervous White House. On the line is President Lyndon Johnson, seeking the Baptist visionary’s help and advice on ‘curing’ the racial conflict roiling America.
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While the men talk in August 1965, the California Army National Guard warily withdraws from Los Angeles, where 13,400 troops from its armored and infantry divisions have just quashed the Watts Rebellion, which had gotten beyond the control of city police.
The rebellion, AKA the Watts Riots, broke out a week and a bit back when a traffic stop ignited a black ghetto’s longstanding grievances with policing and inequality. Thirty-four people have been killed – most shot dead by security forces – more than a thousand are injured, and hundreds of buildings in South Central LA have gone up in flames over five days of urban mayhem.
Police Chief William Parker, who ran…
