Honors Timeline

 

1960 – Los Angeles becomes the third most populous city in the United States, with 2,479,015 people.

1962 – Author Charles Bukowski, who spoke of L.A. as his favorite subject, began performing live readings of his writings on Los Angeles radio station KPFK.

1965 – Currently the largest art museum in the Western United States, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens.

1965 – The Watts Riots – a civil disturbance taking place in the Summer of ’65 in Los Angeles – caused over 3000 arrests, 1000 injuries, and 34 deaths.

1968 – Large, spontaneous walkouts by high school students occurred in support of the Chicano Movement in East L.A.

1968 – Johnny Otis publishes his novel, Listen to the Lambs, about the Watts Riots.

1968 – In California for campaigning, Robert Kennedy is assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

1968 – Author Joan Didion’s (whose novel Play it as it Lays was named one of TIME’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, and remains a classic of Los Angeles literature) published Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a nonfiction piece about her experiences in California.

1969 – A group of students at UCLA publish a monthly political newspaper entitled Gidra. This newspaper continued on until 1974, and was known as the ‘Voice of the Asian American Movement’.

1969 – Manson family murders occur, leading to the 1974 book Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi.