The Watts riot initiated a major turning point in Martin King’s thinking about America. He began to see that “there are literally two Americas,” one beautiful, rich, and primarily white, and the other ugly, poor, and disproportionately black. Martin’s encounter with the “other America,” as he frequently referred to it, helped him to understand something of the world that created Malcolm X.
Bayard Rustin, an adviser to King who met him in Watts, recalled the occasion: “I’ll never forget the discussion we had with King that night. He was absolutely undone, and he looked at me and said, `You know, Bayard, I worked to get these people the right to eat hamburgers, and now I’ve got to do something … to help them to get the money to buy [them].
Food for thought
Everybody evolves. Becomes more enlightened. With the passage of time and the experience of life. Then again, “He who is afraid of every nettle should not piss in the grass.” Thomas Fuller.
I worked in a city planning job in Watts in early 1967, shortly after the riots. The local schoolkids there couldn’t afford hamburgers, so they ate french fries for lunch.