Readers Remember

Late one evening in the summer of 1965 under smoky skies, Mama, in her nurses’ uniform, hustled me out the back door of our South-Central home into our late-model Ford. Our “adventure” would take us to the “Westside”--north of Slauson and west of Crenshaw. In this rarely infiltrated land of upscale homes, my Aunt Bea was one of a handful of African American residents.

Mama instructed Aunt Bea to lock the doors and not open them until morning. My 5-year-old heart pounded and I cried as Mama headed off to work the graveyard shift at the Kaiser Hospital on Sunset Boulevard. Aunt Bea told me there was a riot going on and that our city was on fire.

Almost 30 years later in 1992, under smoky skies, I hustled my two young sons out of our Mid-City home in broad daylight into my late-model Nissan. Our adventure took us to the Best Western high above Highland Avenue near the Hollywood Bowl. I stood clutching my boys, watching out of a window as once again my beloved city smoldered in rage. It was my youngest son’s eighth birthday. And again I cried.

T. FAYE GRIFFIN

Los Angeles

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The summer before sixth grade, I peered out the window to see a National Guard jeep going down the street. Over on Western Avenue, gas station owners had spray-painted on their windows the words “Soul Brother” in big, blue letters. It was the time of the 1965 Watts riots, and I lived in what in the future would be called South-Central L.A.

After the curfew area was announced, my aunt got out the street map and we traced the boundaries: Pico on the north, Crenshaw to the west, Alameda to the east. Now I knew the limits of my community.

ROBERT NAKAMURA

Los Angeles