Kendall O. Price, a faculty member of the School of Public Administration at USC in the 1960s, organized with his colleagues a non-profit corporation called Public Executive Development and Research (PEDR) and worked closely with the School of Public Administration. They conducted two seminars and a conference which led to the Critique of the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots. The seminars dealt with issues in the African-American community and included grass roots leaders from the Watts area and social welfare agency executives from public and private agencies in Los Angeles County. The materials in this small collection are some of the products of that conference, including audiotapes of the sessions.

In August of 1965, six days of rioting ensued in the Watts region of Los Angeles after an African-American man was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol for drunk driving, and his mother and brother participated in the altercation when the police officer radioed for the man's vehicle to be impounded. Marquette Frye, the motorist, was subdued with physical force by several officers who were trying to arrest him. As the situation intensified, growing crowds of local residents watching the exchange began yelling and throwing objects at the police officers. After Frye was arrested along with his mother and brother, the crowds continued to grow and the police returned to the scene several times that night to break them up and were attacked with rocks and concrete. The ensuing six days saw a 46-square mile area of Los Angeles transformed into a combat zone. During the rioting, 3900 National Guardsmen were called out who enforced a curfew when martial law was declared. In addition to the guardsmen, 934 Los Angeles Police officers and 718 officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were deployed during the rioting. It was estimated that between 31,000 and 35,000 adults participated in the riots over the course of six days, while twice that many were "sympathetic, but not active."

1.5 Linear Feet 1 document box, 2 audio reels

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