History lesson

From today's NY Times:

A special on Friday night on Showtime — the title uses a vulgarity; we’ll just call it “Burn”["Burn Motherfucker, burn!"] — does a somewhat better job, but its main strength is to underscore the history leading up to 1992. The film, by Sacha Jenkins, doesn’t even get to the King video and verdict until almost an hour in, using that time to trace the history of racism and oppression by the Los Angeles Police Department back to the Watts riot of 1965 and beyond.

“The legacy of 1965 is that it brought to a close the optimism of the civil rights movement,” Darnell Hunt, the U.C.L.A. scholar, explains onscreen. Patience was no longer the watchword; violence became a way to express dissatisfaction with the sluggish pace of change...

Rob's comment:

When the 1965 Watts riots happened, I was in federal prison in Lompoc for refusing to report for military service. I asked a black inmate from L.A. what he thought about it. His response: "I hope they burn that motherfucker down!"