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August 20, Friday - Worked like crazy all day. My arm hurts so bad I thought it would drop off. Rumors of a riot. Drove home with windows rolled up and doors locked. Wouldn't let Bud go to drive-in.
August 21, Saturday - Rumors still drifting around. Johnson real worked up. Dave Downing came and had lunch with me. He likes California.
August of 1965 saw race-centric rioting break out in the Watts area of South-Central Los Angeles. In the wake of the riots, civil unrest and rumors spread across the rest of the country.
Mom's store was at 31st and State Avenue, in a racially-mixed area of Kansas City, Kansas, as was most of her trip home. She had graduated high school at Wyandotte High School, just a few blocks away.
Mom's store was at 31st and State Avenue, in a racially-mixed area of Kansas City, Kansas, as was most of her trip home. She had graduated high school at Wyandotte High School, just a few blocks away.
Our house was located behind the "Spaghetti Curtain" at the edge of Northeast, which had a prominent Italian community. The theory, as we understood it, was that as long as there was a flourishing Italian community, blacks would dare not encroach into the territory. The Curtain ran from Little Italy in Columbus Park, along Independence Avenue to the East Side. It took a jog to the south and enveloped the neighborhoods north of Truman Road out to the steel mills in the East Bottoms.
I never saw a black student until my junior year in high school. Then there was only one. A few years after I graduated, desegregation came to Kansas City. Buses brought black students to Northeast from the inner city. The Spaghetti Curtain collapsed as many Italian families headed to the suburbs of Gladstone, Blue Springs, and Raytown. A few years after that, mob warfare broke out in Kansas City's River Quay district. Bars and other businesses exploded for no apparent reason. So did cars. Soon after, Little Italy ceased to be the bastion of Italian life in Kansas City. Families, sponsored by area churches, emigrated from Russia and after the war, Viet Nam.
In 1965, much of The United States was racially segregated, in spite of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which effectively outlawed segregation and racial discrimination. In Kansas City, fear between the races was far from being legislated away, and while my dad and my granddad lived and worked with blacks (before they were known as African-Americans), mistrust ran high, and their bigotry, ingrained in them for their entire lives, bubbled just below the surface. My mom's dad never tried to hide his hatred of blacks, and I found my time around him to be uncomfortable, to say the least.
In 1964 and 1965 rioting had been taking place in several northern urban centers, including New York Chicago, and Detroit. The middle '60s became known as the "Long Hot Summer." After the Watts Riots, the top blew off the rumor mills everywhere. Rioting never broke out in Kansas City, but that didn't keep people from anticipating unrest and fomenting fear and mistrust. It was really sad.
More on the Watts Riots here.
In 1965, much of The United States was racially segregated, in spite of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which effectively outlawed segregation and racial discrimination. In Kansas City, fear between the races was far from being legislated away, and while my dad and my granddad lived and worked with blacks (before they were known as African-Americans), mistrust ran high, and their bigotry, ingrained in them for their entire lives, bubbled just below the surface. My mom's dad never tried to hide his hatred of blacks, and I found my time around him to be uncomfortable, to say the least.
In 1964 and 1965 rioting had been taking place in several northern urban centers, including New York Chicago, and Detroit. The middle '60s became known as the "Long Hot Summer." After the Watts Riots, the top blew off the rumor mills everywhere. Rioting never broke out in Kansas City, but that didn't keep people from anticipating unrest and fomenting fear and mistrust. It was really sad.
More on the Watts Riots here.
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