When California Highway Patrol Officer Lee Minikus pulled over Los Angeles transplant Marquette Frye on Wednesday, August 11, 1965, it began as an ordinary traffic stop. Another motorist had pointed out Frye’s erratic driving, and Minikus confirmed that the young African-American man had been drinking. A crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings, additional officers had been called in, and Frye’s mood had progressively soured as he realized that his attempts to talk himself out of arrest were becoming increasingly futile. Ronald Frye, who had been in the car with his older brother, attempted to talk the police out of towing the vehicle. Further reinforcements arrived to handle an increasingly involved assemblage, and one officer mistook Marquette’s frantic behavior and Ronald’s heated negotiations for attacks on the police. The incident quickly became violent as Officer Wayne Wilson dispatched both brothers with force. Word spread through the crowd to the nearby home of the boys’ mother, and Rena Frye arrived just in time to witness the first blows. All three members of the family were taken away for resisting arrest, but the issue of the now dangerous crowd remained. Bystanders shouted out about the abuse of blacks at the hands of white cops. One observer, Gabriel Pope, threw a glass bottle and struck the rear fender of Sergeant Richard Rankin’s patrol car (Conot, 1-29). The shattering of the glass marked the official beginning of the Watts Riot.
1972---The last U.S. ground troops are withdrawn from Vietnam.
1988 – Al-Qaeda is formed.
Journalist Peter Bergen argues that two documents seized from the Sarajevo office of the Benevolence International Foundation show that the organization was established in August 1988
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