Rebellion

The riveting story of the 1965 Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles—a crucial moment in Black history, told by Sibert award-winning author Larry Dane Brimner.

The 1965 Watts Rebellion started with an ordinary traffic stop. While driving through South Central Los Angeles, two Black men—21-year-old Marquette Frye and his brother Ronald—were pulled over by a white cop. As a crowd gathered, the temperature rose. As more police and more onlookers arrived, violence broke out—and it didn’t stop there.

Over the next six days, residents and police clashed, and the Watts neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles went up in flames. In the words of one resident, “Listen, we the Negro people down here have got completely fed up.” It was a rebellion: a rebellion against poverty, police brutality, bad schools, lack of jobs, and useless public transit—racism in all its forms.

Accompanied by dramatic black-and-white historical photos, Sibert Award-winning author Larry Dane Brimner tells the dramatic story of the Watts Rebellion, what it meant then, and what it means today.