During what was so euphemistically labeled the “unrest” in Ferguson, Missouri, The Washington Post interviewed Barbara Arnwine, a civil-rights attorney who, as a teenager, witnessed the 1965 riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles. “We’re in a time warp,” Arnwine told the Post. “Watts was bad, but this is the worst thing I’ve seen.”
In an August 1965 editorial about Watts, The Nation’s editor, Carey McWilliams—a longtime California watcher—wrote that “a feverish search for scapegoats is now under way…. Predictably the forthcoming investigation ordered by Governor [Pat] Brown will stress the same tiresome cliches: police brutality, inadequate leadership, The Heat, slum conditions. All the while the truth about Watts is right there in front of people, in plain boldface type, for all to read; so simple that it is…