"In the wake of the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson, Mo., it’s worth remembering an ambivalent reality of American history: demonstrations – even those that turned violent – have generally advanced the legislative and political cause of civil rights, while riots have more typically resulted in a backlash that retarded it.
Not quite 50 years ago, after a California highway patrolman arrested a 21-year-old unemployed black man suspected of drunken driving, and his mother rushed into the street in protest, the Watts section of Los Angeles exploded in six days of violence that killed 34 people, injured more than 1,000 and caused more than $40 million in property damage.
Just five days earlier, Lyndon Johnson had signed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the bookend to the previous year’s Civil Rights Act and intended to be the feel-good linchpin in the nation’s long delayed effort to live up to its founding creed. Instead, the riots revealed the depth of enduring economic and social despair in black communities across the country, prompting national soul-searching but also a withering retort from outraged whites.
L.A.’s take-no-prisoners police chief, William Parker, declared that violence was to be expected, “When you keep telling people they are unfairly treated and teach them disrespect for the law.”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/ferguson-riots-civil-rights-113151.html?ml=po#.VHTqmYuG81I
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