Watts leaders reflect on community's future 50 years after riots

WATTS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The fires raged for six days -- a once vibrant part of South Los Angeles was in chaos. Tim Watkins remembers watching a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy open fire on one of his neighbors.

"One of the officers took a few steps back, pumped the shotgun, shot him right in the back, dropped him right there," he said.

Watkins was only 12 years old, but the memory of that terrible chapter in his community remains vivid to this day.

"If I hadn't witnessed it, I probably would find it hard to believe," he said.

Watkins is now the director of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, a civil rights and community outreach organization that was founded by Watkins' father, Ted Watkins, shortly after the riots.

"We're top performers in family services, work source, after-school programs for kids that are at risk," Watkins said.

Fifty years later, the organization continues to play an important role in Watts due largely to the groundwork laid out by Ted Watkins, who passed away in 1993.

For more than four decades, Alice Harris, known by many as Sweet Alice, has been a powerful voice for the disenfranchised in Watts.

"The reason the riot was so great is because we were hurting," she said.

At 82, she can still remember her neighborhood imploding in 1965, but more vividly she can recall the sentiments that led up to the unrest.

While the riots may have started with a traffic stop near 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard, Harris says it was more about disillusionment.

"There was no medical facility and no jobs," she said.

Harris went on to found the Parents of Watts, a grassroots organization that provides food and shelter, along with family counseling and employment training.

The Parents of Watts and the Watts Labor Community Action Committee were instrumental in getting Los Angeles County to build the Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center in Wilmington.

"Once we got medical facility, we didn't think about moving out, we thought about improving," Harris said.

Along with healthcare, Harris and Watkins say that the residents of Watts need employment opportunities even if that means simply promoting the area's art and culture.

"The people of Watts simply need to share their talents and gifts with the people of the world, and we'll be employed constantly," Watkins said.

Despite concerns about tensions brewing, Watkins and Harris say there's a positive movement and an optimistic energy about the future of the community they both love.