Walter Mosley makes stops in L.A. tonight, Thursday

The first is that I was a member of an acting group called the Afro-American Traveling Actors Assn., and at the height of the riots we went down to perform our play. But nobody was going to plays because they were either rioting or fighting rioting or hiding from rioting. So we drove back to West Los Angeles right through the riots. I saw all the fighting and police and people lying unconscious or, you know, dead on the street, and all that kind of stuff. But that had less of an impact on me than the night I came into a room and found my father drinking and sobbing. And I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And he said, ‘It’s the riots.’ ‘Are you afraid?’ I said. And he goes, ‘No, I want to go out there and riot. I want to fight. I want to burn. I want to shoot at these people.’ And I was very afraid, and I said, ‘Are you going to?’ And he went, ‘No, I’m not, because it’s wrong to hurt people you don’t know, who may not deserve it, and it’s wrong to burn down your own property. But I want to,’ he said. And that had a really big impact on me.