at cops on the street and at media and police helicopters. Seventeen government buildings were destroyed. The Los Angeles Times Building was attacked and partially looted. A vast canopy of smoke from the burnings covered the L.A. basin. Flights out of Los Angeles International Airport were canceled and incoming flights had to be diverted due to the smoke and sniper fire.

Following the lead of events in the nation’s cultural capital, mass spontaneous rioting spread to several dozen cities across the United States. The rioting was the single most violent episode of social unrest in the United States in the twentieth century, far outstripping the urban revolts of the 1960s both in its sheer destructiveness and in the fact that the April-May riots were a multiracial revolt of thestarted among black people, spread immediately to involve Latinos in South Central (which is about 42 percent Latino) and Pico Union, and then brought in unemployed white workers from Hollywood in the north to Long Beach in the south and Venice in the west. East L.A. was spared only because of a massive show of force by the L.A. Sheriffs Department.

Everybody came out onto the streets. There was an unprecedented feeling of togetherness. Liquor stores were looted. Before the stores were torched, people got out hoses to defend their houses against the danger of spreading fires. Old people were evacuated. It was a family occasion. Carloads of people turned up at a clothing factory, and men, women and children loaded up and drove off. There were two days