Selected Events for Urban Riots |
| Year | Month | Day | Event | Related Resource |
| 1964 | January | 08 | In his first State of the Union address, Lyndon Johnson announces, "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America." | Link |
July | 18 | Riots erupt in Harlem and spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant after James Powell, a 15-year-old black youth, was shot by an off-duty white police officer. Two people were killed and hundreds injured; stores were looted for several days. | | November | 03 | Lyndon Johnson is elected President in a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. | | | 1965 | January | 25 | President Johnson sends Congress a budget containing the biggest expansion of domestic welfare programs since the New Deal. | |
September | 15 | The Watts Riots erupts in Los Angeles | Link | | 1966 | February | | Martin Luther King, Jr. moves his family into a Chicago slum to begin a protest for better housing and economic conditions. To avoid confrontation, Mayor Daley meets with King, and a group of local housing authorities, church representatives and black leaders. | |
August | 26 | Martin Luther King, Jr.'s efforts secure in an open housing agreement in Chicago. A Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) poverty and unemployment program called Operation Breadbasket was created in Chicago and put under the leadership of Jesse Jackson. | | October | 15 | The Black Panther Party is founded in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Newton and Seale articulate their goals in a ten-point platform that demand, among other items, better housing, full employment,and an end to police brutality. | Link | | 1967 | July | 12 | The 1967 Newark, New Jersey riot begins with the arrest and beating of a cab driver, who allegedly drove around a double-parked police car at the corner of 7th St. and 15th Avenue. The riot spreads from black neighborhoods to downtown Newark. At the conclusion of six days of rioting 23 people lay dead, 725 people were injured and close to 1500 people had been arrested. | Link |
July | 23 | The Detroit Riot of 1967 begins when police vice squad officers execute a raid on an after hours drinking club or “blind pig” in a predominantly black neighborhoods. Looting and fires marked week of intense disturbances that left 43 people dead and 324 injured. | Link | December | 04 | Martin Luther King, Jr. announces the formation by SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) of a "Poor People's Campaign" with the aim of representing the problems of poor blacks and whites. | Link |
