A New Message From Watts: Hope But Verify

We've been on the verge of what seemed like permanent ideological transformation before. For liberals, the most dramatic such moment came with Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory in 1964. "These are the most hopeful times since Christ was born in Bethlehem," Johnson declared while lighting the White House Christmas tree that year. He had already passed a landmark bill outlawing Southern segregation and had launched his War on Poverty. He was about to pass the first federal aid to education, Medicare, the National Endowments for the Humanities and Arts, pioneering environmental legislation and the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. The nation's racial ordeal apparently all but surpassed, one of Martin Luther King's deputies proclaimed, "There is no more civil-rights movement. President Johnson signed it out of existence."

The rioting in Watts began five nights later. On Aug. 11, 1965, 103rd Street would become known to the world as "Charcoal Alley." A scuffle with police some 15 blocks away had escalated into violence, which spread, first to 103rd, and eventually all the way to 52nd, far north of Watts's borders. A local news station dispatched the nation's first news helicopter, which was targeted by armed rioters taking potshots from below. Thus did Watts become not merely the country's worst race riot, but the first to unfold live on TV.

In the next congressional election, Lyndon Johnson's coattail liberals were incinerated in Charcoal Alley's flames—and the chaos of riots in over a dozen cities more. Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California decrying the "arson and murder in Watts." Richard Nixon—and then Reagan himself—was on his way to the presidency. It wouldn't be long before pundits began speaking of the United States as a fundamentally conservative nation.

The corner of 116th and Avalon, where it all started, is quiet now, unmarked, virtually unmarkable: it's hard to imagine its placid beige and sky-blue stucco bungalows as the epicenter of anything. It takes five minutes for anyone to pass by—a clutch of cute kids, escorted by a crossing guard, on their way to school. It's where they're heading that history is being made now. The line at the polling station closest to 1965's ground zero is longer than anyone can ever remember.

Seventy-seven-year-old Maurice Banks has been here since 6 a.m. He remembers the riot—"every bit of it." He didn't really disapprove. "People fought for thingswhen things needed to be changed. It was a rebellion." Unbidden, he adds: "Right now, you don't need to fight for it. You're gonna have somebody that's going to fight for you. Someone you can trust."

Banks's polling station is as close to a festival as you can get on a rainy day with no food, no music and too many people who've forced themselves out of bed two hours before they usually leave for work. "Obama is going to win in a landslide!" a building manager says. "McCain doesn't even have to set up his victory party." Fernando Martin, whose parents were born in Mexico—Watts used to be virtually all black, now it's majority Latino—sounds like he stepped out of an Obama commercial. I note that most of the people in line are black. He smiles a smile of solidarity. "Definitely! Yeah! Breaking a barrier. That's cool."