What Happened to Black Communities in the Sixties?

Some kind of incident triggered a mass uprising over and over again in the 19 sixties. Sometimes these precipitating events major, like an off duty police lieutenant named thomas gilligan shot and killed 15 year old james powell in front of witnesses. In other cases, the precipitating incident seemed random and almost trivial. Most of the homes in these neighborhoods had no air conditioning, so residents spend their free time on stoops and in the streets just to get a little relief from the heat.