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🦋 American History

I am being continually surprised, as I read Nixonland, at the extent of the racial violence that occurred in America in the early to mid-60's -- and secondarily surprised at myself for being surprised. I am more ignorant of my country's history than I like to think of myself as being. Take for instance the Watts riots -- I have of course heard of these before and had a notion of their importance; but somehow I had assumed they were a concrete event that took place over a week or something at a particular time and place. Come to find out instead that for a period of at least a few years, a large area of Los Angeles was borrderline anarchic and prone to break out in mass violence. Similarly I had no idea of the frequency with which white mobs assembled in Chicago, and for how long that went on. Thanks for schooling me, Mr. Perlstein.

(And thanks, Edge of the American West bloggers, for giving me inspiration to do some history reading -- I'm finding your this day in history posts fascinating.)

posted morning of Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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