Riots in The USA

Riots in numerous American cities took place during the 1960s, even as victories were won against legal segregation and disfranchisement in the South.

The Civil Rights Movement had raised hopes for further progress toward racial equality, but as blacks in Northern cities saw their hopes frustrated, the setting was established for large-scale disorder in cities such as Newark, New Jersey; Rochester, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Chicago.

Most significant were the Harlem Riot of 1964, the Watts Riot of 1965, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. Despite the recommendations of riot commissions about the social causes of these disturbances, as in the Kerner Report (1968), the government emphasized the use of force to contain the disorders.

The passing of the 1960s did not bring racial tensions to an end, and in 1992 such tensions exploded in the massive Los Angeles Riot of 1992 that followed the acquittal of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King, an African American motorist. The riots of the late 1960s and early 1990s have reflected the lack of governmental attention to the grievances about police brutality and social injustice voiced by African Americans. Such riots have allowed people of other nations to measure American claims to world leadership against the persistence of racial violence within the United States.