How Did The Watts Riot Work Affect The Civil Rights Movement?

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Hearing anger instead of hope, a small town just outside of Los Angeles breaks loose into what will be known as the worst urban riot in twenty years. With a meaningless cause the Watts riot caused horrible setbacks in the progress being made in the Civil Rights movement, damage in their own home town, and they even made Martin Luther King Jr. lose hope. After all of the work put into the Civil Rights movement it only takes one person, one town, one riot to ruin it all for the whole nation. Most people do not realize that a million good examples that cause progress in a movement can all be ruined by one bad example. In the town of Watts the riot left some extraordinary damage that almost seems impossible. The riot lasted only five days. These …show more content…
What the people of Watts did not think of was the set back this would have on the progress events such as Freedom summer had. Freedom summer had made huge progress on allowing blacks to vote in the South. After seeing what would happen when they gave any power to a black skinned folk they became afraid of riots happening in their own hometowns. While everyone fighting for Civil Rights hoped the riot would be of little news they were gravely disappointed. This was the first riot that the west coast had ever seen which made this big news. It was on news channels all over the nation as people soon realized no where was safe from the anger. Many people became afraid that violence would erupt everywhere now. Even if it did not any person not completely black was terrified that they would be beaten to death. Even Martin Luther King Jr. saw the horrible impacts Watts was having on the Civil Rights movement. Deciding they needed help King dropped everything and went to Watts to try to reason with everybody in hopes of restoring order. If he had been able to restore order there is a chance that the impact would have been less significant. After arriving in Watts King rode in a car with a megaphone trying to shout reason into the rioters. Rocks were thrown at King as he was driven around the Watts people. One youth not realizing who he was ran up to him screaming “We
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