10. The Watts Riots: August 11-15, 1965
The term Watts Riots of 1965 refers to a large-scale riot which lasted 6 days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in August 1965. By the time the riot subsided, 34 people had been killed, 2,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested. It would stand as the most severe riot in Los Angeles history until the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The riot is viewed by some as a reaction to the record of police brutality by the LAPD and other racial injustices suffered by black Americans in Los Angeles, including job and housing discrimination.
The riots began on August 11, 1965, in Watts, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, when Lee Minikus, a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer, pulled over Marquette Frye, who Minikus believed was intoxicated because of his observed erratic driving. Frye failed to pass sobriety tests, including walking in a straight line and touching his nose, and was arrested soon after. Minikus refused to let Frye’s brother, Ronald, drive the car home, and radioed for it to be impounded. As events escalated, a crowd of onlookers steadily grew from dozens to hundreds. The mob became violent, throwing rocks and other objects while shouting at the police officers. A struggle ensued shortly resulting in the arrest of Marquette and Ronald Frye, as well as their mother.
9. Cincinnati Riots: April 2001
The 2001 Cincinnati riots were the largest urban disorders in the United States since the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The four days of rioting were a reaction to the fatal shooting in Cincinnati, Ohio of Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old black male, by Steven Roach, a police officer, during an on-foot pursuit by several officers. The riots began in earnest at nightfall. A group which was peacefully protesting in police presence near City Hall was dispersed and elements reformed on the residential outskirts of downtown. They moved into the business area of downtown Cincinnati and rioted.
There was violence against unarmed citizens who were in the area by the rioters. Businesses were looted, storefronts damaged, and small fires were set. The police’s reaction was to guide the nucleus of the crowd by forming human walls to prevent the crowd from spreading while not fully encircling it allowing it to progress in the opening allowed. There were several injuries reported, none were serious, and some gunshots were reported.
The news of the rioting spread quickly and simultaneous riots broke out throughout Cincinnati suburbs of negligible damage. The streets were deserted in the early morning hours and businesses that were not damaged returned to as normal operations as possible. Throughout the next day, downtown suffered a considerable loss of productivity, worker attendance and commerce. Many companies made sure their employees left the facilities before later hours to ensure they were safe from a possible resurgence of violence.
During the work day, a small contingency of protesters gathered between the residential and business boundaries of downtown, shouting, disrupting traffic in a very confined area (of approximately 2 blocks on one street) but remained peaceful. There was a high concentration of police in that bordered area with pairs of police stationed throughout downtown on various street corners. Even with the police presence (and some suggest due to the police presence), when darkness hit the streets the riots returned.
8. The Attica Prison Riot: September 9-13, 1971
The Attica Prison riot occurred at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, United States in 1971. The riot was based in part upon prisoners’ demands for better living conditions, but was led in large part by a small band of political revolutionaries. On September 9, 1971, responding to the death of prisoner George Jackson, a black radical activist prisoner who had been shot to death by corrections officers in California’s San Quentin Prison on August 21, about 1,000 of the prison’s approximately 2,200 prisoners rioted and seized control of the prison, taking 33 staff hostage.
The State began negotiating with the prisoners. During the following four days of negotiations, authorities agreed to 28 of the prisoners’ demands, but would not agree to demands for complete amnesty from criminal prosecution for the prison takeover or for the removal of Attica’s superintendent. Under order of then state governor Nelson Rockefeller, state police took back control of the prison. When the uprising was over, at least 39 people were dead, including ten correction officers and civilian employees
7. The Battle in Seattle: November 30, 1999
Protest activity surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred on November 30, 1999 (nicknamed “N30” on similar lines to J18 and similar mobilizations), when the World Trade Organization (WTO) convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, United States.
The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive and controversial street protests outside the hotels and the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, in what became the second phase of the anti-globalization movement in the United States. The scale of the demonstrations—even the lowest estimates put the crowd at over 40,000—dwarfed any previous demonstration in the United States against a world meeting of any of the organizations generally associated with economic globalization (such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the World Bank). The events are sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle or the Battle in Seattle.
6. The Chicago riots at the Democratic National Convention: August 28, 1968
The 1968 Democratic National Convention had a significant amount of protest activity. In 1967, protest groups had been promising to come to Chicago and disrupt the convention, and the city promised to maintain law and order. For eight days, protesters and police battled for control of the streets of Chicago, whilst the US Democratic Party met at the convention. Given the atmosphere in the International Amphitheater, one would not think it possible that a major conflict between Chicago police and protesters was taking place just a few miles away. Confrontation in the streets, however, had a greater impact than the seating of racially mixed delegates from southern states, credential and platform battles, and even the presidential nomination.
5. Stonewall Riots: June 28, 1969
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
American gays and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s faced a legal system more anti-homosexual than those of some Warsaw Pact countries. Early homophile groups in the U.S. sought to prove that gay people could be assimilated into society, and they favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. The last years of the 1960s, however, were very contentious, as many social movements were active, including the African American Civil Rights Movement, the Counterculture of the 1960s, and antiwar demonstrations. These influences, along with the liberal environment of Greenwich Village, served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots
4. The Los Angeles Riots: April 29-May 4, 1992
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots, also known as the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest and Rodney King Uprising, were sparked on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of African-American motorist Rodney King following a high-speed pursuit. Thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted over the six days following the verdict. At that time, similar, smaller riots and anti-police actions took place in other locations in the United States and Canada.
Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred, and property damages topped roughly US$1 billion. In all, 53 people died during the riots and thousands more were injured. The riots, beginning in the evening after the verdicts, peaked in intensity over the next two days, but ultimately continued for several days. A curfew and deployment of the National Guard began to control the situation; eventually U.S. Army soldiers and United States Marines were ordered to the city to quell disorder as well.
Fifty-three people died during the riots with as many as 2,000 people injured. Estimates of the material losses vary between about $800 million and $1 billion. Approximately 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings, with fire calls coming once every minute at some points; widespread looting also occurred. Stores owned by Korean and other Asian immigrants were widely targeted, although stores owned by Caucasians and African Americans were targeted by rioters as well. Many of the disturbances were concentrated in South Central Los Angeles, which was primarily composed of African American and Hispanic residents. Half of all riot arrestees and more than a third of those killed during the violence were Hispanic.
3. Riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr: April 1968
The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities. Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was at a meeting on the Vietnam War at Camp David. (There were fears that Johnson might be hit with protests and abuses over the war if he attended).
At his widow’s request, King eulogized himself: His last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a recording of his famous ‘Drum Major’ sermon, given on February 4, 1968, was played at the funeral. In that sermon he makes a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to “feed the hungry,” “clothe the naked,” “be right on the [Vietnam] war question,” and “love and serve humanity.” Per King’s request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” at his funeral. After the assassination, the city of Memphis quickly settled the strike, on favorable terms to the sanitation workers.
2. Newark Riots: July 12-17, 1967
The 1967 Newark riots were a major civil disturbance that occurred in the city of Newark, New Jersey between July 12 and July 17, 1967. The six days of rioting, looting, and destruction left 26 dead and hundreds injured. In the period leading up to the riots, several factors led local African-American residents to feel powerless and disenfranchised. In particular, many felt they had been largely excluded from meaningful political representation and often suffered police brutality.
Furthermore, unemployment, poverty, and concerns about low-quality housing contributed to the tinder-box. According to a Rutgers University study on the riot, many African-Americans, especially younger community leaders, felt they had remained largely disenfranchised in Newark despite the fact that Newark became one of the first majority black major cities in America alongside Washington, D.C. In sum, the city was entering a turbulent period of incipient change in political power.
A former seven-term congressman representing New Jersey’s 11th congressional district, Mayor Hugh Addonizio (who was also the last non-black mayor of Newark) was charged with failing to incorporate blacks in various civil leadership positions and to help blacks get better employment opportunities. Black leaders argued that the Newark Police Department was dominated by white officers who would routinely stop and question black youths with or without provocation.
1. New York Draft Riots: July 13-16, 1863
The New York Draft Riots (July 13 to July 16, 1863; known at the time as Draft Week) were violent disturbances in New York City that were the culmination of discontent with new laws passed by Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The riots were the largest civil insurrection in American history apart from the Civil War itself.
President Abraham Lincoln sent several regiments of militia and volunteer troops to control the city. The rioters were overwhelmingly working class men, resentful, among other reasons, because the draft unfairly affected them while sparing wealthier men, who could afford to pay a $300.00 Commutation Fee to exclude themselves from its reach.
Initially intended to express anger at the draft, the protests turned ugly and degraded into “a virtual racial pogrom, with uncounted numbers of blacks murdered on the streets“. The conditions in the city were such that Major General John E. Wool stated on July 16, “Martial law ought to be proclaimed, but I have not a sufficient force to enforce it.” The military suppressed the mob using artillery and fixed bayonets, but not before numerous buildings were ransacked or destroyed, including many homes and an orphanage for black children.