# data[].attributes.body
It was Maya's birthday, she was preparing everything for the gathering happily until Dolly calls her, she told her to wait for her. Dolly arrives and said that Martin Luther King was dead. She went to Harlem feeling shocked and devastated. That day marked history for Americans, what happened was shattering and sorrowful for everyone. After some time, Maya received an excellent job offer to write a television series. She accepted it, so she moved to SF to start her new job.

# data[].attributes.body
Guy came to NYC for one day and Maya planned a party in honor of his son and invited all of the men that helped her raise Guy. She prepared everything with the thoughts in her mind that Guy is no longer her little child. The guests came and the party went well until Hercules and his partner arrived, making offensive comments and acting in a bad way that made feel Maya angry. She kicked them out and after that the party went well. At the end of the party, Guy talks to his mom about what happened and they explained each other point of views. At the end, they said how much they love each other.

# data[].attributes.body
Maya received from his old lover. He told her that he wanted to see her  at a gathering with a few more persons. All of this happened without him knowing that Dolly and her are friends, so they planned something to embarrassed him. When the night came, she prepared everything, even Dolly's entrance. Maya asked him about fidelity when Dolly entered the room. No one notices what happened but the girls were satisfied. Later, Maya's old lover talked with her totally embarrassed  and went out with the rests of the guests to an appointment.

"Dolly walked in the door. Only a few heads turned.  (...)  Dolly walked up to his chair and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Hello there.' He turned and looked up. It took him a second to register her face and another to remember where he was. The first question was, Did I see her, too? The second was, Did I know who she was? Really? The third was, How did she get here?"  (167-168)

# data[].attributes.body
Maya arrived to her friend Rosa's apartment, ready to start her life there. She met Dolly, "the old black lady" that was with her lover, but ,ironically, they became good friends, they spent a lot of time together. Also, Maya met new people and gathered with old friends that helped her furnished her apartment.

# data[].attributes.body
Maya decided to move again, at the end she picked New York. She was planning everything until Bailey came to her house, when he told her about the accident that happened to her son she quickly packed everything and drove to SF. When she finally arrived, she felt guilty for the what happened to her son but she stayed with him until recover. It wast time to move to NYC.

" 'Baby, Guy returned to San Francisco three days ago, and I've come for you. He's in the hospital. He is in serious condition but not a life-threatening one. Get what you need.' Surprise, whether good or bad, can have a profound effect on the body. Some people faint, some cry aloud. Bailey caught me as my knees buckled." (119-120)

# data[].attributes.body
Maya got a call from the love of her life, he was in United States ready to take Maya back to Africa with him. They visited LA and went to black libraries, stores and to the cinema. They watched a romantic movie but after it they fought like Maya was expecting. The next morning her brother and mother came and talked withe her lover and Maya herself. His lover decided to move to Mexico at the end.

" 'I am here.' He couldn't be. I looked at the door. 'I am in New York City. I have come to collect you. God gave you to me. Remember' I couldn't speak. He was the man I felt had taken the heart out of my body and worn it boldly on his shoulders like an epaulette, and I had adored him." (96)

# data[].attributes.body
Frances Williams helped her in LA giving her a job, in Random Research, and an apartment. Working, she learn a lot of the black people of Watts and their anger at the US system, the racism and their situation. On day a riot exploded in Watts, Maya watched all the problems closely, going to Watts and she was part of what happened, she wrote about it and did interviews for reporters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Watts, California

It was a low-key traffic stop around 7 p.m. on a Wednesday evening that ignited what would become known as the Watts Rebellion.

Stepbrothers Marquette and Ronald Frye were pulled over by a white California Highway Patrol officer while driving their mother's car near the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Marquette failed a sobriety test and panicked as he was arrested. As Marquette's anger rose at the thought of going to jail, a scuffle broke out between him and one of the police officers. Ronald joined in, partly to protest the arrest but also to protect his brother.

A crowd began to gather, and back-up police arrived under the assumption that the crowd was hostile, which resulted in a fight between someone in the crowd and an officer. Another newly-arrived officer jabbed Ronald in the stomach with his riot baton and then moved to intervene in the fight between Marquette and that officer.

Marquette was knocked down by the riot baton, handcuffed and taken to the police car. The Frye brothers' mother, Rena, showed-up on the scene and-believing police were abusing Marquette-rushed to pull the officers off of him, resulting in another fight.

Rena was arrested and forced into the car, followed by Ronald, who was handcuffed after attempting to intervene peacefully in his stepmother's arrest.

As the crowd got angrier about the scene they had witnessed, more highway patrol officers arrived and used batons and shotguns to keep the crowd back from the police car. Hundreds more people flocked to the scene to investigate the sirens there.

As two motorcycle police attempted to leave, one was spat on. Those police stopped to pursue the woman who they believed did it, the crowd converged around them, sending several other officers into the crowd to assist them. More police cars were called to the scene.

The two police found Joyce Ann Gaines and to arrest her for spitting at them. She resisted and was dragged out of the crowd which, believing she was pregnant, became even angrier.

By 7:45 p.m., the riot was in full force, with rocks, bottles and more being thrown at the buses and cars that had been stalled in traffic because of the escalating incident.

Watts Explodes

The night after the arrest, crowds attacked motorists with rocks and bricks, and pulled white drivers out of their cars and beat them.

The following morning, there was a community meeting helmed by Watts leaders, including representatives from churches, local government and the NAACP, with police in attendance, designed to bring calm to the situation. Rena also attended, imploring the crowds to calm down. She, Marquette and Ronald had all been released on bail that morning.

The meeting became a barrage of complaints about the police and government treatment of Black citizens in recent history. Immediately following the statement by Rena, a teenager grabbed the microphone and proclaimed that rioters planned to move into the white sections of Los Angeles.

William Parker

Local leaders requested the police dispatch more Black police, but this was turned down by the Los Angeles Police Department Chief William H. Parker, who was prepared to call the National Guard. Word of this decision and subsequent news reports about the teenager's tirade are credited with causing the riots to escalate.

Overnight, violence had engulfed the streets as mobs clashed with police, set buildings and cars on fire and looted area stores. Crowds attacked firefighters and obstructed them from putting out fires.

By the end the third day, rioting covered a 50 square-mile section of Los Angeles and 14,000 National Guard troops were dispatched to the city, erecting barricades. Further clashes included sniper fire at police and Guardsmen, police raids on vehicles and apartments, and Molotov cocktails. Watts resembled a war zone, and the violence continued three more days.

Police Commissioner Parker fanned flames by deriding rioters as "monkeys in a zoo" and implying Muslims were infiltrating and agitating. In the early morning of the final day of the riots, as violence began to subside, police surrounded a mosque, resulting in gunfire and the arrest of people inside.

Police ransacked the building next door and tear-gassed the sewers to prevent anyone from escaping. Two fires broke out and destroyed the mosque. Charges were dropped against arrestees and the Muslim community accused police of using the riots as an excuse to destroy their place of worship.

After the Watts Rebellions

Most of the 34 dead were Black citizens. Two policemen and one firefighter were among the casualties, and 26 deaths, mostly the result of Los Angeles Police Department or National Guard actions, were deemed justifiable homicides.

A commission was set-up to study the causes of the riot, after which several community-improvement suggestions were made that would improve schools, employment, housing, healthcare and relations with the police department.

There was little follow-up, but a new era of DIY local activism blossomed in Watts, including reformed street gang members who joined with the Black Panther Party to rebuild and monitor police excesses.

What Caused the Riots

The riot was not an isolated event, with multiple urban riots across the country taking place in 1964 and 1965 prior to the Watts explosion.

In 1964, there was a three-day riot in Rochester, NY, leaving four dead; in the New York City neighborhoods of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, a six-day riot involving as many as 4,000 people following the shooting of a young Black man; in Philadelphia, a three-day riot following the arrest of a Black couple who had gotten into a scuffle with police; and a three-day riot in Chicago when a Black woman attempting to shoplift alcohol was attacked by the store owner and crowds later gathered to protest.

Some blamed the Watts riots on outsider agitators, but most understood it as the result of continuing dissatisfaction about living conditions and opportunities, and long-standing tension between police and residents.

In 1961, the arrest of a Black male in Griffith Park for riding a merry-go-round without a ticket resulted in crowds throwing rocks and bottles at police. In 1962, the police raided a Nation of Islam mosque and killed an unarmed man, resulting in massive protests.

Over the two years leading up to the riot, 65 Black residents were shot by police, 27 of them in the back and 25 of them unarmed. During that same period, there were 250 demonstrations against the living conditions there.

The Violence Continues

Nationwide, the violence would not end. On August 12, the day after tensions erupted in Watts, Chicago's troubled Garfield Park neighborhood erupted into three days of violence following the death of Dessie May Williams in a fire truck ladder accident.

The following year saw fire bombings, riots and killing in the same city. And the Detroit Riots began two years later, resulting in 43 deaths. The 1992 Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King beating trial of four police officers led to the deaths of 63 people and were a grim reminder that many issues of racism remained unresolved.

Sources

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The Eisenhower Foundation.
Watts Riots: Traffic stop was the spark that ignited days of destruction in L.A. Los Angeles Times.
Watts: Remember what they built, not what they burned. Los Angeles Times.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watts Rebellion - Riots, Summary & 1965 | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Watts Rebellion was a series of riots that stemmed from an August 1965 arrest in a mostly Black Los Angeles neighborhood before subsiding after six days.

# data[].attributes.body
She moved to Hawaii with her Aunt Leah and her husband, working as a nightclub singer to get everything in her life straight. After a couple of months, she had her own clientele and an apartment. Later, she met the singer that stole her clientele but Maya discovered that singing isn't for her, deciding after that to move to LA. She gave her last show and felt like a brighter person than before.

# data[].attributes.body
After the weekend, she visited her Auntie Lottie, they chatted for a while until Maya received a call from Ivonne, she told her that Malcolm X was death. Maya, devastated, went with his brother to a couple of bar, talking about Malcolm X death, she was shock with the indifference of black people. Later, she talks with his son about everything.

"She said, 'These Negroes are crazy here. I mean, really crazy. Otherwise, why would they have just killed that man in New York?' (...) I didn't have to ask. I knew "that man in New York" was Malcolm X and that someone had just killed him." (26)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
February 21, 1965: In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. He was 39.

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, Malcolm was the son of James Earl Little, a Baptist preacher who advocated the Black nationalist ideals of Marcus Garvey. Threats from the Ku Klux Klan forced the family to move to Lansing, Michigan, where his father continued to preach his controversial sermons despite continuing threats. In 1931, Malcolm's father was murdered by the white supremacist Black Legion, and Michigan authorities refused to prosecute those responsible. In 1937, Malcolm was taken from his family by welfare caseworkers. By the time he reached high school age, he had dropped out of school and moved to Boston, where he became increasingly involved in criminal activities.

In 1946, at the age of 21, Malcolm was sent to prison on a burglary conviction. It was there he encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, whose members are popularly known as Black Muslims. The Nation of Islam advocated Black nationalism and racial separatism. Muhammad's teachings had a strong effect on Malcolm, who entered into an intense program of self-education and took the last name "X" to symbolize his stolen African identity.
READ MORE: The Explosive Chapter Left Out of Malcolm X's Autobiography
After six years, Malcolm was released from prison and became a loyal and effective minister of the Nation of Islam in Harlem, New York. In contrast with civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X advocated self-defense and the liberation of African Americans "by any means necessary." A fiery orator, Malcolm was admired by the African American community in New York and around the country.

In the early 1960s, he began to develop a more outspoken philosophy than that of Elijah Muhammad, whom he felt did not sufficiently support the civil rights movement. In late 1963, Malcolm's suggestion that President John F. Kennedy's assassination was a matter of the "chickens coming home to roost" provided Elijah Muhammad, who believed that Malcolm had become too powerful, with a convenient opportunity to suspend him from the Nation of Islam.

A few months later, Malcolm formally left the organization and made a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, where he was profoundly affected by the lack of racial discord among orthodox Muslims. He returned to America as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and in June 1964 founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which advocated Black identity and held that racism, not the white race, was the greatest foe of the African American. Malcolm's new movement steadily gained followers, and his more moderate philosophy became increasingly influential in the civil rights movement, especially among the leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

On stage at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down as his pregnant wife and four daughters took cover in the front row. Three members of the Nation of Islam-Mujahid Abdul Halim, Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam-were soon after charged with first-degree murder. Islam and Aziz maintained their innocence, and during the 1966 trial, Halim confessed to the crime and testified that Islam and Aziz were innocent. All three men were found guilty, however, and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

In 2021, Aziz and Islam were exonerated after an investigation that included the discovery of key FBI documents withheld from the defense and prosecution during the trial. Aziz was 83 at the time of the exoneration; Islam had died in 2009.
READ MORE: 7 Things You May Not Know About Malcolm X

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
February 21, 1965: In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated while addressing his Organization of

# data[].attributes.body
Maya decided to return to United States after staying 4 years in Ghana, leaving her son to help Malcolm X with the OAAU, a organization that fought for the black people's rights. She contacted Malcolm and some of her friends, she told them she would spend a month with her family in SF. The political climate was tense in the US in that time. After she arrived to SF, Maya spent an awesome weekend with her brother and mother but also thinking about her son.

"My return in the United States came at the most opportune time. I could leave my son to his manly development hurdles; I would leave my great, all-consuming love to his obedient subjects; and I would return to work with Malcolm X on building the Organization of African-American Unity." (10)

# data[].attributes.body
Angelou, Maya. A Song Flung up to Heaven. Random House, 2002.