n February 14, 1965, back from a trip to Los Angeles, and a week before he was killed in New York, Malcolm X gave a speech in Detroit. “Brothers and sisters, let me tell you, I spend my time out there in the street with people, all kind of people, listening to what they have to say,” he said. “And they’re dissatisfied, they’re disillusioned, they’re fed up, they’re getting to the point of frustration where they are beginning to feel: What do they have to lose?”
That summer, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. In a ceremony at the Capitol Rotunda attended by Martin Luther King, Jr., Johnson invoked the arrival of enslaved Africans in Jamestown, in 1619: “They came in darkness and they came in chains. And today we strike away the last major shackles of those fierce and ancient bonds.” Five days later, Watts was swept by violence and flames, following a protest against police brutality. The authorities eventually arrested nearly four thousand people; thirty-four people died. “How is it possible, after all we’ve accomplished?” Johnson asked. “How could it be? Is the world topsy-turvy?”
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