Sixty years ago this week, a young Black man from South Los Angeles was pulled over by a white California Highway Patrol officer after another motorist reported the man driving recklessly.

What started as a routine traffic stop quickly escalated into violence and six days of civil unrest known as the Watts Riots – or, as many in the Black community prefer to call it, the Watts Rebellion or Watts Revolt.

The events that unfolded over the course of one week in August 1965 laid bare decades of pent-up frustration among members of the Black community who, for far too long, felt they had been neglected, overlooked, mistreated, discriminated against and, to put it simply, not afforded the same opportunities as other Angelenos.

Monday, Aug. 11, marks the 60th anniversary of that traffic stop

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