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“Who would answer all the questions, fulfill all the requests? Would anyone? Could anyone? History had taught the citizens of Watts to hope for the best and expect nothing, but be prepared for the worst.”
― Maya Angelou, A Song Flung Up to Heaven

“I am not going to stress the usual argument that the police habitually mistreat Negroes. Every Negro knows this. There is scarcely any black man, woman, or child in the land who at some point or other has not been mistreated by a policeman. (A young man in Watts said, "The riots will continue because I, as a Negro, am immediately considered to be a criminal by the police and, if I have a pretty woman with me, she is a tramp even if she is my wife or mother.")”
― Bayard Rustin, Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

“Lighting: a hundred Watts
Detroit, Newark and New York
Screeching nerves, exploding minds
lives tied to
a policeman's whistle
a welfare worker's doorbell
finger”
― Maya Angelou, A Song Flung Up to Heaven

“The McCone Report goes on to mention two other "aggravating events in the twelve months prior to the riot." One was the failure of the poverty program to "live up to [its] press notices," combined with reports of "controversy and bickering" in Los Angeles over administering the program. The second "aggravating event" is summed up by the report in these words:

Throughout the nation unpunished violence and disobedience to the law were widely reported, and almost daily there were exhortations, here and elsewhere, to take the most extreme and illegal remedies to right a wide variety of wrongs, real and supposed.

It would be hard to frame a more insidiously equivocal statement of the Negro grievance concerning law enforcement during a period that included the release of the suspects in the murder of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the failure to obtain convictions against the suspected murderers of Medgar Evers and Mrs. Violet Liuzzo, the Gilligan incident in New York, the murder of Reverend James Reeb, and the police violence in Selma, Alabama—to mention only a few of the more notorious cases. And surely it would have been more to the point to mention that throughout the nation Negro demonstrations have almost invariably been nonviolent, and that the major influence of the civil rights movement on the Negro community has been the strategy of discipline and dignity. Obsessed by the few prophets of violent resistance, the McCone Commission ignores the fact that never before has an American group sent so many people to jail or been so severely punished for trying to uphold the law of the land.”
― Bayard Rustin, Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

“Such proposals may seem impractical and even incredible. But what is truly impractical and incredible is that America, with its enormous wealth, has allowed Watts to become what it is and that a commission empowered to study this explosive situation should come up with answers that boil down to voluntary actions by business and labor, new public relations campaigns for municipal agencies, and information-gathering for housing, fair employment, and welfare departments. The Watts manifesto is a response to realities that the McCone Report is barely beginning to grasp. Like the liberal consensus which it embodies and reflects, the commission's imagination and political intelligence appear paralyzed by the hard facts of Negro deprivation it has unearthed, and it lacks the political will to demand that the vast resources of contemporary America be used to build a genuinely great society that will finally put an end to these deprivations. And what is most impractical and incredible of all is that we may very well continue to teach impoverished, segregated, and ignored Negroes that the only way they can get the ear of America is to rise up in violence.”
― Bayard Rustin, Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

“In the middle of May an L.A. cop stopped a black man named Leonard Deadwyler for speeding through Watts. He stuck his gun in the driver's-side window â€� 'to attrack the driver's attention,' he later testified. He also claimed the car suddenly lurched forward, causing his gun to discharge. Leonard Deadwyler slumped into the lap of his wife and muttered his last words â€� 'But she's having a baby' â€� as his two-year-old son looked on from the backseat. He had been speeding her to the nearest hospital, miles away; there was no hospital in Watts â€� an area twice the size of Manhattan.”
― Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America