'"-;,.7.--' "" - ,NATIONAL ADVISORY DISORDERS, REPORT fu\JON !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I!!!!!!I ' -,- -~~~~~~~~~~-''-'--'-~ •• \' COMMISS'rON ON CIvIL . NCJ ~~-___,__-_:_~--., ~>:;~~;:~:~';~.;;.-" ,.,~.-.'~.: .--,,--c. -".. 08073' , -~-~-T~---~- __ _ 67 - 4400 . , . ~ I' . I I_ Notional Critninal Justice Reference Service , 11CjfS !. ! I \ This microfiche was produceci from pocuments received for inclusion in the NCJRS data base. Since NCJRS cannot exercise control over the physical condition of the documents submitted, the individual frame quality will vary. The resolution chart on this frame may, be used to evaluate the document quality. Illt~ 1.1 I=== 1I111~III1IJ .4 11111 2.5_ 2.2 2.0 11111 1.8 . 111111.6 . MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART NATIONAl BURE.AU Of STANOARDS-1963-A Microfilming procedures used to create this fiche comply with the standards set forth in 41CFR 101-11.504. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of theauthor(s) and do not represent the official position or policies of the U. S. Department of Justice. National Institute ()fJustice l ". United States Department of Justice Washington, 'D. C. 20531 I' i 1 Date Filmed 2/20/ali 'f ! " • • •III!I!!!!!!!!!!!!!~~~=~====:::;:::::::~:::' """"'__=~"""'I""' !! _I I. (-" ~1 ~ '" ,.' ... , ~-~ C'" "" 1IIIII'~_''''-_.''''..... ~" ... 'M'··'~Y-~'=7~",ro·,w~_~'~·X='~·'~_"~W~'~",,,,,~o=~,=·,,.·-""~.~_·,~=""""~·.'Y_'"'''·~ ,"".~.',""'--" .·",~-"'=C'~ lIIIIIiiIIiir_·_11Wl ,.' ,,·,,-e··.·.,."'r'=· W ;,1 [ tj ;J IT ~ i [ [ [ [ Ii IT fY F IT Report of rrhe National Advi~orY C;ommission on CIVIl DIsorders n ! I -~ IT -I 3 IT ~. IT U Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the outhor ond do not necessari ly represent lhe officiol position IT of the U.S. Department of Justice or the National Criminal Justice Reference Service. L a u IT n u IT n .r; t. fi 1 '- ,:t .... The only genuine, long-range solution for what has happened .lies in ~n attackmounted at every level-upon the conditions that breed despair and violence. All of us know what those condHions are: ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs. We should attack these conditions-not because we are frightened by conflict, but because we are fired by conscience. We should attack them because there is sirnply no other way to achieve a decent and orderly society in America.... Lyndon Baines Johnson Address to the Nation June 27, 1967 .. -"-;-.~ [ J [ [ Foreword F This report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders responds to Executiw Order 11365, issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 29, 1967, and to the personal charge given to us by the President. "Let your search," he said, "be free * * *. As best you can, find the truth arid express it in your report." We have sought to do so. "This matter," he said, "is far, .far too important for politics." This was a bipartisan Commission and a nonpartisan effort. "Only )'ou/' he said, "can do this job. Only if you * * * put your should-:rs to the wheel can America hope for the kind of report it needs and will take to its heart:" This has been a workin.~ Commission. To Olll' staff,' headed by David Ginsburg, Executive Director, to his deputy, Victor H. Palmieri, and to all those in go\'emment and private life who helped us, we are· grateful. OTTO KERNER Chairmarz V. LINDSAY Vict' Chairman FRED R. HAR!US EDWARD W. BROOKE JAMES C. CORMAN JOHN WILLIAM M. MCCULLOCH W. ABEL CHARLES B. THORNTON Roy WILKINS KATHERINE G. PEDEN HERBERT JENKINS I. v I [ l I ~ j r THE NATIOl'J'AL ADVISORY CC)MMISSION ON CIVIL DISORDERS I r ~ ADVISORY PANELS TO THE COMMISSION NATIONAL ADVISORY PANEL ON INSURANCE IN RIOT-AFFECTED AREAS Chairman RICHARD J. HUGHES Chairman Governor of New Jersey Vice Chairman OTTO KERNER JOHN V. LINDSAY j\ifayor of New Y~rk Governor of Illinois Vice Chairman City WILLIAM W. SCRANTON Former Governor of Pennsylvania L. FARRELL A. ADDISON ROBERTS President, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company President, Reliance Insurance Company FRANK T. W. R. HARRIS United States Senator Oklahoma . FRED GEORGE S. HARRIS ABEL President, Chicago Metropolitan Mutual Assurance Company President United Steelworkers of America (AFL-CIO) WALTER E. WASHINGTON Commissioner, District of Columbia FRANK M. WOZENCRAFT Assistant Attol'lney General In charge of Office of Legal Counsel U.S. Department of Justice CHARLES B. THORNTON Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Litton Industries, Inc. EDWARD W. BROOKE United States Senator Massachusetts ADVISORY PANEL ON PRIvATE ENTERPRISE Chairman CKARLES JAMES C. CORM~N United States Representative 22d District of California WILLIAM M. MCCULLOCH United States Representative 4th District of Ohio II.. ,~ .'/ ... '~.'" " ":, B. THORNTON JOHN LI?LAND ATWOOD Roy WILKINS Executive Director National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President and Chief Executive Officer North. American Rockwell Corp. i f; MARTIN R. GAINSBRUGH Senior Vice President and Chief Economist National Industrial Conference Board . WAI,TEa LAWRENCE E. HOADLEY Seni.or Vice President and Chief Economist Bank of America F. POLI~, Jr. Vice President-Finance, International and !)evelopment, General Mills, Inc. . LOUIS M. STONE Professor of J..aw Univ~rsity of California, Berkeley KATHERINE GRAHAM PEDEN Commissioner of Commerce State of Kentucky (1963-67) HERBERT JENKINS Chief of Police Atlanta, Georgia vi ~" ].. .•.. vii I . . , if t PROFESSIONAL STAFF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR DAvID DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GINSBURG VICTOR David L. Chambers, Special Assistant H. PALMIERI John A. Koskinen, Special Assistant DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR OPERATIONS GENERAL COUNSEL STEPHEN KURZMAN MERLE M. MCCURDY Lee A. Satterfield, Special Assistant Nathaniel Jones, Assistant General Counsel David E. Birenbaum, Assistant General CoulIScl Roger L. Waldman, Assistant General Counsel ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR-RESEARCH Ph. D. ROIlERT SHELLOW; ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR PUBLIC SAFETY ARNOLD SAGALVN DIRECTOR OF FIELD OPERATIONS CHARLES E. NELSON . Herman Wilson, Deputy George Trask, Special Assistant DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH SERVICES MELVIN L. BERGHEIM Robert W. Moss, Assistant I ~. 1\1:ILAN C. MISKOVSKY Stanley P. Hebert, Deputy ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR PROGRAM R.ESEARCH Ph. D. In In i l..~· .· DIRECTor. OF INVESTIGATIONS Paul G. Bower, Assistant Director RICHARDP. NATHAN, U DIRECTOR OF CONGRESSIONAL RELATIONS HElI:RY B. TALIAFERRO, Jr. I tt.r DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION I ALVIN A. SPIVAK I, Lawrence A. Still, Deputy Eric D. Blanchard, Information Officer , i n SPECIAL CONSULTANTS ROBERT CONOT . JACOB ROSENTHAL i n In I , Contents . . . . SUMMARY •• PREFACE ...... • • • Page .... 0 j :, EXECUTIVE OFFICER Norman J. McKenzie SPECIAL ASSISTANTS TO COMMISSIONERS William L. COViin Kyran McGrath William A. Smith Stephen S. Weiner Donal:! W. Webb James D. Arthur Harvey Friedman Wilbur H. Jenkins Dennis T. Barrett ' Geraldine L. Furth Anthony L. Jones Patricia Be'nnett Barbara Garcia-Dobies Hannah J. Kaiser Leslie Berkowitz Lucy Gilbert Robert G. Kelly Louis B. Brickman Mildred .Glasgow Charles E. King Anna Byus Louis Goldberg Jane Korff Sarah Carey ·Melvin Goldstein Karen J. Krueger Esther Carter Luis Guinot . CarolB. Liebman Theodore Chambetlai'n Harold H. Hair David Boese! John M. Christman William H. Hayden John 1. Boswell' M:...rtin J. Connell William R. Hill, Jr. Harry M. Bratt 'Florence F. Conot Richard B. Holcomb Eleanor J. McGee Bernard Dobranski Andrew B. Horgan Phyllis K. Mensh Isaac Hunt 1 Walter Dukes, Jr. . Barbara P. Newman PerSonal Assistants Doris Claxton,Executive Director . Vivian S. Bullock, Deputy Executive Director Claudette Johnson, The COqlmission Constance Newman Lloyd Oliver William Oxley Jane PasacholI Daniel Pearlman Haywood L. Perry Diane Phillips Thomas Popp 1 James Porter John Pride James Raschard Norbert C. Rayford Eleanor Robbins Salvador A. Romero Rene Berblinger Gerold F. Berger Joh~ Davis U fJ Allen Ross Louise Sa,galyn John K. Scales Suzanne Schilling Arlene Shadoan Francis Sharp 1 Ira T. Simmons 1 Shedd H. Smith Bruce R. Thomas 1 John Ursu Leona Vogt Steven Waldhorn Everett Waldo B. J. Warren 1 Student Assistants Jesse Epstein Oliver Holmes . Merry Hudson d r ilri.'. Elizabeth Jamison Richard Lane NorrisD. Wolff ff l_ U ,. • r.: t· ~, ~ B n Field Team Leaders. viii ~. . , 8 IS PART I. WHAT HAPPENED? Chapter I. PROFILES OF DISORDER INTRODUCTION . 19 1963-64 . . 1965 . 1966 . Spring 1967 . I. TAMPA . . . . II. CINCINNATI. III. ATLANTA IV. NEWARK . V. NORTHERN NEW JERSEY VI. PLA!NFIELD . . . . . . . VU. NEW BRUNSWICK VIIi. DETROIT. . . ... METHODOLOGY. 19 20 20 21 22 25 28 30 38 41 46 47 f J ~~. 1 U 1 61 Chapter U. PATTERNS' OF DISORDERS INTRODuarioN. , . . . . . . . , . . . I. THE PATTERN OF VIOLENCE AND DAMAGE. , L~v~8 of. Vi,:,l~ce and Damage. . . . . . . . , • . . , DIStribution m Terms of Time. Area and Size of Community D~th. Il\iury and Damage. . • . . . , . . . • . VICtima of Violence • . . . . . . II. THE RIOT PROCESS. . . • . • . . The Reservoir of Grieva'n~8'i~ the N~~o Ct;m'm~ni~ Precipitating Incidents. . . . The Development of Violence . The Control Effort. . • • . • ,-.- . 63 65 65 66 66 67 67 68 68 71 71 ix r t- .1.' P~e m. THE The Profile of a Rioter. . . . . The Profile of the Counterrioter . Chasacteristics of Participants. . . . 747477 IV THE BACKGROUND OF DISORDER . . The Pattern of Disadvantage. Local Governmental Structure Federal Programs. • . . . . Grievances . • . . . . . . . Changes in Negro and White Organizations Official and Civic Response. . . . . . . Capacity to Control Future Disorders. . . Repair of Physical Damage. . • . . . . U 77 78 . . . . . . '/9 80 M- V THE AFTERMATH OF DISORDER. . ~ 73 73 RIOT PARTI rour.,(, '* * ......* On Saturd:-.y, Jul, 1;1, *. "* * H } ' Dilmmlt'::: ' k 1l,)il,~((Ol' «ryollec, if 1 Spina reccivcd a report of snipt')'s in ? hO~lsI~g prnJ~'~' Wh::, !le 'Irl'I'''ed, be saw aPI])'oximat<'I~' 11.10 "'atlOnal ~',I'lrdsl11'l1 v • ") l' rornrn "mcers crouching hehlm] \' chIc eF, 1. III Ing J.1 .. " rId • '10licc n~l\d I 'I" I I-'in"' on the ~:",,\lnd around t'lt: ce,gr 0 f II Ie u' 'I1rt\'"Irll , 'I " .. S inc~ ' "e\'cl'I,thilll! app,'arr d ' .\11(I'It","" "t' 1 )'o'ld d~\'}lg qUIrt ':- ' It " ~ , dir','clh' -', . Idl eo,f If If.' S·tl'l'e( Notllll1l' Spin'\ walkl'd down the Illh , ", I" ;1~ ~eJlf'd '\' h,' rtln;e to tlle bst h'lilding of the r(lmpI~x., lC , ~.P'l ',t' \ll around hint lht: lrooper~ JUUlped, bcllf".-:ng Ileal( a S II " "~ J. t'r a VOll';I:!, then'seh'es to Ilt' ulllkr S!llptT bn' .• , mpmt~nt .1 l , " Gua;'d<;lnan ran fr,lIn behind :, bui!c:il. ~ ,"" The director of poli~e wrnt ()ver a,ld asked h~ll1 If he h.ld fired the shot, TIl" ,oldier ~aid "Y,'s,': he had fln:;l to s{an' n man away (rom a window; iha! IllS orden. weI e to eeJl cvervone nwa)' from windolVs. , , -', ' j h,' tnh\ the soldier: "DII )'0U know wh:ll \,{'JI, ::ljJllla sail ( I . t" Fv"I'" • 't d'd? 1'011 havc now ~reatcd :1 st.ate o. 1YS ella, '," JIIS I. , " I'd' C'uardsmall 1111 alltl down I liS sln'ct an C\,e'ry state . pollr". I' ~~an anrl' ('\'e~>, dtr jlolic"Ill:W that., i~ preH'nt thinks, t, ~r:; somebodv just fired a shut alld thal It 1S probably a Snlpt,!., A sho~t time later more "gunshots" w~l'~ heard, Invcstl, came 1I[J(l11 a 1'" rn t' g- SpmR 'w:rtn R'IC..~Il sl'ttln" ., on a wall, " ;:p;~. .l q~II's'tion :15 to whe,ther h,~ kllew "where the firmg is coming from ?" the m,tn saId: , "Thnt\ no firing, That's fireworks, It you look I,IP tu the fOUl'th Hoor, rou will sec the peoplc who arc throwlllg' down thcse cherrv bombs," '1 d B' this time fom' truckloads of National C,ua,rdsmeu t~ rri~ed and troopers and polir:clllcn w~n: agalll cr~uclll d ~\'c where looking (or a sniper. The director of pO~lce re· ;Y d at t.) mame H: . ,eene for .'J hours., .,~nd the only shot filed was the one by thcl Guardstnnn. , l' f Nevertheless, at 6 o'clock that en~l1lng two, co ~lII1llS 0 National Guardsmcn al,1d Sl,tt<: trOl~pers were ,dlree~lllg mass fire nt the Haycs housmg I~OJcct 1Il r~sponsc to '" hat they believed were snipers, * * ( I i I 1} III [J i,; n .1 I } n ........ '* ... * * ~"1!. i ..". ,n 2 The "typical" riot did not take,place, Th(J c1isol'der~ of19~? w~rc unusual, irrcguhUi complex, andUllpre~ .. ~ -..~... , - ...... • ' ."'''' 0" 0 .. ') t l!l. , J ;,-- _~ • Of 164- disorders reported during the first nine llIonths of 19G7, eigh t (5 percent) \Vere major ill terms of violence and d2.mage; 3:~ (20 perccnt) were SCl'ious but not major; 123 ('75 percent) were minor and undoubtedly would not have rcceived national attention as riots had the Nation not been sensitiz('cJ by the more sl'rious outbreaks, • In the 7:1 disorders studi('d by a Senatr. subeommittel:, 83 deaths were reportcd. Eighty-two pcreent of the deaths and more than It.llf the injuries occurred in Nc:,,:ark and Detroit. About 10 perccnt of the dead and 36 percent of the injured wel'e public employees, primarily law otliccrs and fin'men, The wenvhelming majority of the persons killed or injured in all the disorder$ were Negro civilians, • Initial damage estimates were greatly exaggerated, In 'Detroit, newspapcr damage estimates at first ranged from $200 to $500 Ilrillion; thc highest recent estimate, is $4-5 million. In Newark, early estimates ranged from $15 to $25 milJioa, A month later damage was estimated at $10,2 milperc.ellt in inventory losses, lion, ao In the 24 disorders in 23 cities whi~h we surveyed: • The final incident bl.'fore the olltbreak of disorder, and the initial violt'll(~e iuplf, generallr took place in the evening or at night at a plal'(' in whkh it was normal for man}' people to be 011 the IItl'cets, • Violence usually occurred almo!t immediately following the occurrence of the fin"l precipitating incident, and then I!"nlatl'd rapidl}', With hut It1W e"c~ptions, violene,\! ~uhsided during tht, day, and flar/:d rapidly "gain at night, Thl' nightday cydcs rontinued through the early period of the major • Dhordcr generally began with rock and bottle throwing and window breaking, Oner. store windows \Iere broken, looting usually followed, • Disorder did not erupt as a result of a single "triggering" or "precipitating" incidcnt, Instead, : ': was ,generated out of an increasingly disturbed ,ocial atmosphere, in which typi. cally a series of tension-heightening incidenu over a period of weeks or months became linked in the minds of many in the Negro community with a reservoir of underlying griev. ances, At somc point in tbe mounting tension, a further inci. . dcnt,-in itself often routine ilL' tridal-hecame the breaking point and the tension spilled over into violence. • "Prior" incidents, which increased tensions and ultimately led to violence, were police actions in almost half the cases: police actions were "final" incidents beforc the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders. • No particular control tactic was successful in every situa. tion, The varied cffectiveness of control techniques emphasizes the need for advance training, planning, adequate in. telligence systeml, and knowledge of the ghetto community, • Negotiations between Negroet-including, younglllilitalltl .. as ,well ,as ,older, Ncgro,leadcra-and white oRicial. conum. ing "terml of peace" Clccurred durinR\'irtually all the disorders 3 8 • '"' • The civil disorders of 1967 involved Negroes acting against local symbols of white American society, authority, and property in Negro neighborhoods-rather than against white persons, disorder~, Chapter 2.-Patterns of Di;'lrder l'~ ;r * * H '*, * ti * A shon tim,.' lat('l', clemr-nts (If the cl'owd'~-aJl old'.. r ilnd ruuglwl' one titan the night befot'e -appeared in front nf tht! police station, Th(, participants wanted to see th~ mtlyol'. Ma)'or [Patricia} Sheehan went out onto the steps of the. stntion, Using' a bull hoi'll, sh(~ talked to the people and asked that she be given an opportunity to correct conditions, The erowd was boisterous, Some persons challenged the mayor. But, finally, the opinion, "She's new! Give her a chaner.P' prevailed, A demand was issued by people in the crowd that al! persons arrcsted the previous night be released. Told that this already had been done, the people were suspicious. They asked to b(' allowed to inspect the jail cells. It was agreed to permi!, representatives of the people to look in the ('clls til satisfy themselves that c"'er)'one had becn released. The crowd dispersed, The New Brunswick riot had failed to matelializc. H U B Employed as a private guard, 55-ycar-old ]uhus L. Dorsey a Ncg;ro, was standing ill front of a markct w~~ a~­ eosted 'by tw~ Negro men and a woman, They deman c e * New Brunswick U !lames," i' ' t e,'rsel".' A Neg;ro plainclntl1l's officer was stalllll1g a t an 111 ' , ' hw' -('n a I"threw linn l \ . m .'l ~'!ololo\' cock tail into a f busll1ess 0 \ t'stablishmcl)1 at th.. I' orl1er. In the he~t of the a tcrno I : ' d I)\,th e ?O ') °1 11Iil",,I)er ('Innc - to -' . hOll!' wlllds or, both Sunda) , h' • d ~'f 'lay thc fil't' rcached the hOllle next door wit III an "On< , 'fl ' h d 'n minutes, As residents uselessly spraypd th,' ar~es WI! gar cd hoses, llw fire jumped from roof 10 roof of adla~ent t"'t n~ three-story buildings, Within thc hour l,he entire bloc w.lS in flallle~, The ninth hou~e in the burmng ruw bc!on~e,; tz thc arsonist who had thrown the Molotov cocktaiL '* According to Lieutl'nallt General Thl'OckmortOll and Colonel Bolling, the cily, at this time, was saturated with feal'. The National Guardsmen were afraid, the citizens ....erc afraid, and the policc were afraid. Numerous perSOns, the majorit)' of thcm Negroes, wel'(' beillg illjured by >;"Ilishots of undetermined origin, Th,: geclcl'al and his staff f,'ll that Ih" major task of the t!'Oops W;\5 ~o reducc the fear lind restnrr nn ail' of 1)0I'01nI 1:)', J n ol'der to ll(:complish thb, CV"ry drol't W'lIS mad'1 to establish Clllltad nnd rapport betwecll thn trc)upS and thc residents. Tlw sollii(·rs-·':W pm'('cOl of whom were Negro.-bcglll\ ht!lping to dean up the streets, collect garbage, lind trace pcrs()n~ who had disappcarr-d In the confusion. Residents in the neighborh{)ods responded with soup and allndwic-hes for the troops. In arr-as where the Nntionnl GUlu'd tried to estab. Iish rappol't with the citizens, there was a similar response. If. " provide a perspective on lhe protest activities of the present e1'a. We describe the Negro's experience in America and the development of slaver}' as an institution. ''''e show his persistent striving for equality in the face of rigidly !);..:..;.'ained social, economic, and educational barriers, arid ,.;peatec! mob violence. We portray the ebb and flow of the doctrinal tie!t-s-·-aCrOlJllll.oclatioll, sepal'atism, and self-help-and their relationship to the current theme of Black Power. We conclude: Tht, Black Power ad\'oc:ates of today consciously fed that Ihcy are the Illost militant group in the Negro protest Illo\·ement. Yet they hav(' ,'('treated from a direct confrontation with Arm'rican s(wiety on the issue of integration :llld, by preaching separatism. unconsciously function as an accoml1lod"tion to white racism. Much (If their ec:ononlic program. as well as their' interest ill :-::egro historr. self-help, racial solidarity and separation, is reminiscent of Booker T. Washington. The rhetoric is different, bUI the ideas· arc remarkabl;- similar. Chaptcr 6.-The Formation of the Racial Ghcttos I Throughout thc 20th ccntury the Negro i)opulation of the United States has been moving steadily from I'lIral areas to urban and frolll South to North and Wcst. In 1910, 91 perccnt of the Nation's 9.8 million Negroes lived in th,: South and anI)' 27 percent of Amcrican Negroes lived in cities of 2,500 persons or more. Between 1910 and 1966 the total Nep;ro population more than doubled, reaching 21.5 million, and the number living in metropolitan areas rose more than fivefold (f 1'0111 2.6 million to 14.8 million). The number outside the South l'ose clcvcnfold (from 885,000 to 9.7 million). Negrt1 migration fr01l1 the South has resulted from the expectation of thousands of new and highly paid jobs for unskilled workers in the North and the shift to mechanized farming in the South. However, the Negro migration is small when compared to earlier waves of European immigrants. Even between 1960 and 1966, there were 1.8 million immigrants from abroad compared to the 613,000 Negroes who arrived in the North and West from the South. As a result of the growing number of Negroes in urban areas, natural increase has replaced migration as the primary source of Negro population increase in . the cities. Nevertheless, Negro migration from the South will continue unless economic conditions there change dramatically. Basic data concerning Negro urbanization trends indicate that: 1 The term "ghetto" as used in this Report refers to an area within a city characterized by poverty and acute social disorganization and inhabited by m~mbers of a mcial or ethnic group under conditions of involuntary segregation. "sub-employment rate," including both unemployment and underemployment, was about 33 percent, or 8.8 times greater than the overall unemployment rate for all U.s. workers. Employment problems, aggra.vated by the constant arrival of new unemployed migr:lJ1ts, many of them from depressed rural areas, creatc persistent poverty in the ghetto. In 1966, abollt 11.9 pC1Tcnt of the Nation's whitrs and 4·0.6 percent of its nOllwhites were helo\\' the poverty level defit.ed hy the Social Sccurity ,\drninistration (in 1966, $3,335 per year for an urban family of fOUl·j. Ovcr 40 pf'rccnt of the nonwhites below the poverty level live in the central cities. Employment prohlems have drastic sorial impact in the ghetto. Men who at:e chronic:ally unemployed or employed in the lowest status jobs arc often unable or ullwilling to rcmain with their families. The handicap imposed on children growing IIp without fathers ill an atmospherc of deprivation is increased as mothers are forced to work to provide support The culture of poverty that results froll'} unemployment and family brcahtp gcnerates a. system of ruthless, exploitative relationships within thc ghetto. Prostitution, dope addiction, and c:rime create an environ.. IIIt'ntal "jungle" characterized by pcrsonal insecurity and tension. Children growing up under such condi. tions arc life}>, participants in civil disorder. • Almost aU Negro population growth (96 percent from 1950 to 1966) is occurring ,,,ithin metropolitan areas, primnrily within central citi(:s." • The vast majorit;- of while population growth (713 percent from 1960 to 1966) is occurring in suburban portions of metropolitan areas. Since 1960. whilC' central-city population has declined by 1.3 million. iT 11 • As a result, central cities arc becoming more heavily Negro while the suburhan fringeH around theJ11 remain almost entirely white. • The 12 largest central cities now contain over two-thirds of the Negro population outside the South, and almost onethird of the Negru wtal in the United States, \'\'ithin the cities, Negroes ha\'c been excluded from white residential areas through discriminatory practices. Just as significant is the withdrawal of white families from, or their refusal to enter, neighborhoods where Negrof's arc moving or already residing. About • 20 percent of the urban population of the United States changes residencc every year. The refusal of whites to move into "changing" areas vv'hen vacancies occur means that most vacancies eventually arc occupied by Ncgroes. The result, according to a recent study, is that in 1960 the average segregation index for 207 of the largest U.S. cities was 86.2. In other words, to creal,~ an unsegregated population distribution, an average of over 86 percent of all Negroes would have to change their place of residence within the city. iFf,'.• IT. n n u Lack of knowledge regarding credit purchasu)g. creates special pitfalls for the disadvantaged. In many states, garnishment practices compound these difficul. ties by allowing creditors to deprive individuals of their wages without hearing or trial. Chapter 9.-Comparing the Immigrant and Negro Experience In this chapter, we address ourselves to a fundamental question that many white Americans are asking: '''''hy have so many Negroes, unlike the Europcan immigrants, been unable to escape from the ghetto and from poverty? We believe the following factors playa part: • The maturing economy.-When the European immigrants arrived, they gained an economic foothold by pmviding the unskilled labor needed by industry. Unlike the immigrant, the Nf~gro migrant found little opportunity in the city. The eCOIlOm}', by then matllrecl, had little usc for the ullSkilied lab,)r he had to offer. • The disability of Tace.- The structure of discrimination has stringently narrowed opportunities for the Negro and restricted his prospects, Ellropean immigrants suffered from discrimination, hut never so pelvasively. IJI Entrj' ,into the political J}~JIt'm.-The immigrants usually settled ill rapidly growing dties with powerful and expanding political machines, which traded economic advantages for political support. Ward·level grieva~ce machinery, as well as personal representation, enabled the immigrant to make his voice heard and his power felt. By the time the Negi'V arrived, these political machines were no longer so powerful or so well equipped to .provide jobs or tIther favors, and in many cases were unwilling to share their remaining influence with Negroes. Chapter 8.-Conditions of Life in the Radal Ghetto A striking dilTerence in environment fro111 that of white, middlc-class Americans profoundly influences the lives of residents of the ghetto. Crime rates, coll!:iistentl)' higher than in other areas, \ Chapter 7,-Unemployment, Family Structure, and Social Disorganization • Cultural/ac/flrs.-Coming fr6msLicieties with a low stand;lrd of living 1Ind ilt a tilllf! when job aspirntions were low, the hl1lttigt'(lnt~ ~ens(:d little cIt'vrivation in being forced to take the lesl desirabll! and poorer paying joh~, Thflir Il1rKr. and rflh('~ivlJ fumiJjI1~ c'nntrilmtcd 10 totlll income, Their vision of the f\1turl1~~me thnt lecl to a lifo outside of the ghetto~~ prtwidecl tilt.' inc;t:mti\'(\ Il(,c{,~~flry to (It\durlJ the prescnt. "ltho~gh Nl'gro IIItJn wqrked II~ hord ilS the ilnmi!ll'ants, they were unable to support their famiJiel. The entrepre- pronounced ~(.'nS(l (If imncul'i~>" For (!:-;ampll~l ill emu dty one IQw-ineomr. NC11];1'l) clistt'ict had 3!i timc~ ;IH Hlany ~C1rious cl'imcls:~gainst pol'sons as a high.iuclmlc wldilJ distdot, Unless drastic; StllP~ an' taken, th(1 rl'imo prnhlcllIs in P0\'N'ty ur"ns ,11'(\ likol)' to !'(lIltillUl,l I.CI mullipl)' as the growing )'outh and rapid lIrbanil.utiolJ of the population outstrip policl] !\'sourccs, Pnor ht,ftlth nnd sanitation conditions ill the ghl,)tto l'()sult in hightll' HlOl'tallty mtes, it hig-her incidencel of 1Ila,ior cliseast:s, lIlH! low!.II' .mlilnbility and utili;"ution of ll1rdical serviC'(!s. The iufnnt Il\()l·t:.dity mtc for nonwhite babi()s under the age of 1 lllcmlh is 58 pCl'ccmt highc.,t· tha.n for whites j for 1 to J2 Illcmths it is almost thr<:e times as hiA'h, The level of sanitation in the glwtto is far below that in hi,qh.inconw amas, Garbage collrctjon is oftC'll inadNluate, O( an estimated 14,000 cases of rat bit(~ in t1w United Statt's in 1965, most were in ghetto neiA'hborhoods, Ghetto residents beJievt' tht~y art' exploitecl by loral Illet'chants'; and evidence substantiates some of these beliefs, A .study (,'omhlr.tcd in onc.'dt>- b}'the Fcclcl'Ill Trade Commission showed tha.t higlwl' prices were (~harg(ld fe>r f.\'oods sold in ghetto stOI'OS than in othel' areas, l'rmtW n Although there have been gaius in Negro income nationally, and a decline in the number of Negroes below the "pOVCI·t)' level," the condition of Negroel' in the I entral citv remains in a slate of crisis. Between 2 and 25 million Negroes-16 to 20 percent of the total Negro population of all central cities-live in squalor and deprivation in ghetto neighborhoods. Employment is a key problem. It nor only controls the present for the Negro American but, in a most profound wa)', it is creating .the future as well. Yet, dl'spitc continuing economic growth and declining national unemployment rates, the uncmp10yment rate for Negroes in 1967 was more than double that for whites. Equally important is the undesirable nature of many jobs open to Negroes and other minorities. Negw men arc more than three times as likely as white men to be in low-paying, unskilled, or service jobs. This conccntration of male Negro employment at the lowest end of the occupational scale is the single most important cause of poverty among Negroes, 111 aile study of low-income neighborhoods, the n II , A "c~ntral city" is the largest city of a standard metropolitan statistical area, that is, a metropolitan area containing at least one city of 50,000 or more inhabitants. r~.,~ r neurial opportllni(ie~ had vanhheu. Afi l\ remit of slavery nod long p.;dralllaticallr the quality of g-hctto hIt· whIle abandollm!j integration as a goaL l'II improvement in the quality of ghetto life is essential. But this can be no more than an interim strategy. Programs must be'developed which will permit.substantial Negro movement out of the ghettos. The primary goal must be a single society, in which every citizen will be free to live and work according to his capabilities and desires, not his color. 1"1 U Chapter 17.-Recommendations for National Action Introduction No Anlt':rican-white or black--ea~ escape the con. f".1i'· r ... ~ • We can pursue intl'gr:l1iun by combining ghetto "enrich1 men!" with policie~ which will' encourage Negro movement out of central cit}, areas. The first choicc, colltinuanre of present policies, has ominous consequences fol' our society. The share of the Nation's resources now allocated to programs for the disadvantaged is insufficicnt to arrest the deter~o.ration of life in rentl'al-city ghettos. Under such ront.htlOJ1S. a rising proportion of Negroes may corn: to see t.he deprivation andsegregatioll they expcl'l:nce, a Justlfi~ cation for violent protest, or fot' cxtencltng support to no\\' isolated extremists who advocate civil disruption: Lan!'e·scalc and continuing violence could result, fo1-' low~)d bv white retaliatiOlJ.~·md, ultimately, the separa~ lioll of the two communities in a garrison state. ' E\'cn if violence does not occur, the (,'onscqucnces are UIl::lc('C'ptable. Development of a racially integrated society, cxtraordinCll'i1y difficult today, will \'irtualh' impossiblC' when the present black central-oty popu'lation of 12.1 million has grown in almost 21, million. To continue present policies is to Inakc permanent the division of our country into two sceir-ties: one,. largely Negro and pOOl', locatecl in the ce11tral citir-s:; the other, pn'dolllinegrcgate either within the system or m cooperation with ncighboring school systems: II Elimination of racial discrillIiJ1ation in Northern as well as Southern Sd100lu by vigurous application of Title VI of the Ch"il Rights t\r.t of 196+. II Extension of quality early childhood education to every disadvantaged child in the country. II Efforts to improv.~ dramatically schools serving .disad. vantaged children through substantial ~ederal funumg. of rear-round quality compensatory e~UCatlOI~ programs, Improved tcaehing, and expanded cxperImentatIon and research. II Elimination of illiteracy through greater Federal support for adult basic education. • Enlarged opportunities for· parent and community par· ticipation in the public: schools. II Reoriented voeational education empha~izjlll{ work.experience trainill~ and the inn.Jh'rlllent of business and industry. • Expanded opportunities for higher education through increased federal assistance to disadvantaged student~. • Re\'ision of stat{: aid formulas to assure more per student aid to districts having a high proportiun of disad\'antagl.'d sf'hoo! age l'hildren. 12 A broad system of supplementation. would involvesubstantially greater Federal expenditures than, any~ . thing now contemplated. The cost will range widely depending on the standard of need accepted as the; "basic allowance" to individuals and families, and on the rate at which additional income above this level is taxed. Yet if the deepening cycle of poverty and dependence on welfare can be broken, if the children of the poor can be given the opportunity to scale the wall that now separates them from the rest of society, the return on this investment will be great indeed. The Welfare System Our present system of public welfare .is designed to save money instead of people, and tragIcally ~nqs. up doing rieitl;er. This system has two critical deficlenclCs: First, it excludes large numbers of persons who arc in great need, and who, if provided a decent ~evel of support, might be able to become more p.rodu('.tlv~a~d self-sufficient. No Federal funds are avatlable form1llions of unemployed and underemployed m:n' and women who arc needy but neither aged, handIcapped nor the parents of minor children. .. Second, for those included, the system prOVIdes assistance wcll below the minimum nece~sa~y £:01' a decent levcl of existence, and imposes restrIctIOns"that cncouI'age continued dependency on 'welfare' and undermine self-respect. A welter of statlltory requirements and a~minis~r~­ tive practices and regulations operate to rel11md re~lpI­ ents that they are considered untrustworthy, promls?uous, and lazy, Rcsidencc requirements pre>'cnt .asSIstance to people ill need who arc newly. arrIved thc state. Searches of recipients' homes Violate pnvacy. Inadequate social services compound the problems. The Commission recommends that the Federal Government, ading with state and lo(:al governments where necessary, reform the existing welfare system to: :Il • Establish, for recipients in existing welfare categor!es, uniform national ~tandard~ of assistance at least as lugh a;; the annllaJ "pO\'nty 11.'\'1'1" of income, now set by the Social Security Administration at $3,335 per year for an urban family of foul'. Rl.'quire that all sta tes. rC'(·l.'j\:ing. ~eder.al welfare cont~ib~l' lions participate in the AId I .. Fanultes WIth Dependent ~h.d­ dren-UneJ1)ployed Parents Program (AFDe- UP) .that pl.'J'mlts OIssistance to families with both father and mother 1I1 the home. ' thus aiding the family while it is still intact. • Bear a substantially greatc}' portiOI! (Of an \l'l'lfare costsat least 90 percent of total payments. ' • Increase incC'ntives for seeking employment and job train· ing but remove restrictions recently enacted by the Congress th;t would compel mothers of young children [0 work. II Provide more adequate social services through neighbor· hund centers and family-planning progTam. • Remove the freeze plal'ed ?y the. 1967 welfar~ amcnJd. ments on the' percentage of rhlldren ltl a State that can lC 1'00'C'l'I'd by Federal :Issistance. II Eliminate residence requirements. 11 ,\s• a( IO l1"·ralwe :..marry' in the black ghettos of our cities. But this Nation is confronted with the issue of justice for all its people~ white as well as black, rural as well as urban. In particular, we are concerned for those who have con~ tinued to keep faith with society in the preservation of public order--the pcople of Spanish surname) the American IndiaI1 and other minority groups to whom this countty owes so much. We wish it to be clear that in focusing on the Negro, we do not mean to imply any priority of nced. It will not do to fight misery in the black ghetto and leave untouched the reality of injustice and deprivation elsewhere in our society. The first priority is order and justice for all Americans. In speaking of the Negro, we do not speak of "them." We speak of us-for the freedoms and opportunities of all Americans are diminished and imperiled when they are denied to some Americans. The tragic waste of human spirit and resources, the unrecoverable loss to the Nation which this denial has already caused-and continues to produce-no longer can be ignored or afforded. Two premises underlie the work of the Commission: • That this Nation cannot abide violence and disorder if it is to ensure the safety of its people and their progress in a free society. • That this Nation will deserve neither safety nor progress unless it can demonstrate the wisdom and the will to undertake decisive action against the root causes of racial disorder. This report is addressed to the institutions of gov~ ernment and to the conscience of the Nation, but even more urgently, to the mind and heart of each citizen. The responsibility for decisive action, never more clearly demanded in the history of 0111' country, rests on all of us. ' We do not know whether the tide of racial disorder has begun to recede. We recognize as we must that the conditions underlying the disorders will not be obliterated before the end of this ye<:.r Or the end of the next and that so long as these conditions exist a potential for disorder remains. But we believe that the likelihood of d'isorder call be markedly lessened by an American commitment to confront those conditions and eliminate them~a commitment so clear that Negro citizens will know its truth and accept its goal. The most important step toward domestic peace is an act of will; this country can clo for its people what it chooses to do. The pages that follow set forth our conclusions and the facts upon which they are based. Our plea for civil order and our recommendations for social and economic change are a call to 'national action. We are aware of the breadth and scope of those recommendations, but'they neither probe deepernordemand more than the problems which call them forth. • n q t .~ i.. f ,.~ _... • • - -,: _. ~ . .. - • '-" 'b .....liiI ~ . -., !' " .... ,:~- . ~ '.'';' , .. . :,.... .".~ ,...... .. _.... :...: .:...:.-.',~:.I' - ...... ~ -. --..- ......,_.. { t·~:':..-.: .......... ,. .... '-" ... . ". '!"~·;.1.. ~ j~\'~ ,' l 1] Part I: What Happened? 7- 1 ."" r: L ;, IT r-' .~ l f:.. Chapter 1 Profiles of' I)isorde.r 11'J"TRODUCTION (, f·:-· ·. If~. !- U The President directed the Commission to produce "a profile of the rio~-of the rioters, of their environment, of their victims, of their cauS('~ and effects." In response to this mandate the Commission constructed profiles of the riots in 10 of 'the 23 cities under investigation. Brief summaries of what were often conflicting views and perceptions of confusing episodes, they are, we believe, a fair and accurate picture of what happened. From the profiles, we have sought to build a Com. posite view of the riots as well as of the environment out of which they erupted. * * * * * The summer of 1967 was not the beginning of the current wave of disorders.. Omens of violence had appeared much earlier. '.:. 1 1 ,...!'·~.l'1'..' I.' J} o 1963-64 In 1963, serious. disorders, involving both whites and Negroes, broke out in Birmingham, Savannah, Cambridge) Md., Chicago; and Philadelphia. Sometimes the mobs battled each ol~her; more often they fought the police. . The most violent encounters took place in Birmingham. Police used dogs, firehoses, and cattle prods against marchers, many of whom were children. White racists shot at Negroes and bombed Negro residences. Ne&Toes retaliated by burning white-owned businesses in Negro areas. On a quiet Sunday morning, a bomb exploded beneath a Negro church. Four young girls in a Sunday school class. W~re killed. In the spring of 1964, the arrest and conviction of civil rights demonstrators provoked violence in JacksonVille. A shot fired from a passing car killed a Negro woman. When a bomb threat forced evacuation of an all-Negro high school, the students stoned policemen and firemen and burned the cars of newsmen. For the first time, Negroes used Molotov cocktails in setting fires. Two weeks later,' at a demonstration protesting school segregation in Cleveland, a bulldozer accidentally killed a young white minister. When police moved in to disperse a crowd composed primarily of Negroes, violence erupted. In late June, white segregationists broke through police lines and attacked civil rights demonstrators in St. Augustine, Florida. In Philadelphia, Mississippi, law enforcement officers were implicated in the lynch murders of three civil rights workers. On July 10, Ku Klux Klansmen shot and killed a Negro U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Lemuel Penn, as he was driving through Georgia. On July 16, in New York City, several young Negroes walking to summer school classes became involved in a dispute with a white building superintendent. When an off-duty police lieutenant intervened, a 15-year-oldboy attacked him with a knife. The officer shot and killed the boy. A crowd of teenagers gathered and smashed store windows. Police arrived in. force and dis~~d the group. 19 1 On the following day, the Progressive Labor Movement a Marxist-Leninist organization, printed and passed out inflammatory leaflets charging the police with brutality. On the second day after the shooting, a rally called by the Congress of Racial Equality to protest the Mississippi lynch murders developed into a march on a precinct police station. The crowd clashed with the police; one person was killed, and 12 police officers and 19 citizens were injured. For several days thereafter, the pattern was reo peated: despite exhortations of Negro community leaders against violence, protest rallies became uncon. trollable. Police battled mobs in Harlem and in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Firemen fought fires started with Molotov cocktails. V\7hen bricks and bottles were thrown, police responded with gunfire. Widespread looting followed and many persons were injured. A. week later, a riot broke out in Rochester when police tried to arrest an intoxicated Negro youth at a street dance. After 2 days of violence, the National Guard restored order. During the first 2 weeks of August, disorders took place in three New Jersey communities: Jersey City, Elizabeth, and Paterson. On August 15, when a white liquor store owner in the Chicago suburb of Dixmoor had a Negro woman arrested for stealing a bottle of whiskey, he was accused of having- manhandled her. A crowd gathered in front of th~ store, broke the store window, and threw rocks at passing cars. The police restored order. The next day, when the" disturbance was renewed, a Molotov cocktail set the liquor store afi.re. Several persons were injured. . . The final violence of the summer occurred ill PhJ1adelphia. A Negro couple's car stalled at an intersection in an area known as "The Jungle"--where, with almost 2,000 persons living in each block, there is the greatest incidence of crirnc, disease, unemployment, and poverty in the city. ''''hen two police officers, one white and one black, attempted to move th~ car, the wife of the owm~r became abusiv~, and the officers arrest~d her. Police offieers and Negro spectators gathered at the scene. Two nights of rioting, resulting in extensive damage, followed. 19165 In the spring of 1965, the Nation's attention shifted b;;- Ifh ,~ !\'t fJ> I fi %'- ;;'1 .....r, P .J Ii I, 1\1 " ~ n it In March, a fight between several Negroes and pregnant girl. Mexican-Americans resulted in a new flareup in Watts. Less than a week later, Ohio National Guardsmen In May, after a police officer accidentally shot and were mobilized to deal with an outbreak of rioting that killed a Negro, demonstrations by Negro militants again continued for 4·nights in the Hough section of Cleveincreased tension in Los Angeles, land. It is probable that Negro extremists,. although Evidence was accumulating that a major proportion they neither instigated nor organized the disorder, exof riot participants were youths. Increasing race pride, ploited and enlarged it, Amidst widespread reports of skepticism about their job prospects, and dissatis"sniper fire," four Negroes, including one young faction with the inadequacy of their education, caused woman, were killed; many others, several children unrest among students in Negro colleges and high among them, were injured. Law enforcement officers schools throughout the country, Students and youths were responsible for two of the deaths, a white man were the principal participants in at least six of the firing from a car for a third, and a group of young 13 spring and early summer disorders of 1966. white vigilantes for the fourth. July 12, 1966, was a hot day in Chicago. Negro Some news media keeping "tally sheets" of the disyoungsters were playing in water gushing from an turbances began to apply the tenn "riot'~ to acts of illegally opened fire hydrant. Two police officers, vandalism and relatively minor disorders. arriving on the scene, closed the hydrant. A Negro At the end of July, the National States Rights Party, youth tumed it on again, and the police officers ara white extremist organization that advocates deportrested him. A crowd gathered. Police reinforcements ing Negroes and other minorities, preached racial arrived. As the crowd became unruly, seven Negro hatred at a series of rallies in Baltimore. Bands of white youth were arrested. youths were incited into, chasing and beating Negroes. Rumors spread that the arrested youths had been A court order halted the rallies. beaten and that police were turning off fire hydrants Forty-three disorders and riots were reported during in Negro neighborhoods but leaving them on in white 1966. Although there were considerable variations in areas. Sporadic window breaking, rock throwing; and circumstances, intensity, and length, they were usually firebombing 'lasted for several hours. Most of the ignited by a minor incident fueled by antagonism beparticipants were teenagers. tween the Negro population and the police. In Chicago, as in other cities, the long-standing Spring, 1967 grievances of the Negro community needed only minor incidents to trigger violence. In the spring of 1967, disorders broke out at three In 1961 when Negroes, after being evacuated from Southern Negro universities at which SNCC (Student a burning tenement, had be~n sheltered in a church in Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) , a militant anti. an all-white area, a crowd of residents had gathered white organization, had been attempting to organize and threatened to attack the church unless the Negroes the students, were rempved. On Friday, April 7, learning that Stokely CarSegregated schools and housing had led to repeated michael was speaking at two primarily Negro unipicketing and marches by civil rights organizations. versities, Fisk and Tennessee A&I, in Nashville, and When marchers had gone into white neighborhoods, receiving information that some persons were preparthey had been met on several occasions by KKK signs ing to riot, the police adopted an emergency riot and crowds throwing eggs and tomatoes. In 1965, when plan. On the following day, Carmichael and others, a Chicago firetruck had killed a Negro woman in an induqing South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, accident, Negroes had congregated to protest against spoke at a symposium at Vanderhilt University. the fire. station's all-white complement. Rock throwing That evening, the Negro operator of a restaurant and lootipg had broken out. More than 170 persons . located near Fisk University summoned police to arwere arrested in 2 .:lays. rest an allegedly intoxicated Negro soldier. On the evening of July 13, 1966, the day after the Within a few minutes, students, many of them fire hydrant incident, rock throwing, looting and firemembers of SNCC, began to picket'the restaurant. bombing began again. For several days thereafter, the pattern of violence was repeated, Police responding to A squad of riot police arrived and soon became the calIs were subjected to random gunfire. Rumors spread, focus of attention. Spectators gathered: When a city The press talked in highly exaggerated terms of "guerbus was halted and attacked by members of the crowd, rilla wanare" and "sniper fire." a Negro police lieutenant fired five shots into the air. Before the police and 4,200 National Guardsmen Rocks and bottles were thrown and additional managed to restore order, scores of civiliallls and police police Were called into the area; Offic(~rs fin;da num. had been injured; There Were 533 arrests, fucluding bel' of shots over the heads of the cro~.d, The students 155 juveniles. Three Negroes were killed by stray buland spectators gradually dispersed. lets, among them a I3-year-old boy and a 14-year-old On the following evening, after negotiations between 21 i. i It.w- R' r~~i :.1.:••.. • 11 1. ;:r·. {[, 'ii .... students and police broke down, crowds again began fonning. Police fired over their heads, and shots were fired back at the police. On the fringes of the campus, several white youths aimed shots at a police patrol wagon. A few days iater, when police raided the home of several young Negro militanta, they confiscated a halfdozen bottles prepared as Molotov cocktaiis. About a month later, students at Jackson State College, in Jackson, Mississippi, were standing around after a political rally when two Negro police officers pursued a speeding, car, driven by a Negro student; onto the campus. When the oftkers tried to arrest the driver, the students interfered. The police called for reinforcements. A crowd of several hundred persons . quickly gathered, and a few rocks were thro~m. On the following evening, an even larger crowd as· sembled. When police attempted to disperse it by gunfire) three persons were hit. One of them, a young Negro, died the next day. The National Guard restored order. Size days later, On May 16, two separate Negro protests were taking place in Houston. One group was picketing a garbage dump in a Negro residential neighborhood, where a Negro child had drowned. Another was demonstrating at a junior high school on the grounds that Negro students were disciplined more harshly than white. That evening college students who had participated in the protests returned to the campus of TeJcas Southern University. About 50 of them were grouped around a 21.year.old student, D.W., a Vietnam veteran, who was seeking to stimulate further protest action. A dispute broke out, andD.W. reportedly slapped another student. When the student threa.tened D. W., he left, armed himself with a pistol, and reo turned. , In response to the report of a disturbance, two unmarked police cars with four officers arrived. Two of the· officers questioned D.W., discovered he was armed with a pistol, and arrested him. A short time later, when one of the police cars returned to the campus, it was met by rocks and bottles thrown by students. As' police called. for rein. forcements, sporadic gunshots reportedly came from the men's dormitory. The police returned the fire. ,Por several houts, gunfire punctuated unsuccessful attcmpw b)' community leaders to negotiate a truce be. tween the students and the J>9lice. When several tar barrels were set afire in the street and hooting broke' out again, police decided to enter the dormitory. A patrolman, struck by a ricocheting bullet, was killed. After clearing all 480 occupants from the building, police searched it and found one .shotgun and two .22 caliber pistols. The origin of the shot that killed the officer was not determined. As the summer of 1967 approached, Americans, conditioned by 3 years of reports of riots, expected violence. But they had no answers to hard questions: Wh~t was causing the turmoil? Was it organized and, if so, by whom? Was there a pattern to the disorden? ~;;~j '.11 ,~ ;, ll~ r,.',.· .• who had had his hands over his head and was trying to surrender. ' The ambulance that had been summoned became lost on ~e. way.. ~he gathering crowd viewing. the ~loody, CrItIcally Injured youth grew increasingly bel. hgerent. Finally, Officer Or.tes loaded Chambers into his car and drove him to the hospital. The youth died shortly thereafter. As officers were leaving the scene, a thunderstorm broke. Beneath the pelting rain, the' spectators scattered. When an officer went back to check the area he found no one on the streets. A few minutes after 7 p.m.,' the Selective Enforcement Unit, tired and sun-parched, reported in from the races. A half hour later, a report was received that 500 persons were gathering. A police car was sent into the area to check the reptJrt. The officers could find no one. The men 0f the Selective Enforcement Unit were told to go home. The .men in the scout car had not, however, penetrated mto the Central Park Village housing complex where, as the rain ended, hundreds of persons poured from the apartments. At least half were teenage,rs and young adults. As they began to mill about and discu'\s the shooting, old gri~va~ce.sl both real and imagined" were resurrected: dlscnmmatory practices of local li;""es.. a~va~tages taken by white men of Negro girls, tne klckmg 10 the face of a Negro by a white man as the Negro lay h~ndc~ffed on the ground, blackballing of two Negro hIgh schools by the athletic conference Although officials prided themselves on supposedl; go~d race ~elations and relative acceptance by whites of l.ntegratlOn of schools and facilities, Negroes, composmg almos~ 20 percent of the population,1 had had no on~ of tpelr own race to represent them in positionl of. pollcy or power, nor to appeBiI to for redress of gflevances. There Was no Negro on the cit}' council' none on the ?chool board; none in the fire departm~nt; none ?f hlg~ rank on the police force. Six of every 10 houses m.hablted by Negroes were unsound. Many were shacks ~lth broken window panes, gas leaks, and rat holes. 10 the ",Valls. Rents averaged $50 to $60 a month. Such l'ecrea~lonal facilities as did exist lacked equipment and superv~sors. Young toughs intimidated the children, who trIed to ule them. . . The majority of Negro children never reached the' eIghth grade.,. In the high schools, only 3 to 40perdent of Negrose~lorii attained the ~inimum passing,score on the State s college c!,ltrance examination, one.tenth I ',~iit 'ili .......ri~ tl 171 =t ;: .•:1.1, .• ::: J. 1 ~l ~L :rr F' U '.~. .~.'I' ft{[ .~ II ~ ~ .~ I, TAMPA ~h;=u~~~~~?£t~'~~~~l-~ ~~;,Er::f::~!JiZ;:~~55 i';~r' , IJ.'•• ;:~~~y::~~=o~~~ro~~~~oili~:~~;;:;::: all~~~:~;a~:~~~no~~~f~~eh~~:sy:~~h~~~~:~ U ,I an alley. The officers gave chaGe. As they ran, the suspectl left a trail of photographic equipment scat· teted from yellow papet: bags they were carrying. . ..;.. races. Since early morning the police department's Selective Enforcement Unit, designed as a riot control squad, had been employed to keep order at the races. At 5:30 p.m., a block from the waterfront, a photo .,·•., i. one of the houses. Oates called for Chambers to sur· . render. Ignoring him, Chambers emerged running "( [, from beneath the house. A white officer, J. L. C a l v e r t , i took up the pursuit. _~ ~ ~u::Yca~~~~;~:ror~eS~~~e~:\~~~d=:e~n i~~ fe~ ~~:~e~~ ~;~~ :~~:~e~c:'~:e~~~~rt rounded the corner of the house. palvert yelled to him to halt. Chambers ignored him. Calvert pointed his , .38 rovolver and pred. The Slug e~tered the back of th:~I?C~c~i:~=i:e~ra o~~:~l a~~:~c~~o~~ ia Cyhc.:unI-oj!1n'~e.fheniScae~.~n~:S:~r c~~p~:~~~ h~~~~h:a'::~ scene, a chase began throti'gh and around the streets, ~~;~:~tbo:~.~::~r;:~ ve:=e~~~~/~~::~U:;:~u:~t~h~~~~~d : : : n ; ag:rsa:a Village housing project became aware of the chase, they begaP ~.:; j)articipate. Some attempted to help the officers in locating the suspects. { ' __~22~ .} been shot standing in the position in which they saw him. Rumor quickly spread through the neighborhood that a white police officer had 3hot a Negro youth n ,~·:."r·,'. 1 J1 •• ~ U 1[., i ~.'.' li;~ 1.'.:. the percentage of white students. . ,, A difference of at least three-and-a-half years in educational attainment separated the avera"'e Negro and white. Fifty-five percent of the Negr: men in Tampa were working in unskil'led jobs. More than half of the families had incomes of less than $3,000 a year. ~he r~sult was that 40 percent of the Negro chilo dren h~ed In broken hOI?es, and the cit}"s crime rate ranked 10 the top 25 percent in the Nation. About a month before, police-community relations ha~ been severely strained by the actions of a pair of white officers who were subsequently transferred to another beat. When Officer Oates returned to the area he at. temptc;d to convince the crowd to disperse' by an~ouncmg that .a complete investigation would be made lOto the shootmg. He seemed to be making headway when a young woman came running down the street screan;ing that .the police had killed her brother. Her hys~erla gal"a~l~ed the crowd. Rock throwing began. Pol~ce cars. drIVing into .the area were stoned. The p~hce, relymg on a prevIOUs experience when after wlt~drawal of their units, the crowd had dis~ersed, decld~d ~o send no marc patrol cars into the vicinIty. ThIS tIme the maneuvel' did not work. From nearby 1 :h~ugho?t the report, in .b'1e pre.entadon of .tati.tic. N'ilo 11 u.ed Interchangeably WIth 1]orlwhil,. Wherever available1 current data :1fe used. Wh,ere:n.~, updating haa been l, K rl ni pOlllble, figure. are tho.e of thel960c;eiuu•. Sources are the U.S..Bureau .of the Cen.u. and other Government agencie., and, 1n a few m.tance., specialatudie•. Tampa, funl 1967 ""'l"""[1:;lc,__~~~__-----~--------~--------------23 I II ,~~ t~ ~ / .., / j -"ir - J i. ! ~ 4 ?1 bars and tawdry night spots patrons joined the throng. A window was smashed. Haphazard looting began. As fluid bands of rioters moved down the Central Avenue business district, stores whose proprietors were particularly disliked were singled out. A grocery store, a liquor store, a restaurant were hit. The first fire waS set. Because of the dismissal of the Selective Enforcement Unit and the lack of accurate intelligence information, the police department was slow to react. Although Sheriff Malcolm Beard of Hillsborough County was in contact with the Department throughout the e' cning, it was not until after 11 p.m. that a request for deputies was made to him. At 11: 30 p.m., a recall order, issued earlier by the police department, began to bring officers back into the area. By this time, the streets in the vicinity of the housing project were lighted by the flames of burning buildings. Falling power lines whipped sparks about the skirmish line of officers as they moved down the street. The popping noise of what sounded to the officers like gunshots came from the direction of the housing project. The officeI'~ did not return the fire. Police announced from a sound car that anyone caught armed would be shot. The firing ceased. Then, and throughout the succeeding 2 days, law enforcement officers refrained from the use of firearms. No officer or civilian suffered a {,runshot wound during the riot. Driving along the expressway, £:, young white couple, Mr. and Mrs. C. D., were startled by the fires. Deciding to investigate, they took the off-ramp into the midst of the riot. The car was swanned over. Its windows were shattered. C. D. was dragged into the street. As he emerged from a bar in which he had spent the evening, 19-year old J. c., a Negro fruit-picker from Arkansas, was as surprised by the riot as Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Rushing toward the station wagon in which the young woman was trapped, he interposed himself between her and the mob. Although rocks and beer cans smashed the windows, she was able to drive off. J. C. pushed through to where the white man lay. With the hoots and jeers of rioting youths ringing in his ears, J. C. helped him, also, to escape. By 1 a.m., police officers and sheriff's deputies had surrounded an area several blocks square. Firemen began to extinguish the flames which, by this time, had spread to several other establishments from the three stores in which they had, originally, been set. No resistance was met. Control was soon reestablished. r.. ;;0 ;1 ::t ("'~vemor Claude Kirk flew to Tampa. Since the chief of police was absent, and since the Governor regarded the sheriff as his "direct ann," Sheriff Beard was placed in charge of the combined forces of the police a,nd sheriff's departmentS. For the next, 12 hours, the situation remained quiet but tense. By the afternoon of Monday, June 12, the sheriff's and police forces both had been fully committed. The men were tired. There were none in reserve. As a precaution, the sheriff requested that a National Guard contingent be made available. Late in the aftemoon, Governor Kirk met with the residents at a school in the Central Park Village area. It was a tense meeting. Mo~t speakers, whether white or Negro, were booed and hissed. The meeting broke up without concrete results. Nevertheless, the Governor believed it had enabled the residents to let off steam. That evening, as Nationa:l Guard troops began to . lpplant local forces in maintaining a perimeter and eritablishing roving patrols, antipoverty workers went from door to door, urging citizens to stay off the streets. A reported attempt by Black Muslims to indte further violence failed. Although there were scattered reports of trouble from several areas of thEI city,. and a few fires were set-largely in vacant buildingsthere were no major incident3. Several youths with a cache of Molotov cocktails were arrested. They were ~ '*1 j ~ i ;"$ " :'! '.J,1 '1 , \ ! , ~l ":; · · · ~, 1 ~ ]., t t white. , t All the next day, false reports poured into police headquarters. Everyday scenes took on menacing tones. Twenty Negro men, bared to the waist and carrying clubs, were reported to be gathering. They tumed out to be construction workers. Mayor Nuccio met with residents. At their suggestion that the man most likely to carry weight with the youngsters was Coach Jim Williams, he placed a call to Tallahassee, where Williams was attending a coaching clinic. An impressive·looking man with graying hair, Wil. liams arrived in Tampa almost 48 hours after the shooting of Martin Chambers. Together with l:lnother coach" he went to an eatery called The Greek Stand, behind which he found a number of youngsters fash. ioning an arsenal of bottles, blicka, and Molotov cock. tails. As in the crowds that were once more beginning to gather, the principal complaint was. the prese~ of the National Guard, which, the residents asserted, gave them a feeling of being hemmed in. WilJiams decided to attempt to negotiate the removal of t~e N~­ tional Guard if the people would agree to keep the peace and to disperse. . When Sheriff Beard arrived at a meeting called for the College Hill Elementary School, Robert Gilder of the NAACP was speaking to leaders of the Negro youth. Some were college students who had been unable to get summer jobs. One was a Vietnam veteran who had been turned down for a position as a' swimming pool lifeguard. The youths believed that discrimination had played a part in their failure t~ find jobs. The suggestion was made to Sheriff .Beard that the National Guard be pulled out of the Negro areas and that these young men, a.s well as others, be given the opportunity to keep order. The idea, which was encouraged by James Hammond, Director of the Commission of Community Relations, made sense to the sheriff. He decided to take a chance on the Youth Patrol. In another part of the city, West Tampa, two Negro community leaders, Dr. James O. Brookins and attorney Delano S. Stewart, were advised by acquaintances that, unless the intensive patrolling of Negro neighborhoods ceased, people planned to set fires in industrial districts that evening. Like Coach Williams, Dr. Brookins and Stewart contac~ed neighborhood youths and invited Sheriff Beard to a meeting. The concept of the Youth Patrol was expanded. Participants were identified first by phosphorescent arm bl\nds and later by white hats. During the next 24 hours, 126 youths, some of whom had participated in the riot, were recruited into the patrol. Many were high school dropouts. On Wednesday, the inquiry into the death of Martin Chambers was concluded. With the verdict that Officer Calvert had fired the shot justifiably and in the line of duty, apprehension rose that trouble would erupt again. The leaders of the Youth Patrol were called in. The Sheriff' explained the law to them and pointed out that the verdict was' in conformance with the law. De· spite the fact that the verdict was not to their liking,' the White Hats continued to keep order. II. CINCINNATI On Monday, June 12, before order had been restored in Tampa, trouble Erupted 940 miles away in Cincinnati. . Beginning in October 1965, ~ssaults on middle-aged white "women, several of whom were murdered, had generated an atmosphere of fear. When the "Cincin· nati Strangler" was tentatively identified as a Negro, "White Hats" in Tampa, June .1967 a new element of tension was Injected in~o relations between the races. In December 1966, a Negro jazz musician named Posteal Laskey was arrested and charged with one of' the murders. In May of 1967, he was convicted and sentenced to death. Two of the principal witneuea against Laskey were Negroes. Nevertheless, many Ne- 25 24 T -- r groes felt that because of the charged atmosphere, he had not received a {..ir triaL They were further aroused when, at about the same time, a white man, convicted of mans!aughtel' in the death of his girlfriend, received a suspended sentence. Although the cases were dissimilar, there was talk in the Negro community that the difference in the sen~ tences demonstrated a double standard of jus~ice for white and for black. A drive began in the Negro community to raise funds for an appeal. Laskey's cousin, Peter Frakes, began walking the streets on behalf of this appeal carrying a sandwich board declaring: "Cincinnati Guilty-Laskey Innocent." After warning him several times, police arrested Frakes on a charge of blocking pedestrian traffic. Many Negroes viewed his arrest as evidence of police harassment, similar to the apparently selective enforcement of the city's antiloitering ordinance. Between January 1966, and June 1967, 170 of some 240 persons arrested under the ordinance were Negro. Frakes was arrested at 12:35 a.m. on Sunday, June 11. That evening, concurrent with the commencement of a Negro Baptist convention, it was announced :n one of the churches that a meeting to protest the frakes arrest and the antiloitering ordinance would be, held the following night on the grounds of a junior high school in the Avondale District. Part of the significance of such a protest meeting lay in the context of past events. Without the city's realizing what was occurring, over the years protest through political and noilViolent channels had become increasingly difficult for Negroes. To young, militant Negroes, especially, such protest appeared to have become almost futile. Although the city's Negro population had been rising swiftly-in 1967, 135,000 out of the city's 500,000 residents were Negroes-there was only one Negro on the city counciL In the 1950's with a far smaller Negro population, there had been two. Negroes attributed this to dilution of the Negro vote thro~gh abolition of the proportional represen~tion system of electing'the nine councilmen. Although, by 1967, 40 percent of the schoolchildren were Negro, there was only one Negro on the board of education. Of more than 80 members of various city commifiSions, only three or four were Negro. Under the leadership of the NAACP, picketing, to protest lack of Negro'membership in building trades unions, took place at the construction site of a new city convention hall. It produced no results. When the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who had been one of the leaders of the Birmingham demonstrations of 196·3, . staged a protest against· allegeli discriminatory practices at the county hospital, he and his followers were arrested and convicted of trespassing. Traditional Negro leaders drawn from the mid. class lost influence as promises made by the city pro.. duced petty results. In the spring of 1967, a group of t 4 white and 14: Negro business and community lead~ er'>, called the Committee of 28, talked about 2,000 job openings for young Negroes. Only 65 materiali2:ed. Almost one out of every eight Cincinnati Negroes was unemployed. Two of every five Negro families were living on or below the border of poverty. A study of the West End section of the city indicated that one out of every four Negro men living there was out of work. In one public housing area, two-thirds of the fathers were missing. Of private housing occupied by Negroes, one-fourth was overcrowded, and half was deteriorated or dilapidated. In the gO-degree temperature of Monday, June 12, as throughout the summer, Negro youngsters·r09.med the streets, The two swimming pools available to them could accommodate only a handful. In the Avondale section--once a prosperous white middle class community, but now the home 6f more than half the city's Negro population-Negro youths watched white workers going to work at white-owned stores and businesses. One youth began to count the number of delivery .trucks being driven by Negroes. During the course of the afternoon, of the 52 trucks he counted, ~>nly one had a Negro .driver. His sampling was remarkably accurate. According to a study conducted by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, less than 2 percent of truckdrivers in the Cincinnati area are Negro. Late in the afternoon, the youths began to interfere with deliveries being made by white drivers. Dr. Bruce Green, president of the loca.l NAACP chapter, was notified. Dr. Green asked hi::; colleague, Dr, Robert Reid, the director of the Opportunities Industrialization Center, to go and try to calm the youngsters. Dr. Reid fOUlild several whom he knew, and convinced them to go with him to the Avondale Spedal Services Office to talk things over. . They were drawing up plans for a meeting with merchants of the Avondale area when word came of an altercation at a nearby d!'ugstore. Several of the youths left the meeting ,and rushed over to the store. Dr. Reid followed them. The owner of the store was complaining to the police that earlier the youths had been interfering with his business; he declared that he wasn't going to stand for it. Dr. Reid was attempting to mediate when a police sergeant arrived and asked the officers what was going on. One allegedly replied that they had been called in because "young nigger punks w!'lre disrupting deliveries to the stores," A dispute O\rose between Dr, R~id and the $Crgeant as to wpether the officer had said' "nigger." After further discussion, the sergeant told the kids to 'fbreak it,----" up!" Dr. Reid, together with some of the youngsters, [ l"ieturned to the Special Services Office. After talki;ng as an example of discriminatory justice. ~o the youngsters again, Dr. Reid left to attend a. meet" Tuesday morning, Negro leaders presented a list Df mg elsewhere. 11 demands and grievances stemming from the Mon. S,oon ~fter, some of the youngsters headed for the day night meeting to the municipal government. InJunIOr hIgh school, where the meeting protesting the cluded were demands for repeal of the antiloitering Frakes arrest and the antiloitering ordinance was schedlaw, release of all prisoners arrested during the disuled to take place. ~ur~an~e, full employment for Negroes, and equal T.he police department, alerted to the possibility of JustIce 111 the courts. a dIsturbance,. mobilized. However, the police were Municip?1 officials agreed that the city council wa~y of becommg, as some Negro militants had comwould ~onslder the demands. However, they rejected a plamed, an inciting factor. Some months earlier, when su~gestlO~ that they attend an open-air meeting of Ku Klux Klansmen had been attracted to the scene reSIdents m the Avondale section. City leaders did not of ~ speech by Stokely Carmichael, a Negro crowd, rewant to give stature to the militants by recognizinO' actmg to the heavy p.olice patrolling, had gathered them as the de facto representatives of the community~ about th~ car of a plamclothesman and attempted to Yet, by all indications, the militants were the only o~erturn On M?nday, June 12, the department depersons with influence on the people on the streets. CIded to ~vIthhold Its men from the immediate area of the meetmg. Mayor Walton H. Bachrach declared that he was "~uite surprised" by the disturbance because the counIt appeared for a time as if this policy might be cl! h,ad "worked like hell" to help Negroes. Municipal rewarded. Near the end of the rally, however, a Negro offiCIals, whose contacts were, as in other eitiesgenrea~ e~tat.e broker arose to defend the police and the erally \.vith a few middle-class Negroes, appear:d not antIlOItering ordinance. The crowd, including the to realIze the volatile frustrations of Negroes in the . youngsters who had h.ad the e~counter with the police ghetto. officers o~ly a short tIme earher, was incensed. When . Early in the evening a crowd, consisting mostly of the n:eetlng broke up, a missile was hurled through teenagers a~d young adults, began to gather in the ~he wmdow of a nearby church. A small fire was set Avondale DIstrIct When, after a short time no one 111 th<: street. A Molotov coc!ctail was thrown through appea~ed to give direction, they began to mill ~bout. A the wmdow of a drug store. few mmutes before 7 p.m., cars were stoned and winThe police were able to react quickly. There was dows were broken. Police moved in to disperse the only one major confrontation between them and the gathering. mob. Little resistance was offered. Fires were set. .When firemen reached the scene they Although windows were broken in some two dozen were barraged WIth rocks and bottles. A full-scale constores, there was virtually no looting. There were 14 frontation took place between police riot squ~ds and arrests, some unconnected with the disturbance. the Negro crowd: As police s:-vept the streets, people Amo~g those a.rrested was a community worl~er, now scattered. Accordmg to the chIef of police, at approxistudymg for a doctorate at Brandeis University. When 15, "All hell broke loose." mately 7: he went to the area to help get people off the streets The diso.rdcr leaped to other sections of the city. ' he was arrested .and c~arged with loitering. !he conf~slOn ~nd rapidity with which it spread made !he next mormng, a Judge of the Municipal Court, It almost ImpOSSIble to determine its scope. before whom most of the persons charged were to .Many reports of fires set by Molotov cocktails, cars be brought, said he intended to mete out the maximum bemg stoned, and windows being broken were received sentence to anycme found guilty of a riot-connected by the police. A white motorist-who died 3 weeks offense. Although the judge later told the Commission later-and a Negro sitting on his porch suffered gunshot tha.t h~, knew .his :statement was a "violation of judicial w~unds. Rumors spread of Negro gangs raiding white ?thICS, he saId that he made it because the "citv Was n.eIghborhoods, of shootings, and of organization of the m a stat7of siege," and he intended it to act as a deterrIot. Nearly all of them were determined later to be rent agamst further violence. ' unfounded. :rv.t;aximum sentences were, in fact, pronounced by At 9: 40 p.m., follow~ng a request for aid to surroundthe J~dge on aU convicted in his court, regardless of ing communities, Mayor Bachrach placed a call to the the CIrcumstances of the arrest, or the background of Governor asking for mobilization of the National the persons arrested. Police were charging most white Guard. ' persons ~rrested with disorderly conduct-for which At 2: 30 a.m. Wednesday, the first Guard units apthe maXImum sentence is 30 days in jail and a $100 peared on the streets. They followed a policv of refi~e. .Many Negr,~es, however, were charged with straint in the use of weapons. Few shots we~e fired. VIOlatIOn of the RIOt Act-for which the maximum Two hours later, the streets were quiet. Most of the sente~ce is 1 ~ear in, jail plus a $500 fine. Consequently, was minor. Of 40-odd fires reported before damage a major portIOn of the Negro community viewed this dawn, only 11 resulted in a loss of more than $1,000. 1:. ai t. '. n , F l... .. . i f, I·T. ' . 27 U il f j, : " i", [... ~ The fire department log listed four as having caused major damage. . '. . That afternoon the cIty councIl held an open session. The chambe~ was jammed with Negro residents, many of whom gave vocifer~~ssu~port as their spoke~­ man criticized the city admInIStration. When the :;\Udlence became unruly, a detail of National Gua~smen was stationed outside th.e council chamber. Then presence resulted in a misunderstanding, causing many of the Negroes to walk out and the meeting to end. Wednesday night, there were virtually no r~p~rts of riotous activity until 9 p.m., when scattered mCIdents of vj,olence again began to take place. One person was injured by a gunshot. Despite fears of a clash bet\~een ~egroe5 and SAMS-white Southern Appalachian mIgrants whose economic conditions paralleled those of Negroes-such a clash was averted. H. "Rap" Brown, arriving in the city on Thursd~y, attempted to capitalize on the discontent by presentmg a IU;t of 20 "demands." Their principal effect would have been total removal of all white persons, whatevw their capacity, from the ghetto area. Demand No. 18 stated' that "at any meeting to settle grievances . • . any white proposal or white represen~tive objected ~ by black representatives must be rejected autom~ti. cally." No. 20 demanded a veto power over police officers patr<>lling the community. His appearance had no galvanizing effect. Although scattered incidents occurred for'3 days after the arrival of the National Guard-, ~e disorder never returned to its early intensity. Of 63 reported injuries, 12 were serious enough to require hospitalization; 56 of the persons injured ~vere white. Most of the injuries resulted from thrown objects or glass splinters. Of the 107 persons arrested Tuesday night, when the main disturbance took place, 75 were 21 years of age or younger. Of the total of 404 persons arrested, 128 were juveniles, and 338 were 26 years of age or younger. Of the adults arrested, 29 percent were unemployed. III. ATLANTA . n n [ u_. n ' U ~. fi \?it ". :,", F t '11.- •.- n n ,~ II ITr t~ b :~ ~ n u pJ I u --;.., '~i>': 1,t· "j f'" l tr :~ I &"" On Saturday, June 17, as the NaLtional Guard was being withdrawn from Cinci~n~~i, the same. ty,pe o~ minor police arrest that had mttlated the Cmcmnati riot took place in Atlanta. Rapid industrialization following World War II, coupled with annexations that quadrupled the area of the city, hag made Atl~nta a vigorous ~-9d booming c.ommuJlhy. Pr~~tiG bu~iness and pQIJtIcal leaders worked to Slvo it a reputation aM tho mod~ratc Mtrong· hold of the Deep South, Neverthelelll, delpit" lU:cepmnc~, in principle, of intesrll.tion of !il:lhool, I}!ld fMlUtiell, the fact that the city il the heMlqulI.rtel1 both for cIvil riShti organlzil' doni lmd Mlgregatlonll!t Qlc.mcmt.tl createci a Iltrong j\nd over·pre-.ant potimt!ll! fOf contuct, Tho rRpkUy growlnlJ Negro populaUgn, which, by the lummcu' of 1967 had relWhod in ol!t!matOO 44 ptlr· oont. ~nd wu Mcattered In MQveml IIhettoM throughcmt the ci~y, WII miUntAining cOllltant pl,'eIlUrQ on auI'· rounding whltQ rol!idemhl1 AreM, SomQ reliLl eltate 1gentl englBed in IIblook.bu.t1ng mctlcll" U to Itimil. lite panic gh~1l by white homeownQN,. The city police wem c.ontlnually on the alert to keep marchei o,nd eountonnllrohell of civil· rightl l'od white ,upremlWilit orgAnwlltlonli from flAring into viohmeo. In Septembllr 1966, following A {atllilhooting by a poUco officor o{ a Negro I\uto. thief who WBI fellating Arrolt, only the dr&m/ltle ghetto appe/,uanCtl of Mayor I A bJOllk II ll~nuldlll'C!d to hAVll mllm No,ro Ilmlly hi' bOlln lold &fOl, 2S ii "bYltlld" whelll anll homo In A ImlvIOY;!Iy AJI.whltll Ivan A.llen; Jr., had averted a riot. Boasting that Atlanta had the largest KKK memo bership in the country, the Klan, on June 4, 1.967,. marched through one. of the poorer N~gro sections. A massive police escort prevented a raCIal clash: . According to Mayor Allen, 55 percent o~ ~umcIp~1 employees hired in 1967 were Negroes, bnnglOg thelr proportion of the city work force to 28 percent. Of 908 poUGe department employees; 85 are Ne.gro-;-a I nI fJ higher proportion of Ntlgroel than in mon major City PQUce depmmentlJ in tb@ Nation. . To th~ Negro community, howeverJ it apPf;/lred tha~ the progrell roMle lerved gnly to reduce the level 01 inequality. Equal c.ondltir;mli for bl/lcki and whlteM reo m~ned a. hoptl for the {uture, Different PIlY MeliLlo. for blllck and white municipal employee. performing the IIUJU} jobl ha.d been gnly recently ellmlnllttld. The economic and educ~tlonal gap betwClen the black llnd white popuh~tionl may, in fact, hliLve been incnll~81ng, The Iwerllge white Atlantan Will a high I!chool grM!ul\te i the I\verAgCl Negro Atll\ntan had not compl~ted the eighth grade. . In 1960; the median income of I. Negro family wa. leu thlm half of the white'. $6,S~O a ,yeaf, and 48 per. cent of Negm famllitll f!o,rncd 1011 thin $3,000 a yell'. Fltty percent of the men worked In, unlkl11ed jobs, Ind mllny more Negro women than men, 7,9 percent II agalmt 4.9 percent of the relpectlve work force., held well.pllylns, white collir jobs. . Living on marginl\l Incomel in cramped and d~. teriofllting qUllrtel1==One.thlrd of the houtlng WII overcrowded ~nd more thin half lub.tandard......f"ml. r 1I~ " n t1 :;. f i N U , t } i ~ l I I HI 1f j!I n I ~{ ;- g, , , r 1 I~ J. U r n I q ;' "" 'fl ~ Jl..... f; ' i I 1I'J fO ~~ ID} ~ ~.' . ... ., ·11 z n lies were breaking up at an increasing rate. In approximately four out of every 10 Negro homes the father was missing. In the case of families living in public housing projects, more than 60 percent are headed by females. Mayor Allen estimated ·there were 25,000 jobs in the city waiting to be filled because people lacked the education or skills to fill them. Yet overcrowding in many Negro schools forced the scheduling of extended and double sessions. Although Negroes comprised 60 per. cent of the school population; there were 14 "white" high schools compared to nine Negro. The city has integrated ;~~ s;.,;hools; but de facto segregation as a result of housing patterns has had the effect of continuing separate schooling of nearly all white and Negro pupils. White high school students attended classes 6% hours a day; Negroes in high schools with double sessions attended 4%. One Atlanta newspaper continued to advertise jobs by race, and in some industrial plants there were "Negro" jobs and "white" jobs with little chance for advancement by Negroes. Shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 17, a young Negro, E. W., carrying a can of beer, attempted to enter the Flamingo Grill in the Dixie Hills Shopping Center. When a Negro security guard told, the youth he could not enter, a scufHe ensued. Police officers were called to the guard's aid. E. W. received help from his 19-year-old sist~r, who flailed away at the officers with her purse. Another 19-year-old Negro youth entered the fray. All three were arrested. Although some 200 to 300 persons had been drawn to the scene of the incident, when police asked them to disperse, they complied. Because the area is isolated from the city in terms of transportation, and there are few recreational facilities, the shopping center is a natural gathering place. The next night, Sunday; an even bigger crowd was on hand. As they mingled, residents discussed their grievances. They were bitter about their inability to get. the city government to correct conditions and make improvements, Garbage sometimes was not picked up for 2 weeks in succession. Overflowing garbage cans, littered streets, an(~ cluttered empty lots were breeding grounds for rats. Inadequate storm drains led to flooded streets. Although residents had obtained title to several empty lots for use as playgrounds, the city failed to provide the equipment and men necessary to convert them. The area Jacked a swimming pool. A nearby park was inaccessible because of the lack of a road. Petitions submitted to the mayor's office for the correcting of these and other conditions were acknowledged, but not a9ted upon, . ~in(:!~ only Qn~of the Hi alcIerrnen was a Negro; and amlmb~I' pf blaJlk wardfl were repnmmted by white alderm~n, many N\:1grg@§ felt thl:lY were not b~ln~ prgp_ erly reprllsent@Q gn th~ dty ~gVernUlent, Tho small number of elected Negro officials appeared to be due to a system in which aldermen are elected at large, but represent specific wards, and must reside in the wards from which they are elected. Because of the quiIte~ pattern of black-white housing, white candidates were able to meet the residency requirements for .running from predominantly Negro wards. Since, however, candidates are dependent upon the city-wide vote for election, and the city has a white majority; few Negroes had been able to attain office. A decision w.as made by the Dixie Hills residents to organize committees and hold a protest meeting the next night. The headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is located in Atlanta. Its former president, Stokely Carmichael, wear~g a green Malcolm X sweatshirt,appeared; together with several companions. Approaching a police captain, Carmichael asked why there were so many police cars in the area. Informed that they were there to make sure there was no disturbance, Carmichael, clapping his hands, declared in a sing-song voice that there might have to be a riot if the police cars were not removed. When Carmichael refused to move on as requested, he was arrested. Soon released on bail, the next morning Carmichael declared that the blac~ people were preparing to resist "armed aggression" by the police by whatever means necessary. Shortly thereafter in the Dixie Hills Shopping Center, which had been closed down for the day, a Negro youth, using a broom handle; began to pound on the outside ben of a burglar alarm that had been 'set off, apparently, by a short circuit. Police officers responded to the alarm and ordered him to stop hitting the bell. A' scuffle ensued. Several bystanders intervened. One of the officers drew his service revolver and fired, superficially wounding the young man. Tension rose. Approximately 250 persons were present at that evening's meeting. When a number of Negro leaders urged the submission of a petition of grievances through legal channels, the response was lukewarm. When Carmichael took to the podium, urging Negroes "to take to the streets and force the police department to work until they fall in their tracks," the response was tumultuous. The press quoted him as saying: "It's not a question of law and order. We are not concerned with peace. We are concerned with the liberation of black people. We have to build a revolution." As the peopl~ present at the meeting poured into the street, they were joined by others. The crowd soon numbered an estimated l?OpO. From alleys and rooftops rocks and ppttles were thrown at the nine police offl(:!ers on the licene. Windowli of police can Wertl broken, Firl:lcrackefli e~plQded in th~ darknesS,p9UCl! btlHevo they m~y have been fired on, 29 - 4 I. 'f? Reinforced by approximately 60 to 70 offi~ers, the police, firing over the heads of the crowd, qUl~kly regained control. Of the 10 persons arrested, SlX were 21 years of age or younger; only one was in his thirties. The next day city equipment appeared in the area to begin work on the long··delayed playgrounds and other projects demanded by the citizens. It was announced that a Negro youth patrol would be established along the lines of the Tampa White Hats. SNCC responded that volunteers for the patrol would be selling their "black brothers out" and would be viewed as "black traitors," to be dealt with in the "manner we see fit." Nevertheless, during the course of the suinmer, the 200 youths participating in the corps played an important role in preventing a serious outbreak. The police believe that establishment of the youth corps becam~ a major factor in improving policecommunity relations. Another meeting of area residents was called for Tuesday evening. At its conclusion, 200 protesters were met by 300 police officers. As two police officers chased several boys down the street, a cherry bomb or incendiary device exploded at the ()fficers' feet. In •..sponse, several shots were fired from a group of police consisting mostly of Negro officers. The discharge from a shotgun struck in the midst of several persons sitting on the front porch of a house. A 46-year old man was killed; a 9-year old boy was critically injured. Because of the efforts of neighborhood and anti~ poverty workers who circulated through the area, and the later appearance of Mayor Allen, no further violence ensued. When H. "Rap" Brown, who had returned to the city that afternoon, went to other Negro areas in an attempt to initiate a demonstration against the shooting of the Negroes on the porch, he met with no response. Within the next few days, a petition was drawn up by State Senator Leroy Johnson and other moderate Negro leaders demanding that Stokely Carmichael get out of the community and allow the people t.o handle their own affairs. It was signed by more than 1,000 persons in the Dixie Hills area. IV. NEWARK The last outburat in Atlanta occurred on Tuesday night, June 20. That same night, in Newark, N.J., a tumultuous meeting of the planning board took place. Until 4 a.m., Ilpeaker after speaker from the Negro ghetto arOfe to denounce the city's intent to tum over 150 acres in the heart of the central warCl as a site for the State's new medical and dental college. The growing opposition to 'the city administration by vocal black residents had paralyzed both the plan. rling board and the board of education. Tension had been rising so steadily throughout the northern New Jersey area that, in the first week of June, Col. David Kelly, head of the state police, had met with municipal police chiefs to draw up plans for state police suppc·rt of city police wherever a riot developed. Nowhere was the tension greater than in Newa,rk. . Founded in 1666, the city, part of the Greater New York City port complex, rises from the salt marshes of the Passaic River. Although in 1967 Newark's population of 400,000 still ranked it 30th among American municipalities, for the past 20 years the white middle class had been deserting the city for the suburbs. In the late 1950's, the desertions had become a rout. 'Between 1960 and 1967, the city lost a net total of more than 70,000 white residents. Replacing them in vast areas of dilapidated housing where living condi. tions, according to a prominent member of the County Bar A$sociation, were so bad that "people 'Would be kinder to their pets," were Negro migrants, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. In 6 years, the city switeheci from 30 n f.1. IE n ft.·.. 65 perce~t white to 52 percent Negro and 10 perCClnt Puerto Rican and Cuban. The white population, nevertheless, retained political control of the city. On both the city council and the board of education, seven of nine members were white. In other key boards, the disparity was equal or greater. In the central ward, where the medical college con· troversy f3ged, the Negro constituents and their white councilman found themselves on opposite sides of almost every crucial issue. . The municipal administration lacked the ability to respond quickly enough to' navigate the swiftly changing currents. Even had it had great astutemlss, it would have lacked the financial resources to affect significantly the course of evenb. In 1962, seven·term Congressman Hugh Addonizio had forged an Italian·Negro coalition to overthrow longtime Irish control of the city hall. A liberal in Congress; Addonizio, when he became mayorl had opened his door to all people. Negroes, who had been excluded from the previous adm~nistration, were brought into the government. 'rhe police department was integrated. . Nevertheless, progress was slow. As the Negro population increased, more and more of tJ1e politically ori· ented found the progress inadequate. The Negro-Italian coalition began to develop strains over the issue of the police. The police were largely Italian, the persons they arrested were largely Negro. Community leaders agreed that, as in many police forces, the~e w~s ~ small minClrity of officers who abused U u J f ,I [ , 1 I( II , , u LI their responsibility. This gave credibility to the cries of "brutality!" voiced periodically by ghetto Negroes. In 1965, Mayor Addonizio, acknowledging that there was "a small group of misguided individuals" in the department, declared that "it is vital to establish once and for all, in the minds of the public, that charges of alleged police brutality will be thoroughly investigated and the appropriate legal or punitive action be taken if the charges are found to be substantiated." Pulled one way by the Negro citizens who wanted a police review board, and the other by the police, who adamantly opposed it, the mayor decided to transfer "the control and investigation of complaints of police brutality out of the hands of both the police and the public and into the hand~ of an agency that all can Bupport-:-the Federal Bureau of Investigation," and to send "a copy of any charge of police brutality * * * directly to the Prosecutor's office." However, the FBI could act only if there had been a violation of a person's federal civil rights. No complaint was ever heard of again. Nor was there much redress for other complaints. The city had no money with which to redress them. The city had already reached its leg<>:\ bonding limit, yet expenditures continued to outstrip income. Health and welfare costs, per capita, were 20 times as great as. for some of the surrounding communities. Cramped by.its small land area of 23.6 square miles-one-thircl of which was taken up by Newark Airport and unusaJ,;,ie marshland-and surrounded by independent juri!dictions, the. city had nowhere to expand. Taxable property was contracting as land, cleared for urban renewal, lay fallow year after year. Property taxes had beep. increased, perhaps, to the point of diminishing, return. By the fall of 1967, they were to reach $661.70 on a $10,000 house-double that of suburban communities. 3 As a result, people were refusing either to own or to renovate property in the city. Seventy-four percent of white and 87 percent of Negro families lived in rental housing. Whoever was able to move to the suburbs, moved. Many of these persons, as downtown areas were cleared and new office buildings were constructed, continued to work.in the city. Among them were a large proportion of the people from whom a city normally draws its civic leaders, but who, after moving out, tended to cease involving themselves in the community's problems. During the daytime Newark more than doubled its population-and was, therefore, forced to provide services for a large niunber of people who contributed nothing in property taxes. The city's per capita outlay for police, fire protection, and other municipal servo ices continued to increase. By 1967 it was twice that • The legal tax rate is $7.76 per $100 of market value. However, because of inflation, a guideline of 85.27 percent of.marl;etvalueisused in assessing,reducingthe true fax rate to $6.617 per $100. of the surrounding area. Consequently, there was less money to spend on education. Newark's per capita outlay on schools was considerably less than that of surrounding communities. Yet within the city's schQOI system Were 78,000 children, 14,000 more than 10 yeats earlier. Twenty thousand pupils were on double sessions. The dropout rate was estimated to be as high as 33 percent. Of 13,600 Negroes be~een the ages of 16 and 19, more than 6,000 were not in school. In 1960 over half of the adult Negr~ populatio~ had less than an eighth grade education. The typical ghetto· cycle of high unemployment, family breakup, and·· crime was present in all its elements. Approximately 12 percent of Negroes were. without jobs. An estimco.ted 40 percent of Negro children lived in broken homes. Although Newark maintained proportionately the .largesi police force of any major city, its crime rate was among the highest in the Nation. In narcotics violations it ranked fifth nationally. Almost 80 percent of the crimes were committed within 2 miles of the core of the city, where the central ward is located. A majority of the criminals were Negro. Most of the victims, likewise, were Negro. The . Mafia was reputed to control much of the organized crime. ' Robert Curvin, CORE official, tries to calm crowd in Newark, July 1967 Under such conditions a major segment of the Negro population became increasingly militant. Largely excluded from positions of traditjonal political power, Negroes, tutored by a handful of militant so~ial activists who had moved into the city in: the early 1960's, made use of the antipoverty program, in which poor people were guaranteed representation, asa political springboard. This led to friction. between the United Community Corporation, the agency that administered the antipovery program, and the city administration. When it became known that thesecfetary of the board of education intende~ to retire, the militants . 31 J - '- e, t, 4 ? I T r proposed for the position the city's budget director, a Negro with a master's degree in accounting. The mayor, however, had already nominated a white man. Since the white man had only a high school education, and at least 70 percent of the children in the school system were Negro, the issue of who was to obtain the secretaryship, an important and powerful position, quickly became a focal issue. Joined with the issue of the ISO-acre medical school site, the area of which had been expanded to triple the original request-an expansion regarded by the militants as an effort to dilute black political power by moving out Negro resid~nts-the board of education ba.ttIe resulted in a confrontation between the mayor and the militants. Both sides refused to alter their positions. adjourn until 3: 23 a.m. Throughout the months 01' May and June, speaker after speaker warned that if the mayor persisted in naming a white man as secretary to the board of education and in moving ahead with plans for the medical school site, violence would ensue. The city administration played down the threats. On June 2.7, when a new secretary to the board of education was to be named, the state police set up a command post in the Newark armory. The militants, led by the local CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) chapter, disrupted and took over the board of education meeting. The outcome was a stalemate. The incumbent secretary decided to stay on another year. No one was satisfied. At the beginning of July there were 24,000 unem. ployed Negroes within the city limits, Their ranks were swelled by an estimated 20,000 teenagers, many of whom, with school out and the summer recreation program curtailed due to a lack of funds, had no place togo. Wound~d rjot~r ~scort~d from IIjol~nc~ se~n~, N~wark, lui')! POliClI, Guardsmlln col/ar all~''1d loot~1s, Newark, luly 1967 Into this impasse stepped a Washington, Negro named Albert Roy Osborne. A flamboyant, 42-yearold former wig salesman who called himself Colonel Hassan Jeru-Ahmed and wore a black beret,'he presidedle were being shot, ' "Tell the black bastards to stop shooting at us," the sergeant, according to Morris, replied, "They don't have guns; no one is shooting at you," Morris said, uYou shut up, there's a sniper on the roof," the sergeant yelled. A lhort time l~ter, at approximately 5 p.m., in the Same vicinity, a police detective was killed by a small caliber bullet. The origin of the shot could not be determined. Later during the riot, a fireman was killed by a .30 caliber bullet. Snipers wer~ blamed for the deaths oil both. At 5:30. p.m., on Beacon Street, W. F. told J. S., whose 1959 Pontiac he had taken to the station for inspection, that his frout brake needed fixing. J. S., whohad just returned from work, went to the car which was pal;ked in the street, jacked up the front end, took the wheel off, and got under the car. The street was quiet. More tpan a dozen persons were sitting on porches, walking about, or shopping. None heard any shots. Suddenly several state troopers appeared at the corner of Springfield and Beacon. J. S. was startled by a shot clt,mging into the side of the garbage can next to his car. As he looked up he saw a state trooper with his rifle pointed at him. The next shot struck him in the right side . At almost the same instant, K. G., sumding on a porch, was struck in the right eye by a bullet. Both he and J. S. were critically injured. At 8 p,m., Mrs. L. M.· bundled her husband, her husband's bJ;'other, and her four sons into the family car to drive to.a restaurant for dinner. On the return trip her husband, who was driving, panicked, as he approached l\ National Guard roadblock. He slowed the car, then quickly swerved around. A shot rang out. When the family reached home, everyone began piling out of the car. Ten-y~ar-old Eddie failed to move. Shot . through the head, he was de~d. Although, by nightfall, most of the looting and bum111g had ended, ,repOfti of Kniper tl~ increUi!.d. The fire was, according to New Jersey National Guard reports, IIdeliberately or othexwise in.accurate." Maj. Gen. James F. Cantwell, Chief 'of Staff of the New Jersey National Guard, testified before an Armed Services Subcommittee of the House of Representatives ,that IIthere was too much tidn$' initially against snipers" n IJ ......0. p U n P J n it u . i I j I , ;f D",Il~' ~ar abl4l' in N,wark dlmd,r, Ju/~ 196'1 36 i u because of "confusion when we were finally called on for help and our thinking of it as a military action." "As a m.at~er ~~ fact," Director of Police Spina told ~he CommisSion, down in the Springfield Avenue area ~t was so bad that, in my opinion, Guardsmen were firmg upon police and police were firing back at them * * *. I really don',tbelieve there was as much sniping ~s e . th~ugl:t * 'If *. We have since compiled statIStlC~ l~dlcatmg that there were 79 specified instances of smpmg." Sev~ral pr?blemscontributed to the misconceptions regardmg smpers: the lack of communications; the f~ct that one shot might be reported half a dozen times by half a dozen different persons as it caromed and reverberated a mile or more through the city' the. ~act that the National Guard troops lacked rio~ trammg. They were, said a police official, "young and very ~c~red," and had.had little contact with Negroes. W~thm the Guard Itself contact with Negroes had certamly been limited. Although, in 1949, out of a force ?f 12,52? men there had been 1,183 Negroes, followmg the mtegration of the Guard in the 1950's the number had declined until, by July of 1967, there were 303 N~groes in a force of 17,529 men. .On ~atu.rday, July 15, Spina received a report of snlpers.m a housing project. When he arrived he saw apprmomately .100 National Guardsmen and police officers. crouching behind vehicles, biding in corners and lymg on the ground around the edge of the courtyard. Si~ce eveIJ'thing appeared quiet and it was broad dayhght, Spma walked directly down the middle of th~ s~reet. Nothing happened. As he came to the last b~lldmg of the complex, he heard a shot. All around hIm the .troopers jumped, believing themselves to be ' under snIper fire, A moment later a young Guardsman ran from behind ~ bqilding. The director of polic' few Neg"roes until 1950. By 1967. the Negro population had risen to an estimated 30 perl'ent of the total. As in Englewood, there was a division betwe~n t~e, Negr~ middle class, which lived in the Eaat aide glided ghetto," and the unskilled, unemployed and underemployed poor on the Weat side. Geared to the needs of a suburban middle clan, the part.time and fragmented city government had failed to rel\lize the change in character which the city had undergqne, and :-vas u~prepared to cope with the problems of a g~owlng ~l~dvantaged population. There w~s n.o full-time adminIstrator or city manager. Boards, Wlt~ mdependent jurisdiction over such areas as educ.atlon, welfare and health; were appointed by the parttime mayor, whose own position was largely honorary. Accustomed to viewing politics as a gentleman's pasti~e, ci~ officials were startled ~.nd upset by the I~tenstty With which demands issued from the ghetto. Usually such demands were met obliquely, rather than head-on. In the summer of 1966, trouble was narrowly averted over the issue of a swimming pool for Negro youngsters. In the summer of 1967, instead of having built the Plainfield, /"lyI967 pool, the city be~an. ~usi~g the children to the county pool a half-hour s l'iue distant. The fare was 25 cents per person, and the chlldren had to provid~ their own lunch, a considerable s~Tain on a frequent basis £01' a poor family with several children. 41 -, .. i. ! n ,[:, . '~ ~k The bus operated only on 3 days in midweek. On weekends the county pool was tOCI crowded to accommodate children from the Plainfield ghetto. Pressure increased upon the school system to adapt itself to the changing social and ethnic backgrounds of its pupils. There were strikes and boycotts. The track systcm creatcd dc facto segrcgation within a supposedly integrated school system. Most of the youngsters from white middle-class districts Were in the higher track, most from the Negro poverty areas in the lower. Relations were strained between some white tcachers and Negro pupils. Two.thirds of school dropouts were estimated to be Negro. In February 1967 the NAACP, out of a growing sense of frustration with the municipal government, tacked a list of 19 demands and complaints to the door of the city hall. Most dealt with discrimination in housing, employment and in the public schools. By summer, the city's common council had not responded. Although two of the 11 council members were Negro, both represented the East side ghetto. The poverty area was represented by two white women, one of whom had been appointed by the council after the elected representativf;, a Negro, had mo'ved away. Relations between the police and the Negro community, tenuous at best, had been further troubled the week prior to the Newark outbreak. After being hand- cuffed during a routine arrest in a housing project, a woman had fallen down a flight of stairs. The officer said she had slipped. Negro residents claimed he had pushed her. When a delegation went to city hall to file a complaint, they were told by the city clerk that he was not empowered to Rccept it. Believing that they were being given the run-around, the delegation, angry and fnustrated, departed. On Friday evening, July 14, the same police officer was moonlighting as a private guard at a diner frequented by Negro youths. He was, reportedly, number two on the Negro community's "10 most-wanted" list of unpopular police officers. (The list was colorblind. Altllough out of 82 officers on the force only five were Negro, two of the 10 on the "most-wanted" list were Negro. The two officers most respected in the Negro community were white.) Although most of the youths at the diner were of high school age, one, in his midtwenties, had a reputation as a bully. Sometime before 10 p.m., as a result of an arf;ument, he hit a 16-year-old boy and split open his face. As the boy lay bleeding on the asphalt, his f~iends rushed to the police officer ~nd demanded that he call an ambulance and arrest the offender. Instead, the olEcer walked over to the boy, looked at him, and reportedly said:· "Why don't you just go home and i~t.. iI J! I: 1' 1 ':' : l U ! I, I, Riot debris, Plainfi,ld.luly 196'7 42 .r II ! I 1 N~ !~ ~. It Nt' .1 wash up?" He refused to make an arrest. The youngsters were incensed. They believed that, had the two participants in the incident been white, the older youth would have bcen arrested, the younger taken to the hospital immediately. On the way to the housing project where most of them lived, the youths traversed four blocks of the city's business district. As they walked, they smashed three or four windows. An observer interpreted their behavior as a reaction to the incident at the diner, in effect challenging the police officer: "If }lrm won't do anything about that, then let's see you do something about this!" On one of the fluiet city streets, two young Negroes, D. H. and L. c., had been neighbors. D. H. had graduated from high school, attended Fairleigh Dickinson University and, after receiving a degree in psychology, had obtained a job as a reporter on the Plainfield Courier-News. L. C. had dropped out of high school, become a worker in a chemical plant, and, although still in his twenties, had married and fathered seven children. A man with a strong s\~nse of family, he liked sports and played in the local basebaIl league. Active in civil rights, he had, like the civil rights organizatiqns, over the years, become more militant. For a period of time he had been a Muslim. The outbreak of vandalism aroused concern among the police. Shortly after midnight, in an attempt to decrease tensions, D. H. and the two Negro councilmen met with the youths in the housing project. The focal point of the youths' bitterness was the attitude of the police-until 1966 police had used the word "nigger" over the police radio and one officer had worn a Confederate belt buckle and had flown a Confederate pennant on his car. Their complaints, however, ranged over local and national issues. There was an overriding cynicism and disbelief that government would, of its own accord, make meaningful changes to improve the lot of the lower-class Negro. There was an overriding belief that there were two sets of policies by the people in power, whether law enforcement officers, newspaper editors, or government officials: one for white, and one for black. There was little confidence the.: the two councilmen could exercise any influence. One youth said: "You came down here last year. We were throwing stones at some passing cars, and you said to us that this was not the way to do it. You got us to talk with the man. We talked to him. We talked with him, and we talked all year long. We ain't got nothing yet!" However, on the promise that meetings would be arranged with the editor of the newspaper and with the mayor later that same day, the youths agreed to disperse. At the first of these meetings, the youths were, apparently, satisfied by the explanation that the news.. paper's coverage was not deliberately discriminatory. The meeting with the mayor, however, proceeded badly. Negroes present felt that the mayor was complacent and apathetic, and that they were simply being given the usual lip service, from which nothing would develop. . The mayor, on the other hand, told Commission investigators that he recognized that "citizens are frustrated by the political organization of the city," because he, himself, has no real power and "each of the councilmen sz.tys that he is just one of the 11 and therefore can't do anything." After approximately 2 hours, a dozen of the youths walked out, indicating an impasse and signaling the breakup of the meeting. Shortly thereafter, window smashing began. A Molotov cocktail was set afire in a tree. One fire engine, in which a white and Negro fireman were sitting side by side, had a Molotov cocktail thrown at it. The white fireman was burned. As window smashing continued, liquor stores and taverns were especially hard hit. Some of the youths believed that there was an excess concentration of bars in the Negro section, and that these were an unhealthy influence in the community. Because the police department had mobilized its full force, the situation, although serious, never appeared to get out of hand. Officers made many arrests. The chief of the fire department told Commission investi. gators that it was his conclusion that Ilindividuals making fire bombs did not know what they were doing, or they could have burned the city." At 3 o'clock Sunday morning, a heavy rain began, scattering whatever groups remained on the streets. Homes searched fOT weapons. Plainfield, lu(,,1967 43 In the morning, police made no effort to cordon off the area. As white sightseers and churchgoers drove by the housing project there was sporadic rock throwing. During the early afternoon, such incidents increased. At the housing project, a meeting was convened by L. C. to draw up a formal petition of grievances. As the youths gathered it became apparent t~a~ some of them had been drinking. A few kept dnfttng away from the parking lot where the meeting was being held to throw rocks at passing cars. It was decided to move the meeting to a county park several blocks away. Between 150 and 200 persons, including almost all of the rock throwers, piled into, a ,caravan of cars a'nd headed for the park. At approximately 3: 30 p.m., the chief of the Union County park police arrived to find the group being addressed by D~vid Sulliv~n~ executive director of the human relatlons commlSSlon. He "informed Mr. Sullivan he was in violation of our park ordinance and to disperse the group." Sullivan and L. C. attempted to explam that they were in the process of drawing up a list of grievances, but the chief remained adamant. They could not meet in the park without a permit, and they did not have a permit. . After permitting the group 10 to 15 mmutes grace, the chief decided to disperse them. "Their mood was very excitable," he reported, and "in my estimatio~ no one could appease them so we moved them out wIthout too much trouble. They left in a caravan of about 40 cars, horns blowing and yelling and headed south on West End Avenue to Plainfield." Within the hour, looting became widespread. Cars were overturned, a white man was snatched off a motorcycle, and the fire department stopped respo~d­ ing to alarms because the police were unable .to p;ovlde protection. After having been on alert untIl mldday, the Plainfield Police Department was caught unprepared. At 6 p.m., only 18 men wc~e ?n the :tree~s. Checkpoints were established at cruclalmtersectlOns Il1 an effort to isolate the area. Officer John Gleason, together with two reserve officers, had been posted at one of the intersections, three blocks from the housing project. Gleason was a veteran officer the son of a fonner lieutenant on the police depart~ent. Shortly after 8 p.m., two white youths, chased by a 22-year-old Negro, Bobby Williams, came running from the direction of the ghetto toward Gleason's post. . . . As he came in sight 'of the polIce officers, WIllIams stopped. Accounts vary of what happened next, or why Officer Gleason took the action he did. What is known is that when D.H., the newspaper reporter, caught sight of him a minute or two later, Officer Glea~on was two blocks from his post. Striding after Wili'iams directly into the ghetto area, Gleason already had passed one housing project. Small groups were milling about. In D.H.'s words: "There was a kind of shock and amazement," to see the officer walKing by himself so deep in the ghetto. . . Suddenly, there was a confrontatIOn betwee? ~I!­ Iiams and Gleason. Some witnesses report W.I1hams had a hammer in his hand. Others say he dId not. When D.H., whose attention momentarily ha~ been distracted next saw Gleason he had drawn hiS gun and was'firing at Williams. As Williams, critically injured, fell to the gro~nd, Gleason turned and ran back toward his post. Negro youths chased him. GI~ason stumbled, regained his balance, then had hiS feet knocked out from under him. A score of youths began to beat him and kick him. Some residents of the apartment house attempted to intervene, but they were brushed aside. D.H. believes that, under the circumstances and in the atmosphere that prevailed at that moment, , any police officer, black or white, would have been killed. H . ' li t. . f .r {' j; i ' Room after Guardsmen, troopers search for carbines, Plainfield, July 1967 :.. After they had beaten G1e~son to death, the youths took D.H.'s camera from him and smashed it. Fear swept over the ghetto. Many residents--both lawless and law-abiding-were convinced, on the basis of what had occurred in Newark, that law enforcement officers, bent on vengeance, would come into the ghetto shooting. People began actively to prepare to defend themselves. There was no lack of weapons. Forty-six carbines were stolen from a nearby anus manufacturing plant and passed out in the street by a young Negro, a fonner newspaper b9Y. Most of the weapons fell into the hands of youths, who began firing them wildly. A fire station was peppered with shots. Law enforcement officers continued their cordon about the area, but made no attempt to enter it except, occasionally, to rescue someone. National Guardsmen arrived shortly a.fter midnight. Their armored personnel carriers were used to carry troops to the fire station, which had been besieged for 5 hours. During this period only one fire had been reported in the city. Reports of sniper firing, wild shooting, and general chaos continued until the early morning hours. By daylight Monday, New Jersey state officials had begun to arrive. At a meeting in the early afternqon, it was agreed that to inject police into the ghetto would be to risk bloodshed; that, instead, law enforcement personnel should continue to retain their cordon. All during the day various meetings took place between government officials and Negro representatives. Police were anxious to recover the carbines that had been stolen from the arms plant. Negroes wanted assurances against retaliation~, In the afternoon, L.C., an official of the human relations commission, and others drove through the area urging people to be calm and to refrain from violence. At 8 p.m., the New Jersey attorney general, commissioner of community affairs, and commander of the state poFce, accompanied by the mayor, went to the housing project and spoke to several hundred Negroes. Some members of the crowd were hostile. Others were anxious to establish a dialog. There were demands that officials give concrete evidence that 'they were prepared to deal with Nef{ro g-rievance~. Again, the meeting was inconclusive. The officials returned to City Hall. At 9; 15 p.m" L. C. rushed in claiming that-as a result Qf the failure to resolve an}" of the outstanding problema! and fl'lports that people who had been ar. filS ted bv the policf.\ were bflinf{ beatfln...,....violence was about to e"f)lode anew. The key demand of· the mili. tant faction was that those who had been arrested during the riot ahould be released. State offidaJa d~cided to arrange for the release on bail of 12 arrestees chnrged with minor violationa, L. C., in tum, a~reed to try to induce, ~tum of the IItolen carbines by Wednesday noon. As state officiala were scanning the list of arrestees to detennine which of them should be released, a mblo. sage was brought to Colonel Kelly of the state police that general firing had broken out around the perimeter. The report testified to the tension: an investil!~tion disclosed that one shot of unexplained origin had Deen heard. In response, security forces had shot out street lights, thus initiating the "general firing." At 4 o'clock Tuesday morning, a dozen prisoners wez:e released from jail. Plainfield police officers considered this a "sellout:' When, by noon on Wednesday, the stolen carbines had not been returned, the govenlor decided to authorize a mass search. At 2 p.m., a convoy of state police and National Guard troops prepared to enter the area. In order to direct the search as to likely locations, a handful of Plainfield police officers were spotted throughout the 28 vehicles of the convoy. As the convoy prepared to depart, the state community affairs commissioner, believing himself to be carrying out the decision of the governor not to pennit Plainfield officers to participate in the search, ordered their removal from the vehicles. The basis for his order was that their participation might ignite a clash between them and the Negro citizens. A[~ ,he search for carbines in the community progressed, tension increased rapidly. According to wit: nesses and newspaper reports, some men in the search force left apartments in shambles. The search was called off an hour and a half after it was begun. No stolen weapons were discovered. For the Plainfield police, the removal 'of the officers from the convoy had been a humiliating experience. A half hour after the conclusion of the search, in a meeting charged with emotion, the entire department threatened to resign unless the state community affairs commissioner left the city. He acceded to the demand. On Friday, 7 days after the first outbreak, the city began returning to nonnal. Guardsml1n mov" in for Plainfi,ld, July 1967 hOIIS" to house carbin. wlrch, 44 45 If ... z. l i J l! . conditions. The crowd Was boisterous. Some persons challenged the mayor. But, finally, the opinion, "She's new! Give her a chance!" prevailed. VII. NEW BRUNSWICK Although New Brunswick has about the same population as Plainfield, New Brumwick is a county seat and center of commerce, with an influx of people during the day. No clearly defined Negro ghetto exists. Substantial proportions of the population are Puerto Rican, foreign-born, and Negro. All during the weekend, while violence sputtered, flared, subsided, then flared again in Plainfield, less than 10 mih~s away, there were rumors that "New Brunswick was really going to blow." Dissatisfaction in the Negro community revolved arou.nd several issues: the closing of a local teenage coffeehouse by the police depart"raent, the lack of a swimming pool ari:d other recreation facilities, and the release of a white counle on very low bond after they had been arrested for allegedly shooting at three Negro teenagen. As elsewhere, there was a feeling that the law was not being applied equally to whites and Negroe~. By Monday, according to Mayor Patricia Sheehan, the town was "haunted by what had happened in Newark and Plainfield." James E. Amos, the associate director of the antipoverty program in Middlesex County, said there wal a "tensenell in the air" that "got thicker and thicker." StaA' memben ,of the antipoverty allency met with the mayor and city commissioners to di.cull what step. might be taken to reduce the tensifJn. The mayor, who had been. elected on a reform platform 2 month. pre. vlou.ly, mppointed a Negro poUce officer, Lieutenant John Brokaw, II community 1iliIOn officer, He WII authorized to report directly to the mayor. Negro officers In the department went Into the .treets In plain cloth.. to AR'ht romors and let II counterrloten. Vnlfonned POUC~l officers were counseled to act w~th feltraint to avoid the pol.lbillty of a police action tetting oft' violence, The radio .tation decided on itl own initlitive to pl~y down rumon and new, of any dllturbance, The antipoverty .~ncy set up I t".k foree of work. en to go Int9 IU of the communities, white, Puerto RICin. And NelfO, to report Infonnltlon and to try to cool thl l!tuitlon. Th. chlel 01 poJic. met with &he chief. of Iurround. In, communltl.1 to d11CU11 coopiratlon In cu, a dll. ord.r bN1ce cut. The Itreets remaJned quiet until put 9 p,m. Then lCattered reportl of windows beln, brokon benn to be received by poUce. At 10:S0 p.m., Ambl notlcMll00 younpten marchln, In a column of tWOl dO'Nn the I&I'&!I~. A tall Nell'O mlnllttr Itlpped from the office of chi antlpoYlrty asenc:y.and plaeecl hlm,,11 In the .t.... t In order to b.ad them off. ""lrOChal'll ItOplLefm. talk to you I" he called out. Tb. marcben bnub.d pan him. A Imall boy, about .e, ~'fl"I'"'' 13 years old, looked up at the minister: "Black power, baby!" he said. The New Brunswick police were reinforced by 100 officers from surrounding communities. Roadblocks were set up on all principal thoroughfara into the city. Wild rumol'll swept the city: reports of armed Negro and white gangs, shootillgl, fires, beatinp, and death,. In fact, what occurred Wall more in the nature of random vandalilm. According to Mayor Sheehan, it was "like Halloween-a gigantic night of mischief." Tuesday morning the mayor imposed a curfew, and recorded a tape, played periodically over the city's radio station, appealing for order. MOlt of the persons who had been picked up the previous night were released on their own recognizance or on low bail. The antipoverty agency, whOle summer program had not been funded until a few day. previously, began hiring youngsters as recreatio"al aides. So many teenagers applied that it WilS det;id~d to cut each stipend in half and hire twice as m~ny :os planned. When .the youngsters indicated a desire to lee the mayor, she and the city commillioners agreed to meet with them. Although initially hostile, the teenagers who made up the group Ilpoured out their lOuis to the mayor." ,The mayor and the city commissioners agreed to the drawing up of a .tatement by the Negro youth. attacking discrimination, inferior educational and employment opportunitiel, police hara..rnent, and poor houling. Four of tht young people begin broadcllting O'~er the radio Itation, urging their IIIOU i brothen and Ii•• ten" to IIcool it, becaule you will only get hurt and the mayor ha. talked with UJ and I. going to do lOme. thing for us," Other youths circulated. through the streets wIth the same melUge. De.pite these meuure., a confrontation between the police lAnd a crowd thlt gathered. near a pubUc houling project occurred that evening. The crowd WII Ingry at the muslve thow of force by police In riot dreu. IlIi you don't get the COpl out of here," one min warned, "we are all going to get our gunl," A.ked to retum to their homel, people npUed: "We wlllgo home when you pt the pollce out of the area," Requllted by Mvel'll city ccmmlliionen &0 pull back ehe unltonn'ld police, the ,chlel it Ant refused. Rel WI' then told It WII a direct order from the mayor. ThB pollee were withdrawn. A .hort time later, elemeng of the crowd-an older and rouRher one than the night belore-appelnd ,In front of the police Itatlon. The participants wantecl to lee the mayor. Mayorlheehanwentout o~to the ltepa ot theltatlon, tTlln. I bullhom, Ih. talked to tbe peopl. Ind uked thlt Ih. be elVin an opportunity to cornet 3' A demand was issued by people in the crowd that all persons arrested the previous night be released. Told that this already had been done, the people were suspicious. They asked to be allowed to inspect tne . jail cells. It was agreed to permit representatives of the people to look in the cells to satisfy themselves that' everyone had been released. The crowd dispersed. The New Brunswick riot had failed to materialize. VIII. DETROIT On Saturday evening, July 22, the Detroit Police Department raided five "blind pigs." The blind pigs had ~ad their .origin in prohibition days, and survived as private SOCial clubs. Often, they were after-hours drinking and gambling spots. The fifth blind pig on the raid list, the United Com. munity and Civic League at the comer of 12th Street and Clairmount, had been raided twice before. Once 10 pe~so~s had been picked up j another time, 28. A ~etrOlt vice squad officer had tried but failed to get 111 shortly after 10 o'clock Saturday night. He suc.ceeded, on his second attempt, at 3: 45 Sunday mornmg. The Tactical Mobile Unit, the Police Department's crowd control squad, had been dismissed at 3 a.m. Since Sunday morning traditionally is the least troublesome time for police in Detroit-and all over the coun. try-onlr 193 officers were patroling the streets. Of these) 44 were in the 10th precinct where the blind pig was located. .Polic~ expected to find two dozen patrons in the blmd pIg. That night, however. it was the scene of a party for several servicemen t\~o of whom were hac·k· f V' , rom letnam. Instead of two dozen patrons police found 82. Some voiced resentment at the police intrusion. An hour went by before all 82 could be transported from the scene. The weather was humid and wannthe temperature that day was to rise to 86-and despite the late hour, many people were still on the street. In short order, a crowd of about 200 gathered. In ~ovember of 1965, George Edwards, Judge of the Umted States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Commissioner of the Detroit Police Department from 1961 to 1963, had written in the Michigan Law Review: DClt,oit disordCl,.!uly 1967 47 ..l ~, ~ I t is clear that in 1965 no one will make e:r.cuses Cor any city's inability to foresee the possibHity oC racial trouble. «- * * Although local police Corces generally reg-ard themselves as public servants with the responsibility oC maintaining law and order, they tend to m:nimize this attitude when they are patrolling arcas that are heavily populated with Negro citizens. There, they tend to vicw each person on the strects as a potential crimin:al or encmy, and all too oCtcn that attitude is reciprocated. Indeed, hostility bctwecn thc Negro communit'cs in our large cities and thc police departments, is the major problem in law enforcement in this decade. It has bcen a major cause oC all recent race riots, Negroes questioned why the entire gang was not hera. What, they asked, would have been the result if a white man had been killed by a gan.g of Negroes? What if Negroes had made the kind of advances toward a white woman that the white men were rumored to have made toward Mrs. Thomas? The. Thomas family lived only four or five blocks from the raided blind pig. . A few minutes after 5 a.m., just after the last of those arrested had been hauled away, an empty bottle smashed into the rear window of a. police car. A litter 'basket was thrown through the window of a store. Rumors circulated of excess force used by the police during the raid. A youth, whom police nicknamed "Mr. Greensleeves" because of the color of his shirt, was shouting: "We're going to have a riot!" and exhorting the crowd to vandalism. At 5: 20 a.m., Commissioner Girardin was notified. He immediately. called Mayor Jerome Cavanagh. Seventeen officers from other areas were ordered into the 10th Precinct. By 6 a.m., police strength had gr.own to 369 men. Of these, however, only 43 were committed to the immediate riot area. By that time, the number of persons on 12th Street was growing into the thousands and widespread window-smashing and looting had begun. On either side of 12th Street were neat, middle-class districts. Along 12th Street itself, however, crowded apartment houses created a density of more than 21,000 persons per square mile, almost double the city ave~age. The movement of people when the slums of "Black Bottom" had been cleared for urban renewal had changed 12th Street from an integrated community into an almost totally black one, En which only a number of merchants remained white. Only 18 percent of the residents were homeowners. Twenty-five percent of the housing was considered so substandard as t6 require clearance. Another 19 percent had major deficiencies. At the time of Detroit's 1943 race riot, Judge Edwards told Commission investigators, there was "open warfare between the Detroit Negroes and the Detroit Police Department." As late as 1961, he had thought that "Detroit was the leading candidate in the United States for a rate riot." There was a long history of conflict between the police department and citizens. During the labor battles of the 1930's, union members had come to view the Detroit Police Department as a strike-breaking force. The 1943 riot, in which 34 persons died, was the bloodiest in the United States in a span of two decades. Judffe Edwards and his successor, Commissioner Ray. Girardin, attempted to restructure the image of the department. A Citizens Complaint Bureau was set up to fac~litate the filing of complaints by citizens against officers. In practice, however, this Bureau appeared to work little better than less enlightened and more cumbersome procedures in other cities. On 12th Street, with its high incidence of vice and crime, the issue of pc;>lice brutality was a recurrent theme. A month earlier, the killing of a prostitute had been determined by police investigators to be the work of a pimp. According to rumors in the community, the crime had been committed by a vice squad officer. At about the same time, the killing of Danny Thomas, a 27-year-old Negro Army veteran, by a gang of white youths had inflamed the community. The city's major newspapers played down the story in hope that the murder would not become a cause fOl' increased tensions. The intent ·backfired. A banner r,, and candy to the youngsters streaming in and out of his store. For safekeeping, he had brought the photography equipment from his studio, in the next block, to the drugstore. The youths milling about repeatedly assured him that, although the market next door had been ransacked, his place of business was in no danger. In midafternoon, the market was set afire. Soon. after, the drug store went up in flames. State Representative James Del Rio, a Negro, was camping out in front of a building he owned when two small boys, neither more than 10 years old, approached. One prepared to throw a brick through a window. Del Rio stopped him: HThat building belongs to me," he said. "I'm glad yc;u told me, baby, because r was just about to bust you in!" the youngster replied. Some evidence that criminal elements were orp;anizing spontaneously to take advantage of the riot began to manifest itself. A number of cars were noted to be returning again and again, their occupants methoqically looting stores. Months later, goods stolen during the riot were still being peddled.. A spirit of carefree nihilism was taking hold. To riot and to destroy appeared more and more to become ends in themselves. Late Sunday afternoon, it appeared to one observer that the young people were "dancing amidst the flames." A Negro plainclothes officer was standing at an intersection when a man threw a Molotov cocktail into a business establishment at the corner. In the heat of the afternoon, fanned by the 20 to 25 m.p.h. winds of both Sunday and Monday, the fire reached the home next door within minutes, As residents uselessly sprayed the flames with garden hoses, the fire jumped from roof to roof of adjacent two- and three-story buildings. Within the hour, the entire block was in flames, The ninth house in the burning row belonged to the arsoniSt who had thrown the Molotov cocktail. In some areas, residents organized rifle squads to protect firefighters. Elsewhere, especially as the windwhipped flames began to overw~elm the Detroit Fire Department and more and more residences burned, the firemen were subjected to curses and rock-throwing. Because of a lack of funds, on a per capita basis the department is one of the smallest in the Nation. In comparison to Newark, where approximately 1,000 firemen patrol an area of 16 square miles with a population of 400,000, Detroit's 1,700 firemen must cover a cIty of 140 square miles with a population of 1.6 million. Because the department had no mutual aid agreement· with surrounding communities, it could not 51 ;.. I>) . . .l1li. . . .- . . . . . .- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -..- '- _ - -....." , -----.. """"...L~. - 4~-"'''------"''''''------------------------------.._---------- r quickly call in reinforcements from outlying areas, and it was almost 9 p.m. before the first arrived. At one point, out of a total of 92 pieces of Detroit firefighting equipment and 56 brought in from surrounding communities, only four engine companies were available to guard areas of the city outside of the riot perimeter. As the afternoon progressed, the fire department's radio carried repeated messages of apprehension and orders of caution: There is no police protection here at all; there isn't a policeman in the area. * * * If you have trouble at all, pull out! ,.. * * We're being stoned at the scene. It's going good. We need help! ,.. ... * Protect yourselves! Proceed away from the scene. ,.. * * Engine 42 over at Linwood and Gladstone. They are throwing bottles at. us so we are getting out of the area. * * t:' All companies without police protection-all .companies without police protection-orders are to withdraw, do not try to put out the fires. I repeat-all companies without police protection orders are to withdraw, co not try to put out the fires! It was 4:30 p.m. when the firemen, some of them exhausted by the heat, abandoned an area of approximately 100 square blocks on either side of 12th Street to await protection from police and National. Guardsmen. During the course of the riot, firemen were to withdraw 283 times. Fire Chief Charles J. Quinlan estimated that at least two-thirds of the buildings were destroyed by spreading fires rather than fires set at the scene. Of the 683 structures involved, approximately one-third were residential, and in few, if any, of these was th~ fire set originally. Governor George Romney flew over the area between 8: 30 and 9 p.m. "It looked like the city had been bombed on the west side and there was an area two-and-a-half miles by three-and-a-half miles with major fires, with entire blocks in flames," he told the Commission. In the midst of chaos, there were some unexpected individual responses. Twenty-four-year-old E.G., a Negro born in Savannah, Ga., had come to Detroitin 1965 to attend Wayne State University. Rebellion had been building in him for a long time because, You just had to bow down to the white man. * * * When the insurance man would come by he would always call out to my mother by her first name and we were e:>pected to smile and greet him happily. * * it Man, I know he would never have thought of me or my father going to his home and calling his wife by her first name. Then I once saw a white man slapping a young pregnant Negro woman on the street with such force that she just spun around and fell. I'll never forget that. nu r, When a friend called to tell him about the riot on 12th Street, E. G. went there expecting "a true revolt," but was disappointed as soon as he saw the looting begin: "I wanted to see the people really rise up in . revolt. When :I: saw the first person coming out of the store with things in his arms, I really got sick to> my stomach and wanted to go hOII\e. Rebellion against the white suppressors is one thing, but one measly pair of shoes or some food completely ruins the whole concept." E. G. was standing in a 'crowd, watching firemen "'~ , I • { t Looting in D8troit, }ul'l1967 52 work, when Fire Chief Alvin Wall called out for help from the spectators. E. G. responded. His reasoning was: "No matter what color someone is, whether they are green or pink or blue, I'd help them if they were in trouble. That's all there is to it." He worked with the firemen for 4 days, the only Negro in an all-white crew. Elsewhere, at scattered locations, a. half dozen other Negro youths pitched in to help the firemen. At 4: 20 p.m., Mayor Cavanagh requested that the National Guard be brought into Detroit. Although a major portion of the, Guard was in its summer encampment 200 milES away, several hundred troops were conducting their regular week-end drill in the city. That circumstance obviated many problems. The first troops were on the streets by 7 p.m. At 7: 45 p.m., the mayor issued a proclamation instituting a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. At 9:0i' p.m., the first sniper fire was rrPorted, Following his aerial survey of the city, Governor Romney, at or shortly before !"ilidnight, proclaimed that "a state of public emergency exists" in the cities of Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck. At 4:45 p.m., a 68-year-old white shoe repairman, George Messerlian, had seen looters carrying' clothes from a cleaning establishment next to his shop. Armed with a saber, he had rushed into the street, flailing away at the looters. One Negro youth was nicked on the shoulder. Another, who had not been on the scene, inquired as to what had happened. After he had been told, he allegedly replied: "I'll get the old man for you!" Going up to Messerlian; who had fallen or been knocked to the ground,' the youth began to beat him with a club. Two other Negro youths dragged the attacker awayJrom the old man. It was too late. Messerlian died 4 days later in the hospitat At 9: 15 p.m., a 16-year-old Negro boy, superficially wounded while looting, became the first reported gunshot victim. . At midnight, Sharon George, a 23-year-old white woman, together with her two brothers, was a passenger in a car being driven by her husband. After having dropped off two Negro friends, they were returning home on one of Detroit's main avenues when they were slowed by a milling throng in the street. A shot fired from' close range struck the car. The bullet splintered in Mrs. George's body. She died less than 2 hours later. An hour before midnight, a 45-year-old 'white man, Walter Grz<:\nka, together with three white companions, went into the street. Shortly thereafter, a market was broken into. Inside the show Window, a Negro man b(;!~fl,n fWing bags with groceries and handing them to Qgnfed.~rFltl:!8 l:l\.Hside the stor~f G~illlka twice went QVl:!f tg tho IItl'lfl:!l iUl~epted bags, a.ml plll(J~g them down bl:!' 81dl:! hIs (ll?mpemions across th~ str~mtf On th~ third occasion he entered the market. When he emerged";'themarket owner, driving by in his car, shot and killed him. In Grzanka's pockets, police found seven dgars, four packages of pipe tobacco, and nine pairs of shoelaces. Before dawn, four other looters were shot, one of them accidentally while struggling with a police officer. A Negro youth and a National Guardsman were injured by gunshots of undetermined ,origin. A private guard shot himself while pulling his revolver from his pocket. In the basement of the 13th Precinct Police Station, a cue ball, thrown by an unknown assailant, cracked against the head of a sergeant. At about midnight, three white youths, .armed with, a shotgun, had gone to the roof of their apal"tment building, located in an aU-white block, in order, they said, to protect the building from fire. At 2:45 a.m., a patrol car, carrying police officers and National Guardsmen, received a report of "snipers on the roof." As the patrol car arrived, the manager of the building went to the roof to tell the youths they had better come down. 'The law enforcement personnel surrounded the building, some going to the !iront, others to the rear. As the manager, together with the three youths, descended the fire escape in the rear, a National Guardsman, believing he h(lard sho~s from the front, fired. His shot killed 23-year-old CHfton Prior. Early :in the morning, a young white fireman and a 49-year-old Negro homeowner 'were killed by' f~lIen power lilrles. By 2 a.m. Monday, Detroit police had been augmented by 800 State Police officers and 1,200 National Guardsmen. An additional 8,000 Guardsmen were on the way. Neverthdess, Governor Romney and Mayor Cavanagh decided to ask for Federal assistance.· At 2: 15 a.m., the mayor called Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and was referred to Attorne}f General Ramsey Clark. A short time thereafter, telephone contact was established between Governor Romney and . the attorney general. 5 There is some difference of opinion about what occurred next. According to the attorney general's office, the governor was advised of the seriousness of the request and told that the applicable Federal statute required that, before Federal troops could be brought into the city, he would have to stat~ that the situation had deteriorated to the point that local and state forces could no longer maintain law and order. According to the governor, he was under the impressio~ that he was being asked to declare that a "state, of insurrection" existed in the city., 5 A 1i~t1e (lver two h(l\uoe eArlillf, at 11;'~ p.m., Mayor Cavanagh bId IntQnJllld tho V.S. AUgmoy GClftllrAI that A " danllllI'Q"8 8ltmlthm Clxl8tCld In thll CJhy," DIltl\1I1 IU@ lilt torCh in thl! fiftl\l r@port of CI)'I'\lI R, VIIlC!@! OOVClrlll1 tho Det*t riot, rll!IlIlN@d gn 8@pt@mlm la, 1961. {- The governor was unwilling to make such a declara~ non, contending that, if he did, insurance policies would not cover the loss incurred as a result of the riot. He and the mayor decided to re-evaluate the need for Federal troops. Contact between Detroit and Washington was maintained throughout the early morning hours. At 9 a.m., as the disorder still showed no sign· of abating, the governor and the mayor decided to make a renewed request for Federal troops. Shortly before noon, the President of the United States authorized the sending of a task force of paratroops to Selfridge Air Force Base, near the city. A few minutes past 3 p.m., Lt. Gen. John L. Throckmorton, commander of Task Force Detroit, met Cyrus Vance, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, at the air base. Approximately an hour later, the first Federal troops arrived at the air base. After meeting with state and municipal officials, Mr. Vance, General Throckmorton, Governor Romney, and Mayor Cavanagh, made a tour of the city, which lasted until 7: 15 p.m. During this tour Mr. Vance and General Throckmorton independently came to the conclusion that-since they had seen no looting ot sniping, since the fires appeared to be corning nnder control, and since a substantial number of National Guardsmen had J:}ot yet been committed-injection of Federal troops would be premature. . As the riot alternately waxed and waned, one area of the ghetto remained insulated. On the northeast side the residents of some 150 'square blocks inhabited b; 21 ,~~o persons had, il1 1966, banded together in the PosltiVe Neighborhood 'Action Committee (PNAd). With professional help from the Institute of Urban Dynamics, they had organized block clubs and made plans for the improvement of the neighborhood. In order to meet the need for recreational facilities, which the city was not providing, they had raised $3,000 to purchase empty lots for playgrounds. Although opposed to urban renewal, they had agreed to cosponsor with the Archdiocese of Detroit a housing project to be controlled jointly by the archdiocese and PNAC. When the riot broke out, the residents, through the block clubs, 'were able to organize quickly. Youngsters, agreeing to stay in the neighborhood, participated in detouring traffic. While many persons reportedly sympathized with the idea of a rebellion against the "system," only two small fires were set-one in an empty building. During the daylight hours Monday, nine more persons were killed by gunshots elsel.'/here in the city, and many others were seriously or critically injured. Twenty-thrce-year-old Nathaniel Edmonds, a Negro, was sitting in his backyard when a young white man stopped his car, got out, and began an argument with him. A few minutes later, declaring he was "going to pai~t his picture on him with a shotgun," the white 54 man aHegedly shotgunned Edmonds to death. Mrs. Nannie Pack and Mrs. Mattie Thomas were sitting on the porch of Mrs. Pack's house when police began chasing looters from a nearby market. During the chase' officers fired three shots from their shotguns. The 'discharge from one of these accidentally struck the two women. Both were still in the hospital weeks later. Included among those critically injured when they were accidentally trapped in the line of fire were an 8-year-old Negro girl and a 14-year-old white boy. As darkness settled Monday, the number of incidents reported to police began to rise again. Although many turned out to be false, several involved injuries to police officers, National ql-lardsmen, and civilians by gunshots of undetermined origin. Watching the upward trend of reported incidents, Mr. Vance and General Throckmorton became convinced Federal troops should be used, and President Johnson was so advised, At'l 1": 20 p.m., the President signed a proclamation federalizing the Michigan National Guard and authorizing the use of the paratroopers. At this time, there were nearly 5,000 Guardsmen in the city, but fatigue, lack of training, and the haste with which they had had to be deployed recIucedtheir effectiveness. Some of the Guardsmen traveled 200 miles and then were on duty for 30 hours straight. Some had never received riot training and were given on-the-spot instructions on mob control-oniy to discover that there were no mobs, and that the situation they faced on the darkened streets was one for which they were unprepared. Commanders committed men as they became avaiiable, often in small groups. In the resl:1lting confusion, some units were lost in the city. Two Guardsmen assigned to an intersection On Monday were discovered still there on Friday. Lessons learned by the California National Gua.rd two years earlier in Watts regarding the danger of overreaction and the necessity of great restraint in using weapons had not, apparently, been passed on to the Michigan National Guard. The young troopers could not be expected to know what a danger they were creating by the lack of fire discipline, not only to the civilian population but to themselves. A Detroit newspaper reporter who spent a nikht riding in a command jeep told Commission investigator of machine guns being fired accidentally, street lights being shot out by rifle fire, and buildings being placed under siege on the sketchie~t reports of sniping. Troopers would fire, and immediately from the distance there would be answering fire, sometimes consisting of tracer bullets. In one instance, the newsman related, a report was rece;ved on the jeep radio that an Army bus was pinned down by sniper fire at an intersection. National a Guardsmen and police, arriving from vanous . d'lrec1" ,:ons, J~mped .out and began asking each other: Where.5 the smper fire coming from?" As one Guardsrna? pomted to a bUilding, everyone rushed about takmg cover. A soldier, alighting from a jeep, acci~ dentally pulled the trigger on his rifle. As the shot ~~h'b~rated. through the darkness, an officer yelled: at s" g~mg on?" "I don't know," came the answer. Smper, I guess." Without any clear authorization or direction, someone opened fire upon the suspected building. A tank rolled up and sprayed the building with .50-caliber t~acer bullets. Law enforcement officers rushed into ,~ e surrounded ~uilding and discovened it empty. Th~y must be finng one shot and running" was the verdlCt. ' . Guardsm,n rjd~ "shotiun" on(Jre 'ruck, D~trojt, July 1967 - 'I1 (' ~ qIJ The reporter interviewed the men who had gotten off the bus and were crouched around it. When he asked them a,bout the sniping incident, he was told that someone had heard a shot. He asked IlDid the bullet hit the bus?" The answer was: "Well we don't know." ' . B~a~ke~ing the hour of midnight Monday, heavy fir:ng, 10Jurmg many persons and killing several, occurred 10 the southeastern sector, which was to be taken over by th~ p~ratroop~rs at 4 a.m., Tueflday, and which was, ~t th18 ~Ime, consldered to be the most active riot area 10 the cIty. Employed as a private guard, 55-year-old Julius L. Dorsey, a Negro, was s~nding in front of a market when accosted \>y two Negro men and a woman They ?emanded permit them to loot the mark~t. He Ignored th~lr demands. They began to berate him, He asked a neIghbor to call the police. As the argument g~ew ~ore he~ted, Dorsey tired three ahots from his plstol Into the aIr. . Th~" police. radio reported: "Looters, they have ~die.. A patrol car driven b)' a police officer and cMrry109 thre6 National GUl\rdmen arrIved. Ai the looters ?e n fled, t?e law enforcement personnel opened fire. When the finng ceased, one person lay dead. He was Julius L. Dorsey. . In two areas-one consisting of a triangle formed by Mack, Gratiot, and E. Grand Boulevard the other surrounding Southeastern High SchrJOI-fi:ing began shortly after 10 p.m. and continued for several hours. I.n the first of the areas, a 22-year-old Negro com. plamed tha~ ~~ had been shot at by snipers. Later, a half dozen clVlhans and one National Guardsman were wounded by shots of undetermined origin. . Henry Denson, a passenger in a car, was shot and ~llled wh~n the vehicle's driver, either by accident or mtent, failed to heed a warning to halt at a National Guard roadblock. Similar .incidents occurred in the viduity of South~astern Hlgh School, one of the National Guard stag109 areas. !"s ea;ly a.'110: 20 p.m., the area was reported to b~ u!!.t1er smper fire. Around '~idnight there were two mCldents, the sequence of which remains in doubt. Shortly before midnight, Ronald Powell, who lived three blocks east of the high school and whose wife w~s, mo~entarily, expecting a baby, asked· the four fr1 7nds w~th whom he had been spending the evening to take hIm home. He, together with Edward Bllt.ckshear, Charl~s Glover, and John Leroy climbed into Charles Dunson'ljo station wagon for the short drive. ~ome. of the five may have been drinking, but none was 1OtoXlcated. To the north of the high school, they were halted at a National Guard roadblock, and told they would have to detour around the school and a fire station at Mack and St. Jean Streets because of the firing that had been occurring. Following orders; they took a circuitous route and approached Powell's home from the south. On Lycaste Street, between Charlevoix and Goethe they saw a jeep sitting at the curb. Believing it to b~ anot~e~ roadb~ock, the.y slowled down. Simultaneously ~shc. rang ou •. A National Guardsmen fell, hit in the -.lonkle, Other National Guardsmen at the scene thought the shot h~d come from the station wagon. Shot after shot was. dlrecte~ against the vehicle, at least 17 of them findmg thelr mark. All five occupants were injured John Leroy fatally. ' At approximately the same time, firemen police and National Guardsmen at the comer of M~ck St. Jean Streeu, 2~ ~locks away, again' came under fire from what they bel,ieve? were rooftop snipers to the southeL.." the dU'ectlon of Charlevoix and L~caste. The police and guardsmen 'responded with a hall of fire. When the shooting ceased, Carl Smith, a young firefighter, J"y dead. An autopsy determined that the ahot had been fired at Itreet level, and, according to police probably had come from the southealt. ' At 4 a.m" when paratroopers, under the command and .". --------------,,.--~------------------~------- of Col. A. R. Bolling:, arrived at the high school, the area was so dark and still that the colonel thought, at first, that he had come to the wrong place. Investigating, he discovered National Guard troops, claiming they were pinned down by sniper fire, crouched behind the walls of the darkl.':ned building. The colonel immediately ordered all of the lights in the building turned on and his troops to show themselves as conspicuously as possible. In t.he apartment house across the street, nearly every window had been shot out, and the walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. The colone:! went into the building and began talking to the residents, many of whom had spent the night huddled on the floor. He reassured them no more shots would be fired. According to Lieutenant General Throckmorton and Colonel Bolling, the city, at this time, was saturated with fear. The National Guardsmen were afraid, the residents were afraid, and the police were afraid. Numerous persons, the majorty of them Negroes, were being injured by gunshots of undetermined origin. The general and his staff felt that the major task of the troops was to reduce the fear and restore an air of normalcy. In order to accomplish this, every effort \vas made to establish contact and rapport between the troops and the residents. Troopers-20 percent of whom were Negro-began helping to clean up the streets, collect garbage, and trace persons who had disappeared in the confusion. Residents in the neighborhoods responded with soup and sandwiches for the troops. In areas where the National Guard tried to establish rapport with the citizens, there was a similar response. Within hours after the arrival of the paratroops, th~ area occupied by them was the quietest in the city, bearing out General Throckmorton's view that the key to quelling a disorder is to saturate an area with "calm, determined, and hardened professional ll soldiers. Loaded weapons, he believes, are unnecessary. Troopers had strict orders not to fire unless they Guardsmen take cover, Detroit, July 1967 . - ---------... could see the specific person at whom they were ain. ing. Mass fire was forbidden. During five days in the city, 2,700 Army troops expended only 201 rounds of ammunition, almost all during the first few hours, after which even stricter fire discipline was enforced. (In contrast, New Jersey National Guardsmen and state police expended ~3,326 rounds of ammunition in three days in Newark.) Hundreds of reports of sniper fire-most of them false-continued to pour into police headquarters; the Army logged only 10. No paratrooper was injured by a gunshot. Only one person was hit by a shot fired by a trooper. He was a young Negro who was killed when he ran into the line of fire as a trooper, aiding police in a ra:tl on an apartment, aimed at a person believed to be 'i sniper. General Throckmorton ordered the weapons of all military personnel unloaded, but either the order failed to reach many National Guardsmen, or else it was disobeyed. . Even as the general was requesting the city to relight the streets, Guardsmen continued shooting out t~e lights, and there were reports of dozens. of shots being fired to dispatch one light. At one such location, as Guardsmen were shooting out the street lights, a ra:dio newscaster reported himsl~1f to be pinned down by "sniper fire." On the same day that the general was attempting to restore normalcy by ordering ~treet barricades taken down, Guardsmen on one street were not only, in broad daylight, ordering people off the street, but off their porches and away from the windows. Two persons who failed to respond to the order quickly enough were shot, one of them fatally. The general himself reported an incident of a Guardsman "firing across the bow" of an automobile that was approaching a roadblock. As in Los Angeles 2 years earlier, roadblocks that were ill-lighted and iIl-defined-often consisting of no more than a trash barrel or similar object with (}uardsmen standing nearby-proved a continuous hazard to motorists. At one such roadblock, National Guard Sgt. Larry Post, standing in the street, was caught in a sudden crossfire as his fellow Guardsmen opened up on a vehicle. He was the only soldier killed in the riot. With persons of every description· arming themselves, and guns being fired accidentally or on the vaguest pretext all over the city, it became more and more impossible to tell who was shooting at whom. Some firemen began carrying guns. One accidentally shot and wounded a fellow fireman. Another injured himself. The chaos of a riot, an? the difficulties faced by police officers, are demonstrated by an incident that occurred at 2 a.m., Tuesday. A unit of 12 officers received a call to guard firemen from snipers. When they arrived at the comer of ..,.-------------""I'!"----------------------~ . . . _--------------------_-- Vicksburg and Linwood in the 12th Street area, the ~ntersection was well-lighted by the flames completely enveloping one building. Sniper fire was directed at L~e officers from an alley to the north, and gun flashes were observed in two buildings. As the officers advanced on the two buildings, Patrolman Johnie Hamilton fired several rounds from his machinegun. Thereupon, the officers were suddenly subjected to fire from a new direction, the east. Hamilton, struck by four bullets, fell, critically injured, in the intersection. As two officers rin to his aid, they too were hit. By this time other units of the Detroit Police Department, state police, and National Guard had arrived on the scene, and the area was covered with a hail of gunfire. In the confusion the snipers who had initiated the shooting escaped. At 9: 15 p.m., Tuesday, July 25, 38-year-old Jack Sydnor, a Negro, came home dmnk. Taking out his pistol, he fired one shot into an alley. A few minutes later, the police arrived. As his common-law wife took refuge in a closet, Sydnor waited, gun in hand, while the police forced open the door. Patrolman Roger Poike, the first to enter, was shot by Sydnor. Although critically injured, the officer managed to get off six If n n , H Pa,.atr~oper 56 stands I{ uartfl Detro!tl !Y!jI 1967 shots in return. Police within the building and o~ street then poured a hail of fire into the apartment. When the shooting ceased, Sydnor's body, riddled by the gunfire, was found lying on the ground outside a window. Nearby, a state police officer and a Negro youth were struck and seriously injured by stray. bullets. As in other cases where the origin of the shots was not immediately determinable, police reported them as "shot by sniper." Reports of "heavy sniPer fire" poured into police headquarters from the two blocks surrounding the apartment house where the battle with Jack Sydnor had taken place. National Guard troops v~ith two tanks were dispatched to help flush out the sni1?ers. Shots continued to be heard throug .lout the neighborhood. At approximately midnight-there are. discrepancies as to the precise time--a machinegunner on a tank, startled by several shots, as~ed the assistant gunner where the shots were coming from. The assistant gunner pointed toward a flash in the window of an apartment house from which there had been earliei.' reports of sniping. The machinegunner opened fire. As the slugs ripped through the window and walls of the apartment, tltey nearly severed the arm of 21-year-old Valerie Hood. Her 4-year-old niece, Tonya Blanding, toppled dead, a .50-caliber bullet hole in her chest. A few seconds earlier, 19-year-old Bill Hood, standing in the window, had lighted a cigarette. . Down the street, a bystander was criticaUy injured by a litral' bullet. Simultaneously, the John C. Lodge Freeway, t""o blocks away, was reported to be under rmiper fire. Tanks and National Guard troops were sent to investigate. At the Harlan House Motel, 10 blocks from where Tonya Blanding had died a short time earlier, Mrs. Helen Hail, a 51-year-old white businesswoman, opened the drapes of the fourth floor ha.ll window. Calling out to other guests, she exclaimed: "Look at the tanksl" She died seconds later as bullets began to slam into the building. As the firing ceased, a 19-year-old Maripe, carrying a Springfield rifle, burst into the building. When, accidentally, he pushed the rifle barrel through a window, firing commenced anew. A police investigation showed that the Marine, who had just decided to "help out" the Jaw .enforcement personnel, was not involved in the death of Mrs. Hall. R. R., a white 27-year-old coin dealer, was the owner of an expensive, three-story house on L Street, an integrated middle-class neighborhood. In May of 1966, he and his wife and child had moved to New York and had rented the house to two young men. After several months, he had begun to have problems with his tenants. On one occasion, he reported to his attorney that he had been threatened by them. In March of1967, R. R; instituted eviction proceed- 57 [ _ .. \ ./ " L [ . , i• 1 1.K,. ·1'.··· '. n ~. i \ff ings. These were still pending when the riot broke out. Concerned about the house, .R. R. decided to fly to Detroit. When he arrived at the house on Wednesday, July 26, he discovered the tenants were not at home. He then called his attorney, who advised him to take physical possession of the house and, for legal purposes, to take witnesses along. Together with his 17-year-old· brother and another white youth, R R. went to the house, entered, and began changing the locks on the doors. For protection they brought a .22 caliber rifle, which R. R's brother took into the cellar and fired into a pillow in order to test it. Shortly after 8 p.m., R. R called his attorney to advise him that the tenants had returned, and he had refused to admit them. Thereupon, R. R. alleged, the tenants had threatened to obtain the help of the National Guard. The attorney relates that he was not particularly concerned. He told R. R. that if the National Guard did appear he should have the officer in charge call him (the attorney) . At approximately the same time, the National Guard claims it received information to the effect that several men had evicted the legal occupants of the house, and intended to start sniping after dark. A National Guard column was dispatched to the scene. Shortly after 9 p.m., in the half-light of dusk, the column of approximately 30 men surrounded the house. A tank took position on a lawn across the street. The captain commanding the column piaced in front of the house an explosive device similar to a firecracker. After setting this off in order to draw the attention of the occupants to the presence of the column, he called for them to come out of the house. No attempt was made to verify the truth or falsehood of the allegations regarding snipers. When the captain received no reply from the house, he began counting to 10. As he was counting, he said, he heard a shot, the origin of which he could not determine. A few seconds, later he heard another shot and saw a "fire streak" coming from an upstairs window. He thereupon gave the order to' fire. . According to the three young men, they were on the second floor of the house and completely bewildered by the barrage of fire that was unleashed against it. As hundreds of bullets crashed through the first- and second-story windows and richocheted off the walls, they dashed to the third floor. Protected by a large chimney, they huddled in a closet until, during a lull in the firing, they were able to wave an item of c!othiOg out of the window. as a sign of surrender. They were Mrest~d as snipers. The firiog from rifles and machine guns haq been so im~pse ~hat ill a period of few minutes it inflicted an elitimated $10,000 worth of damage. One of a pair . of sWIle ~())umns was shot n~arly in half. Jailed at thfllOth precinGt station sometime Wednes- a 58 day night, R. R. and his two companions were tak-errfrom their cell to an "alley court," police slang for an unlawful attempt to make prisoners confess. A police officer, who has resigned from the force, allegedly administered such a severe beating to R. R. that the bruises still were visible 2 weeks later. R. R.'s 17-year-old brother had his skull cracked open, and was thrown back into the cell. He was taken to a hospital only when other arrestees complained that he was bleeding to death. At the preliminary hearing 12 days later, the prosecution presented only one witness, the National Guard captain who had given the order to fire. The police officer who had signed the original complaint was not asked to take the stand. The charges against all three of the young men were dismissed. Nevertheless, the morning after the original incident a maJ'or metropolitan newspaper in another sec, . b tion of the country composed. the followmg anner story from wire service reports: DETROIT, July 27 (Thursday).-Two National Guard tanks ripped a sniper's haven with machine guns Wednesday night and flushed out three shaggyhaired white youths. Snipers attacked a guard command post and Detroit's racial riot set a modern record for bloodshed. The death toll soared to 36, topping the Watts bloodbath of 1966 in which 35 died and making Detroit's insurrection the most deadly racial riot in modern U.S. history. * * * !n the attack on the sniper's nest; the Guardsmen poured hundreds of rounds of .50 caliber machine gun fire into the home, which authorities said housed arms and ammunition used by West Side sniper' squads. Guardsmen recovered guns and ammunition. A reporter with the troopers said the house, a neat brick home in a neighborhood of $20,000 to $50,000 homes, was torn apart by the machine gun and rifle fire. Sniper fire crackled from the home as the Guard unit approached. It was one of the first verified reports of sniping by whites. * * * A pile of loot taken from riot-ruined stores was recovered from the sniper's haven, located ten IJl0cks from the heart of the 200,sqllare block riot zone. Guardsmen said the house had been identified as a storehouse of arms and ammunition for snipers. Its 'arsenal was regarded a~ an indication that the sniping-or at least some ofit-wao organized. As hundreds of arrestees were brought into the 10th precinct station, officers took it upon themselves to carry on investigations and to attempt to extract confessions. Dozens of charges of police brutality emanated from the station as prisoners were brought in uninjured, but later had to be taken to the hospital, In the absence of the precinct commallder, who h.~g transferred his headquarters ~o ~he ri9t ~omm~Qd pt:>~t at a nea,rby hospiml, disdplil1~ va,Pisheq, Pri~QI1e.rs Wh9 reql.lesteq tha,t tnflY b~ Permitteq to l1()tify ~omeone ()£ their an-est were 'almo'st hwaria,bly tQ!d th.at; "The. telephones are out of order," Qgngres5man Conyers ~ ~~..t - .\.. fTi: t \ , -~ n .. 'n , [ f :...,1. . \', .. ~ ( r .., J\ I. n I h- I !• t ~ I I ( i n i I :,~ j fJ ~, fi' If ~ r.l ::!:j [~ ~;\'.I "V' r"11~ I J n, , and State Representative Del Rio, who went to the fired his shotgun. The youth disappeared on the other station hoping to coordinate with the police the estabside of the car. Without making an investigation, the lishing of:.>. community patrol, were 50 upset by what officers and Guardsmen returned to their car and they saw that they changed their minds and gave up drove off. on the project. When nearby residents called police1 another squad A young woman, brought into the station, was told car arrived to pick up the body. Despite the fact that to strip. A\fter she had done so, and while an officer an autopsy disclosed the youth had been killed by five took pictures with a Polaroid camera, another officer shotgun pellets, only a cursory investigation was made, came up to her and began fondling her. The negative and the death was attributed to "sniper fire." No of one of the pictures, fished out of a wastebasket, police officer at the scene during the shooting filed.a subsequently wa.s turned over to the mayor's office. report. Citing the sniper danger, officers throughout the Not until a Detroit newspaper editor presented to department had taken off their bright metal badges. the police the statements of several witnesses claiming They also had taped over the license plates and the . that the youth had been shot by police after he had numbers of the police cars. Identification of indibeen told to run did the department launch an invidual officers became virtually impossible. vestigation. Not until 3 weeks after the shooting did On a number of occasions officers fired at fleeing an officer come forward to identify himself as the one looters, then made little attempt to determine whether who had fired the fatal shot. their shots had hit anyone. Later some of the persons Citing conflicts in the testimony of the score of were discovered dead or injured in the street. witnesses, the Detroit Prosecutor's office declined to In one such case police and National Guardsmen press charges. were interrogating a youth suspected of arson when, Prosecution is proceeding in the case of three youths according to officers, he attempted to escape. As he in whose shotgun deaths law enforcementper50nnel vaulted over the hood of an automobile, an officer were implicated following a report that snipers were fir..ng from the Algiers Motel. In fact, there is little evidence that anyone fired from inside the building. Two witnesses S3:Y that they had seen a man, standing outside of the motel, fire two shots from a rifle. The interrogation of other persons revealed that law enforcement personnel then shot put, Ode or' more street lights. Police patrols responded to the shots. An attack '..vas launched on the motel. The picture is further complicated by the fact that this incident occurred at roughly the same time that the National Guard was directing fire at the apartment house in which Tonya Blanding was killed. The apartment house was only six blocks distant from and . in a direct line with the motel. . The killings occurred when officers began7'hn-the_ spot questioning of the occupants of the motel in an effort to discover weapons used in the "sniping." Sev,", eral of those questioned reportedly were beattln. One was a Negro ex-paratrooper who had only recently been honorably discharged, and had gone to Detroit to look for a job. AIthough by late Tuesday looting and fire-bombing had virtually ceased, between 7 apd 11 p.m. that night there were 444 reports of incidents. Most were reports of sniper fire. During the daylight hours of July 26, there were 534- such reports. Between 8: 30 and. 11 p.m., there were 255. As they proliferated, the pressure on law enfQl'cement officers to uncover the 5nipers became intense, Homes were broken into. Searches were made on the flimsiest of tips. A Detroit newspaper headline aptly proclaimed: "Everyone's Suspect in No Man's Loot~d IUlmmark,t, D,t"()it,'uly 1967 Land." 59 :. D. '.r' I " 4 I Before the arrest of a young woman IBM operator in the city assessor's office brought attention to the situation on Friday, July 28, any person with a gun in his home was liable to be picked up as a suspect. Of the 27 persons charged with sniping, 22 had charges against them dismissed at preliminary hearings, and the charges against two others were dismissed later. One pleaded guilty to possession of an unregis-tered gun and was given a suspended sentence. Trials of two are pending. In all, more than 7,200 persons were arrested. Almost 3,000 of these were picked up on the second day of the riot, and by midnight Monday 4,000 were incarcerated in makeshift jails. Some were kept as long as 30 hours on buses. Others spent days in an underground garage without toilet facilities. An uncounted number were people who had merely been unfortunate enough to be on the wrong street at the wrong time. Included were members of the press whose attempts to show their credentials had been ignored. Released later, they were chided for not having exhibited their identification at the time of their arrests. The booking system proved incapable of adequatM¥: handling the large number of arrestees. People became lost for days in the maze of different detention facilities. Until the later stages, bail was set deliberately high, often at $10,000 or more. When it became apparent that this policy was unrealistic and unworkable, the prosecutor's office began releasing on low bailor on their own recognizance hundreds of those who had been picked up. Nevertheless, this fact was not publicized for fear of antagonizing. those who had demanded a ~igh-bail policy. Of the 43 persons who were killed during the riot, 33 were Negro and 10 were white. Seventeen were looters, of whom two were white. Fifteen citizens (of w'hom four were white), one white National Guardsman, one white fireman, and one Negro private guard died as the result of gunshot wounds. Most of these deaths appear to have been accidental, but criminal homicide is suspected in some. Two persons, including one fireman, died as a result of fallen powerlines. Two were burned to death. One was a drunken gunman; one an arson suspect. I ., One white man was killed by a rioter. One police officer was felled by a shotgun blast when a gun, in the hands of another officer, accidentally discharged during a scuffie with a looter. . Action by police officers accounted for 20 and, very hkely, 21 of the deaths; action by the National Guard for seven, and, very likely, nine; action by the Army for one. Two deaths were the result of action by storeowners. Four persons died accidentally. Rioters were resp~nsible for two, and perhaps three of the deaths; a pJ1vate .guard for one. A white man is suspected of murdering a Negro youth. The perpetrator of one of the killings in the Algiers Motel remains unknown. . Damage estimates, originally set as high as $500 million, were quickly scaled down. The city assessor's office placed the loss-excluding business stock, private furnishings, and the buildings of churches and charitable institutions-at approximately $22 million. Insurance payments, according to the State Insurance Bureau, wiII come to about $32 million, representing an estimated 65 to 75 percent of the total loss. By Thursday, July 27, most riot activity had ended. The paratroopers were removed from the city on Saturday. On Tuesday, August 1, the curfew was lifted and the National Guard moved out. Family in charred ruins of home, Detroit, July 1967 METHODOLOGY-PROFILES OF DISORDER Construction of the Profiles of Disorder began with surveys by field teams in 23 cities. From an analysis of the documents compiled ?ond field interviews, 10 of the 23, a fair cross section of the cities, were chosen for intensive further investigation. A special investigating group was dispatched to each city under study to conduct in-depth interviews of persons previously questioned and others that had come to our attention as a result of the analysis. Additional documents were obtained. In the process of acquisition, analysis, and distillation of information, the special investigating group made several trips to each city. In the meantime, the regular field teams continued to conduct their surveys and report additional information. The approximately 1,200 persons interviewed represent a cross section of officials, observers, and particip~nts involved in the riot process-from mayors, police chIefs, and army officers to Black Power advocates and rioters. Experts in diverse fields, such as taxation fire fighting, and psychology, were consulted. Testi~ony presented to the Commission 'in closed hearings was incorporated. Many official documents were used in compiling chronologies and corroborating statements made by witnesses. These included but were not limited to police department and other law enforcement agencies' after-action reports, logs, incident reports, injury reports, and reports of homicide investigations; afteraction reports of U.S. Army and National Guard units; FBI reports; fire department logs and reports; and reports from Prosecutors' offices and other investigating agencies. About 1,500 pages of depositions were taken from 90 witnesses to substantiate each of the principal items in the Profiles. Since some information was supplied to the Commission on a confidential basis, a fully annotated, footnoted copy of the Profiles cannot be made public at this time, but wi!! be deposited in the Archives of the United States. Gutted buildings, Detroit 61 60 I-----------------------:=--------------;------jj >(._- • i. l )1 \ 1'\\ Chapter 2 Patterns of Disorder 't' '~. " :y it .[.......s:'. '•... (Jn r.• . lJI· ~~- 1. INTRODUCTIO:N The President asked the Commission to answer severllli specific questions about the nature of riots: 11Th" kinds of r.ommunities in which they occurred; II The characteristics-including age, education, and job history-of those who rioted ana those who did not; II The ways in which groups of lawful citizens can be encouraged to help cool the situation; • The relative impact of various depressed conditions in the ghetto which stimulated people to riot; II The impact of Federal and other programs on those conditions; II The effect on .rioting of police-community relationships; II The parts of the community which suffered t1~e most as a resul t of the disorders, The Profiles in the foregoing chapter portray the nature and extent of 10 pf the disorders which took place during the summer of 1967. This chapter seeits in these events, and in the others which we surveyed, a set of common elements to aid in understanding what happened and in answering the President's questions. This chapter also considers certain popular conceptions about riots. Disorders are often discussed as if there were a smgletype; The "typical" rioto! recent yeaI'll Ul80JPetiIPes seen llS a massive uprising ag~unst wltite peQple,inv9lving widellpread burning, looting, ;mel "Implns, oltbe.r, by .all ghetto Negroes or by 1m uneDUem of vielanca ovor the "atlon I laverltyJ location, timing, and n\lmbllfl of peoplo Involved i 6S i I u. - '. ) f r i; III The riot process in a sample of 24 disorders we have surveyed: * prior events, the development of violence, the various con lrol efforts on the part of officials and the community, and the relationship between violence and control efforts; III Th,: riot participants: a comparison of rioters with those who sought to limit the disorder and with those who remained uninvolved; , III The setting in which the disorders occurred: social and economic conditions, local governmental structure, the scale of Federal programs, and the grievance reservoir in the Negro community; ;. III The aftermath of disorder: the ways in which communities responded after order was restored in the streets. Based upon information derived from Our surveys, we afTer the following generalizations: 1. No civil disorder was "typical" in all respects. Viewed ill a national framework, the disorders of 1967 varied greatly in terlllS of violence and damage: while a relatively small number were major under our criteria and a somewhat larger number were serious, most of the disorders would have received little 01' no national attention as "riots" had the Nation not been sensitized by the more serious outbreaks. 2. While the civil disorders of 1967 were racial in charactp.r, they were not interracial. The 1967 disorders, as well as earlicr disorders of the recent period, involved action within Negro neighborhoods against symbols of white American society-authority and property-rather than against white persons. 3. Despite extremist rhetoric, there was no attempt to subvert the social order of the United States. Instead, most of those who attacked white authority and property seemed to be demanding fuller i1articipation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the vast majority of American citizens. 4. Disorder did not typically t.:upt without preexisting cal.lsc~ as a result of a single "triggering" or "precipitating" incident. Instead, it developed out of an increasingly disturbed social atlllosphere, in which typically a series of tension-heightening incidents over a per:od of weehs or months became linked in tht' minds of many in the Negro community ',vith a shared reservoir of underlying grievances. 5. There was, typically, a complex relationship between the series of incidents and the underlying grievances. For example, grievances about allegedly abusive police practices, unemployment and underemployment, hOl,lsing, and other conditions in the ghetto, were often aggravated in the minds of many Negroes by incidents involving the police, or the inaction of municipal authorities on Negro complaints about police action, unemployment, inadequate housing or other conditions. When grievance-related inci,. dents recurred and rising tensions were not satisfac- * SCt-' the Statement on Methodology in the Appendix for a description of our survey procedures. Detroit disorder scene) July 1957 Store burned and looted) Detroit) July 1957 tori I)' resolved, a cumulative process took place in which prior incidents were readily recalled and grievances reinforced. At some point in the mounting ten. sion, a further incident-in itself often routine Or rven trivial-became the breaking point, and the tenion spilleel over into violence" 6. Many grievances in the Negro community result from the discrimination, prejudice and powerlessness which Negroes often experience. They also result from the severely disadvantaged social and economic condi. tions of many Negroes as compared with those of whites in the same city and, more particularly, in the predominantly white suburbs. . 7. Characteristically, the typical rioter was not a hoodlum, habitual criminal or riffraff; nor was he a recent migrant, a member of an uneducated underclass or a person lacking broad social and political concerns. Instead, he was a teenager or young adult, a lifelong resident of the city in which he rioted, a high school dropout-but somewhat better educated than his Negro neighbor-and almost invariably underemployed or employed in a menial job, He was proud of his race, extremely hostile to both whites and middleclass Negroes and, though informed about politics, highly distrustful of the political system and of political leaders. 8. Numerous Negro counterrioters walked the streets urging rioters to "cool it." The typical counterrioter resembled in many respects the majority of Negroes, who neither rioted nor took action aga.inst the rioters, that is, the noninvolved. But certain differences are crucial: the counterrioter was better. educated and had higher income than either the rioter or the noninvolved. 9. Negotia i.ions between Negroes and white officials occurred during virtually all the disorders sUTvt../ed. The negotiations often involved young, militant Negroes as well as older, established leaders. Despite a setting of chaos and disorder, negotiations in many .. cases involved discussion of underlying grievances as well as the handling of the disorder by control authorities. 10. The chain we have identified-discrimination, prejudice, disadvantaged conditions, intense and pervasive .grievances, a series of tension-heighteniDg incidents, all culminating in the eruption of disorder at the hands of youthful, politically-aware activistsmust be understood as describing the central trend in ~ I. THE PATTERN OF VIOLENCE AND DAMAGE LEVELS OF VIOLENCE AND DAMAGE Because definitions of ·civil disorder vary widely, between 51 and 217 disorders were recorded by various agencies as having occured during the first 9 months of 1967. From these sources we have developed a, list of 164 disorders which occurred during that period.~ We have ranked them in three categories of violence and damage, utilizing such criteria as the degree and duration of violence, the number of active participaiJlts, and the level of law enforcem"ent response: 1- Majio r Disorders Ei~!,lt disorders, 5 percent of the total, were major. These were characterized generally by a combination of the following factors: ( 1) many fires, in tensive looting, and reports of sniping; (2) violence lasting more than 2 days; (3) sizeable crowds; and (4) use of National Guard or Federal forces as well as other control forces. 2 Sel'ious Disorden I Thi.rty.thrl;le dbordel'l', 20 percent of the total, were fierlouE but not mRjor. The~e were characterized gemcrall}' by; (1) bolated looting, l!C)me fires l and some 1. 64 ~-_Ji ~_ .;:;-~ _ . _ ' _ ...,.. rock throwing; (2) violence lasting between 1 and 2 days; (3) only one sizeable crowd or many small groups and (4) use of state police though generally not National Guard or Federal forces. 3 Minor Disorders One hundred and twenty-three disorders, 75 percent of the total, were minor. These would not have been classified as "riots" or received wide press attention without national conditioning to a "riot" climate. They wer.e characterized generally by: (1) a few fires or broken windows; (2) violence lasting generally ler than 1 day; (3) participation by only small numbers of people; and (4) use, in most cases, only of local police or police from a neighboring community. t The 164 disorders which we have categorized occurred in 128 cities. Twenty-five (20 percent) of the cities had two or more disturbances. New York had five separate disorders, Chicago had four, six cities had three and 17 cities had two. s Two cities which experienced a major disorder-Cincinl1ati and Tampa-had subsequent disorders; Cincinnati had two more. Howeverl in these two cities the later disorders wefft less serious than the earlier ones. ][n only two cities were later disorders more severe,e 65 ~ '":r ______ . the disorders, not as an explanation of all aspects ¥ the riots or of all rioters. Some rioters, for example, may have shared neither the conditions nor the grievances of their Negro neighbors; some may have coolly and deliberately exploited the chaos created by others; some may have been drawn into the melee merely because they identified with, or wished to emulate, others. Nor do we intend to suggest that thF.l majority of the rioters, who shared the adverse conditions and grievances, necessarily articulated in their own minds the connection between that background and their actions. 11. The background of disorder in the riot cities Was typically characterized by severely disadvantaged conditions for Negroes, especially as compared with those for whites; a local government often unresponsive to these conditions; Federal programs which had not yet reached a significantly large proportion of thOse in need; and the resulting reservoir of pervasive and deep grievan«e and frustration in the ghet.l~o. 12. In the immediate aftermath of disorder, the status quo of daily life before the disorder generally was quickly restored. Yet, despite some notable public and private efforts, little basic change took place in the. conditions underlying the disorder. In some cases, the result was increased distrust between blacks and whites, diminished interracial communication, and growth of Negro and white extremist groups. ....... ..........J. .... ----..~----_ ·" e ------------....,...-.-----~---..-....--------'------ ---------­ n J;; '/' n l t Three conclusions emerge from the data: • The significance of the 1967 disorders cannot be minimized. The level of disorder was major or serious, in terms of our criteria, on 41 occasions in 39 cities, • The level of disorder, however, has been exaggerated. Three-fourths of the disorders were relatively minor and would not have been regarded as nationally.newsworthy "riots" in prior years, II The fact that a city had experienced disorder earlier in 1967 did not imrnunize it from further violence, DISTRIBUTION IN TERMS OF TIME, AREA AND SIZE OF COMMUNTY Time In 1967, disorders occurred with increasing frequency as summer approached and tapered off as it waned. More than 60 percent of the 164 disorders occurred in July alone. . r with populations of 250,000 or more. But 37 (23 percent) of the disorders reviewed occurred in communities with populations of 50,000 or less; and 67 disorders (41 percent) occurred in communities with populations of 100,000 or less, including nine (about 22 percent) of the 41 serlous or major disturbances. H .. Numberof major disorders NumberGf serious disorders Numblrof minor disorders 0-50........................ Sl}-100................... ~ .. IOO-250................. ~ ... 250-500................ ~ .... 50l}-I,OOO.................... Over 1.000................... 1. 0 0 5 1 1 5 3 8 10 4 3 31 27 23 15 10 13 Tolals................. 8 33 11911 Tolils n ~~ t } > • 37 30 31 30 15 17 16011 ~. l' \.! \' H DEATH, INJURY AND DAMAGE DISORDERS BY MONTH 7 AND LEVEL Number of msjor disorders Month (1957) Number of Number 01 serious minor disorders disorders ~~1~~~:~:~~~~:~~~~~~~~~~::~::~~~~~~~:~~:::::: 1i:::::······ ~ · .. · .. r.... ApriL................................... Mty ~ __ June...... 3 July......................... 5 August. ~........ Septemb6r TotaL................. 3 3 22 3 33 ~ . 8 10 75 4 11 15 103 123 164 14 11 ~...... Totals 17 11 Area The violence was not iimited to anyone section of the country, DISORDERS BV REGIOIt , AItD LEVEL Region Number or m~lor disorders Numbar 01 serious dIsorders Number of minor disorders Total (percenl) EasL........................ 3 10 44 35 MldwesL................... 4 11 44 36 Soulh end border............. 1 7 19 16 WesL.................................. 5 16 13 TotaL --8---3-3---1-2-3---1-00-- When timing and location are considered together, other relationships appear. Ninety-eight disorders can be grouped into 23 clusters, which consist of two or more disturbances occurring within 2 weeks and within a few hundred miles of each other. "Clustering" was particularly striking for two sets of cities. The first, centered on Newark, consisted of disorders in 14 New Jersey cities. The second, centered on Detroit, consisted Qf dislturbances in seven cities in Michigan and one in Ohio.9 Size. of Community The violence was not limited to large cities. Seven of the eight major disorders occurred in communities 66 ous attacks,2S but police and fire equipment was damaged in at least 15 of the 23 cities. u Of the cities surveyed, significant damage to residences occurred only in Detroit. In at least nine of the 22 other cities there was minor damage to residences, often resulting from fires in adjacent businesses. 25 VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE DISORDERS BY LEVEL AND CITY POPULATION 10 City gOPulalloo (In I ousands) many r(,;sidences were destroyed. 19 Other human costs -fear, distrust, and alienatit1n-were incurred in every disorder. Third, even a relatively low level of violence and damage in absolute terms may seriously disrupt a small or medium-sized community. tn its study of 75 disturbances in 67 cities, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations reported 83 deaths ,md 1,897 injuries. 12 Deaths occurred in 12 of these diBturbances. More than 80 percent of the deaths and mere than half the injuries occurred in Newark and Detroit. In more than 60 percent of the disturbances, no deaths and no more than 10 injuries were reported. 1s Substantial damage to pro~rty also tended to be concentrated in a relatively small number of cities. Of the disorders which the Commission surveyed, significant damage resulted in Detroit ($40-$45 million), Newark ($10.2 million), and Cindnnati (more than $1 million). In each of nine cities, damage was estimated at less than $100,000. 14 Fire caused extensive damage in Detroit and Cincinnati, two of the three chies which suffered the greatest destruction of property.i~ Newark had relatively little loss from fire but extensive inventory l03S from looting and damage to stock.16 Damage estimates made at the time of the Newark and Detroit disorders were later greatly reduced. Early' estimates in Newark ranged from $15 to $25 million; a month later the estimate was revised to $10.2 million. In Detroit, newspaper damage estimates at first ranged from $200 million to $500 million; the highest recent estimate is $45 million,1'1 What we have said should not obscure three important factors. First, the dollar cost of the disorders should be increased by the extraordinary administrative expenses of municipal, state and Federal Governments. iS Second, deaths and injuries are not the sole measures of the cost of civil disorders in human tenus. For example, the cOst .:If dislocation of people-though clearly not quantifiable in dollars and cents-was a significant factor in Detroit, the one case in which , 1 n J i: \ I \1 f!, \ f I " t I i f .. ) I, l, !, i"'; r ! I','j Of the 33 persons who died in the 75· disorders s~udied by the Permanent Subcommittee On Investigabons, about 10 percent were public officials, primarily law .officers and firemen. Amorg the injured, public offiCials made up 38 percent.29 The overwhelming majority of the civilians killed and injured were Negroes. Retail businesses suffered a much larger proportion of the damage during the disorders than public institutions, industrial properties, or private residences. In Newark, 1,029 establishments, affecting some 4,492 employers and employees, suffered damage to buildings or loss of inventory or both. Those which suffered the greatest loss thro'lgh looting, in descending order of loss, were liquor, ciothing, and furniture stores. White-owned businesses are widely believed to have been damaged much more frequently than those owned by Negroes. In at least nine of ~he cities studied, the damage seems to have been, at least in part, the result of deliberate attacks on white-owned businesses characterized in the Negro community as unfair or disrespectful toward Negroes. 21 Not all the listed damage was purposeful or was caused by rioters. Some was a byproduct of violence. In certain instances police ·and fire department control efforts caused damage. The New Jersey Commission on Civil Disorders has found that in Newark, retributive action Was taken against Negro-owned property by control forces. 22 Some damage was accidental. In Detroit some fire damage, especially to residences, may have been caused primarily by a heavy wind. Public institutions generally were not targets of seri- II. THE RIOT PROCESS The Commission has found no "typical" disorder in 1967 in terms of intensity of violence and extensiveness of damage. To determine whether, as is sometimes suggested, there was a typical Hriot process," we examined 24 disorders which occurred during 1967 in 20 cities and three university settings. 26 We have concentrated on four aspects 1'f that process: • The accumulating re5ervoir of grievances in the Negro community; '. II "Precipitating" incidents and their relationship to the reselVoir of grievances; r I I After the riot, Detroit • The development of violence after its Initial outbreakl III The control effort, including official force, negotiation, tmd persuasion. We found a common social process operating in all :H disorders in certain critical respects. These events developed similarly, over a period of time and out of an accumulation of grievances and increasing tenIlion in the Negro community. Almost invariably, they exploded in ways related to the local community and its particularproblem~ and conflicts. But once violence erupted~ there began a complex interaction of many elements-rioters, official control forces, counter. rioters-in which the differences between various disorders were more pronounced than the similarities. 67 I fi J'~~ ..... ~ THE RESERVOIR OF GRIEVANCES IN THE NEGRO COMMUNITY Our examination of the background of the surveyed disorders revealed a typical pattern of deeply held grievances which were widely shared by many members of the Negro community.27 The specific content of the expressed grievances varied somewhat from city to dty. But in general, grievances among Negroes in all the cities related to prejudice, discrimination, severely disadvantaged living conditions, and a general sense of frustration about their inability to change these conditions. ,Specific events or incidents exemplified and reinforced the shard sense of grievance. News of such incidents spread quickly throughout the community and added to the reservoir. Grievances· about police practices? unemployment and underemployment, housing, and other: objective conditions in the ghetto were aggravated in the minds of many Negroes by the inaction of municipal authorities. Out of this reservoir of grievance and frustration, the riot process began in the cities which we surveyed. PRECIPITATING INCIDENTS In virtually every case a single "triggering" or "precipitating" incident can be identified as having immediately preceded-within a few hours and in generally the same location-the outbreak of disorder. 2s But this incident was usually a relatively minor, even trivial one, by itself substantially disproportionate to the scale of violence that followed. Often it was an incident of a type. which had occurred frequently in the same community in the past without provoking violence. We found that violence was generated by an increasingly disturbed social atmosphere, in which typically not one, but a series of incidents occurred over a period .of weeks or months prior to the outbreak of disorder. 20 Most cities had three or more such incidents; Houston .had 10 over a 5-month period. These earlier or prior incidents ,;"ere linked in t~e minds of many Negroes to the preexisting reservoir of underlying grievances. With e~ch sllch incident, ff\lstration and ten.sion grew lIniil at some point a final incident, often similar to the incident~ preceding it, occurred ancl was followed almost immediately by violence, As we ~e it, the prior incidents and the reservoir of underlying grievances contribut~d to a cumuladve prQG~ft!i gf mQunting- tension that ~pUled over into viQlcmGtl wh(!n thl:! final incld~nt occurred, In this seme. thl:! cmtlrtl c.haln=the ~rll:!VanCesl thl:! series Qf prh~r tenRI,m.hl:!l~htenln~ lncldents, IUld the finallncident~ waft the "pr~clplmnt" gf dlftorder, Thl6 chain de6Crlb(:l§ the c.entral tnmd in the dis- 68 f I orders we surveyed and not necessarily aU aspectS"'of the riots or of all rioters. For example, incidents have not always increased tension; and tepsiop has not always resulted in violence. We conclude only that both processes did occur in the disorders we examined. Similarly, we do not suggest that all rioters shared the conditions or the grievances of their Negro neighbors: some may deliberately have exploited the chaos created out of the frustl'ation of others; some may have been drawn into the melee merely because they identified with, or wished to emulate, others. Some who shared the adverse conditions and grievances did not riot. We found that the majority of the rioters did share the adverse conditi.ons and grievances, although they did not necessarily articulate in their own minds the connection betv/een that background and their actions. Newark and Detroit presented typical sequences of prior incidents, a buildup of tensions, a final incident, and the outbreak of violence: . NEWARK Prior Incidents 1965: A Newark policeman shot and killed.an la-year-old Negro boy. After the policeman had stated that he had fallen and his gun had discharged accidentally, he later claimed that the youth had assaulted another officer and was shot as he fled. At a hearing it was decided that the patrolman had not used excessive force. The patrolman remained on duty, and his occasional assignment to Negro areas was a continuing source of irritation in the Negro community. April 1967: Approximately 15 Negroes were arrested while picketing a grocery store which they claimed sold bad meat and used unfair credit practices. Late May, early June: Negro leaders had for several months voiced strong opposition to a proposed medical-dental center to be built on 150 acres of land in the predominantly Negro central ward. The dispute centered mainly around the lack of relocation provisions for those who would be displaced by the medical center. The issue became extremely volatile in late May when public "blight hearings" were held regarding the land to be condemned. The hearings became a public forum in which many residents spoke against the proposed center. The city did not change its plan. . Late May, June: The mayor recommended appointment of a white city councilman who had no more than a high school e.ducation to the position of secretary to the board of education. Reportedly, there was wiclespread support from both whites and Negroes for a Negro candidate who held a, master's degree and was consid\1red more qualified. Tije mayor did not change his recommendation. Ultimately, the origim~l secretary retained his p~sition and neither candi' of a white-owned store. The Negro's request was not granted. Police actions were also identified as the fino I incident preceding 12 of the 24 disturbances. 33 Again, in all but two cases, the police action which became the final incident bcgan routinely,3f The final incident in Grand Rapids occurred when police attempted to apprehend a Negro driving an allegedly stolen car. A crowd of 30 to 40 Negro spectators gathered. The suspect had one arm in a cast, and some of the younger Negroes in the crowd intervened because they thought the police were handling him too roughly. Typical was a case in Houston a month-anc1-a-half before the disorder. Three civil rights advocates were arrested for leading a protest and for their participation in organizing a boycott of classes at the predominantly Negro Texas Southern University. Bond was set at $25,000 each. The court refused [or several davs to reduce bond, even though TS"U ofIicials dl'Opp~d the charges they had originally pressed. There were no final incidents identified involving the administration of justice. In a unique: case in Nf'w Haven, llll' shooting o[ ,1 Puerto Rican by a white man \\·as identifIed a, the final incident before violence.4~ Finally, we have noted a marked relationship between prior and final incidents within each cit\'. In most of the cities surveyed, the final incident \\'~s of the same type as one or more of the prior incidents, For example, police actions were identified as both the final incident and one or more prior incidents preceding seven disturbances,48 Rallies or meetings to protest police actions involved in a prior incident were identified as the final incident preceding thrpe additional disturbances,4o The cumulative reinforcement of grievances and heightening of tensions found in all instances were particularly evident in these cases. Protest Activities Approximately 22 percent of the prior incidents involved Negro demonstrations, rallies, and protest meetings.3~ Only five involved appearances by nationally known Negro militants. 36 Protest rallies and meetings were also identified as the final incident preceding five disturbances. Nationally known Negro militants spoke at two of these meetings; in the other three only local leaders were involved. 87 A prior incident involving alleged police brutality was the principal subject of each of three rallies. 88 Inaction of municipal authorities was the topic for two other meetings. s9 White Racist Activities About 17 percent of the prior incidents involved activities by whites intended to discredit or intimidate Negroes or violence by whites against Negroes. fo These included some 15 cross-burnings in Bridgeton, the harrassment of Negro college students by white teen~ agers in jackson, Mississippi, and, in Detroit, the slaying of a Negro by a group of white youths. No final incidents were class.ifiable as racist activity. Previous DisordeJ's in the Same City In this category were approximately 16 percent of the prior incidents, including seven previous disorders, the handling of which had produced a continuing sense of grievance. 41 There were other incidents, usually of minor violence, which occurred prior to seven disorders 42 and were seen by the Negro community as precursors of the subsequent disturbance. Typically, in Plainfield the night before the July disorder, a Negro youth was injured in an altercation between white and Negro teenagers. Tensions rose a,s a result. No final incidents were identified in this category. Disorders in Other Cities Local media coverage and rumors generated by the Newark and Detroit riots were specifically identi- 70 THE DEVELOPMENT OF VIOI..ENe£, Child in riJins of home, Detroit, July 1967 fied as prior incidents in four cases. 4S However, these major disorders appeared to be important factors in all the disorders which followed them. Media coverage and rumors genera.ted by the major riots in nearby Newark and Plainfield were the only identifiable final incidents preceding five nearby disorders. 44 In these cases there was a substantial mobilization of police and extensive patrolling of the ghetto area in anticipation of violence. Official City Actions Approximately 14 percent of the prior incidents were identified as action, or in some cases, inaction of city officials other than police or the judiciary.45 Typically, in Cincinnati 2 months prior to the disturbance, approximately 200 representatives (mostly Negroes) of the innercity community councils sought to appear bdore the city council to request summer recreation funds. The council permitted only one person from the group to speak, and then only briefly, on the ground that the group had not followed the proper procedure for placing the issue on the agenda. No final incidents were identified in this category. Administration of Justice Eight of the prior incidents involved cases of allegedly discriminatory administration of justice.46 Once the series of precipitl:\ting incidents culminated in violence, thfl dot process did not follow a uniform pattern in the 24 disorders purveyed.fiG However, some similarities emerge. The final incident befol'e the Q\.ltbreak of disorder, and the initial violence itself, generally ocr-uned at a time and place in which it was norma! for many people to be on the strflets. In mOst of the 24 disorders, groups generally estimated at 50 or more per~ons wert on the street at the time and place of the first outbreak. fi1 In all 24 disturbances, including the three univcl'> slty-related disorders, the initial disturbance area consisted of streets with relatively high concentrations of pedestrian and automobile traffic· at the time. In all but two cases~Detroit and Milwaukee-violence started between 7 p.m. and 12; 30 a.m., when the largest numbers of pedestrians could be expected. Ten of the 24 disorders erupted on Friday night, Saturday, or Sunday.fi~ In most instances, the temperature during the day on which violence first erupted was quite high.~a This contributed to the size of the crowds on the street, particularly in areas of congested housing. Major violence occurred in all 24 di50rders during the evening and night hours, between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., and in most cases between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.~i In onl)' a few'disorders, including Detroit ane! Newarl~, did substantial violence QCCUr or contimle during the dk,y. time,~Q Generally, the night-day cycles conUnued in daily succession through the early period of the ''d¥rorder. M A t the beginning of disorder, violence generally flared almost immediately after the final precipitating incident.": It then escalatrd quickly to its prak I('\'el, in the case of I-night disorders. and to the first night peak in the case of continuing disorders.'" In Detroit and Newark, the first outbreaks began within two hours and reached severe, althou:sh !lot the highest, le\'els within 3 hours. , In almost all of the subsequent night-day cyeks. the chang"(' from [('lalive order to a state of disorder by a number of p/:oplc typically occurred extremely rapidl:'--within 1 or 2 hours at the mostY' Nineteen ')f the surveyed disorders lasted mon' than 1 night.·;,) In 10 o[ these, violence peaked on the first night, and the level of activity on subsequent nights was the same or less. 61 In the other nine disorders, however, the peak was reached on a subsequent night. 62 Disorder generally began with less serious violence against property, such as rock and bottle-throwing and window-breaking,63 These were usuall>' the materials and the targets closest to hand at the place of thr.,' initial outbreak. Once store windows were broken, looting usually followed,64 Whet,her fires were set only after looting occurred is unclear. Reportee! install( es of firt'-bomb. ing ane! Molotov cocktails in the 24- disorders nppc<\red to orcur as frequently during one cycle of violence ns e!uring another in disorders which l'OntiTllII'cI through morc the\!) one ·cycle. 6,5 IjoweVel', fires seemed to break out more frequently dlJring the middle cycles of riots lasting several days.ti6 Gunfire and miring were also reported more frequently dllring the middlto ryc!es.0 7 THE CONTROL EFFORT What type of community l'esponse is most effective once disorder erupts is dearly a critically important question. Chapter 12, "Control of Disorder," and the Supplement on Control of Disorder consider this question at length. \ \'c consider in this section the variety of control responses, official and unofficial, utilized in the 2+ surveyed disorders, including: III Usc or threatened use of local official force; II Use or threa tcned use of supplemental official force from other juri~dlctions; IS Negotiations between offid.