Columns of smoke darkened the sky along the Harbor Freeway as 11-year-old Richard Rankin rode home to Inglewood through South Los Angeles. His father shushed him from the driver's seat when he asked about the fires.
It would have been awkward to explain a race riot to a trio of sixth-grade boys — two white and one black — who had just been at a Boy Scout camp in the High Sierra, where skin color didn't matter.
It was Aug. 14, 1965, and the Watts riots were winding down.
But the boys in the car knew nothing of the violence that had taken more than 30 lives.