Set the Night on Fire

Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties is a movement history by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener published in April 2020. The authors combine archival research and personal interviews with their own experiences in the civil rights and anti-war movements to tell the story of this transformative decade. The book's purpose is not to present a comprehensive history of 1960s Los Angeles but to dispel the mythology surrounding this era and replace it with the neglected history of the populist social and cultural movements that shifted power away from an entrenched elite and opened up opportunities for radical egalitarian change. Mike Davis (1946–2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California. Jon Wiener (born 1944) is an American historian and journalist based in Los Angeles. Synopsis The book begins with an account of the powers ruling LA in the 1950s—especially the police (the LAPD), and ends with the defeat of mayor Sam Yorty by Tom Bradley in 1973, the city’s first African-American mayor. Post-war LA is usually described as a middle class paradise of suburban living and a booming economy. But people of color lived in a separate world shaped by poverty and police violence which would eventually define the decade. Set the Night on Fire covers a range of movements—the non-violent direct action campaign seeking the end of segregated housing, the gay rights and women’s liberation movements, the rise of Black Power after the Watts Uprising of 1965, the emergence of alternative media (especially the LA Free Press ("the FREEP")), and tells the stories of anti-war women, draft resisters, activist nuns, and the Chicano students in East LA who led the high school "blowouts" of 1968.