he
officers issued live ammunition to all the men.

By the end of the riot, the Guard had fired thousands of rounds of
ammunition. The press portrayed Watts as an armed camp with scores of
black snipers systematically trying to pick off the police and the Guard.
In retrospect, both the police and the Guard came to believe that most of
the snipers had really been the police and the Guardsmen unknowingly
shooting at each other. When all of the evidence was examined in the calm
light of day, very little of it pointed to the existence of snipers.
Gradually, the Guard gained confidence in itself and in the situation.
The more that it acted in calm and deliberation, the more quickly peace
was restored to the area. Finally, eleven days after the Frye arrest the
last members of the Guard withdrew, and the next day the police returned
to normal duty.

In the light of the victories of the Civil Rights Movement, whites were
bewildered by the anger which exploded from the black ghetto. They
thought of their concessions to blacks as gifts from a generous heart.
Blacks, to the contrary, viewed these concessions as the tardy surrender
of rights which should have been theirs all along. Moreover, the effects
of the civil rights victories had been largely limited to the Deep South
and almost entirely to changes in legal status. The day-to-day realities
of education, housing, employment, and social degradation had hardly been
touched. Finally, life in an urban ghetto, though lacking the humiliation
of legal segregation, had brought another harsh reality into
Afro-American life. Survival for the individual as well as for the family
came under fresh stress in urban slum situations. This had also been true
for immigrant groups from Europe. Urban slum conditions created
tremendous economic, social, and psychological strains. Ghetto life added
a new dimension of social disorganization to an already oppressed
community. The anonymity of life in large urban centers tended to remove
many of the social constraints to individual behavior. Crime and
delinquency increased. Actually, America had been deluded by the Civil
Rights Movement into thinking that genuine changes were taking place for
most Afro-Americans. Watts became a living proclamation that this was not
true.

Early in 1967, violence began to reverberate throughout the ghettoes all
across the nation. The earliest disturbances occurred at three Southern
universities. Then, violence exp