Writer recalls living through Watts riots

WATTS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- In the summer of 1965, newscasts delivered the roiling distress of South Los Angeles into the living rooms of America.

What was not so visible was the underlying frustration that fueled it.

"My insides were churning," said Larry Aubry, a columnist with the black weekly the LA Sentinel.

"There was shooting going on," he said as he returned to the scene of the violence.

He had been a parole officer in 1965, on the side of law and order. Yet he knew well the color barriers of the day. Fifty years later, he urges vigilance to avoid another uprising.

"They lacked hope and they lacked vision and they lacked respect. They needed respect," he said.

He described the alarm he felt stepping out of his mother-in-law's home near 61st Street and Vermont Avenue.

"I heard shots and I came out. I was behind the police... What I wanted to tell them was, 'What the hell are you doing? These are human beings here. I don't care if they are looting or not."

Aubry offered no rosy picture as he walked through Vermont corridor, now lined by thrift shops, storefront chapels and empty buildings. He says members of the community who earned their way into the middle class have largely abandoned the neighborhoods they came from.

"Those conditions that caused that are still with us quite frankly. I think there is a need for more hope. I am not sure there is more hope," Aubry said.

Yet he is not discouraged. He says he takes it as a challenge. The former school board member, now 82, is part of a new group called the Black Community, Clergy and Labor Alliance.

"It is to develop alternatives to what exists now, coalesce around issues," he explained.

He pointed to the transformation of nearby Leimert Park. More resources for other parts of South Los Angeles could provide jobs and better education, he said.

"The struggle is every day," he said.