I woke up this morning after having a disturbing dream about the Watts Riots. This week marks 50 years since those riots and my dream was more a nightmare than anything else.
I was in a restaurant with someone and someone I knew came in - this isn't someone I really knew but in my dream I knew this person, if that makes sense. He came up to us and told us that they were planing to rob the place, so we should leave. He would wait until we were gone and then he would do it. I did not know how to get out and warn the people in the place about what was going to happen...
Suddenly, I was in the home of a former neighbor, back in Pacoima. It was night time and we were looking out the back patio window. Their house overlooked the Wash ( which is what I now know is the LA River- go figure) We saw the fires begin. They sprung up all over until the sky was filled with that orange light of fire and smoke. In my dream I cried out "why are they doing this again?" I needed to go home. My parents house was empty and I just needed to be in it, so I took a dog, a large German Shepard, who in the dream was my dog, and we went back to the house. Then my alarm went off.
Weird. In 1965, I was seven. The week of the Watts Riots, my grandmother died and that took over everything in our household. The dream I had got me thinking about the past 50 years in Los Angeles. Have things changed? Well, yes. I think they have. There are still many things that need changing, but I believe things have improved since those days in the early 60's. I am thinking about how we approach one another in relationship to race. It's not fair, certainly, to judge anyone on the color of their skin and THAT goes both ways. I am no more responsible for the actions of my ancestors than you are. What I AM responsible for is how I behave NOW and how I teach my children to behave. We cannot change the past. We cannot erase what was, we can do our best to change what is and what will be. I believe that the Confederate flag, should not fly above capital buildings. It's not a flag of anything, except a past we need to learn from. I don't believe we should remove all the statues of soldiers and local heroes. They ARE part of our history and have not been co-opted by hate groups as a banner declaring their position on race. When we talk about the War between the States, their names should be remembered.
I know that there are commemorations of the events on those hot August nights in 1965. I hope the discussion honors those who rose to the occasion of helping the City heal and do not tear down the future they envisioned; that by remembering the reasons behind the riots we see how far we have come, that the path still reaches out before us and we must walk it together.
My memory of being caught up in the Riots is still so vivid. It was a Friday afternoon and my father and I were off to the Airport to pick up an aunt visiting from out of town. Naturally, being my dad, no sense of directions and wwe were driving aimlessly around - vaguely heading west, but.......and not listenting to the news (hey, it was 1965, I wanted to play KRLA!) And suddenly we were stopped by the police. I looked up ahead, and all I saw were flames and dozens (hundreds) of angry black people arguing with police.......................where the hell were we? The officer told my father, "Turn left or get shot." Very matter of fact. For once, Dad did as he was told with no argument, and KRLA gave way to the news............................
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it was as big a deal, but the spring, 1992 Rodney King Riots (although at the Library, we were only allowed to call it "the civil unrest") is still so vivid to me - perhaps more so.
I am a pretty secure, middle aged (approaching the "autumn" of my life) (well middle aged if I live to be in my 130's?) white Protestant male, so little of that discrimination touches me own life, and I ask myself what do I know? Still, I can see it around and have to strive to not further it.
Tom