The Black Freedom Struggle and the 1968 Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C

I Believe in the City: The Black Freedom Struggle and the 1968 Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C.

by Kyla Sommers

B.A. in History, May 2013, The George Washington University

A Dissertation submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

January 10, 2019

Dissertation directed by

Eric Arnesen James R. Hoffa Teamsters Professor of Modern American Labor History

The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Kyla Sommers has passed the Final Examination for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy as of December 7, 2018. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation.

I Believe in the City: The Black Freedom Struggle and the 1968 Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C.

Kyla Sommers

Dissertation Research Committee:

Eric Arnesen, James R. Hoffa Teamsters Professor of Modern American Labor History, Dissertation Director

Eric Chapman, Associate Professor of History, Committee Member

Christopher Klemek, Associate Professor of History, Committee Member

Acknowledgements

When I was 17 years old, I decided to attend the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. My dad encouraged me to get a degree in history because he believed it would provide me with a “good, classical education” to ground whatever I chose to do next. My classes with Chris Tudda, Katrin Schultheiss, Hope Harrison,

Andrew Zimmerman, and others sparked my passion for history. Dr. Tudda first suggested I pursue a PhD in history and his encouragement led me to apply to several doctoral programs. At 22 years old, I once again chose to attend GWU. After ten and a half years at this institution, I am thankful for the role GW played in both my academic development and personal growth.

I owe many people in the GWU History Department my gratitude. Thank you to the many wonderful professors who put up with me. The late Leo Ribuffo, Erin

Chapman, Eric Arnesen, Chris Klemek, and Andrew Zimmerman all provided invaluable instruction and encouragement. You each challenged me and motivated me to produce the best history I could. To the many friends I’ve made in the tiny confines of the history

TA office, thanks for tolerating my perpetually disorganized desk(s) and providing much- needed laughter and support. To the GW debate team, especially its director Paul Hayes, thanks for honing my research and communication skills that were so helpful in my graduate studies.

I also am indebted to the archivists and librarians who aided my dissertation research. In particular, thank you to Derek Gray of the Washingtoniana division of the

D.C. Public Library, Jennifer King at Gelman Special Collections, and Anne McDonough of the Kiplinger Library at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Thank you to the

iii

D.C. African Archives Project for curating many of the materials that I found invaluable while researching. The passion for D.C. history present at these repositories is palpable and inspiring.

Thank you to the people who supported me as I struggled to complete my dissertation. To my family—Brian, Melody, Kari, Keith, and Kaleb—thanks for your endless love, goofiness, and strength. Each one of us has needed special support at some point and I am grateful that you were there for me as it was my turn. Erin, thank you for your thoughtfulness and ability to make me feel better (especially through laughter) from hundreds of miles away. To the 401 crew, the late night sing-along bunch, the Midwest

Mafia, and all the other friends who have helped make D.C. home, thank you for providing joy throughout this process.

Finally, to quote a favorite professor, “if you can live with someone who is writing their dissertation and not stab them, you’re doing pretty good.” Not only did Nate not stab me, he was extremely patient, understanding, and helpful. Thank you for your love and support, Nate. Because I couldn’t have done this without you, this dissertation is dedicated to you.

Abstract

I Believe in the City: The Black Freedom Struggle and the 1968 Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C.

This dissertation examines the causes of the 1968 civil disturbances in

Washington, D.C., how the disturbances have been understood and interpreted, and the legacy of the events. Answers to these questions posed in historical accounts of D.C. in

April 1968, I conclude, are insufficient or inadequate. While one cannot whitewash the damage done to Washington nor deny the reality of the high crime rates in the late 1960s, there is more to the story of the civil disturbances than burned-out buildings and white backlash. It is just as important to illuminate the activism that preceded the upheaval and the subsequent efforts to rebuild D.C. This dissertation adds important nuance to historical understanding of what sparks urban uprisings, why people choose to participate, and the ways these incidents are politicized.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………....iii

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...v

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….1

Chapter 1: “I’ve Been Living with Tension All My Life:” Power and Protest in the Emblematic Capital……………………………………………………………………...16

Chapter 2: “You Just Can’t Expect People Not to Act This Way:” April 4-16, 1968…..82

Chapter 3: “And then people say, ‘Well, why would you turn on your own community?’” Explaining the 1968 Civil Disturbances………………………………..140

Chapter 4: “Tempering Firmness With Restraint:” The Justice System and the Civil Disturbances…………………………………………………………………………….199

Chapter 5: “This Has Created Both a Vacuum and an Opportunity:” Rebuilding Washington, D.C………………………………………………………………………..245

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...305

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………313

Introduction

“At this time, we will hear from Commission Walter Washington of the District

of Columbia,” announced North Carolina Congressman Basil Whitener in May 1968. 1

Washington had come to testify before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives on the District of Columbia (D.C. House Committee) on two bills that would limit the power of the D.C. government and constrain black activism. Conservative politicians wrote both pieces of legislation in response to the civil disorders that engulfed D.C. after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Although over 200 cities erupted in protest and violence after King’s death, the disturbances in Washington caused the most property damage, resulted in the greatest number of arrests, and was occupied by the largest number of federal troops.2 As the newly appointed mayor of

D.C., Walter Washington handled the crisis with restraint and competence.

The D.C. House Committee, however, viewed Walter Washington as an

illegitimate leader appointed to usurp its members’ power. After the Committee blocked

numerous efforts to grant the capital home rule, President Lyndon Johnson restructured the District’s government to give D.C. more control over its own affairs and appointed native Washingtonian Walter Washington mayor in 1967. For nearly 100 years before,

Congress had governed Washington, setting its budget, determining its laws, and

1 “Statement of Hon. Walter Washington, Commissioner, District of Columbia; Accompanied by Chief John B. Layton, Metropolitan Police Department; Thomas Appleby, Executive Director, Redevelopment Land Agency; Julian R. Dugas, Director, Department of Licenses and Inspections; Dr. Murray Grant, Director, Department of Public Health; Dr. Fred Health, Department of Public Health; Robert Kniepp, Assistant Corporation Counsel; and William N. Dripps, Department of Licenses and Inspections,” 153, Civil Disturbances in Washington: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress Second Session: Investigation of the April 1968 Rioting, Looting, Damages and Losses, and Police Actions: May and July, 1968 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968). P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This publication is hereafter referred to as Civil Disturbances in Washington. 2 Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, Riot Data Review (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1968), 62, 227.

appointing its leaders. North Carolina Congressman John McMillan, the chairman of the

D.C. House Committee, insisted “communist sympathizers” backed D.C. home rule and

was so opposed to Walter Washington’s appointment that he sent the African American

mayor a wagon of watermelons after Washington submitted his first budget to

McMillan’s office.3 Other committee members refused to refer to Washington as

“mayor,” instead calling him a commissioner. Thus, Whitener’s seemingly simple

introduction of “Commissioner Washington” was in fact a slight intended to diminish his

legitimacy.

Mayor Washington was called to testify about two bills that he opposed. In a thinly veiled attempt to curtail future civil rights protests, H.R. 16941 proposed to require monetary bonds from those who sought to obtain a parade permit in Washington.

Government officials could then easily demand an unattainably high bond price to effectually bar an undesired demonstration. Second, H.R. 16948 would mandate the D.C. government to pay for the cleanup of private businesses after the civil disorders the previous month.4 The bills rebuked Washington and his government in two ways: one

asserted that the District had done such a poor job handling the civil disorders that it should be held financially responsible for business owners’ clean up expenses; the other suggested that the federal government had so little faith in the city’s ability to manage protests that Congress would prevent demonstrations from occurring in the first place.

The witnesses preceding Mayor Washington depicted the capital as a city held hostage by protestors and criminals with a government that was unwilling and unable to

3 ‘”Red Sympathizers Support Home Rule, McMillan Asserts,” Washington Post, B22, January 5, 1966; Harry S. Jaffe and Tom Sherwood, Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington D.C. (Simon & Schuster, 1994) 62. 4 Civil Disturbances in Washington, 114-116.

protect its inhabitants. American citizens had lost their “right” to visit the capital and

walk its streets.5 As Mayor Washington testified, he challenged the Congressmen’s

critical appraisal of D.C. and urged them to encourage, rather than rebuke, the capital and

its people in the aftermath of the civil disturbance:

I believe the time has come when the Nation’s Capital should really be the place that all people of the Nation look to…when you come down to a small town in your district, you talk about that town and do not run it down. I am trying to do that with this town. I am trying to get everybody to pull along with me, because the situation is difficult. And I think [the criticism of D.C. by members of Congress after the civil disturbances] is ringing in my ears and has continued to ring. I have made ten speeches to people not to run the town down. The town is not what someone would like to have it. I think some will try to pull it apart if we are not careful…I want you to know that I think it is necessary to react to some of the statements [by members of Congress], not emotionally, but sincerely, because I believe in this theme, and I believe in the city. I believe in the people. We are going to protect them. And we are going to do this if just given a decent opportunity to do so.6 In response to the Congressmen who criticized his ability to govern and chastised his

hometown, Washington demanded that the men respect the city he led. While the capital

was shrouded in smoke just weeks before, the mayor foregrounded a message of hope

and determination: “I believe in the city. I believe in the people.”

Popular and historical accounts of the 1968 upheaval often emphasize the

disturbance’s physical damage and largely overlook the thousands of Washingtonians

who responded with a strengthened commitment to make D.C. “the place that all people

of the Nation look to.” The two published histories of the 1968 D.C. civil disturbances

center the destruction in their titles; Clay Risen’s book is entitled A Nation on Fire and

Samuel J. Walker’s monograph is named Most of 14th Street is Gone. Risen and Walker

5 Civil Disturbances in Washington, 116-117, 23-36. 6 “Statement of Hon. Walter Washington, Commissioner, District of Columbia; Accompanied by Chief John B. Layton, Metropolitan Police Department; Thomas Appleby, Executive Director, Redevelopment Land Agency; Julian R. Dugas, Director, Department of Licenses and Inspections; Dr. Murray Grant, Director, Department of Public Health; Dr. Fred Health, Department of Public Health; Robert Kniepp, Assistant Corporation Counsel; and William N. Dripps, Department of Licenses and Inspections,”154-155, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

argue the upheaval greatly contributed to the decline of the capital. “The end of the April

riots in Washington left behind large areas of burned-out desolation and immense

problems of recovery and restoration,” writes Walker in Most of 14th Street Is Gone.

“Large parts of the areas most affected by destruction and violence remained an unproductive wasteland for decades.”7 Risen’s analysis of the impact of April 1968 is

even bleaker:

For another two generations, Washington would become and remain one of the nation’s most crime-and-poverty ridden cities. The population would drop nearly in half, while every pathological social indicator—out-of-wedlock births, infant mortality, drug use, murder, school dropouts—would increase several-fold…The 1968 riots can’t be blamed for all the factors in the city’s malaise. Washington was a problem city beforehand, and with middle-class flight already an established fact, it was inevitably going to get worse. But the riots certainly took a bad situation and made it much worse. The riots destroyed a vast swatch of the city’s working-class section, leaving no place for social mixing. It sent a message to political investors and residents alike that Washington was pathologically disturbed, and thus no place to relocate. And by scaring off middle-class residents (and thus a middle-class tax base) for decades, the riots arguably rendered it impossible for the city to get back on its feet.8 This narrative of urban decay is reproduced in much of the public understanding of the civil disturbances. The Washington Post’s interactive piece on the 50th anniversary of the

upheaval, “A City Destroyed by Riots, Then and Now,” contrasted photos of damaged

buildings with contemporary images of bustling streets.9 In “Everything was on fire,”

D.C.-based news website WTOP recounted the disorders and their impact on the city:

“After the riots, crime spiked in Washington—and most other urban centers nationwide—sparking white flight out of America’s cities, including the

7 Samuel J. Walker, Most of 14th Street is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 118. 8 Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), 247. 9 Nick Kirckpatrick and Katie Mettler, “A City Destroyed by Riots, Then and Now,” Washington Post, April 5, 1968, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/amp-stories/how-the-1968-riots- changed-washington-then-and-now/

District…Crumbling storefronts and vacant lots pockmarked the cityscape for years.”10

While the story of crime and decay constitute one understanding of the legacy of

April 1968, it is certainly not the only narrative. “The explosions of ‘urban unrest’ in the

1960s became almost immediately, and have remained, something like Rorschach tests or

ventriloquist dummies for scholars, journalists, and advocates of political programs

across the ideological spectrum,” historian Adolph Reed Jr has aptly suggested.11 Indeed,

a recent round table on urban unrest in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History reflected

how scholars representing different subfields of history interpreted the legacy of civil

disturbances distinctly. To historian Michael Flamm, the “‘long, hot summer’ of

1967…eroded popular faith in activist government and the Great Society, which never

recovered from conservative claims that liberal programs had stimulated the civil

disorders by encouraging the irresponsible and ‘rewarding the rioters.’” Conservative

leaders combined “riots, race, and radicals into an indictment of liberals” and responded

with calls for “law and order.”12 After promising to curb crime with a “get tough”

approach, Richard Nixon was elected to the presidency in 1968 and “the triumph of law

and order was complete” signaling “an end to the brief era of liberal ascendancy.”13 The

lasting impact of the civil disturbances, in this conceptualization, is white backlash and

the death of liberalism.

While Flamm’s argument focuses on white Americans’ reaction to the primarily

northern phenomenon of urban violence, his examination of backlash is similar to the

10 Jack Moore, “’Everything Was on Fire’—remembering the DC riots 50 years later,” WTOP, https://wtop.com/dc/2018/04/everything-was-on-fire-remembering-the-dc-riots-50-years-later/slide/1/. 11 Adolph Reed Jr, “The Kerner Commission and the Irony of Antiracist Politics,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 14, Issue 4, 2017, 31. 12 Michael W. Flamm, “Urban Upheaval and the Enduring Appeal of Law and Order,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 14, Issue 4, 2017, 17-18. 13 Michael Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 178-179.

work of historians who study the response of Sunbelt suburban Americans to the

successes of the Black Freedom Movement. Historians such as Thomas Sugrue, Kevin

Kruse, Matt Lassiter, Lisa McGirr, and Robert O. Self have documented how white

suburbanites reshaped American politics as they rejected the civil rights movement and

Great Society agendas.14 White people moved to the suburbs or used tuition vouchers to avoid interracial schools, unincorporated their suburban neighborhoods from urban municipalities, privatized public services, and launched campaigns for tax reform to oppose funding the “decaying” cities. Scholars posit this “long backlash” to desegregation ultimately spurred modern conservativism’s opposition to large government and embrace of free enterprise.

In “The Language of the Unheard—Black Panthers, Black Lives, and Urban

Rebellions,” Robyn Spencer argues that the “sixties rebellions inspired and challenged a new generation of activists in the 1960s to try and transform the material conditions of their lives.” Urban unrest “helped sound the alarm” about the concerns of the black community “at a time when grassroots political organizations were proliferating under the banner of Black Power.”15 Spencer discusses the efforts of the Black Panthers to

“provide organizational alternatives” to civil disturbances that sought to “transform the

14 For more, see Thomas J. Sugrue, “Crabgrass-Roots: Race, Roots, and the Reaction Against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964,” The Journal of American History, 82.2 (Sep 1995), 551. Thomas J. Sugure, The Origins of The Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003). Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001). Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). Michael Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Michael Flamm, In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 15 Robyn C. Spencer, “The Language of the Unheard—Black Panthers, Black Lives, and Urban Rebellions,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 14, Issue 4, 2017, 21-22.

6 structural conditions that caused the sixties rebellions.”16

This interpretation of urban upheaval builds upon the work of Black Power scholars who challenge the “declensionist” narrative of the civil rights movement. The first generation of studies of the black freedom struggle, they contend, often glorified a

“good” movement which used nonviolent protest to achieve legislative victories such as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. According to the traditional account, the outbreak of civil violence in the Los Angeles suburb of Watts days after the passage of the Voting Rights Act signaled the “demise” of the nonviolent movement and began the Black Power era.17 In his introduction to the 2009 edited volume The Black Power Movement, Peniel Joseph argued that the Black Power

Movement (BPM) should be reconceived to include the 1950s and 1970s, show its close association with international activism, utilize social history to highlight the role of everyday people, and incorporate Black Power with the legacy of the Civil rights

Movement to see its redeemable and lasting impact.18 The articles in The Black Power

Movement and Joseph’s Waiting ‘Til The Midnight Hour document the early roots of the

Black Power Movement, diversify its association beyond the Black Panther Party, and

16 Spencer, “The Language of the Unheard,” 21-24. 17 Much of this builds upon the notion of the “long civil rights” movement. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s 2005 article “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past” coined the phrase, highlighted previous scholarship that challenged such periodization, and urged historians to continue to broaden civil rights history. While historians had long acknowledged black activism existed prior to 1955, Dowd Hall’s article encouraged historians to continue to broaden civil rights history by further studying the activism in the North as well as South, the impact of class-based activism, the importance of women’s activism and gender dynamics, the importance of 1960s victories for activism in the 70s, the impact of the Left, and the pre-1960s roots of the conservative backlash. 18 Peniel E. Joseph, ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2009). He also urged historians show Black Power’s interest and close association with international activism, utilize social history to highlight the role of everyday people. Radio Free Dixie, a biography of black activist Robert Williams, documents how Joseph’s Black Power activism started in the 1950s, had connections with activists around the world (especially in decolonized Africa), and emphasized self-defense. Pure Fire by Christopher Strain argued that the self-defense often associated with Black Power was not a radically new idea, but instead part of both a long Black tradition and incorporated in the seemingly nonviolent Civil Rights Movement.

highlight its positive cultural contributions.19 Scholars such as Ashley Farmer, Robyn

Spencer, and Dayo Gore have documented the role of black women in shaping radical

organizations and the Black Power movement.20 Concrete Demands: The Search for

Black Power in the 20th Century by Rhonda Williams exemplifies recent works which

study Black Power through local activism and grass-roots organizing.21 In contrast to the

“full-blown crisis” of the late 1960s posited by some historians, these studies assert that

“where many saw despair, Black Power militants envisioned opportunity, vowing to take

control of the democratic institutions that shaped black life in urban cities and rural towns

across America.”22

In her contribution to the Labor round table, Karen Ferguson, drawing upon her

monograph Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of

Racial Liberalism, analyzes the response to urban violence by white liberal institutions

like the Ford Foundation. Some elites, she argues, funded major philanthropic initiatives

to encourage black separatism based on the belief that “the only way African Americans

could become full citizens would be for them to establish a society of their own, one

19 Peniel Jopseh, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2006). 20 Ashely Farmer, Rethinking Black Power: How Black Power Transformed an Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). Robyn Spencer, The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2016). Dayo Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 2011). 21 Rhonda Williams, Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power In the 20th Century (New York: Routledge Press, 2015). See also Peniel Joseph, ed. Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Devin Fergus, Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics 1965-1980 (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2009); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 22 Joseph, Neighborhood Rebels, 8.

separate from white America.”23 In particular, the Ford Foundation funded black

community-control programs, including the Brooklyn Ocean Hill-Brownsville schools

campaign, and Afro-centric performing arts organizations to foster continued black

separatism.24 In Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-

1980, Devin Fergus similarly traces the connections between Black Power organizations

and the liberal elite in North Carolina. Fergus challenges the conceptualization of Black

Power as isolationist—separate from the liberal order and operating on its own—and

insists many radicals were tied to liberal money and organizations. Liberals took the

threat of further uprisings seriously and allied with radicals to constrain further violence

and prevent revolution. For Fergus, liberals were successful and Black Power was

“protean and permeable, thus making it vulnerable to reform.”25

This dissertation is my own extended response to the question posed by the Labor

roundtable’s editor: “What were the causes of the violence? The solutions? What did it all

mean? How should the riots have been understood or interpreted?”26 Answers to these

questions posed in historical accounts of D.C. in April 1968, I conclude, are insufficient

or inadequate. While one cannot whitewash the damage done to Washington nor deny the

reality of the high crime rates in the late 1960s, there is more to the story of the civil

disturbances than burned-out buildings and white backlash. It is just as important to

illuminate the activism that preceded the upheaval and the subsequent efforts to rebuild

D.C. Further, my research adds important nuance to our understanding of what sparks

23 Karen Ferguson, “Saving the Nation in the Age of Black Insurgency,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 14, Issue 4, 2017, 26. 24 See also Karen Ferguson, Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 25 Devin Fergus, Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics 1965-1980 (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 1-10. 26 Eric Arnesen, “Introduction,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 14, Issue 4, 2017, 13.

urban uprisings, why people choose to participate, and the ways these incidents are

politicized.

Studying urban activism before, during, and after the upheaval depicts a fuller history of the late 1960s and early 1970s that goes beyond urban decline. D.C. African

Americans were not a passive downtrodden mass ravaged by discrimination and poverty; nor were they the silent victims of President Richard Nixon or white backlash. Instead, many black Washingtonians were agents of change who resisted federally imposed policies they found unsatisfactory, demanded control over their communities and government, and adopted a variety of tactics to achieve their goals.

Examining this history also contributes to the history of white backlash and American

resistance to desegregation. Before George Wallace called for “law and order” in his

1964 presidential run and Richard Nixon made crime the primary issue in his campaign

in 1968, southern segregationists asserted instances of crime in D.C. proved that

desegregation was a failure and that black Americans could not govern effectively.

Further, the reactions of white residents of the D.C. suburbs to the disorders show how

D.C.’s status as the capital city only increased white disdain for crime and racial unrest.

Additionally, researching the efforts to rebuild D.C. in the wake of the disturbances

complicates the narrative that liberalism ended with Richard Nixon’s election. The

mayor, City Council, and D.C. citizens embarked on an ambitious program built on the

legislative mandates and programs established by Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and

War on Poverty. Many black radicals allied with liberal reformers and used federal

funding to push for black self-determination, political power, and economic

empowerment.

Chapter 1 traces the history of African Americans in D.C. and contends American

fear of black political power has shaped D.C. since its founding. As the capital,

Washington has always been a central battleground for national movements such as

abolitionism and desegregation. Black Washingtonians used evolving strategies to challenge racism and demand political and economic power. Understanding how their

demands were made—and ignored by political leaders—illuminates why Washington,

D.C. erupted in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. This chapter’s in-

depth examination of the post-World War II black freedom movement in D.C. provides

the requisite detail and analysis to support the contention in later chapters that the

disorders were a continuation of previous activism rather than a radical break from it. The

goals of the black freedom movement in Washington did not change after the upheaval,

but rather the urgency of their demands increased.

Chapter 2 offers a narrative history of April 4-April 15, 1968 in Washington, D.C.

While one cannot tell the story of the civil disturbances without acknowledging and understanding the violence, this history is much more than a tale of violence or despair.

My account seeks to clarify rather than sensationalize the events and to emphasize the disparate ways Washingtonians experienced the upheaval. While some people purposely set buildings on fire, others desperately advocated calm. Some Washingtonians were terrified; others experienced a joyous “carnival” atmosphere in the streets.

The next chapter tackles the Rorschach test: “why did people burn their own community?” There were three common answers to this query in 1968: (1) the participants were criminals out to steal goods in the absence of law enforcement, (2) the civil disorders were a reaction to poor conditions in cities, and (3) it was a revolution to

overthrow white institutions. Each interpretation correlated with the political agenda of

conservatives, liberals, and radicals (respectively). I argue that different people

participated for different reasons. Some were deliberately political in their actions, others

wanted to “get something for nothing,”27 and some people were influenced by both

motivations simultaneously. As the Washington Afro American concluded in 1968,

“There is no single reason covering individual motivation of participants.”28

Chapter 4 examines how the city of Washington chose to prepare for potential

civil disorders after the “long, hot summer” of 1967 and the strategies leaders utilized to

curtail the chaos during April 4-15th. As documented by Elizabeth Hinton in her book

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, many cities responded to prior disorders

by heavily arming their police forces. D.C. leaders, however, chose to better train their

officers and emphasize restraint. Despite repeated calls to shoot participants, D.C.

adopted a policy of minimal force. The D.C. courts generally—if not always—respected

citizens’ due process rights and administered relatively lenient sentences. While D.C. was

better in its administration of justice than other cities, this chapter also examines its

shortcomings. The police enforced the law in racially biased ways and the city increased

surveillance of African American radicals following the disorders.

Finally, chapter 5 investigates how different groups responded to the civil

disturbances. While many white suburbanites chose to abandon the city, many African

American Washingtonians poured themselves into the efforts to rebuild it. As the federal

government urged “law and order,” the D.C. City Council passed legislation to limit

police power and improve community-police relations. Washingtonians urged police

27 William Raspberry, “Potomac Watch: Punish, Don't Destroy Looters,” Washington Post, Apr 15, 1968, B1. 28 “Riots and the Law,” Washington Afro American, April 13, 1968.

restraint and citizen control even as the federal government directly opposed them. Using

the ideals, programs, and financing generated by the War on Poverty and Great Society,

Washingtonians sought to rebuild the city and address the root causes of civil unrest.

D.C. embraced community participation at an unprecedented level. Many black radicals sought to wield the local government to enact policies that fostered black self-

determination and economic empowerment. While federal funding cuts and policy shifts

hampered the success of many community-driven programs, Washingtonians successfully lobbied for limited home rule.

My work builds upon the burgeoning literature on Washington, D.C. and its

examination of the city as the capital and as a center of African American culture and

activism. In Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban

Planning in Washington D.C., Howard Gillette argued in 1995 that throughout the city’s

history, efforts to make the city a national symbol of a successful cosmopolitan city came

at the expense of social justice and the interests of D.C. residents, especially African

Americans. Despite some resistance by Washingtonians, the city was shaped by national policies instead of local circumstances.29 Subsequently, other historians have further

examined this tension between D.C. as a local and federal entity. “Making DC

Democracy’s Capital,” a PhD dissertation by Greg Borchardt at The George Washington

University, argued historians too often view Washington as a backdrop for the national

civil rights movement and ignore its local efforts. Borchardt contended D.C.’s civil rights

movement was distinct because of the large proportion of the city that was black, a strong

black middle-class, the lack of industry, and the strict city boundaries that limited the

29 Howard Gillette, Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).

impacts of suburban sprawl.30 In her dissertation, Lauren Pearlman similarly evaluates

the local black freedom struggle’s impact on the national civil rights movement and “law

and order” politics.31 Blaire Ruble’s U Street posits D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood as a

“zone of contact” that is vitally important to American culture and the black freedom

movement.32 Most recently, Chris Meyers Ash and George Derek Musgrove’s Chocolate

City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, “examines how being

the nation’s capital has had both a catalyzing and at times demoralizing effect on local

racial struggles.” The capital “has often served as a battleground for national fights over

the meaning of race and democracy, as well as a laboratory in which national ideas and

agendas have been pursued on behalf (and at the expense) of local people.”33

Other scholars have expanded the history of D.C.’s black freedom struggle by

examining activism before and after the 1960s. Marya McQuirter’s dissertation

“Claiming the City: African Americans, Urbanization, and Leisure in Washington, D.C.,

1902-1957” shows the methods black Washingtonians utilized to claim their right to

space and leisure in D.C. Tikia K. Hamilton’s dissertation Making a ‘Model’ System:

Race, Education, and Politics in the Nation’s Capital before Brown, 1930-1950, shows

the evolution of protest tactics African Americans utilized to demand a better education

for their children. Treva Lindsey, Anne Valk, Joan Quigley, Mary-Elizabeth Murray and

Elizabeth Clark-Lewis have examined the activism of black women in Washington and

the ways class shaped their strategies. Finally, Zachary M. Schrag’s Great Society

30 Greg Borchardt, “Making DC Democracy’s Capital” (PhD diss., The George Washington University, 2013). 31 Lauren Pearlman, “Democracy’s Capital: Local Protest, National Politics, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., 1933-1978 (PhD diss., Yale University, 2013). 32 Blaire Ruble, Washington’s U Street: A Biography (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010). 33 Chris Meyers Asch and George Derek Musgrove, Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

Subway: A History of the Washington Metro argues that the Metro was made possible by

a broad coalition of black, white, rich, poor, urban, and suburban Washingtonians. The

mass transit system was a unique product of the Great Society era’s faith in big

government projects and skepticism of big highways.34

In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of 1968, historian Marya McQuirter launched

dc1968—a digital storytelling project in which McQuirter creates daily posts showcasing

activism, art, and everyday life in 1968 Washington. “Part of the reason why I came up

with this project is because I wanted to push back against what I call a single story or

narrative that we have about 1968 in D.C,” McQuirter explained. “If you do a browser

search—‘Washington, D.C. 1968’—what you’ll automatically come to is April 4, April

5—the uprising. But clearly the year, 1968, doesn’t start on April 4[.]” Washington in

1968, in her view, should not just be understood as a “moment of rupture or fracture in

this city…I think 1968 has to be seen as a year of activism and a year in which people

woke up.”35 My project seeks to reframe our understanding of the civil disturbances so

that the events are not only associated with violence and despair, but also the activism

and awakening that McQuirter highlights. Thus, my dissertation is entitled “I Believe in

the City” because it emphasizes the response of government officials and citizens who

used the disturbances to add impetus to their preexisting efforts to end discrimination

against African Americans, reduce economic inequality, establish black political power,

and grant political representation to Washingtonians.

34 Zachary M. Schrag, The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). 35 Moore, “’Everything Was on Fire’—remembering the DC riots 50 years later,” WTOP.

Chapter 1: “I’ve Been Living with Tension All My Life:” Power and Protest in the Emblematic Capital

Julius Hobson, a militant and firebrand civil rights activist in Washington, D.C., was asked by a journalist in 1967 if he thought racial tensions would result in riots. “I’ve been living with tension all my life,” he replied.36 Indeed, as I study the origins and causes of the events following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in D.C., it is easy to make a similar statement: Washington, D.C. has lived with racial tension since its creation. This chapter examines the history of African Americans in the capital city and identifies several themes. First, battles over black political power have shaped D.C. since its founding. Second, for better or worse, the nation has always looked to D.C. as a

“special” and “emblematic” city that molds the character of the country. Third, the black freedom struggle faced unique obstacles in D.C. because it had no representation in

Congress and Southern segregationists controlled the District’s affairs. Fourth, despite these unique limitations, black Washingtonians consistently challenged racism and discrimination in the capital. Understanding how their demands were made—and ignored by political leaders—illuminates why Washington, D.C. erupted in the wake of Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

I: From Swamp to Superpower: African Americans in Washington, 1800-1945

“Beautiful, Poetic Justice:” Washington’s Founding to Reconstruction

Washington, D.C.’s very founding and design demonstrates the capital’s dual nature as the land of both subjugation and opportunity for African Americans. While

Northern states lobbied to seat the government permanently in Philadelphia, Southerners

36 “D.C. Militants United, Plan to Picket Rights Parlay,” The Evening Star, July 13, 1967.

16 believed the selection of the city of brotherly love would give too much power to abolitionists and threatened to leave the union unless the capital was moved south. The founders ultimately selected a square plot along the Potomac River, forged from the slaveholding states Maryland and Virginia, for the capital’s location. Pierre Charles

L’Enfant designed the city with the help of Benjamin Banneker, a free black land surveyor from Maryland.37 African Americans—free and enslaved—were integral to the creation and functioning of the city as they physically built it, served food in homes and hotels, and managed the households of D.C. bureaucrats and politicians.38

Slavery in Washington quickly declined in the first half of the nineteenth century because it was simpler and cheaper to hire domestic servants. By 1840, free black people were nearly 25% of the total population of Washington.39 Black residents were worrisome to D.C. leaders due to their racial views (one man commented that a rise in the black population would make D.C. “nothing less than a hell on earth for the white man”) and because, like many of their white southern counterparts, they believed freed people would encourage insurrections.40 The first black codes, laws imposing specific rules and

37 Carl Abbott, Political Terrain: Washington, D.C. From Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 28-30. For an in-depth examination of the selection of the Potomac for the capital city, see Kenneth R. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of The American Capital (Fairfax, Virginia: George Mason University Press, 1991). After George Washington fired L’Enfant for taking too long to complete the project, L’Enfant fled the city and took the plans with him. Banneker likely helped Andrew Ellicott recreate the designs from memory. Constance McLaughlin Green, The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967), 14-15; Charles Cerami, Benjamin Banneker: Surveyor, Astronomer, Publisher, Patriot (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002). 38 Abbott, Political Terrain, 64; Green, The Secret City, 27; Howard Gillette, Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 30; Clarence Lusane, The Black History of the White House (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011), 10-20. 39 Many slaves freed themselves through manumission: the buying of oneself from their master. The free population in D.C. also grew because Virginia forced African Americans to leave the state within six months of being freed. Many crossed the border into D.C. and made it their home. Green, The Secret City, 16, 38-39; Blaire Ruble, Washington’s U Street: A Biography (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 20; Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 27; Abbott, Political Terrain, 49. 40 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 37; Green, The Secret City, 19.

fines for African Americans, were implemented in 1808. The city added codes when

white Washingtonians felt the most threatened: during the War of 1812, amidst

abolitionist activity in the 1820s, following the Nat Turner rebellion in Virginia in 1831,

and after the black population grew by 70% in the 1840s.41 White Washingtonians also

limited black freedom and residency through extrajudicial violence. After an enslaved

person allegedly attempted to kill his owner in 1835, a white mob destroyed symbols of

black success: a church, school, and a restaurant owned by black businessman Beverly

Snow were badly damaged. The so-called Snow Riots were followed by even tougher

restrictions on black life including a law that barred black people from owning a business

(other than driving carts) and required every black resident to have at least five white

people testify they were of good character.42 Nonetheless, by 1860 no American city had

a larger free black population.43

With the secession of the South and the start of the Civil War, Radical

Republicans were powerful enough in Congress to legislate reforms in Washington. In

1862, Congress abolished slavery in D.C., making it first place to emancipate south of the

Mason-Dixon Line. Believing slavery in the capital symbolized the power of Southern slave-owners, the national anti-slavery movement had long prioritized abolition in D.C.44

Most of white Washington and the press, however, criticized emancipation and pushed

41 Green, The Secret City, 18, 32-48; Tom Lewis, Washington: A History of Our National City (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 83-84; Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 19-21. 42 Green, The Secret City, 32-48; Jefferson Morley, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2012). 43 No city had a larger free black population by percentage of total population. Green, The Secret City, 16, 38-39; Blaire Ruble, Washington’s U Street: A Biography (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010), 20; Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 27. 44 Masur, An Example for All the Land, 22-27; Abbott, Political Terrain, 61-64; Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 28-32.

for more oppressive black codes.45 After the Confederacy’s defeat, Radical Republicans

sought to increase black rights nationwide. Reform was easiest in Washington because it

lacked representation and Congress had direct legislative control over the District. Some

legislators even believed forging the capital in a radical, northern image was “beautiful,

poetic justice” that punished the former Confederacy. While most white residents

opposed black enfranchisement (in a local referendum, only 36 out of 7,339 people in

Washington City and Georgetown supported it), over 2,500 black Washingtonians signed

a petition to lobby Congress for suffrage. In 1867, Congress overrode President Andrew

Johnson’s veto and granted free black men the right to vote in D.C. In the 1868 mayoral

election, nearly 50% of registered voters were black men and their votes were

instrumental in electing Radical Republican Sayles Jenks Bowen as mayor. Black

Washingtonians wielded real political power and the new government pushed school

integration, passed several anti-discrimination civil rights laws, and ran black candidates

in every ward in 1869 (several of whom won).46

D.C.’s free black population quadrupled from 11,000 to 40,000 people during the

Civil War. Thousands of people who escaped slavery in Maryland and Virginia, called

contrabands, fled to D.C. where they settled into military encampments and small islands on the Potomac River.47 After the war, newly free people settled in tenements, alley

dwellings, and homes throughout the city, often close to the Union camps they inhabited

45 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 35-39; Masur, An Example for All the Land, 25-27; James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), 272-277. Additionally, Radical Republicans increased black rights in D.C. during the civil war as they prohibited racial discrimination on street cars, overturned the Fugitive Slave Law, and reorganized the District judiciary system. 46 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 50-56; Blaire, Washington’s U Street, 28-29. For an in-depth examination of civil rights during Reconstruction in Washington, see Masur, An Example for All the Land. 47 “Contrabands” literally meant the people were confiscated property. Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 39-42; Masur, An Example for All the Land, 26-33; Oakes, Freedom National, 189-191, 416-421.

while contrabands. The Freedman’s Bureau, established to aid formerly enslaved people,

built a hospital at the corner of S and 13th Streets Northwest and converted nearby

wartime barracks into tenements. In 1867, Congress chartered Howard University and

located its campus in the same neighborhood. Through its new residents and institutions,

this neighborhood (today called Shaw), became the center of black life in D.C. during

Reconstruction.48

Reconstruction, however, was short lived. In 1871, Congress turned D.C. into a

territorial state and appointed Alexander “Boss" Shepard, a well-known business leader,

as the governor. After Shepard’s ambitious municipal physical improvements incurred

debt nearly twice the city’s legal limit, Congress dissolved the territorial government in

1874 and instead created a Board of Commissioners, comprised of three appointed

leaders, to run the D.C. municipal government. Most white Washingtonians supported the

plan because Congress would pay 50% of D.C.’s budget. Additionally, they were willing

to give up their right to vote so black people would no longer have political power in

D.C. The Organic Act of 1878, part of the compromise that officially ended

Reconstruction, made the commissioner structure permanent and D.C. residents lost the

vote for nearly 100 years.49

“The Thing to Do:” Jim Crow in Washington, 1878-1945

As segregation was enshrined in American law and custom, the promise of federal employment, quality education, and a middle-class life brought many black newcomers to D.C. In 1883, the federal government created a civil service system that democratized

48 Ruble, Washington’s U Street, 23-26; Masur, An Example for All the Land, 50-59, 82-84; Chris Meyers Asch and George Derek Musgrove, Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 137-140, 179-180. 49 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 57-68; Masur, An Example for All the Land, 214-256; Lewis, Washington, 194-207; Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 152-184.

job access and subsequently the number of black civil servants in D.C. tripled. Although

black employees were often limited to menial jobs and passed over for promotions,

federal employment provided long-term job stability and formed the core of black middle-class D.C.50 Washington’s public schools were relatively well-funded because

D.C. law required education funds to be distributed proportionately to black and white schools based on population. The black public school system was almost entirely run by black administrators and, by tradition, 3 of the 9 people on the appointed school board were black, giving black people some control over their schools. While imperfect, D.C. attracted the best teachers in the nation and students at M Street High School (later renamed Dunbar) scored higher on their examinations in 1899 than students from the two white high schools in D.C. 51

By 1900, D.C. boasted the largest African American population of any American

city.52 D.C. was also the political and cultural center of black America. Washington

contained the largest number of black homeowners in the country and black newspapers

across the nation carried stories describing the fine lifestyles and parties of this

Washington upper crust. Prestigious Howard faculty members and elite clubs such as the

Bethel Literary and Historical Association further cemented D.C.’s status as the center of

black culture.53 The D.C. elite also included black entrepreneurs who believed black businesses would foster community solidarity and black prosperity. The business district

50 Eric S. Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 22-32; Eric S. Yellin, “It Was Still No South to Us’: African American Civil Servants at the Fin De Siècle,” Washington History, Vol. 21 (2009), 22-47. 51 Greene, The Secret City, 137; Donald Roe, “The Dual School System in the District of Columbia, 1862- 1954: Origins, Problems, Protests,” Washington History, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2004/2005), 26-43; Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 168-173. 52 Green, The Secret City, 132 & 151; Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 169. 53 Greene, The Secret City, 137; Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 168-173.

in Shaw around U Street was the center of black life in D.C. and grew from 15 black

owned businesses in 1880 to over 300 in 1920.54

For every successful black business owner and bureaucrat, there were many more

domestic workers and day laborers living in poverty.55 At the turn of the century, nearly

25% of black Washingtonians lived in alley dwellings, one or two room shacks in the

alleys behind the homes of the middle and upper class. While alley communities were

often “poor, crime ridden, and unhealthy,” residents created a supportive community

network and many were actively involved in local politics.56 Although all black people

endured white racism, poor dark-skinned people also often faced discrimination from wealthy, light-skinned African Americans often called the “high yellow elite.” For example, Dunbar High School and Howard University often denied students admittance if they were too dark and elite clubs were accessible to only the light-skinned.57 The

black elite often discouraged behavior they believed damaged the image of their race

(and thus racial progress) by the black poor.58

The lives of elite and working-class African Americans alike worsened as D.C.

institutions were increasingly segregated during the Progressive Era. Presidents Theodore

54 Michael Andrew Fitzpatrick, ‘“A Great Agitation for Business’: Black Economic Development in Shaw,” Washington History, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 1990/1991), 48-73; Ruble, Washington’s U Street, 61-62; Asch and Meyers, Chocolate City, 210-213. 55 In 1870, for example, 75% of the D.C. population were unskilled laborers or domestic workers. Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 178. For more on domestic laborers in D.C., see Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C. 1910-1940 (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 1994). 56 Asch and Mugrove, Chocolate City, 179-182; Ruble, Washington’s U Street, 23-26. For an in-depth look at the history of alley dwellings in Washington, see James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980). 57 Mary Elisa Kerr, The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor and the Case of Black Washington, D.C. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2006), 53-59; 81-91; Treva B. Lindsey, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 60-63. 58 Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 178-184; Lindsey, Colored No More, 52-85; Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service, 32-34.

Roosevelt and William Howard Taft both reduced the number of federal job

appointments reserved for African Americans. President Woodrow Wilson, a southern

racist, segregated the federal workplace after his wife learned white women worked next

to black men, drastically reduced the number of black people employed in the federal

government, and banned black people from federal office lunch rooms and toilets.59

Endorsing segregation became “the thing to do” and local government offices and

businesses followed the Wilson administration’s example. White Washingtonians urged

laws to segregate public transportation and bar miscegenation. Black people were no

longer welcome members of the powerful Board of Trade or Federation of Citizen’s

Associations.60

The “City Beautiful” movement also transformed D.C. during the Progressive Era.

The project, largely crafted by Senator James McMillan and the newly formed Senate

Park Commission, created new parks, grand government buildings, and monuments. Both

the City Beautiful designers and Progressive Era reformers wanted to eradicate blight in

the areas close to the Capitol building. Reformers’ interest went beyond beautification,

however, as they believed that if the poor lived in a cleaner and less crowded

environment, they would have better character and opportunity. In many cities, the

Progressive campaigners focused on immigrant communities but since few lived in D.C.,

progressives focused on “reforming” African American neighborhoods and residents. In

1914, Congress granted D.C. the power to demolish alley dwellings. Although

progressives celebrated the removal of “blight” around the capital, many black families

were forced to relocate in slums in Southwest D.C. after their houses were demolished.

59 Yellin, “It Was Still No South to Us,” 32; Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service, 62-67, 94-104, 110- 111, 170-172; Green, The Secret City, 156-157. 60 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 82-83; Green, Secret City, 197-208.

Almost no low-income housing was built to accommodate them.61

Many black Americans resolved to resist and fight worsening discrimination, a

phenomenon referred to as the “New Negro” movement. Some federal employees

challenged workplace segregation, D.C. started its own branch of the Nation Association

for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1912, and many black women

pushed for racial and gender equality in local institutions and culture.62 Such activism

only intensified at the close of World War I as black Americans, especially veterans,

pushed the United States to instill the democratic values it fought for abroad into racial

policies domestically. Threatened by the New Negro movement and the assertiveness of

many black veterans, many white people were determined to reassert white supremacy.

This resulted in riots across the nation and a surge in lynchings from 1917-1919.

In D.C., tensions increased as the city faced housing and job shortages and an influx

of new residents. After several white women were raped by a black man, newspaper

headlines were so evocative the local NAACP warned the press that more “inflammatory

headlines and sensational news articles” would result in race riots. They were right: in an

era when white mobs lynched black men for merely flirting with white women, the furor

over the rapes led a posse of over 100 white men, most of whom were in the military, to

beat random black men. Many black businesses along U Street were attacked showing the

white mob’s desire to “reassert white supremacy and defile, if not destroy, visible signs

of African American accomplishment.”63 Some black Washingtonians fought back and

61 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 89-94, 110-129; Green, The Secret City, 175, 197-208; Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 196-206. 62 Green, The Secret City, 163-176; 201; Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 193-196, 219-226; Lindsey, Colored No More, 8-24. 63 David F. Krugler, “A Mob in Uniform: Soldiers and Civilians in Washington’s Red Summer, 1919,” Washington History, Vol. 21 (2009), 48-77; David F. Krugler, 1919, the Year of Racial Violence: How

purchased over 500 guns to guard their streets and homes. Although the press praised the

police and antiriot forces for their role in restoring order in D.C., the police efforts to

“wrest back control of the city” just meant “clearing the streets and sidewalks of blacks.”

While nearly all reports concluded white mobs instigated the riots and black people acted

in self-defense, only eight or nine of the roughly 100 people arrested during the riots were

white and black people imprisoned were treated brutally by the police. In the riot’s

aftermath, virtually no action was taken to alleviate white racial hostilities.64 The

worsened segregation and living conditions deterred migration to the capital and by 1930,

D.C.’s black population was proportionally the lowest since the Civil War.65

The Great Depression and New Deal era exacerbated hardships across

Washington. A 1938 survey found D.C.’s unemployment and welfare needs were the

highest in the country. To make matters worse, Southern Congressmen tried to block aid

from going to D.C. black residents, the federal government gave many jobs normally

reserved for black people to whites, and some black people were fired from their jobs and

replaced by white workers.66 After this occurred at a hamburger joint with an almost

entirely black clientele, incensed African Americans formed the New Negro Alliance and

launched the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign. The group researched D.C. employment discrimination, negotiated with businesses over hiring policies, and launched pickets and boycotts if these negotiations failed.67 D.C. activism attracted

African Americans Fought Back (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 2-8; 15-34, 66-98; Asch and Meyers, Chocolate City, 231-236. 64 Krugler, “A Mob in Uniform,” 48-77; Krugler, 1919, the Year of Racial Violence, 66-98; Green, The Secret City, 190-193; Green, Secret City, 197-208. 65 Asch and Musgrove, Chocolate City, 226. 66 Green, Washington: Capital City, 1879-1950 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), 459. 67 Gregory Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital: Local Activism, the ‘Federal State’, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C.” (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2013), 112-

national attention when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow

Marian Anderson, an internally renowned singer, to perform at Constitution Hall.

Washingtonians, largely wealthy black and liberal white people, formed the Marian

Anderson Citizens Committee (MACC) and national figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt

and NAACP head Walter White helped secure Anderson a stage at the Lincoln Memorial

on Easter Sunday. The incident sparked lasting national interest in D.C. segregation and

cemented the Lincoln Memorial as an important symbol for the black freedom struggle.68

The growing number of federal agencies composing the New Deal attracted

numerous aspirants for jobs to Washington and D.C.’s population increased by 36% in

the 1930s. This resulted in major housing shortages and black people were especially

affected since the surrounding suburbs refused to rent or sell to them. To make matters

worse, the government again displaced black Washingtonians as the Alley Dwelling

Authority (ADA) cleared slums to build government offices and housing for federal

employees. The ADA condemned housing in predominantly African American

neighborhoods in the Foggy Bottom, Georgetown, and West End neighborhoods.

Wealthy white residents turned the former apartments into single family homes but

almost no low-income housing was built to accommodate those displaced. Black

community groups strongly criticized such redevelopment and the Lincoln Civic

Association advocated the abolition of the ADA at multiple hearings in the late 1930s.

118; Michele F. Pacifico, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work’: The New Negro Alliance of Washington,” Washington History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring/Summer, 1994), 66-88; Green, The Secret City, 229-231. 68 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 18-19; Green, The Secret City, 248-249. For a more in- depth look at the Marian Anderson incident, see Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marion Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009).

Their demands were not met.69

Housing issues for D.C. African Americans only worsened with the start of World

War II. The federal government demanded a massive increase in Washington-area

housing, but it was intended for soldiers and government workers instead of low-income

families. In 1943, the ADA was reorganized as the National Capitol Housing Authority

(NCHA) and the new agency proposed to build affordable housing to reduce

displacement. White citizen’s associations, home builder’s organizations, and the real

estate industry all opposed the plan because they did not want black housing in their

neighborhoods and preferred for-profit construction built by private industry. Black civic groups argued private companies would further displacement and potentially take “over entire Negro communities…and the trend has been to wipe them out in the District of

Columbia, rebuilding and changing its occupancy altogether.”70 Ultimately, despite the

clear opposition and protest of many black groups, private industry won and the District

built scant affordable housing.71

From its founding, Americans acknowledged the capital city had an elevated role in

American politics as its policies and practices symbolized national values and molded the

new democracy. This special importance was why the South insisted the capital be

formed from two slaveholding states and why Radical Republicans thought civil rights in

Washington punished the Confederacy with “beautiful, poetic justice.” For white people

in D.C., however, the Civil War and Reconstruction manifested their deepest fears: the

69 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 138-144; Green, Washington, 413; Green, The Secret City, 233- 237. 70 Geneva Valentine testimony, June 10, 1944, cited in William Robert Barnes, “Origins of Urban Renewal: The Public Housing Controversy and the Emergence of a Redevelopment Program in the District of Columbia” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1977), 144. 71 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 144-150; Asch and Meyers, Chocolate City, 277-284.

free black population exploded, the Republican Congress “imposed” black suffrage, and

black people had enough political power to swing city elections and hold office. While

the federal and local governments briefly expanded black political power, the rejection of

the black male franchise combined with concerns about corruption and debt ended

Reconstruction and democracy in D.C. With the loss of the franchise, segregation crept

back into nearly every sector of D.C. Nevertheless, black Washingtonians made D.C.

central to African American culture and politics and resisted discrimination in housing, employment, and society. While D.C. was always a battlefield between northern and southern culture, in the Cold War this battle had larger implications as it shaped international perceptions of American democracy.

II: “The Eyes of the Nation Are Upon It:” Desegregation to Community Control In 1944, a coalition of philanthropists, activists, and social scientists formed the

American Council on Race Relations to study American racism and encourage the end of

segregation and discrimination. The Council was a foremost proponent of “contact

theory,” the notion that racism resulted from ignorance and thus education about and

contact with African Americans would reduce prejudice. Believing D.C. was an

especially important city, one of the Council’s first published reports, Segregation in

Washington, described the degree of segregation in D.C. and the local, national, and

international implications. Kenesaw M. Landis, the author, argued race was “the first

basis by which is determined the most important decisions of a man’s life--where he shall

live, where he shall work and at what pay, where he shall go to school and church, and

how he shall be judged in his community.”72

Landis’s report concluded segregation persisted due to business interests,

Southern Congressional control over the capital, federal agency policies, and the racism

of white Washingtonians. Business segregation gave “racial prejudice a monetary value,

and allows it to be capitalized in a way that makes captive a whole city to the special

interests and worst impulses of a few.”73 No group monetized racism more than the real

estate industry as companies destroyed “blighted” housing and converted formerly black

neighborhoods into “‘exclusive’ district[s] of luxury apartment houses for whites.”

Displaced residents were driven into slums with inflated rents so “a profit [was] made on

the Negro going and coming.”74 The Southern-controlled House Committee on the

District of Columbia encouraged segregation policies to the extent that a Washington

Evening Star article opined, “It must be observed as one of the ironies of history that the

Confederacy, which was never able to capture Washington during the course of the war, now holds it as a helpless pawn…” Landis argued these Southern segregationists kept

D.C. “as the capital of white supremacy. Here they have demonstrated their racial theories to the world and gone home to brag about it.”75 Federal government agencies were still segregated and rarely hired African Americans for anything other than menial jobs. Government lending and housing agencies implemented discriminatory policies that

72 Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Segregation in Washington: A Report, November 1948 (Virginia: The University of Virginia, 1948), 48-55; Wendell E. Pritchett, “A National Issue: Segregation in the District of Columbia and the Civil Rights Movement at Mid-Century,” Faculty Scholarship. Paper 1226. http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1226. 73 Landis, Segregation in Washington, 19. 74 Ibid, 30-38. 75 Ibid, 88.

amounted to state enforced segregation.76 Whites-only Citizen’s Associations and their

members prevented any integration. “In the drive to exclude the Negro,” Landis wrote,

“the Citizen’s Associations have functioned as the front-line shock troops, completing his

encirclement by a network of mutual defense pacts, or agreements not to sell, erected all

around the inner zones of the city.”77

While most of these conditions existed nation-wide, Landis claimed racism in

Washington was uniquely problematic because the capital shaped American policy and

its image abroad. This sentiment was reflected in Truman administration’s report on

American race relations entitled To Secure These Rights. Washington, it asserted, “should

symbolize to our own citizens and to the people of all countries our great tradition of civil

liberty. Instead, it is a graphic illustration of a failure of democracy.”78 Landis argued

D.C. policies were crucial because “[Washington] is the great stage of world events, and

the curtain is always up on the play entitled: Democracy in Action. How do we look

across the footlights to the rest of the world? Even if we wished, we could not dim the

lights or lower the curtain.”79 Broadcasting a positive image of D.C. was especially

important after World War II as the United States made an international pitch that

democracy was superior to fascism and communism. This context ensured any errors in

Washington’s staging of “Democracy in America” would be met with international

criticism and diplomatic scrutiny.80 Desegregating Washington would be a “quick fix” to

alter American image with much less of the political cost of challenging segregation

76 Ibid, 60-68. 77 Ibid, 34. 78 President’s Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights: The Report of Harry S Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), 88-89. 79 Landis, Segregation in Washington, 2-4. 80 Landis, Segregation in Washington, 4-10.

nationwide. “Washington, of course, is quite accustomed to serving as whipping boy for

the national race conscience,” proclaimed an article in the Washington Star.

This is not the only city south of the Mason-Dixon Line where the problem of securing the colored citizen’s rights is a long and delicate one. But this is the one such city on which the rest of the Nation feels entitled to vent the full measure of its righteous impatience. And, for a touchy issue of the sort, this city is a politician’s dream. Nobody is likely to lose votes for anything he says about Washington.

Such national attention made D.C. “not a Southern city. It is a national city.”81 As the United States entered the Cold War, savvy activists merged protest

strategies with rhetoric of the symbolism of D.C. to make a convincing argument for

desegregation in Washington.82 By 1954, D.C. schools were desegregated and black

Washingtonians could eat and shop anywhere in Washington. However, these reforms

did little to alter the distribution of power in the city. Southern segregationists on the

Senate and House D.C. committees retained enough power to prevent Home Rule, black people were still displaced from their homes by urban renewal, and employment discrimination and poverty persisted. Further, politicians and the police used exaggerated fears of black crime to limit civil liberties. To improve black life in the capital, black

Washingtonians used increasingly aggressive rhetoric and strategies, often self-

consciously invoking “Black Power,” to demand both decreased discrimination and

81 “While Politicians Talk, Washingtonians Are Working Out Their Own Problems,” October 19, 1953, Container 3, Folder 24, MS 0404 Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti- discrimination Laws, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 82 Several scholars have studied the impact of the Cold War on civil rights. See Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Penny Von Eschon, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Jennifer Scanlon, Until There is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

increased “citizen participation.”83 While black power’s exact definition is debated by

scholars, I refer to the term’s connotation in the late 1960s: a call for “racial solidarity,

cultural pride, and self-determination” often paired with a “militant posture.”84 “Citizen

participation” denotes the idea that people affected by policies and programs should have

a say in the formation and administration of such initiatives. In the 1960s, black

Washingtonians demanded access and power in business, anti-poverty programs,

housing, education, governance, and policing. Southerners in Congress, many white

Washingtonians, the D.C. Police Department, the business establishment, and often the

District government resisted these calls for change. Ultimately, on the eve of Martin

Luther King’s assassination, D.C. was an incredibly tense place due to longstanding unresolved racial disparities and undemocratic practices.

“We Want to Free D.C. From our Enemies:” Business and Employment Discrimination and Activism When prominent civil rights activist Pauli Murray was a law student at Howard

University, she and other students discovered the “lost laws” with the help of a Howard law librarian.85 During Reconstruction, D.C. passed two civil rights laws which barred discrimination based on race and imposed fines for violating the ordinance. While these laws disappeared from the official city register in 1929, the statues were never repealed.86

To test the applicability of the laws, Pauli Murray led two sit-ins at Thompson’s Cafeteria

at 725 14th St NW. As the students prepared for another demonstration, Howard

University president Mordecai Johnson banned off-campus protests by university

83 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 110-11. 84 Peniel E. Joseph, “The Black Power Movement: A State of the Field,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 96, Iss. 3, (December 2009): 751-776. 85 Lauren Pearlman, “Democracy’s Capital: Local Protest, National Politics, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., 1933-1978 (PhD diss., Yale University, 2013), 45. 86 Green, Washington, 325.

organizations.87

While the Howard students’ campaign was curtailed by their own university, activists later that decade continued what Pauli Murray had started. To resurrect the lost laws and ensure their enforcement, 26 citizens formed the Coordinating Committee for the

Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws and appointed D.C. resident and

national civil rights leader Mary Church Terrell as Chairperson. To create a test case, in

1950 an interracial group went to Thompson’s Cafeteria, the same place Murray had

protested a few years before, and attempted to eat lunch. After taking food trays, a

manager asked the group to leave because of city law and company policy.88 This

incident was the basis of District of Columbia vs. John R. Thompson, Co., Inc. As the

case went to trial and anticipated a final ruling after several appeals, the Committee

convinced some businesses to desegregate. Volunteers visited nearly 100 restaurants and

lunch counters to determine if they served black patrons and encouraged citizens to only

give their business to integrated places. If campaigns to lobby businesses to serve black

people failed, the Committee organized pickets, boycotts, and letter writing campaigns.

The Committee especially targeted large retailers such as Hahn’s Shoe Store and Hecht’s

Department Store.89

The Thompson case garnered national attention and organizations, government

representatives, and concerned citizens wrote amicus briefs in support of enforcing the

antidiscrimination laws. Many emphasized the importance of D.C. desegregation to

87 Pearlman, “Democracy’s Capital,” 45-46. 88 Affidavit of Mary Church Terrell, January, 1950, Container 1, Folder 7, MS 0404 Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-discrimination Laws, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 89 Joan Quigley, Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 143-163; Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 29-46.

national security and American image abroad. In their amicus brief, the American

Veterans Council, a progressive veteran’s group, labeled D.C. the “window shop of

American democracy” and argued failure to desegregate would furnish “grist for the propaganda mills of the communist and fascists” and damage ties to democratic allies.90

The Solicitor General of the United States Philip Perlman similarly posited “the existence

of racial discrimination in the Nation’s Capital constitute[d] a serious flaw in our

democracy” that was especially important because “[t]he United States is now

endeavoring to prove to the entire world that democracy is the best form of government

yet devised by man.”91 D.C. was uniquely important because “the eyes of the world

[were] upon it:” it received the most international press coverage and it was where most

foreign diplomats formed their impression of the United States.92 Terrell and other

members of the Coordinating Committee also purposely courted media attention and used

Cold War fears about American image abroad to rally support.93

The Coordinating Committee finally won their case and D.C. businesses were

desegregated when the Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 1953. Soon, however,

businesses such as Hahn’s and Hecht’s were again picketed as activists demanded equal

employment opportunities. Department stores, grocers, construction businesses, and other

90 “Brief of Greater Washington Area Council of American Veterans Committee, Inc. (AVC) Amicus Curiae,” September 19, 1950, 2 & Appendix A; Container 1, Folder 10, MS 0404 Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-discrimination Laws, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 91 Phillip B. Perlman, “Memorandum for the United States Amicus Curiae,” Container 1, Folder 11, MS 0404 Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-discrimination Laws, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 92 “Petition for Leave to File Brief Amicus Curiae and Brief Amicus Curiae,” Container 1, Folder 10, MS 0404 Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-discrimination Laws, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.; Phineas Indritz, “Great Washington Area Council of American Veterans Committee, Inc. (AVC) and American Veterans Committee (Chapter One) Amicus Curiae,” June 30, 1951, Container 1, Folder 11, MS 0404; Phillip B. Perlman, “Memorandum for the United States Amicus Curiae,” MS 0404. 93 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital, 35-40; “Petition for Leave to File Brief Amicus Curiae and Brief Amicus Curiae,” Container 1, Folder 10, MS 0404 Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-discrimination Laws, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.

34 employers frequently only hired African Americans for the lowest paying jobs, if at all.

Local activist Julius Hobson initially worked with government institutions and moderate partners to decrease job discrimination. He partnered with Sterling Tucker, executive secretary of the moderate Washington Urban League, to create a D.C. version of the Fair

Employment Practices Committee to act as a watchdog organization. In 1958, the city commissioners created the Human Relations Council (HRC) but it had no legal authority or paid staff. Frustrated with the HRC’s ineffectiveness, Hobson and the Congress on

Racial Equality (CORE) lobbied individual employers to change their hiring practices and implement anti-discrimination practices.94 If that failed, CORE employed over 80 unannounced pickets and boycotts to encourage people to only shop in stores with black sales clerks. Hobson and CORE effectively pressured Hecht’s, Hahn’s, and smaller retailers to hire more black Washingtonians in a wider variety of positions and produced

5,000 jobs.95

Hobson, however, felt these gains were insufficient. He denounced picketing and marching campaigns and instead urged civil rights organizations to “concentrate on the problems of poverty which affect the masses of Negroes who are more concerned about jobs, good housing and fair treatment from the police than they are about ‘integration.’”96

After CORE’s national office expelled Hobson in 1964 for undemocratic leadership practices, Hobson created a D.C. chapter of Associated Community Teams (ACT) and called for greater participation of low-income black people in new anti-poverty programs.

The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act established the Office of Economic Opportunity

94 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 128-139; Asch and Meyers, Chocolate City, 337-339. 95 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 126-150; Anne M. Valk, Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, D.C. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 21-23. 96 Julius W. Hobson, “Letters to the Editor: Boycotts Endorsed,” Washington Post, November 30, 1964, A16; quoted from Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 150.

(OEO) which aimed to aid impoverished people nationwide. The federal government

mandated OEO projects include input from low-income citizens in program formation

and management. Hobson and ACT seized upon this requirement for citizen participation

and argued the United Planning Organization (UPO), the agency responsible for

administering OEO funds in D.C., was too far removed from the concerns of low-income

Washingtonians. ACT brought such residents to UPO offices to insist their opinions be heard and Hobson filed a lawsuit claiming the lack of poor people on UPO’s board meant it violated the provision for resident input and participation. By 1968, over 1,500 low- income people served on community advisory boards and even the UPO Board of

Trustees. Although UPO programs tended to prioritize men’s employment concerns,

African American women utilized the provision for citizen input to increase their activism and leadership in their communities.97

Marion Barry also advocated reducing economic inequality and utilized recent federal programs to create job opportunities for young black men. Barry, formerly chairman of the nationwide Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, came to D.C.

in 1965 to lead the local SNCC chapter and quickly became a well-known figure in local

politics with campaigns like the 1966 boycott of the Capital Transit Company. After the

company proposed bus fare hikes, Barry and SNCC launched a one-day bus boycott on

January 24, 1966. Ridership decreased by 75,000 people and the boycott successfully

prevented the increased fares.98 To empower black Washingtonians through job

opportunities, Barry and Mary Treadwell created Pride, Inc. which hired male black

97 Valk, Radical Sisters, 22-23-26-34; Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 149-154; David Fergus, Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 14. 98 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 259-261; Valk, Radical Sisters, 19-21.

youths to aid the city’s sanitation department. Funded by the Department of Labor, Pride,

Inc. was one of many programs nation-wide to receive federal money as the government sought to tame extreme elements of Black Nationalism by accommodating some black demands.99

These campaigns for employment and economic equality consistently confronted

the white business community and other “establishment” figures. At a community

meeting, people cheered Hobson as he criticized the power of conservative whites and

middle-class black people. The crowd booed William A. Press, the vice president of the

Board of Trade, when he asserted unemployment was not a real problem in D.C. A resident claimed the Board of Trade’s membership “was composed of merchants who exploited the poor by marking their goods at astronomical prices, owners of slums, and employers who pay low salaries and oppose a minimum wage law.” Hobson said the

Board of Trade launching a poverty program was “like having a billy goat for a gardener.”100 Barry connected businesses to general inequality as he said, “We want to

free D.C. from our enemies—the people who make it impossible for us to do anything

about the lousy schools, brutal cops, slumlords, welfare investigators who go out on

midnight raids, employers who discriminate in hiring and a host of other ills that run

rampant throughout our city.”101

A “Model for the Rest of the Country:” D.C. Schools

D.C.’s schools were the envy of African Americans nationwide under the dual system

99 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 154-160.; Valk, Radical Sisters, 34; Asch and Meyers, Chocolate City, 350-358. 100 “Trade Board Seen as Enemy in District’s Poverty War,” March 9, 1965, Washington Afro American, Box 284a, Folder 28: “Wash. Afro American clippings,” Box 284a, Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 101 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 261.

for Track 1 (white) and Track 2 (black) schools. Funds were distributed to the two

systems proportionately based on the population of each race according to the latest

census. As D.C.’s black population doubled from 1910 to 1940, Track 2 schools received

much less funding per pupil because money was distributed based on outdated census

figures. Track 2 schools became massively overcrowded, especially after the government

halted the construction of new schools during World War II. Unsatisfied with system’s

decline, black parents and the wider community fought for better schools by demanding

the equalization of Track 2 schools and desegregation.102

In 1950, Central High School, the flagship white high school, was nearly half-empty

while Cardozo High School, designed for 900 black children, housed 2,000 pupils.

Cardozo was forced to hold three shifts for classes and the only gym was a 50 x 20 foot

janitor’s closet with low-hanging pipes.103 The school board proposed transferring the

Central High School building to Cardozo students and dispersing Central pupils to other

white high schools. White residents vocally opposed the plan at school board meetings

but black Washingtonians insisted they deserved such a prized facility: “The crux of the

issue simply is this: We Negroes can have anything the whites no longer want …We

asked for Central High School but they think it is too good for us.”104 “For one and one-

half centuries Washington has been the Capital of the Nation,” one advocate insisted,

“but it never will be--as long as the dual school system exists—the capital of

102 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 57-61; Donald Roe, “The Dual School System in the District of Columbia, 1862-1954: Origins, Problems, Protests,” Washington History, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2004/2005), 26-43. 103 “More on Cardozo-Central Move, And a Brotherhood Week Suggestion,” February 25, 1950, Box 69, Folder “Cardozo,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 104 “Another Letter on Need for Adequate Schools for Negroes,” Box 69, Folder “Central High,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.

democracy.”105 Ultimately, the transfer succeeded in part because the black community’s

lobbying efforts were better organized. At the final and most important school board

meeting over the transfer, black citizens came out “en masse to demand the Central

transfer,” while white people were “caught napping” with a low turnout.106 Central

students mourned the loss of their school and editorials poured in to local newspapers

decrying the “defilement of tradition” and the city’s takeover by “outside influences.”107

The simpler alternative—integration—was never seriously considered.

The Brown Parent Group, later renamed the Consolidated Parent Group, initially advocated school transfers like Central in response to massive overcrowding at Brown

Junior High.108 To improve their children’s education, the Brown Parents Group used

pickets and lobbying, and eventually launched a school-wide student strike. Despite its

success at emptying the schools, the Brown Parent Group realized its boycott would not force immediate action and enlisted the legal expertise of experienced civil rights lawyers

Charles Hamilton Houston and James Nabrit. After their lawsuit to equalize Track 2 schools failed, the group changed its name to the Consolidated Parent Group (CGP) and prioritized desegregation instead of school equalization. After the school board rejected the CPG’s request to integrate the new all-white Souza Middle School, Bishop took students, including Spottswood Bolling Jr., to Sousa to request admittance. The school’s refusal led to the Bolling vs Sharpe lawsuit. Houston represented Bolling and his decision

105 J.W. Hayward, Jr., “Duality in Public Schools Held Contradiction of Democracy,” November 10, 1949, Folder “Central High,” Vertical Files, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 106 “Citizens Swarm to Fight Central High Transfer,” February 1, 1950, Vertical Files, Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo.” 107 For examples, see Vertical Files, Box 69, Folder “Central High (2) and transition to Cardozo,” Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. For more on the white-push back to the Central transfer see Bell Clement, “Pushback: The White Community’s Dissent From Bolling,” Washington History, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2004/2005), 86-109. 108 Students were forced to come in multiple shifts and only received 4.5 hours of instruction a day, 1.5 hours less than the legally mandated six.

39 to exclusively advocate desegregation molded the NAACP’s approach in other school desegregation cases, including Brown vs Board of Education.109

Both the Bolling and Brown decisions overturned Plessy vs Ferguson, the case which allowed segregation if it was “separate but equal.” President Dwight Eisenhower publicly asserted D.C. should quickly integrate and its desegregation should be a “model for the rest of the country.” To Eisenhower, D.C. was the perfect place to earn credibility with civil rights groups without violating state’s rights since D.C. was under federal control.110 Unlike most school districts, D.C. integrated in the school year immediately following the decision. Despite a few walk-outs at high schools by white children, desegregation mostly proceeded peacefully. Most opponents, and even some ideological supporters, protested in a quieter way by enrolling their children in private schools or moving to the suburbs where most schools were still segregated. Some used the D.C. suburbs as a “safety belt” from desegregation and the growing black population in

Washington. By 1957, African Americans constituted over 80% of students in public schools and over 50% of the city’s population.111

Southern segregationists, especially those on the House D.C. Committee agreed

109 Marya McQuirter, “Our Cause is Marching On”: Parent Activism, Browne Junior High School, and the Multiple Meanings of Equality in Post-War Washington,” Washington History, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2004/2005), 66-82. Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 64-74. For more on the role of Howard University in desegregation, see Okianer Christian Dark, “The Role of Howard University in Brown vs. Board of Education,” Washington History, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2004/2005), 83-85. 110 Borchard, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 75. Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 99. 111 David A. Nichols, ‘“The Showpiece of Our Nation: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Desegregation of the District of Columbia,” Washington History, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2004/2005), 44-65; Clement, “Pushback: The White Community’s Dissent from ‘Bolling,’” 86-109. While white flight started in the 1930s, white withdrawal from D.C. public schools tripled its rate following Bolling (Clement, “Pushback,” 102). The notion of a suburban “safety belt” comes from Hobart Corning: “Statement of Dr. Hobart M. Corning, Superintendent of Schools, District of Columbia; Accompanied by Norman J. Nelson, Deputy Superintendent; and Charles N. Zellers, Deputy Superintendent,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency in the District of Columbia of the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1956), 444.

with Eisenhower that D.C. integration was “a model for the rest of the country” but

contended the capital’s school system proved integration was bad for Washington and,

subsequently, bad for the nation. In 1957, a subcommittee of the House D.C. Committee

held hearings on the D.C. school system. To Clarence Mitchell, head of the NAACP in

D.C., the hearings relied so heavily on distorted data and racist tropes that it called the trials “unhooded clan meetings”; for its part, the Washington Post slammed the hearings

as a “hatchet job.”112 William Gerber, the subcommittee’s chief counsel, asked school

administrators and teachers leading questions to suggest integration destroyed

Washington’s schools because black students were inherently intellectually inferior,

caused dangerous disciplinary problems, and could corrupt white children. He claimed

most black students were not competent for their grade level and even mocked black

pupils for their spelling errors.113 Gerber repeatedly riled up racist fears about interracial

sex and black sexuality to suggest integration would corrupt innocent, naïve white

children. 114 Some educators testifying blamed behavioral issues on bad parenting, absent

fathers, community crime, and “kid glove” treatment in place of harsh discipline.115

Other teachers, however, pushed back and often reframed the questions to highlight the

lasting impact segregation imposed on black children and argued the solution to the

112 Clarence Mitchell, “From the Workbench: An Unhooded Klan Meeting,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 6, 1956, 4; cited in Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital, 99-100. “Hatchet Job,” Washington Post, September 20, 1956, 16; cited in Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 97. 113 Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency in the District of Columbia of the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1956), 13-14, 16, 31, 40, 68-69, 91, 167, 235, 264, 306, 313, 395-401, 417-418. 114 Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency, 264, 266. Williams asked nearly every witness about “sex problems.” For example, see Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency, 24, 36, 43, 61, 66-67, 76, 80, 126, 139, 159, 189, 196, 264-265, 267, 269, 272, 291, 294, 300, 303-304, 367. 115 Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency, 61, 108, 216, 238, 276.

problems was integration.116 Some educators claimed that while integration did pose

challenges, the problems were surmountable. “The problems I have told you of are the

big problems,” a teacher said, “but they will be conquered if we get time and money and

a little bit of faith.”117 Assistant superintendent Dr. Carl Hansen described integration,

while not perfect, as a “miracle of social adjustment.”118

The committee sent hearing transcripts and distorted reports to schools in the

South and used the information as an excuse to delay integration. In a speech following

the hearings, Davis contended D.C.’s example confirmed the main objections to

integration: “health, the Negroe’s [sic] high crime rate and disrespect for the law, the

lower mentality level, and the high rate of illegitimacy among Negroes.” “In Washington,

D.C., Negroes have every advantage they could ask for,” he asserted, but the city still had

a high crime rate and black people were “responsible.” Educational standards were

lowered because “the Negroes have not been able to keep pace with the white children in

the District of Columbia.” The D.C. school’s “sex problems” proved to Davis that

“integrationalists and mongrelizers,” as well as the “radical NAACP,” had the ultimate

goal of “intermarriage and complete mongrelization of the American people.” Seizing

upon the countless assertions that D.C. should be “a model example of a nonsegregated

city,” Davis charged the model had failed and D.C. was instead a cautionary tale:

116 Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency, 51, 216, 220-222, 326, 338, 411. 117 “Statement of Hugh Stewart Smith, Washington, D.C., Principal, Jefferson Junior High School,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency, 49. Another educator said that while integration brought “many, many problems,” it was worth it because it, “is right and, having been decided by the Supreme Court, it is up to us to do everything we can to make it work.” “Statement of Miss Margaret Moore, Principal, H.D. Cooke Elementary School,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency, 279. 118 “Statement of Dr. Carl F. Hansen, Assistant Superintendent in Charge of Senior High Schools,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Public School Standards and Conditions and Juvenile Delinquency, 358.

I have given you tonight, in brief, a picture of the deplorable situation in Washington. I have seen there the tragic results which come from the breakdown of segregation and substitution of an integrated public-school system. The same thing can happen, and will happen here, if the people meekly accept wrongful usurpation of power, and a Supreme Court dictatorship, as they did in Washington.119

Ten years later after the Davis hearings, black Washingtonians such as Julius

Hobson refused to “meekly accept” the ongoing discrimination against black students. In

1967, Judge J. Skelly Wright ruled in Hobson vs. Hansen that the D.C. school board

“unconstitutionally deprive[d] the District’s Negro and poor public school children of

their right to equal educational opportunity with the District’s white and more affluent

public school children.” Predominantly black schools received less funding and were

more crowded than predominantly white schools and the strict adherence to

neighborhood school policy caused de facto segregation so severe it “violated plaintiff’s

constitutional rights.”120 While the court stopped short of saying that school board practiced “de jure” segregation, the decision asserted that it was “impossible not to assume that the school administration is affirmatively satisfied with the segregation which the neighborhood [school] policy breeds.”121

Hobson and D.C. parents did not just want equal educational opportunities, they

also demanded more control over the content of children’s education. Associated

119 “Congressman James C. Davis Speaks to the State’s Rights Council,” November 28, 1956, University of Southern Mississippi Digital Collections, M393 McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, http://digilib.usm.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/manu/id/1521. 120 For example, in 1965-1966, the “median percentage of capacity for the predominantly Negro elementary schools was 115%” while for predominantly white elementary schools, they were at 77% capacity. While every student who applied for kindergarten in mostly white elementary schools got a spot, there was a waiting list of 6,236 children for predominantly black elementary schools. The median amount of funds spent per student was over $100 higher at white schools than black schools. See “Civil Liberties Fund: An Evaluation of the Decision in Hobson vs. Hansen,” February 1968, 11-13, Box 13, Folder: “An Evaluation of Hobson v. Hanson National Capital Area Civil Liberties Defense and Educational Fund, 1968,” Papers of Julius Hobson, 1960-1977, D.C. Community Archives, Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C. 121 “Civil Liberties Fund: An Evaluation of the Decision in Hobson vs. Hansen,” 1-7, Hobson papers.

Community Teams (ACT) coordinated a school boycott on March 16, 1967 to protest

“for academic excellence through integrated schools.”122 A flyer for the march demanded

“quality education” which included “more Negro and Puerto Rican principals,” and that

“Negroes be taught their history and culture in school.” “No responsible person or leader

can be opposed to these demands,” the flyer asserted, “unless he is a field hand for the

plantation bosses at city hall and the board of education.”123 For another boycott on May

1, 1967, an ACT flyer proclaimed “District of Columbia public schools don’t educate.

They incarcerate.”124 After the school board appointed a new superintendent in 1967

without citizen input, Hobson was incensed and pushed for increased citizen participation

in School Board decisions.125 These court cases, boycotts, and insistence on citizen

involvement in decision-making in education all show the growing impatience on the part

of many black D.C. residents with educational inequality.

“Can You Eat and Sleep Home Rule?:” Home Rule Activism

Sustained campaigns for home rule were a recent phenomenon in D.C. politics. In

the 50 years after the founding of the Board of Trade in 1889, the main push by

Washingtonians was for national representation instead of local self-rule. The issue

regained steam with the New Deal coalition as a group of mostly white liberals,

Democratic Party officials, and labor activists supported home rule as an extension of

American democracy. In the late 1940s and early 50s, Home Rule was a bipartisan issue

122 “Get in Step for Freedom Now!”, Box 13, Folder: “Announcements, news releases, new letters, etc,” Papers of Julius Hobson. 123 “Why We boycott for Quality Education,” Box 13, Folder: “Announcements, news releases, new letters, etc,” Papers of Julius Hobson. 124 “May Day! May Day! May Day! May Day! May Day! School Boycott—Stay out of School!.” Box 13, Folder: “Announcements, news releases, new letters, etc,” Papers of Julius Hobson. 125 “District of Columbia citizens for a Better Education,” November 2, 1967, Box 13, Folder: “Announcements, news releases, new letters, etc,” Papers of Julius Hobson.

and Congress held several hearings with the intent of passing a bill to grant it.126

Home Rule supporters emphasized that the lack of democracy in D.C. hurt

American image abroad. “So long as we put up with the arbitrary rule of American citizens by persons in whose selection they have no part,” Senator Hubert Humphrey warned, “we are vulnerable to criticism as being… hypocritical.”127 One voting rights advocate noted that when the Germans and Japanese learned people in the capital, “could not even vote for their own dog catcher” it hampered their efforts to craft democracies in those countries.128 Additionally, some believed Home Rule was “essential to any solution

of the problems of civil rights.”129 While racism was the “subtle undercurrent that has run

through this subject,” one testifier noted, Home Rule was important for American power:

Because we are out now--I am speaking of our Nation--to try to compete with an adversary who has no hesitation of using these weaknesses and divisions that we have shown on the matter of race and racial prejudice to our great disadvantage. We are trying to compete for the loyalties of millions of people throughout the world, most of whom are colored, and if we allow a situation like this to affect a piece of beneficial legislation such as this, not just for the District of Columbia, but to make a more healthy American democracy, I believe Mr. Chairman that our great foreign policy would be thrown into serious jeopardy.130

Despite bipartisan support of Home Rule, a combination of business leaders,

white citizens, and Southern members of Congress were opposed to it. The BOT

considered the commissioner government—which they in effect ruled—to be the “most

effective” and best municipal government in the nation and its members were hesitant to

126 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 236-241. 127 “Statement of Hon. Hubert H. Humphrey,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 117. 128 “Statement of George B. Galloway, Senior Specialist in American Government, Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 90. 129 “Statement of Stanley Gewitz, President, Washington Chapter, Americans for Democratic Action,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 116. 130 “Statement of Elmer W. Henderson, Director, American Council on Human Rights,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 135.

45 see their control over D.C. go.131 Most citizens’ associations also believed the appointed government was best.132 Public support of home rule declined as D.C.’s black population grew, decreasing from over 80% in 1938 to 70% in 1946. Although nearly 100% of black

Washingtonians supported self-governance, only 50% of white people agreed.133 Many objected to Home Rule because they feared “If we get home rule the Negroes will take over the city”134 and worried that “minority groups would control local elections here.”135

Congress members admitted that while racist objections were not discussed openly, “it is whispered about and is one of the silent obstacles to passage.”136

The Senate passed home rule legislation four times in the 1950s, but southern segregationists, especially John L. McMillan from South Carolina, blocked the bills from

131 “Statement of Edward F. Colladay, General Counsel, Washington Board of Trade,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 166; Statement of George B. Galloway, Senior Specialist in American Government, Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 91. 132 “Statement of Clifford H. Newell, Representing the Arkansas Avenue Community Association,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 196-198; “Statement of John A. Remon, Representing the Cathedral Heights Citizen’s Association,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 191-192. 133 “Statement of Clifford H. Newell, Representing the Arkansas Avenue Community Association,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 196-198. In the nearly all-black Cardozo neighborhood, not one of the 2,793 people voting were against home rule. These numbers are according to plebiscite held by suffrage organizations in 1938 and 1946. See Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 239. 134 “Statement of Kenneth Adams, President of the Young Republicans Club of the District of Columbia,” 70. “Statement of Clifford H. Newell, Representing the Arkansas Avenue Community Association,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 196-198. One Congressman reported over 12 people told him “in private and not in confidence that they are opposed to this bill because of their fear it would give the Negro domination over the District of Columbia.” “Statement of Marshall L. Shepard, Representing the Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia,” 221. 135 “Answers to the Board of Trade Pamphlet Entitled “Does the Kefauver Bill Really Provide for Home Rule,” “Statement of Clifford H. Newell, Representing the Arkansas Avenue Community Association,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 201. 136 “Rebuttal of Board of Trade Arguments Against Home Rule for the District of Columbia,” “Statement of Clifford H. Newell, Representing the Arkansas Avenue Community Association,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 99. “I remember there was a former Member of the congress,” Wilber S. Finch recalled, “…who was reputed to have said that he would never vote for suffrage for the people of the District of Columbia as long as there was one Negro living in the District who would qualify as a voter.” See “Statement of Wilbur S. Finch,” “Statement of Clifford H. Newell, Representing the Arkansas Avenue Community Association,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization, 75.

leaving the House Committee on the District of Columbia. Washingtonians received the right to vote in presidential elections in 1961 after the 23rd Amendment was ratified with

Eisenhower’s backing. Even then, the bill to create the 23rd Amendment had to originate

in the House Judiciary Committee because the D.C. Committee’s members refused to

bring it to a floor vote. After Johnson pledged his support for home rule in an address to

Congress in 1965 and members of both parties backed proposed legislation, many were

hopeful home rule would finally be approved. Organizations such as the Association for a

Democratic America, the Washington Home Rule Committee, the D.C. Democratic

Committee, CORE, and the Urban League lobbied for self-governance. Efforts were once

again stymied, however, when the House District Committee refused to bring the bill to a

vote.137

After this failure, local activists intensified their efforts to achieve self-

governance. Hobson and ACT filed a lawsuit alleging D.C. residents’ inability to elect

their leaders violated the 14th amendment granting African Americans the right to vote,

but the suit was rejected by the District court.138 Martin Luther King, Jr. gave speeches

on home rule’s importance and the D.C. Coalition of Conscience, led by activist Walter

Fauntroy, gathered signatures to show citizen support. Over 4,000 people attended a 1966

rally for home rule held by Youth Organization United. The rally and other efforts often

chastised the business community, especially the Board of Trade. Groups were deeply

divided, however, on the best tactics to achieve self-governance. Many coalition-based

home rule efforts tried to moderate their tone and downplayed the idea of black power

137 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 243-260; Robert L. Asher, “GOP in House Strongly Urge D.C. Home Rule,” September 4, 1966, B2, The Washington Post. 138 Paul W. Valentine, “Suit by Hobson Asks Election of D.C. Heads,” April 26, 1966, B2, The Washington Post. “U.S. Sees No D.C. right to Local Vote,” January 28, 1967, C4, The Washington Post.

while others intentionally used militant rhetoric. Advocates were also divided on

cooperation with the federal government and President Johnson. During the White House

Conference on Civil Rights, Barry helped convince every committee to pass a pro-home

rule resolution.139 Hobson, ACT, and the local chapter of SNCC, however, refused to

attend the Conference as they believed average black citizens were not properly

represented and the conference used too many “white experts” to explain the black

community.140

Free D.C. often provoked criticism from moderates and divided the

community over its tactics. Started by Marion Barry and supported by Walter Fauntroy,

Free D.C. believed that by pressuring individual members of the Board of Trade to

support home rule, it could lessen the Board’s powerful opposition by eroding BOT

member’s support. Free D.C. insisted businesses sign a petition to support home rule,

lobby Federal officials, display a sticker in their store window, and give money. If

businesses refused, Free D.C. urged the community to boycott. Many in Congress were

so angered by the monetary demands, they called for an investigation into the legality of

the movement and subsequently the group dropped its request for funds. Free D.C. initially focused on H St NE and later expanded to 14th Street businesses where patrons

were predominantly black. 350 out of roughly 400 on stores along H Street displayed the

sticker and those that refused were considered “enemies.” Free D.C. also picketed major

chains deeply ingrained in the Board of Trade such as Hecht’s and Kann’s department

stores. Free D.C. distributed leaflets that showed long-time home rule opponents John

139 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 232, 259-272. 140 Dan Morgan, “District Home Rule Raised as Issue for White House Rights Conference,” May 31, 1966, A1, The Washington Post. Nicholas von Hoffman, “Picketers, Conferees Swap Jests,” June 2, 1966, A4, The Washington Post.

McMillan and Robert Byrd holding black people as slaves with the help of “moneylord

merchants.” While the Free D.C. organization only lasted six months due to organization

issues, it increased interest in home rule and posed the business community, especially

small businesses, as a key enemy.141

Despite high profile activism, many questioned how much D.C. residents were

willing to fight for home rule. While organizations collected petitions and organized

events, these efforts did not produce the participation levels they often desired. A poll

showed that fewer than 1 in 12 isolated home rule as one of three biggest concerns for

Washingtonians. As one woman put it, “Can you eat and sleep home rule? Can they make

jobs with home rule? What are they going to do with home rule when they get it?” Still,

in a Washington Post poll in 1966, black people nearly unanimously supported home

rule.142 Many white people both inside the District and in the surrounding suburbs

opposed it. Inside D.C., about 40% supported home rule, 40% opposed it, and 20% were

unsure. Nearly all the surrounding suburbs opposed home rule. According to the

Washington Post, “The arguments against home rule center on higher taxes (feared by

both Negroes and whites), corruption, less Federal aid and Negro control of the Capital.”

When asked about why they opposed home rule, white Washington residents clearly

showed their racial resentment: “Lord, help us, if those n*****s ever get home rule,”

“[I]t isn’t right that the Nation’s Capital be all colored,” “I’m opposed to it because it’s

going to be all colored,” “They don’t have the right education to do the right job,”

141 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 260-270; Catherine Maddison, “’In Chains 400 Years…And Still in Chains in D.C.!’ The 1966 Free D.C. Movement and the Challenges of Organizing in the City,” Journal of American Studies, 41 (2007), I, 1969-192. 142 “Area Residents Support Home Rule, But They Don’t Get Excited About It,” October 4, 1966, A1, The Washington Post.

“Because a colored fellow would be mayor—no other reason.”143

Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., founder of the Americans for Democratic Action and long-standing home rule advocate, released a statement in August 1966 documenting such mounting white anxiety about black people activism in Washington. “Already we have seen abundant evidence that, as the normal methods of political dialogue and discussion of issues fail, boycotts and confrontations begin to appear as the only means of making oneself heard,” he explained. “As discussion and peaceful protest fail to obtain results, alternative means of achieving recognition for a point of view will become ever more flamboyant, violent, and dangerous. What is in store for us without Home Rule is an ever-escalating guerilla warfare.” After the Senate and House District Committees blocked home rule legislation from a floor vote again in 1966, President Johnson pursued another strategy to curb the tension Rauh documented. Johnson presented to Congress a plan to restructure the D.C. government that would create a 9-person city council and a mayor-commissioner, all appointed by the executive branch, to govern the city and an elected school board to democratize education. The bill came to a floor vote through the

House Judiciary Committee, avoiding the staunch opposition of the D.C. House

Committee, and passed in 1967. Johnson appointed native Washingtonian and former

D.C. Housing Authority director Walter Washington as mayor and selected mostly moderate black civil rights leaders and liberal businessmen for the City Council. Former

Washington Afro American editor C. Sumner Stone called the reorganization a “[c]ruel

charade.”144

A “White Noose Around the Black Core:” Housing and Urban Development in D.C.

143 “Area Residents Support Home Rule, But They Don’t Get Excited About It,” October 4, 1966, A1, The Washington Post. 144 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 271-274.

Congress created the Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) in 1945 to buy, clear,

and sell unsightly lots for private redevelopment. In 1949, the RLA received substantial

funding after Congress passed the National Housing Act which, among other initiatives,

granted major cities funds to redevelop or renew “blighted” urban areas and thus

launched national urban renewal. D.C. was a “testing ground” for urban renewal and the

RLA launched a massive plan to gut and rebuild the Southwest quadrant of Washington,

D.C. in hopes of creating a modern city that could ebb the tide of white flight. The RLA

selected Southwest for redevelopment because it had poor housing conditions and “a

central and almost strategic location” close to major office buildings and recreation

areas.145 The quadrants inhabitants were predominantly African Americans whose newly

freed ancestors inhabited the neighborhood after the Civil War because it was close to

industrial jobs along the Potomac waterfront. Many Southern migrants to Washington

settled in Southwest and used the dense community networks to acclimate to life in the

city. Other inhabitants moved there after alley dwelling demolishment destroyed their

homes in the 1930s.146

The RLA initially designed SW as a low-to-moderate income residential area

since it determined it would be too difficult to rapidly transform an area from low-income

to affluent.147 The agency rejected an ambitious proposal—the Justement-Smith (JS)

plan—because the large quantity of luxury apartments, lack of low-income housing, and nonexistent relocation plan made the JS proposal untenable.148 As the planning went

145 Harland Bartholomew and Associates City Planners, “Redevelopment Plans for the Southwest Survey Area, District of Columbia,” 2, P1102, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 146 Asch and Meyers, Chocolate City, 320-325; Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 151-162. 147 Harland Bartholomew and Associates City Planners, “Redevelopment Plans for the Southwest Survey Area, District of Columbia,” 23-24. 148 Harland Bartholomew and Associates City Planners, “Redevelopment Plans for the Southwest Survey Area, District of Columbia,”37.

forward, however, the RLA changed its mind and chose the Zeckendorf plan—a proposal almost identical to the JS plan except it was funded by the development firm Webb and

Knapp.149 Southwest residents and community groups protested the RLA plan and

contended in Berman v. Parker that urban renewal violated the equal protection clause of

the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled the Redevelopment Act was

constitutional and determined beautification was an acceptable use for eminent

domain.150

Redevelopers, the RLA, and city government heralded urban renewal as the

triumph of modernity and beauty over blight and despair. A 1956 city report praised the

redevelopment, believing abolishing slums allowed D.C. to better live up to its role as the

capital: “Washington, at night, is one of the world’s most beautiful cities…But come

dawn, the mantle of darkness lifts to expose slums, blight and traffic snarls...the vexing

problems that we must dispel before we can live and work in an environment that is in

keeping with the prerogatives of the National Capital City.”151 A 1967 RLA guide to

Southwest proclaimed “the old Southwest died” with the bulldozer and the “radical

change” of urban renewal resurrected a vibrant, modern community: “the New

Southwest.”152 Advertisements for the “new Southwest” similarly contrasted the old and

new—and the new was decidedly whiter and richer. For example, a letter to introduce a

pamphlet on the Town Center Plaza building boasted “Here within the shadows of the

Capitol and the major government buildings, you will live in a mood of quiet luxury with

149 “Southwest Guide 1956-1956, A Joint Publication of the Southwest Community Council, Inc. and The Southwest Neighborhood Assembly,” 56-57, P1104, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 150 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 173-175. 151 “Federal City Council Report,” 13, P470, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 152 “District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency Annual Report 1967,” P746, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.

every convenience designed for modern living.” The brochure depicted a young white

couple standing in a modernly furnished living room, gazing through spacious windows

at the capitol building and Washington monument with the caption “the most wonderful

‘way of life’ in Washington.”153

This “way of life” was only possible because of the massive displacement of

Southwest residents, 76% of whom were black. Of the 5,900 new units of housing built,

only 310 qualified as moderate-income housing and only one apartment complex offered

low-income housing.154 Unable to afford housing in their old neighborhood, many

displaced African Americans moved to neighborhoods in inner Northwest and Anacostia

in Southeast Washington. This forced relocation destroyed many of the social networks

that members of the the African American community used to support themselves and

integrate migrants into the city.155 By 1972, Southwest was 80% white and half as

populous as it was prior to urban renewal.156

Those displaced struggled to relocate as they encountered stark housing segregation. Residential discrimination was rampant in D.C. and had only worsened over

time. From 1900 to 1962, the suburbs flipped from 1/3 to only 6% black while D.C.’s

black population rose from 25% to over 50%.157 As white people had the mobility to

move to the suburbs, housing discrimination in D.C. and the suburbs forced the

concentration of black people in the inner-city.158 The very few who managed to live in

the suburbs were often forced to pay higher prices and faced harassment and even

153 “Town Center Plaza,” P547, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 154 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 163-164. 155 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 163-166. Ruble, Washington’s U Street, 183-185. 156 Ruble, Washington’s U Street, 184. 157 “Testimony of Eunice Grier,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1962), 13. 158 “Testimony of David A. Sawyer, Executive Director, Commissioners’ Council on Human Relations,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 81.

violence.159 In the District, only 8 out of 211 apartment complexes in the District would

rent to black people. 160 “Housing discrimination is but one of the vicious heads of a

Hydraheaded economic monster,” said Sterling Tucker of the Urban League. “Its twin is

employment discrimination whose principal byproduct is poverty.”161

Although explaining the vicious cycle that sustained discrimination was “like

trying to stab an eel with a broom poll,” housing segregation persisted because it was

profitable to real estate companies, supported by government agencies and policies, and

demanded by many white people.162 Real estate companies blamed housing segregation

on white preferences and class inequality. The president of the Washington Board of

Realtors believed realtors were right to deny black people housing because their presence

could hurt property values.163 An executive with Levitt and Sons, a company that

famously did not sell their suburban homes to African Americans, claimed it maintained

this policy because white residents wanted it: “As a business enterprise we cannot defy or

offend the customs and traditions of the locality in which our company operates.”164 The

Board of Trade and many white business owners opposed any anti-discrimination law,

claiming it was better to let people work it out without government interference: “You

can drive a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink--and until such time as these

159 “Testimony of Mrs. Adolph Williams, President, Montgomery County Branch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 99-103. 160 “Testimony of David A. Sawyer, Executive Director, Commissioners’ Council on Human Relations,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 81. 161 “Testimony of Sterling Tucker, Executive Director, Washington Urban League, Accompanied by Walter Lewis, Assistant Executive Director, Washington Urban League,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 44. 162 “Testimony of Rev. Charles M. Mason, Jr., Past Chairman, Social Action Committee, Silver Spring Ministerial Association,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 95. 163 “Testimony of George W. DeFranceaux, Realtor and President, Washington Board of Realtors, Inc.,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 186. 164 “Exhibit H-2,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 244.

owners are ready to accept open occupancy, rules and regulations are not going to make

any material difference,” insisted George W. DeFranceaux, a realtor and president of the

Washington Board of Realtors, in 1962.165 Many were opposed to anti-discrimination laws because the real estate industry made large profits off of segregation. As occurred across the country, real estate companies told white homeowners that once black people moved into their neighborhoods their property values would decline and the neighborhood would deteriorate.166 Realtors purposely orchestrated the perception that

black people were moving into neighborhoods and used phone calls, fake “for sale”

signs, mailings, and other methods to pressure people to sell fast. White people were

“prone to panic” and often did sell at low prices only for agents to resell the homes at

above market values to black families.167 Civil Rights, USA, a report on D.C. housing

segregation, concluded that “Whatever else may be said, one thing seems certain:

Without cooperation by and among the members of the housing industry, there could be

little discrimination in housing.”168

Real estate companies exaggerated white people’s preferences for segregated

housing. Surveys conducted by activist groups revealed suburban residents were much

165 “Testimony of George W. DeFranceaux, Realtor and President, Washington Board of Realtors, Inc.,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 216. Charles Tyler, “More Riots A-Comin’ If Housing Bars Stay: Cause and Effect Described,” December 4, 1962, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19621204&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 166 There is a growing body of literature on real estate’s role in segregation. See Thomas J. Sugure, The Origins of The Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). 167 “Statement Presented on Behalf of Neighbors, Inc., by Melvin Caplan, President,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 398-411. 168 The United States Commission on Civil Rights, “Civil Rights U.S.A.: Housing in Washington, D.C.”, 10, P1143-1144, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.

55 more likely to accept desegregation than realtors claimed.169 Nevertheless, many whites did strongly oppose integration. For example, the American University Park Citizen’s

Association was against “forced integration,” thought anti-discrimination measures hurt individual rights, and claimed white people were a minority in need of special protections.170 “No one can view with equanimity the prospect of the District of

Columbia, the seat of the Government, becoming a Negro ghetto for obvious reasons,” testified the president of the Washington Planning and Housing Association.171 “I should like to emphasize that the fantastic migration of the Negroes to Washington must stop,” wrote a member of the John F Kennedy Foundation for the Preservation of our Priceless

Heritage. “The great danger the Negro problem has thrust upon the outstanding city in this country—our Capital, afflicted higher per capita with a diabolical situation reaching the stage of an avalanche.”172

Federal Housing Administration and private lenders encouraged segregation through “red-lining”—they almost exclusively granted home loans in white neighborhoods.173 In D.C., many lenders only approved mortgages in areas west of Rock

Creek Park where racial covenants and tradition informally banned African Americans.

169 “The Greater Washington Good Neighbor Campaign, 1961: A Report on How it was Done,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 362-363. 170 “Statement by American University Park Citizens’ Association,” June 1, 1964, Series 11, Box 284a, Folder 25 “American University Park Citizens’ Association, Statement,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 171 “Remarks by Charles A. Horsky, President, Washington Planning and Housing Association,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 419-420. 172 “The John F. Kennedy Rehabilitation Center for the Preservation of Our Priceless Heritage,” September 16, 1964, Series 11, Box 284a, Folder 24 “Race Relations,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 173 The FHA officially abolished this practice in 1960 but it still set a pattern for private lenders. “Testimony of Thomas C. Barringer, Director, FHA District of Columbia Insuring Office,” “Testimony of Rev. Charles M. Mason, Jr., Past Chairman, Social Action Committee, Silver Spring Ministerial Association,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 223. For more on previous scholarship on red-lining, see footnote 127.

The racial divide was so stark that one Washingtonian compared the Park to the Berlin

Wall in Germany and the D.C. border to the Great Wall of China.174 Using more violent

imagery, another testified the border was a “white noose around the black core, with

Negroes heavily in the center of the city and the white noose of suburban American

around this core.”175

Washingtonians and residents of the surrounding suburbs mobilized to protest

housing discrimination in differing ways. The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE)

launched a campaign in the early 1960s that collected extensive data to demonstrate the

pervasiveness of residential discrimination. CORE picketed buildings owned by

segregationist Morris Caffritz, FHA offices, and the suburban giant Levitt and Sons. In

1963, a coalition of the local CORE, NAACP, and Southern Christian Leadership

Conference organized a march that drew nearly 4,000 Washingtonians to protest housing

and job discrimination. The Action Coordinating Committee to End Segregation in the

Suburbs (ACCESS), formed in 1966, sought to desegregate housing in the suburbs

through broad desegregation instead of using “model” black families to slowly integrate.

The self-described “militant fair housing group” utilized demonstrations, media publicity,

marches, and negotiation with government agencies and officials to encourage change.

These campaigns accomplished limited success. In 1964, D.C. adopted “the most

sweeping” fair housing regulation in the country. The regulation changed little, however,

because the Human Relations Council, the agency that processed complaints, had no

174 “Testimony of Marjorie McKenzie Lawson,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 315-319. 175 “Testimony of Paul P. Cooke, National Vice Chairman, American Veterans Committee,” “Testimony of Rev. Charles M. Mason, Jr., Past Chairman, Social Action Committee, Silver Spring Ministerial Association,” Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing In Washington, 228-229. “Testimony of Eugene Davidson, Realist and Former President, Washington Real Estate Brokers Association,” 189.

power to punish those that broke the law. Eventually, Maryland passed open laws and

after negotiations with ACCESS, the Department of Housing and Urban Development,

and the FHA, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara banned military personnel from

living at the segregated developments within a 3.5 mile radius of the Andrews Air Force

Base.176

Other organizations tackled housing issues by seeking to prevent urban renewal from further displacing black residents. After the completion of the Southwest urban renewal project, the Redevelopment Land Agency planned the largest redevelopment project in the US in the area named Northwest #1. Initial designs would destroy and rebuild 80% of the area and relocate the same percentage of its mostly African American population. Shaw residents showed up en masse at RLA Neighborhood Advisory Council meetings and demanded community involvement in planning, employment opportunities from the project, and the rehabilitation of buildings instead of bulldozing and rebuilding.

Walter Fauntroy, an outspoken critic of urban renewal and head of the New Bethel

Baptist Church, created the Model Inner City Community Development Organization

(MICCO), a coalition of 150 civil groups and churches, to seize the RLA’s provision for citizen input in planning and demand redevelopment occur on the terms of the community. “We have taken urban renewal, a tool often used to destroy black neighborhoods,” said Reginald Griffith of MICCO, “and fashioned it into an instrument by which the people can preserve and upgrade their own community. We shall not be another Southwest.”177 MICCO faced criticism as rival groups such as the Community

Rehabilitation Under Security and Trust (CRUST) and Shaw’s People’s Urban Renewal

176 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 180-209. 177 Originally quoted in Shaw Power, October 1969; cited in Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 174.

Group (SPUR) felt MICCO’s middle class black leaders left out working class concerns when they negotiated with the political establishment and compromised. Nevertheless,

MICCO and Northwest #1 showed black people wanted control of their neighborhoods and were willing to organize to make it happen.178

In 1965, activist Sammie Abdullah Abbott formed the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC) as a coalition between white and black Washingtonians and aimed to stop the construction of the highway system and instead build a mass transit system. The National Capital Planning Commission’s original plans for the D.C. highway system were postponed in the early 1960s after white citizens from the wealthy neighborhoods of Cleveland Park and Georgetown, whose homes would be destroyed by the proposed highway, won a five-year ban on construction. The planners then redesigned the highway system to go through the inner-city and force tens of thousands of people—

80% of whom were black—out of their homes. The ECTC intentionally foregrounded racial justice and black voices and characterized the proposed highways as “White Men’s

Roads through Black Men’s Homes.” Abbott sought out connected black people to lead: construction worker and activist Reginald H. Booker was the chairman and Marion Barry was one of the vice chairmen. Simultaneously, Abbott recruited white leaders to the cause, such as Peter S. Craig, the wealthy white lawyer who was instrumental in the court order that blocked the highway in wealthy Northwest neighborhoods, and the mostly white Committee of 100 on the Federal City. The House D.C. Appropriations Committee, the D.C. Board of Commissioners, D.C. Department of Highways, most major D.C. newspapers, and even Walter Washington supported the highway system. While the highway issue was unresolved at the time of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, the

178 Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 173-180: Asch and Meyers, Chocolate City, 349-351.

ECTC’s discourse and activism is important as it rejected the power of Congress and

large lobbies and connected community power to racial justice and black power.179

“It Blackens Us All:” Crime in Washington

According to former D.C. Police Chief Jerry Wilson, Americans considered the

capital much more dangerous than other cities in the first two decades after desegregation. Washington “suffered earliest and longest in this generation from a reputation for high crime and fear of crime.” Wilson argued this was partially because many white people believed “that a high proportion of blacks are criminal offenders.” As the city’s black population grew and the District became a majority black city, it was no coincidence that despite lower levels of crime, white Washingtonians reported feeling less safe and believed D.C. was one of the most dangerous cities.180 Americans also

assumed Washington was unsafe because of the heightened attention D.C. crime received

from the media and politicians.181 For example, in 1957, famous author Willie Snow

Etheridge was mugged in D.C. right off Connecticut Avenue—a “good” part of town. “It

is a disgrace that the citizens of these United States can’t walk the streets of their

Capital…without being mugged by hoodlums,” she wrote in a national magazine.182

Congressmen responded and bemoaned the “terror” as well: the capital would be “an

after dark ghost city” unless Congress passed stronger anti-crime laws, D.C. was “a half-

179 Borcahdt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 211-231. Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, 165- 169. For an in-depth look at the anti-highway movement, see Zachary M. Schrag, The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). 180 Wilson also argued this was due to crime reporting, the high percentage of black people triggering racist views of crime, incentives in reporting, and several high-profile robberies in mid-class neighborhoods. Jerry V. Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia 1955-1975 (Washington: National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Administration, United States Department of Justice, 1978), 4-5. 181 Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia, 1-8. 182 “I Was Mugged,” January 21, 1958, A 12, The Evening Star. Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia, 4-5.

civilized place where it is unsafe to venture into the streets at night,” and crime made it a

“national disgrace.”183

The sensationalized concern over crime, however, was often completely

disconnected from reality. At the time of the Etheridge incident, for example, the D.C.

crime rate was one of the lowest in the country and 10% lower than the previous year. In

1956, after D.C. crime decreased by nearly 20% over 3 years, citizens associations asked

Congress for more police because “residents…are afraid to go out after dark to meetings

or for social occasions.”184 In his opening statement of the 1963 Joint Congressional

Hearings on “the increasingly serious crime situation in the District of Columbia,” John

McMillan asserted “We all know we have this problem [crime]. We don’t feel it is

necessary to have any further investigations. What we want to do [is] try to help the law

enforcement officers in the District of Columbia solve this increasing crime problem.”185

Despite McMillan’s certainty, crime in Washington was actually down in 1961 and 1962

and consistent with national averages.186

The false narrative that D.C. was rampant with crime was politically useful to

integration opponents in the wake of Brown. Southern lawmakers claimed crime in D.C.

was the outcome of integration and proved that African Americans were dangerous and

incapable and thus less deserving of rights. “The vision of Washington as a hotbed of

rapine and bloodshed has been disseminated by congressmen who view the crime rate as

the predictable and deserved reward of racial desegregation,” concluded J.W. Anderson

183 “Tougher Crime Laws Sought,” January 25, 1958, C11, Washington Post. “D.C. Crime Curb Is Urged in Senate,” August 18, 1959, A7, Washington Post. Originally cited by Jerry Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia, 5. 184 Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia, 1-8. 185 Crime in the District of Columbia: Joint Hearing before the District of Columbia Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives on the Increasingly serious crime situation in the District of Columbia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), 2. 186 Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia, 12.

of the Washington Post.187 Senator Olin Johnston made speeches in Congress almost

daily connecting integration and crime because he believed newspapers failed to report

the “chronic ailments that accompany forced integration.”188 Senator Allen Ellender

asserted D.C. crime proved “his contention that Negroes cannot govern themselves.”189

Congressman James Davis said D.C. was “noted for the great number of serious crimes

committed in its limits” and bluntly stated “Negroes are responsible for this high crime

rate.”190 An article in the US World Report, read aloud at the 1963 Congressional crime

hearings, claimed “Now out in the open are problems that have been accumulating

quietly for years. Police are turning to Congress for help in combating a surge of violent

crime in the city’s streets. Officials are expressing concern about the future of a Capital

City that is being abandoned by white people, taken over by Negroes.”191

Black Washingtonians understood how quickly crime in the capital would be used

to denigrate black people writ large. At the 1962 city championship football game between St. John’s, an almost entirely white private school, and Eastern High, an almost entirely black public school, a “melee” broke out both on and off the field after an

Eastern player was ejected. As the game ended and Eastern lost, chaos reigned as crowds

rushed towards the exits and fights broke out within the stadium and the surrounding five

187 J.W. Anderson, “Anxiety of a City at Night Enters Politics,” July 26, 1964, E5, The Washington Post. 188 “Johnson Calls Press Lax on Integration,” September 3, 1959, A25, The Washington Post. He further argued, “Police cannot solve ‘evils caused by forced integration.”’ In another speech, Johnston claimed that D.C. and New York had high crime rates because they were, “Two places where forced integration has been experimented with more than any other places in the United States.” 189 “Ellender Calls District A ‘Cesspool of Crime,”’ June 17, 1963, A6, The Washington Post. He had recently been barred entry by three African nations for making similar comments. After listing figures of how much of D.C. was controlled by black people he argued, “you have the worst conditions in Washington where they are at the head than of any big city in the country…To me, that just shows their inability to govern.” 190 “Congressman James C. Davis Speaks to the State’s Rights Council,” November 28, 1956, University of Southern Mississippi Digital Collections, M393 McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection, Box 3, Folder 6, http://digilib.usm.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/manu/id/1521. 191 “From U.S. News and World Report, Feb. 18, 1963,” Crime in the District of Columbia, 165-169.

blocks.192 Representative John Bell Williams from Mississippi declared the fracas proved

integration would not work: “The unprovoked mass attack by thousands of

Negroes…against the white spectators both inside and outside the stadium, point up

graphically the complete failure of forced integration here. The incident, coupled with the

skyrocketing rate of Negro crimes of violence against white people, make Washington’s

‘show of integration’ ugly indeed.”193 In a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, the

assistant principal of Eastern High begged the violence not be pinned on all Eastern

students and apologized that the “entire disorderly conduct for the occasion will be used

for slanted propaganda purposes in the metropolitan Washington area as well as the

South.”194 In an editorial in the Washington Afro American, Chuck Stone stated that, “all

of us share this concern. None of us want to see any kind of violence erupt in the capital

of America. To use a lousy metaphor, it blackens us all.”195

To many in Congress, the solution to D.C. crime was increased state power, fewer

protections for the accused, and tougher punishments.196 Police Chief Robert Murray

blamed crime on Supreme Court rulings protecting the rights of the accused: “The

restrictions imposed by those decisions have made it practically impossible to obtain

192 Gerald Grant, “340 Inured in Grid Melee, Surveys Show,” December 16, 1962, B1, Washington Post. “Complete Text of Citizens’ Committee Report on Stadium Melee,” January 11, 1963, B4, Washington Post. Initial reports said 33 people were injured based on hospital records (“33 Injured in Fights at Stadium,” November 23, 1962, A1, Washington Post). 193 “Mississippian Asks Congress to Probe Violence at District Football Game,” December 11, 1962, B1, Washington Post. 194 Madison W. Tignor, “Letters to the Editor,” November 28, 1962, A22, Washington Post. 195 Chuck Stone, “The Day D.C. Cursed the Darkness Instead of Lighting One Candle,” November 27, 1962, 1 &6, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19621127&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 196 There is a growing and influential body of work on “law and order” as a strategy to curtail civil rights gains. See Michael Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012).

convictions of criminals in the many serious cases where neither scientific evidence nor

eyewitness identification is available,” he said.197 Murray insisted the police department

did not need new officers, only fewer restrictions and new powers such as preventative

arrests.198 Many agreed that the police lacked sufficient power and Congressman John

Dowdy even asserted criminals learned how to exploit the perceived lack of police power

through the musical film “The West Side Story.”199 “[T]he Bill of Rights should not be

used as a legal haven for the unsavory criminal element who today is depriving the law-

abiding men, women, and children of another right: the right to walk the streets of the

Nation’s Capital city without fear of bodily harm,” said Senator Alan Bible of Nevada.200

Such statements created a different version of rights in response to the civil rights

movement: there was also “the right” to safety, much as segregationists asserted “the

right” to associate with whom one wanted. “I am here merely as a humble member of at

least that portion of the Washington public which is becoming conscious of the

frightening loss of certain rights hitherto regarded as unalienable--the right to walk in

safety on the public streets of this city and the right to security in our homes or places of

business,” remarked B.M. McKelway of the Citizen’s Crime Commission in 1962.

“These rights are being constantly violated in Washington.”201 To rectify the imbalance

of “rights,” the courts needed to have “as much responsibility in protecting the

197 “Statement of Chief Robert V. Murray, Metropolitan Police Department, District of Columbia,” Crime in the District of Columbia: Joint Hearing before the District of Columbia Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives, 7, 34. 198 “Statement of Chief Robert V. Murray, Crime in the District of Columbia Part 1, 35, 52-55. 199 Crime in the District of Columbia, 88. 200 Crime in the District of Columbia, 3-4. 201 “Remarks by B. M. McKelway, Citizen’s Crime Commission Dinner. Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C., December 10, 1962,” printed in Crime in the District of Columbia, 21-22.

community as it has in protecting the rights of the individual. And it is out of balance.”202

The balance could be restored if criminals had fewer rights, received harsher

punishments, and if police officers had more power. If white people, coded as “law

abiding citizens” or the “community,” lacked rights, then “criminals” were privileged as

the courts and society writ large treated them with “kid gloves” or “mollycoddled” them.

A Washington Star article opined “Too much crime in Washington, of course there is,

and there always will be as long as kid glove treatment of criminals is the rule rather than

the exception.”203 Congressmen suggested “law and order” measures such as building

more prisons, establishing reform schools, criminalizing vagrancy, mandatory minimum

sentences, and “tough love.” Senator Olin Johnson and Representative Omar Burleson

recommended two companies of Marines patrol D.C .204 Many advocated increased

physical punishment in schools and in courts.205 Similarly, after Congressman Winston

Prouty made the caveat that he didn’t “want to be considered a brute or throwback to the

Middle Ages,” he asked, “[D]o you not think that the mere inclusion on the statute books

of the lash as a form of punishment might serve as a very effective deterrent to some of

the crimes perpetrated by youth?”206 “Congress continues to fail to provide adequate

202 “Statement of John E Winters, Deputy Chief, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.,” Crime in the District of Columbia, 115. 203 “Statement of Oliver T. Gasch, Former U.S. Attorney,” Crime in the District of Columbia, 86. 204 Statement of Oliver T. Gasch, Former U.S. Attorney,” Crime in the District of Columbia, 88-90; “Tougher Crime Laws Sought,” January 25, 1958, C11, The Washington Post. “Hill Demands Crackdown on D.C. Crime,” August 26, 1959, A1, Washington Post. Crime in the District of Columbia: Joint Hearing before the District of Columbia Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives on the Increasingly serious crime situation in the District of Columbia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), 58. “Statement of Chief Robert V. Murray, Metropolitan Police Department, District of Columbia,” Crime in the District of Columbia, 50. Statement of John E Winters, Deputy Chief, Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.,” Crime in the District of Columbia, 119. 205 Congressman Dowdy, for example, brought up school spankings repeatedly and claimed the D.C. school district’s ban on corporal punishment made them “absolutely helpless.” Crime in the District of Columbia, 60, 70-71, 88, 92. 206 “Statement of Hon. Alexander Holtzoff, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” Crime in the District of Columbia, 58.

policemen for the Nation and world’s Capital,” Representative Mendel Rivers charged,

“and the judges in the District refuse to pronounce adequate sentences on these

hoodlums, thugs, rapists, and gangsters who are demoralizing and bringing fear and ill

repute to America’s most important city.”207

No one embodied the desire to interfere in D.C. affairs and police the city more

than Senator Robert Byrd, chairman of the Senate District Committee beginning in 1959.

Byrd was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and served one of the longest Senate

careers, only ending with his death in 2010. In 1959, when D.C. crime was still low, Byrd

commented that people reading newspaper “might well form the opinion that this city is a

half-civilized place where it is unsafe to venture into the streets at night.”208 In 1961, he

called for more funding for the police and blamed lenient courts for the issues. “The

courts,” said Byrd, “must be less lenient, must stop mollycoddling criminals, particularly

repeaters.”209 Byrd believed Supreme Court cases expanding civil liberties and the civil

rights movement resulted in increased crime because “[i]n such an atmosphere of

permissiveness, civil disobedience and disrespect for civil law, the seeds of crime took

deeper root, and the Nation is now reaping the harvest.”210

Black activists emphasized the racial element of the crime panic and criticized

police overreach. The Afro American, for example, noted a double standard in how crime

was treated depending on its location in the city and the ability to use it politically: the

crime Congressmen and the police really cared about was crime that with white

207 “100 More Police Asked Immediately for District,” August 27, 1959, B1, Washington Post. 208 “D.C. Crime Curb is Urged in Senate,” August 18, 1959, A7, Washington Post. 209 John J. Lindsay, “Senator to Seek Funds for Police to Stem Crime,” May 14, 1961, A1, Washington Post. 210 “Crime Rise Blamed on High Court,” August 11, 1966, D28, Washington Post.

victims.211 Others examined the irony of blaming civil rights leaders for crime increases

when Southern leaders very recently adopted “massive resistance” to ignore the Supreme

Court’s Brown decision: “[Richard] Nixon need[s] to look again before they blame civil

rights leaders for originating the philosophy of disobeying laws they deem to be unjust.

That doctrine has been followed with complete immunity for years by Southerners.”212

Although he lost, Julius Hobson sued the police department in 1959 for hiring

discrimination and brutality. ACT distributed 15,000 forms to investigate issues of police

brutality. The responses revealed “overwhelming ghetto resentment against the police

department.” ACT members observed busy street corners and witnessed officers lie about how the arrests were made in multiple instances. Hobson himself reported he saw

the Vice Squad on Saturday nights in precincts 9 and 13 wantonly stop and question colored men and women merely standing or walking on the streets. The slightest protest against this harassment brings swift arrest and sometimes brutal or discourteous treatment. Congress wails that Washington streets are unsafe. Indeed they are--for any colored person found walking them late at night in precincts 9, 10, and 13. Congress leads a chorus of cries for more protection by the police while the poor plead for protection from the police.213

By 1964, crime (mostly nonviolent) did rise in D.C. and many in Congress

continued to politicize the issue. Congressman Gordon Allott, for example, called D.C. a

“jungle” and encouraged more citizens to carry guns to solve crime.214 1964 Republican

presidential nominee Barry Goldwater even made D.C. crime a campaign issue, blaming

it on liberal court decisions and poor White House leadership: “Our Nation’s Capital now

211 “A Word to McClellan,” September 8, 1959, 4, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=l1dGAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jOUMAAAAIBAJ&pg=4983%2C33911 43. 212 “Poor Students of History,” August 23, 1966, 4, Washington Afro-American. 213 “Hobson resigns from police advisory post, hits units,” September 14, 1965, 1, The Washington Afro- American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19650914&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 214 “Senator Calls D.C. Jungle, Hits at Courts,” June 14, 1964, A40, Washington Post.

ranks third out of 16 comparable cities in robberies--a place of shame and dishonor that

reflects directly on lack of leadership and concern in the White House.”215 In response to

such criticism, President Johnson and the executive branch increasingly controlled D.C. law enforcement and Johnson instructed Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to make

D.C. a model for criminal justice. Both the House and Senate held hearings on D.C. crime in 1965. In 1966, the House and Senate passed a D.C. crime bill that, among other

provisions, made admissible evidence obtained during unreasonable periods of detention.

Johnson vetoed the bill, however because he believed it violated citizen’s civil liberties.

In 1966, Johnson launched the President’s Commission on Crime in the District of

Columbia which, among other proposals, advocated restructuring the D.C. Police

Department. The Senate, however, blocked the plan.216 “The recommended reforms are

directly related to the Police Department’s effectiveness in dealing with the kind of racial

disorder which has had nearly epidemic proportions in American cities this summer,”

warned an editorial in the Washington Post in 1966. “Delay in this situation is

reckless.”217

Nearly everyone weighed in with disparate ideas as to how to resolve the conflict

between D.C. and the police. Marion Barry recommended police and children play

baseball games together to increase understanding between the groups.218 D.C. created a

citizen review board in 1965 to alleviate tensions. While the board’s report recommended

215 Carroll Kilpatrick, “Goldwater Sees U.S. Becoming a ‘Jungle,’” September 25, 1964, A1, Washington Post. 216 Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia, 19-21. 217 “Playing with Dynamite,” September 3, 1966, A12, Washington Post. 218 “Barry hits police community relations,” August 30, 1966, 1, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19660830&printsec=frontpage&hl =en.

more community control of the police, the measures were not adopted.219 Congressman

Broyhill, convinced the answer to crime was more police power, introduced a bill to turn

over control of the D.C. police to Congress.220 The police did adopt an affirmative action

policy in 1967 to try to hire more black officers but in 1968 the police force was still 80%

white in a city nearly 70% black.221

High-profile confrontations between the police and black Washingtonians

demonstrate the increasing tension between the police and D.C. citizens in the second

half of the decade. First, in 1965 four black boys were taken into police custody for

playing football in an alley behind Park Road in between 13th and 14th Streets Northwest.

As the children were held at the 10th Precinct just a few blocks away, a crowd of 100

people in a “near-riot” gathered outside to protest, some carrying signs that read “Los

Angeles riots were started by Los Angeles police.” Further confrontation was avoided

after Edward Hailes, a representative of the NAACP, convinced the crowd to disperse.

Acting Deputy Chief Howard F. Mowry, head of the District Police Community

Relations Division, blamed the incident on the “poor judgement” of the officers. “I don’t

mind their busting up the football game, but I am critical of their insisting on taking the

kids to the station,” he explained. “There is no question in the world that this is the type

of thing that is going to get us into trouble, if trouble ever comes.”222 Many in the police

219 Hobson was appointed to a police advisory post but eventually resigned due to his frustrations that he could not discuss specific cases of brutality with the police, that the Human Relations Council ignored protests against the police, and that the city failed to take any significant action despite his warnings that riots could easily result from continued police discrimination. “Hobson resigns from police advisory post, hits units,” September 14, 1965, 1, Washington Afro-American. 220 William Raspberry, “D.C. May Lose What Little Voice It Has on Police,” December, 24, 1967, D1, Washington Post. 221 John W. Hechinger Sr. and Gavin Taylor, “Black and Blue: The City Council vs. Police Brutality, 1967- 1969,” Washington History, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 1999/2000), 10. 222 “Act Threatens to March on Police Stations: Charges officers with misconduct,” September 18, 1965, 1, Washington Afro-American,

were incensed at the public criticism. One of the arresting officers who was from West

Virginia asked for Senator Robert Byrd to defend him. Byrd did interviews with all

officers involved and actively protected them from criticism and punishment.223

African Americans argued the boys would not have been arrested if they were

white but because they were black, “they marched them to a call box, and summoned a

patrol wagon to haul them off to jail, as if they were vicious criminals.” As long as police

officers defended such actions, some insisted, “[T]here can be no real understanding

between the police and the citizen….Only when mistakes are honestly admitted can the

public feel the confidence it should in its police department.”224 Although Police Chief

Layton warned the Department he would not condone “abuse of authority or unwarranted

force” by police officers when making arrests, Julius Hobson still led a march against the

police and called for the removal of the arresting officers. “All we’ve had are...words and

more words,” he asserted. “If Layton is sincere about police abuse, then he ought to move

the men responsible for it. He ought to treat the brutal policemen like the criminal that he

is.” To improve community-police relations, Hobson insisted, “The Department ought to

send a police official into the ghetto…rather than talk to me, the Rev. Walter Fauntroy or

Edward Hailes of the NAACP.” He further warned future police misconduct could result in riots and specified H St NE, U St NW, and 14th St NW as likely hotspots due to the

https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19650928&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. “Near riot still causing comment,” September, 14, 1965, 1, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19650914&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. Paul Valentine, “An Alley Game That Became a Near-Riot,” September 25, 1965, B1, Washington Post. 223 Alfred E. Lewis, “W. Virginia Senator Probing Police Role in Melee Following Football Game,” November 17, 1965, B1, Washington Post. 224 “Memo To Capt. Gooding,” September 14, 1965, 1, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19650914&printsec=frontpage&hl =en.

frequent “targeting and misconduct he saw when he watched police activity.”225

After an altercation between police and protesters in Southeast, D.C. in August

1966, Commissioner Walter Tobriner demanded more investment in community

programs: “[L]aw enforcement efforts cannot cure the underlying ailments of our city.

The answers must come from practical, broad-range efforts, such as the Demonstration

Cities Program.”226 Nationally recognized black power advocate Stokely Carmichael227 got involved and criticized the police in D.C., the white press, undemocratic practices, and the “business establishment” at a rally. “I don’t think any black person ought to apologize,” he insisted, “for what the black brothers did out there.” He demanded that since white people flocked to the suburbs, they should take their “cracker” policemen with them and appoint black officers “picked by the black community” as precinct captains. “If you tell them you’re going to burn down the city,” he predicted, “I bet you get the vote.”228

In August 1966, passions flared again after a late-night encounter in the 14th

precinct in Northeast. A group of young black people gathered along Kenilworth Avenue

NE, ostensibly to fight another group after an earlier confrontation. Nearly 200 teenagers

threw rocks and bricks at passing cars (almost all with black drivers), set small trash fires,

and pulled fire alarms to “raise hell anyway” after the other side did not show up to the

225 “Hobson resigns from police advisory post, hits units,” September 14, 1965, 1, Washington Afro- American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19650914&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 226 “Tobriner Cites unrest, praises police efforts,” September 13, 1966, 1, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19660913&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 227 Carmichael later adopted the name Kwame Toure. As other scholars, including his biographer Peniel Joseph, have done, I refer to him as “Stokely Carmichael” as this was the name he used at this time and is what is used in all documents and articles I cite from the period. 228 “Carmichael holds rally in Southeast,” August 23, 1966, 1, Washington Afro-American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19650914&printsec=frontpage&hl =en.

fight. Police and firemen were greeted with rocks as they arrived on the scene. Captain

Culpepper, a white officer from the 14th precinct, sealed off the area from traffic and

ordered his officers away from the group. He then called community and religious leaders

and asked they convince the youths to disperse. Community leaders came and convinced

the teenagers to disperse and go home, resolving the disturbance by 3:00 A.M.229

Most of the local press and civil rights leaders praised both Culpepper and the 14th

precinct’s generally good track-record in dealing with the community. 230 Senator Byrd,

however, excoriated Culpepper on the Senate floor and went to the 14th precinct to

personally berate him for being “derelict in his duty” because he did not arrest the

teenagers. Instead of tempered police responses, he urged stationing troops to “curb

unruly mobs in Washington.”231 A Post editorial charged that Byrd’s resistance to police

restraint endangered the community:

Senator Robert Byrd undoubtedly has the power, although hardly the moral right, to play with dynamite in the explosive atmosphere of this city’s current racial tension. But he ought to understand that his interference in the operations of the Washington police department present the gravest imaginable danger to human life and public order. He has been engaged in nothing less than the encouragement of mutiny and the incitement of violence.232

Byrd and white Washingtonians resistant to police criticism increasingly blamed

crime on civil rights leaders who sought police reform by insisting such criticism hurt

“police morale” and thus increased crime. After conducting interviews with D.C. police,

Byrd charged that “There is almost to a man the feeling that many of the problems of the

Police Department are generated, compounded and multiplied by...civil rights

229 Claude Koprowski and Jesse W. Lewis Jr., “Police Curb Outbreak in Northwest,” August 24, 1966, A1, Washington Post. Harrison Young, “Layton Now Will Talk to Anacostia Probers,” September 3, 1966, A1, Washington Post. 230 Harrison Young, “Layton Now Will Talk to Anacostia Probers,” September 3, 1966, A1, Washington Post. 231 “Troops Use Here Urged in Senate,” September 23, 1966, A27, Washington Post. 232 “Playing With Dynamite,” September 3, 1966, A12, Washington Post.

72 organizations.” Police officers reported they were hesitant to arrest black people because they feared they would be charged with brutality.233 In a 1967 report, D.C. officers asserted their low morale was because “courts and civil rights advocates have hampered law enforcement by excessive concern for the rights of defendants and have diminished respect for the police by extravagant charges of brutality and misconduct.”234 Byrd was even upset when the President’s Crime Commission urged the Department to ban officers from using racial slurs or calling black men “boy.”235 When D.C. residents called for an investigation of the police after officers killed and unarmed black man in 1967, Byrd chastised activists because their “drumhead justice” further hurt police morale.

Congressman Joel Broyhill charged that investigations would make the D.C. government look weak and “engulf the city in a wave of lawlessness.”236 Police officers’ wives defended their husbands against criticism. After the Post called for police restraint, 70 police wives went to the newspaper’s offices to demand better treatment of their husbands. “Specifically, the wives complained that news media play up stories that result in demonstrators and lawbreakers being ‘pampered,’” the Post reported, “but fail to give adequate attention to the problems and indignities suffered by Washington policemen.”

“How come nothing is printed about how bad our husbands are hurt?” the wives asked,

“They always say how bad the Negroes are hurt.” In an op-ed in the Post, the group of wives called for more police power and greater use of force, including shotguns and K-9 dogs to stop crime.237

Numerous Washingtonians rejected the notion that citizens owed law enforcement

233 “Police Lack Support, Byrd Report Charges,” August 8, 1967, B2, Washington Post. 234 “Police Morale,” July 4, 1967, A16, Washington Post. 235 “Support Your Police,” October 10, 1966, A16, Washington Post. 236 “Byrd, Broyhill Denounce Booker Death Probe,” May 12, 1967, B1, Washington Post. 237 “News Media Not Presenting Police Side, 70 Wives Charge,” September 9, 1968, Washington Post, C1.

uncritical support. William Raspberry, an African American columnist for the

Washington Post, argued that “One reason for the low state of police-community

relations here (and the resultant lack of citizen cooperation in law enforcement) is that the

fact too few Washingtonians have been able to feel that the police force was their own,”

Raspberry contended. “Too many policeman live outside the city: too many citizens have

viewed the police as an occupying army; there being no local self-government, the

citizenry has no effective means of determining what men--or what type of men--head the

police force.”238 The Post editorial staff asserted that broad calls for police support really served to silence and oppress black Washingtonians: [T]he slogan, ‘support your local police,’ has been taken over in a curious way by people who seem to mean by it ‘support your local police against the community’--or at least against its poor people and its colored people, who, given the discriminatory character of educational and employment opportunities in recent decades, tend to be the same.”239 Hobson also challenged the

notion that police lacked power or support and illuminated the sharp divide in the

perceptions of policed populations and the police themselves:

At meeting after meeting I have listened to policemen complain about their difficulty in making arrests because of constitutional guarantees imposed by the courts. These men have raised a continuing cry for more authority, more right to make arbitrary arrests, to turn more dogs loose in the poorest and most oppressed neighborhoods and the right to hold and question suspects until they, the police, decide that the suspect should have legal counsel. These three official bodies have been silent partners in this conspiracy against the poor. And in the current crime rate hysteria, the Department itself appears bent on substantiating racist charges about high colored crime. For I have personally watched the Vice Squad on Saturday nights in precincts 9 and 13 wantonly stop and question colored men and women merely standing or walking on the streets. The slightest protest against this harassment brings swift arrest and sometimes brutal or discourteous treatment. Congress wails that Washington streets are unsafe. Indeed they are--for

238 William Raspberry, “D.C. May Lose What Little Voice It Has on Police,” December, 24, 1967, D1, The Washington Post. 239 “Support Your Police,” October 10, 1966, A16, The Washington Post.

any colored person found walking them late at night in precincts 9, 10, and 13. “Congress leads a chorus of cries for more protection by the police,” Hobson concluded,

“while the poor plead for protection from the police.240

III: “The Nation’s Capital Is in a Sweat:” Rising Tensions 1967-1968 Two developments in 1968 made D.C. the focal point of the national black

freedom struggle. First, Stokely Carmichael arrived in D.C. and quickly riled the white

and black community. Carmichael was the former national chairman of SNCC and his

name was nearly synonymous with black power and radicalism. Simultaneously, Martin

Luther King, Jr. announced the Poor People’s March, set for late April 1968. Thousands

of poor people of all races would set up camp on the national mall to demand Congress

pass anti-poverty legislation. While black leaders were divided on the desirability of

these developments, Congress, the national media, the Federal Bureau of Investigation

(FBI), and locals fretted that the increased agitation for change would lead to riots.

Six months after announcing his plans to settle in D.C., Carmichael arrived in

January 1968 and quickly created the Black United Front (BUF). Nearly 100 black

political leaders attended the first meeting to organize the BUF and members included

Marion Barry, the publisher of the Washington Informer Calvin Rolark, Reverend

Channing Phillips, City Council member Walter Fauntroy, Reginald H. Booker of the

ECTC, and Chuck Stone.241 Carmichael aimed to create a coalition between militants and

moderates to lessen infighting between black groups and leaders and create a “black take-

240 “Hobson resigns from police advisory post, hits units,” September 14, 1965, 1, The Washington Afro- American, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19650914&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 241 Peniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas, 2014), 235; “Minutes of the Black United Front,” February 13, 1968, Box 16, Folder 14: “Black Empowerment, Black United Front, April-May 1968,” MS 2070 Walter Fauntroy Papers, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

over” of the police department, schools, and welfare department.242 Many were not

impressed with Carmichael and some actively resisted his presence and ideas. Sterling

Tucker said he would only attend the BUF’s first meeting if convenient and insisted, “I don’t see anything special about this meeting. It’s just another meeting of a community group.”243 Tucker’s organization, the Urban League, was skeptical and declined to

formally commit to the organization until its mission was clearer. H. Carl Moultrie,

president of the NAACP D.C. branch, declined to be part of the group’s leadership

board.244 Whitney Young, while a member of the BUF, insisted he would resist any

attempt from Carmichael to take over the BUF leadership.245 18 clergy members from the

Committee of 100 Ministers publicly announced their “unalterable” opposition to

Carmichael and the Black United Front.246 Nevertheless, many moderates including

Walter Fauntroy participated.

Asked why he selected D.C. as his base, Carmichael replied, “Washington

represents the clearest contradictions of black and white in America. Yet, it is the Capital

of this country. Washington must begin to represent to people around the world what this

country is all about.”247 Carmichael, however, did not mean D.C. should become a

beacon of democracy to the world to promote America abroad as many before him

suggested—he meant that D.C. should illuminate the corruptness of the American way of

life and dramatize its hypocriticalness. When asked why he chose Washington, the young

242 For more on Carmichael’s interest in unifying the black community, see Joseph, Stokely: A Life, 231- 236. 243 Robert C. Maynard, “Rights ‘Unity’ Session Called by Carmichael,” January 9, 1968, A1, Washington Post. 244 Robert C. Maynard, “Urban League Wary of Black United Front,” January 18, 1968, A1, Washington Post. 245 Joseph, Stokely: A Life, 235-236. 246 William Raspberry, “Ministers Can’t Speak for Flocks,” January 15, 1968, B1, Washington Post. 247 Maynard, “Urban League Wary of Black United Front.”

leader stated, “It seems to me it must represent clearly in the minds of people around the

world exactly what this country is about and [nonwhites elsewhere] must not be

‘brainwashed’…in Africa our brothers will be able to see through all that nonsense the

honkies are trying to put down.” 248 At a press conference, a reporter read aloud a

previous statement from Carmichael: “Before you create revolution, you have to heighten

contradiction. As long as there is hope, people are not going to fight. They won’t fight

unless you push…You create disturbances, you keep pushing the system until they have

to hit back.” Asked if this was his intention with the BUF, Carmichael replied with a

slight smile: “It’s pretty clear…by involving [moderates] with the masses, it will show

them the contradictions.” Heightening these contradictions was “pretty simple in the

District of Columbia.”249

Sensationalized stories and concern about Carmichael furthered debate over who

really spoke for the black community. After a group of ministers condemned Carmichael,

columnist William Raspberry dismissed their claim to speak for their congregations:

“Even if churches have a combined membership of a fifth of the city’s Negro population,

as they claim, there is no reason to suppose that they speak for these 100,000 members on

political, social or civil rights matters. No one supposes that the NAACP officials who

were at the Tuesday night meeting spoke for all card-carrying NAACP members, or that

Urban League officials spoke for all members of that group.”250 One self-described

“ordinary Negro,” asked, “Why is it that people never pay any attention to what we

ordinary Negroes think? Let Stokely Carmichael or somebody come into town to raise

248 Robert C. Maynard, “Carmichael Enigma: What Are His Aims,” January 21, 1968, A1, Washington Post. 249 Maynard, “Carmichael Enigma,” Washington Post. 250 William Raspberry, “Ministers Can’t Speak for Flocks,” January 15, 1968, B1, Washington Post.

hell, and you can’t see him for reporters. People get the impression that he’s speaking for

us. He’s not, but we don’t have any way to make our voices heard.”251 Black youth’s

tepid reception to Carmichael’s message also suggested that Carmichael could not claim

to speak for large flocks as easily as he wished. In a rally held at Howard University by

SNCC and attended by Carmichael, only 100 students gathered while many others were

out on campus to sing fraternity and sorority songs and practice in hazing rituals.”252 At

an assembly at nearly all-black Roosevelt High School, Carmichael struggled to keep the

students attention and admitted, “This was a bad session.”253

Nevertheless, Carmichael’s presence created alarm. “Stokely Carmichael says

he’s coming, and the nation’s capital is in a sweat,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

“Other segments of the white community here fear the Carmichael brand of ‘black

power’ may provide the germ to an epidemic of trouble. And for good reason. The Negro

militant is threatening to declare ‘all-out war’ on the District of Columbia.”254 Martin

Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign (PPC), set to begin on April 15, also stoked fears

of violence. The Washington Field Office of the F.B.I. even considered and implemented

strategies to “foster disunity” in the BUF, discredit Stokely Carmichael in the black

community, paint King as a “hypocrite,” and mitigate King’s PPC fundraising

campaign.255

251 William Raspberry, “Racial Moderates Want to Be Heard,” June 5, 1967, B1, Washington Post. 252 “Fraternities Upstage Militants’ Rally,” March 9, 1968, B1, Washington Post. 253 Paul W. Valentine, “Carmichael Razzed at High School Talk,” February 14, 1968, A1, Washington Post. It is a true statement to the media frenzy surrounding Carmichael that a lackluster speech at a high school made the front page of the Post. 254 “Calm in the Capital,” June 23, 1967, Wall-Street Journal. 255 Memo to F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, April 2, 1968; Memorandum to F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, April 4, 1968, “FBI surveillance records from the COINTELPRO Black Extremist program from August 1967-April 1968, including memo on the establishment of counterintelligence program targeting "black nationalist-hate type organizations" and goals of the program.” “Counterintelligence program black nationalist-hate groups racial intelligence (Washington Spring Project),” Memo to W.C. Sullivan to G.C.

While King threatened civil disobedience to disrupt the government, he also

assured the press that the thousands of people coming to D.C. to set up camp on the mall

were trained in nonviolence. To quell the concerns over the impending Poor People’s

Campaign and Carmichael’s continued presence, Mayor Walter E. Washington delivered

a televised interview to urge D.C. residents to not “overreact.” When asked about

Carmichael, Washington said the militant was operating in “an orderly fashion” to “unify

many of the black residents who have turned to unity” as a political strategy.256 Still, the

city prepared. D.C. police attended PPC planning meetings in Atlanta to anticipate potential unrest. In a letter to the Board of Trade, an insurance company urged business owners to “develop [their] own riot protection plan.”257 A local news station argued “The

expenses which demonstrators thrust upon the public should be covered by bonds.”258

Both the national and local discourse speculated if 1968 would be another “long,

hot summer.” Many local leaders thought the chances of a riot in Washington were low

because the federal government was too large of a target and citizens were too apathetic.

One article threatened the possibility of “all-out war” and argued D.C. had the ingredients for a racial riot: “dilapidated housing, segregated neighborhoods, high unemployment among Negro youngsters, poverty, bad police-ghetto relations, poor schools and limited welfare help” and a large black population. But it concluded riots were unlikely because

Moore, March 26, 1968; Memo to W.C. Sullivan to G.C. Moore, March 29, 1968, “FBI COINTELPRO Black Extremists surveillance files for April-July 1968 with documentation on Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Elijah Muhammad, LeRoi Jones, SCLC, and the Nation of Islam.” All documents found in “FBI Files on Black Extremist Organizations, Part 1: COINTELPRO Files on Black Hate Groups and Investigation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 256 Robert L. Asher, “Stay Calm in Protests, City Urged,” March 3, 1968, L1, Washington Post. 257 Russell, Marsh, and Kennedy, Inc., “Riot,” March 25, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 34 “Special TF: Civil Disturbances—correspondence,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 258 “Paying for the Damage,” March 31, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 36 “Special TF: Civil Disturbances— clippings,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

there was “a near unanimity with which local Negro leaders, ranging from the very

militant to the nonviolent, predict relative calm—Stokely Carmichael and white anxiety notwithstanding. Their basic reason: Washington’s Negro population seems less discontented than that of other cities.” They trusted the assessment of local leaders because “These...are the men who know the Washington Negro best because for years they have tried and failed to mobilize him to various kind of protest.” Hobson thought riots were unlikely because “Nobody has moved Washington…You could take a little black girl, dress her in organdy, take her downtown, pour gas over her, burn her, and it wouldn’t move this community.” Gatson Neal, the director of the New School of Afro-

American Thought, remarked that “Everybody’s ready here but the black man who’s supposed to start it.” Fauntroy referenced his difficulty in getting people to attend a march for welfare in 1965 as a reason he thought uprisings unlikely. Reverend Channing

Phillips believed disorders would not occur because the federal government was too big of a target. “The present consensus is that the capital will suffer tension, perhaps some threats and rock-throwing, but probably nothing worse,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

“The reasoning is based on the same unique qualities of the city that, in all likelihood,

attracted the Carmichael eye to Washington: It is the nation’s capital, and its citizenry is

largely Negro…As the capital, this city has no elected mayor and no city council to

govern it: instead, there is a Presidentially appointed Board of Commissioners--and

Congress. Anger needs a target, and in this town the top target is both distant and

awesome.” Sterling Tucker, however, predicted violence and tensions in Cardozo and

Anacostia, the “dumping ground for the rest of Washington.”259

259 “Calm in the Capital,” June 23, 1967, Wall-Street Journal.

Similarly, the FBI believed D.C. enjoyed “racial tranquility” but worried about the arrival of Carmichael and King. In a report assessing the likelihood of riots in D.C., the FBI argued

Washington is now two-thirds Negro and has a higher percentage of Negroes than any other major city in the United States. Its recent racial record has been comparatively peaceful, but danger signals have arisen as a result of Stokely Carmichael's present efforts to create a Black United Front in Washington and Martin Luther King's plans for a massive civil disobedience demonstration in the Nation's Capital this spring. Were it not for Carmichael and King, Washington could probably look forward to another year of comparative racial peace...But Carmichael's current organizing activity and King's schedule demonstration bode ill for this city. Nevertheless, D.C. was less volatile than other cities, the FBI believed, because D.C. had a “responsible middle class” who would prevent riots and "Its Negro ghettos are spread out and interspersed with pleasant neighborhoods.” As the capital and “showcase of our democratic system, there is an intense awareness and concern by Federal and District officials alike for what happens here.” Recent reforms, including the appointment of

Walter Washington as mayor, “evoked a generally favorable response among the Negro population, giving ghetto residents hope for a more satisfying future."260 A mere month after the release of the FBI memo, violence riled the nation’s capital in the wake of

King’s assassination.

260 Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Outlook for Racial Violence in Washington, D.C.,” March 11, 1968, Reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2015.

Chapter 2: “You Just Can’t Expect People Not to Act This Way:” April 4-16, 1968

“It’s Just Really for Real:” The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yvonne Baskerville was driving home when a radio news bulletin announced Dr.

King was shot outside of his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. “I thought I was going to have

a stroke,” she recalled. “I mean I was just devastated…You didn’t know that he was

dead, you prayed that he wasn’t dead, but you just knew everything that he’d worked so

hard for, everything he had planned and prayed for was just gone.” Once home, she sat in

the car to collect herself before she went inside to be with her children and great-

grandfather. Born in 1872, the elderly African American considered King a “saint” and

was devastated by his assassination: “[H]e just really lost it. He was so pained that this

could happen in America, that someone could really kill him, you know, not an accident,

not lightning or anything unusual, that someone could plan and plot and kill such a man

of peace was just unbelievable. So that night we didn’t sleep, we couldn’t sleep.”261

“Everybody in my house was crying….my uncles, my aunts, my mother, my

father, everybody,” reflected Elizabeth Williams Frazier, an African American D.C.

native.262 Bonnie Perry, a 13-year-old in 1968, witnessed “people upset

everywhere…crying and holding one another and fussing and cussing and walking up

and down the street. It was like confusion everywhere.” To Perry, the sadness was

coupled with a profound sense of hopelessness: “It was like there was no hope for the

261 “Yvonne Baskerville interview transcript,” May 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/216/rec/41. 262 “Elizabeth Williams Frazier interview transcript,” April 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/227/rec/42.

future. He was the person that was most prominent as a black leader at that time, and now

he’s gone. So it’s like what do you have to live for?”263

Some Washingtonians were eating at Ben’s Chili Bowl, a restaurant on U Street,

when they learned King was shot outside his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. According to

Virginia Ali, who owned and operated the eatery with her husband Ben, the patrons

anxiously wondered “What’s happening? What’s happening? What’s happening?”264 Just

a block and a half away at the intersection of 14th and U Streets Northwest, large crowds

congregated on the sidewalks after radios and television programs broke the news at 7:30

PM.265 14th and U was one of the busiest intersections in the city and a critical juncture for black Washington. The U Street bus line was the one of the only routes that transported people from Northwest to Northeast D.C. The 14th Street line funneled people

from the “inner city” to offices and shops downtown. Abundant take-out eateries, liquor

shops, and drug stores allowed commuters to run errands on their way home from work.

The primary shopping destination for the city’s African Americans was just a few blocks

north along 14th Street. Shoe and clothing shops, grocery stores, and car dealerships lined

the road. The area was also the city’s “nerve center” for civil rights activism. The

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded and led by King, had its

Washington office above the People’s Drug Store at 14th and U. The D.C. branches of the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress on Racial Equality

263 “Bonnie Perry Interview,” October 22, 2002, Box 1, Folder 4, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 264 “Virginia Ali Interview,” February 23, 2003, Box 1, Folder 1, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 265 Ben Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 14. Unless specified otherwise, all times are in Eastern Standard Time.

(CORE) were all located within a couple blocks.266

People gathered on the street below the SCLC office to seek the guidance of the

organization King led and some went into the office in search of news from Memphis.

Betty Wolden, a white NBC reporter on location, said 14th and U felt “ominous—like

before a hurricane strikes.”267 Police closely monitored the crowd but did not disperse it

because “the mood of the group was…one of shock and dismay rather than of anger” and

the department believed it would be “futile and probably an incensing dispersal of the

assembly.”268

Police officers used a similar tactic to quell a disturbance at the same intersection

two evenings prior. A group of 300 rowdy black youth gathered at the Peoples Drug

Store the night of April 2nd. A month before, the store hired security guards to deter

shoplifters and tensions over the decision persisted. After white policemen appeared, the

teenagers threw bottles and stones at the officers. Firemen arrived to put out a small fire

started in a tree. Believing the visible police presence further inflamed the situation,

Lieutenant Joseph Frye removed uniformed officers from the area. Activist Stokely

Carmichael was moving furniture from the old SNCC office into its new building when

he encountered the confrontation. The black power advocate had moved to D.C. in early

1968 and formed the Black United Front as a coalition of moderate and militant black

266 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 13. 267 Gilbert, 10 blocks from the White House, 14. 268 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Documents from this report are indicated by their title within the report as the document does not use page numbers. The Office of Emergency Preparedness characterized the initial mood at 14th and U as one of “shock and sadness.” “Operation Bandaid One,” 1968, Box 1, Folder “April 4-8,” RG 23 Office of Emergency Preparedness Records, District of Columbia Archives, Washington, D.C. Gilbert’s Ten Blocks also describes the initial mood of people on the street as one of shock. See Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 15.

Washingtonians. Carmichael urged the crowd to “go home” and the crowd eventually dispersed.269 The assembly on April 4th was much larger than the previous night, however, and this time it would not be tamed.270

At 8:20 PM, a news bulletin over the radio announced Dr. King was dead.271 At the Washington Hilton, Vice President Hubert Humphrey broke the news to the D.C. politicos gathered at a Democratic party fundraiser. King’s assassination “stunned the participants and plunged them into a mood of immediate, gloomy concern.”272 Not everyone, however, was saddened. One lobbyist in attendance smiled and remarked “Of course I’m from the South and I’m glad.” A Congressman “grumbled that he saw no reason to adjourn the dinner ‘just because of this.’”273 All speeches and President Lyndon

B. Johnson’s appearance were cancelled and the “filet mignon dinner was barely consumed before the event was ended.”274

A mile away at Ben’s Chili Bowl, religious music played over the radio as people in tears came into the restaurant. “People are talking about it,” recalled Ben’s co-owner

269 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 13-14; “Operation Bandaid One,” Office of Emergency Preparedness Records, 1; “Stokely Helps Quell Row,” April 3, 1968, Washington Daily News, 5, Washingtoniana Periodicals, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.; Peniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas, 2014), 250-251. 270 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 14. 271 Gilbert’s 10 Blocks records the announcement at 8:19 p.m. while police accounts place it at 8:20 p.m. Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 4; “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 1, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 272 “Death Puts Gloom on Dinner Party,” April 5, 1968, final night edition, Washington Star, B-1, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 36. Ramsey Clark oral history confirms that Vice President Humphrey was speaking that night. See “Attorney General Ramsey Clark oral history interview on race riots during the Johnson administration,” March 21, 1969, 22, Found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part III: Oral Histories,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 273 “King Death: A Turning Point?” April 7, 1968, Washington Star, A-4, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 274 “Death Puts Gloom on Dinner Party,” Washington Star. My account deemphasizes the reaction of President Lyndon B. Johnson. For more on Johnson’s decision-making in the crisis, see Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, New Jersey, 2009).

Virginia Ali. “This was a gentle man. This was a man that didn’t believe in violence. And

look how violently he dies.” Beyond grief, she remembered the disbelief: “It’s not real.

We don’t believe this…and then you turn on the TV, you turn on the radio and you hear

that this is really for real. It’s just really for real.”275 WOL, a popular “soul” music radio

station, played organ music as DJ Bob Terry pleaded, “This is no time to hate. Hate

won’t get you anywhere. And let me tell you something too, white man. Tomorrow

before you get back in that car and go out to the suburban house, you better say

something nice to that black man on the job beside you. You’d better stop hating too.”276

To many black Americans, King was an exceptional figure who embodied their

hope for freedom and equal rights. His assassination extinguished that hope and laid bare

the ugly reality that many Americans opposed that dream. “Here’s a man who’s tried his

best nonviolently to get more jobs and better living facilities and bring equality to all

people…and they take this nonviolent man and kill him violently,” reflected Virginia Ali.

“[T]he kids just couldn’t understand that, the kids just got mad and they reacted not just

in Washington but across the country.”277 “[W]hat was so hurtful was that Martin Luther

King was assassinated the way that took place,” said Washingtonian Betty May Brooks-

Cole. “I immediately labeled the person as a coward because here was a peaceful guy, a non-violent guy, that was only trying to promote freedom and equal rights for everyone, which we really needed because, as a white person you would not understand how it

275 “Virginia Ali Interview,” February 23, 2003, Box 1, Folder 1, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 276 Gilbert, 10 Blocks from the White House, 17. Also see “The City’s Turmoil: The Night it Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” April 14, 1968, The Washington Post, A1. 277 “The Shaw Community: The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement, as told by Mrs. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl,” 26-27, Box 1, Folder 9: “Interview with Virginia Ali,” MS 2285 Ben’s Chili Bowl Papers, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

impacted us on a daily basis, being discriminated against.”278 Native Washingtonian

Reuben Jackson discussed this sense of disillusionment in an oral history interview:

Martin Luther King had a speech where he said…we just want America to be true to what you have on paper279…I think what the assassination said was that there were people who were not interested in saying the premise on which this country was based, that they weren’t really interested in seeing it carried out for everyone…. So I think that this was confirmation that there were and are forces who just said no, we’re not having this.… It’s just like someone tapping you on the shoulder saying, ‘Well, but it’s not like that.’ And yet I think that just bothered people….I just think there was just this anger, like, ‘How? How could you?’ You know, ‘Here we go again.’280 In this moment of hopelessness and anger, many blamed King’s death on white people writ large. African American Washington Post reporter William Raspberry wrote that the violence started with the outrage that a white man killed King and “in a matter of hours, the victim had become, in the eyes of too many of us, all black people; and the murderer was no longer one stupid, hate-filled white man, nor even bigoted white Southerners. It was that generic Whitey[.]” Some felt “that Whitey had shown his true colors, Whitey had killed the one man who had given black people hope that non-violence could work; that Whitey had killed the man who merited the title ‘Negro leader’ if anybody ever deserved that overused term; that Whitey had declared war on black people.”281 As

Washingtonians responded to King’s death, some acted upon their anger at this generic

“Whitey.”

278 “Betty May Brooks-Cole interview transcript,” South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/250/rec/45. 279 This is a reference to King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 23, 1963 at the Washington March for Jobs and Freedom. King said the Declaration of Independence and Constitution promised all men equal rights but America had never lived up to his promise—it wrote African American a “bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” King said the people at the march had come to “cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm). 280 “Reuben M. Jackson Interview,” 12-14, Box 1, Folder 2, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 281 William Raspberry, “Dr. King and His Killer Became Symbols,” Washington Post, April 7, 1968, D1.

Back at 14th and U, many people’s initial shock evolved into bitterness and rage.282 By 8:30, just 10 minutes after the crowd learned of King’s death, officers requested another police wagon to “control [the] crowd throwing bottles.”283 At the

SCLC office overlooking the intersection, Rev. Arnold Davis called Walter Fauntroy, head of the local chapter of the SCLC and Vice Chairman of the City Council, to inform him of the angry crowd gathering below. Fauntroy agreed to attempt to calm them.284

Soon after at 8:52, Stokely Carmichael left his nearby office to ask stores to close. “They took our leader, so, out of respect, we’re gonna ask all these stores to close down until

Martin Luther King is laid to rest,” he declared. “If Kennedy had been killed, they’d have done it.”285 As Carmichael went from shop to shop, a pack followed him and shooed customers out of the stores.286 Most shopkeepers easily complied with the request. As the group entered the People’s Drug Store at about 9:00, President Johnson’s address played over the radio: “I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence…We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. Only by joining together and only by working together can

282 Multiple accounts document this shift. See Gilbert, 10 Blocks from the White House, 15; “The City’s Turmoil: The Night it Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” April 14, 1968, Washington Post, A1, Proquest; “Operation Bandaid One,” 2, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records; “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 283 “Operation Bandaid One,” 2, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records. 284 “The City’s Turmoil: The Night it Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. This article places the call at 8:26 p.m., 6 minutes after King’s death was announced. 285 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 17. See also “The City’s Turmoil: The Night it Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. 286“ The City’s Turmoil: The Night it Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. The account of Carmichael leading a crowd to ask stores to close is also supported by the police account. See “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968.

88 we continue to move toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people.” 287

Walter Fauntroy similarly urged peace as he met Carmichael at 14th and Wallach

Place, a block south of U Street, at 9:15. While the two men differed ideologically, they had interacted for months as members of the Black United Front. Grabbing Carmichael’s arms, Fauntroy pleaded “This is not the way to do it, Stokely. Let’s not get anyone hurt.

Let’s cool it.” “All they were doing,” Carmichael assured Fauntroy, was asking stores to close and Fauntroy left convinced this was a “useful channeling of the frustration.”

Carmichael resumed his mission and the crowd following the militant grew larger, at one point stretching almost a full block behind him.288 Street corners all along 14th Street were increasingly crowded as people grappled with their shock and anger.289

As Carmichael traversed the streets, he subdued some calls for violence. As someone yelled they would “kill whites,” Carmichael turned around asked “Are you ready to kill? How you gonna win? They got guns, tanks. What do you got? If you don’t your gun, go home. We’re not ready. Let’s wait until tomorrow. Cool it.”290 When a woman broke a window at the Belmont TV and Appliance Store, SNCC workers blocked people from taking television sets. Carmichael grabbed two children trying to get past,

287 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 15. “Statement by the President on the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” April 4, 1968, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28781. The presidential diary also indicates Johnson gave the speech between 9:05 and 9:10 pm. “President’s Daily Diary, April 4, 1968,” Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library online, http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/daily-diary.html. 288 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 18, 20-21; “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. 289 Operation Bandaid One,” 3-4, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records. The report specifically indicates a crowd of 300 people 2324 14th Street which is at the intersection of 14th and Belmont. Reports from the Office of Emergency Preparedness, described Bill Branch of the D.C. Archives as “the Department of Homeland Security for Washington,” indicated the crowd at 14th and U grew especially large after 9: 00 and between 9:25 and 9:40 people gathered at 14th and T St and 14th and Belmont. 290 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 21. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. It is likely these accounts were drawn from the plainclothes police officers in the crowd. The report from the Office of Emergency Preparedness also mentions Carmichael was “in Northwest Washington trying to stop looting.” See “Operation Bandaid One,” 8, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records.

took a gun out of his waistband, and shouted “If you mean business, you should have a

gun. You’re not ready for the ‘thing.’ Go home. Go home.”291 After hearing what

sounded like gun shots (it was actually glass breaking), Carmichael wrestled a firearm

from a man and demanded people: “Go home, go home, go home. None of this. None of

this, we’re not ready…You won’t get [a leader] like this. You’ll just get shot. Go

home.”292 In an interview the following day, Carmichael insisted he did not mind people

breaking windows, but he thought it was unsafe to be on the street without guns because

black people would be shot in confrontations with the police.293 Thus, people should go

home to stay safe. His followers did not heed his advice.

There was no one definitive event that ignited the pattern of window-breaking, looting, and arson that erupted that night. Washington Post reporters believed the first incident of property damage occurred at the Republic Theatre on U Street when a boy punched his hand through the glass and took a bag of popcorn at 9:37.294 The police

department, however, first reported window breaking and looting at 9:30 at a Safeway

grocery store a few blocks north of U Street.295 In an oral history interview, Virginia Ali

asserted that a brick thrown through a store window at 14th and U sparked the

291 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 22. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. 292 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 22-23. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. The Office of Emergency Preparedness also received reports that Carmichael was attempting to stop looting. “Operation Bandaid One,” 8, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records. 293 “District: New wave of violence erupts in Northwest,” Washington Evening Star, April 5, 1968, A1. 294 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 20. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. 295 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. The Office of Emergency Preparedness received the first information of window breaking at 10:10 p.m. and the first report of breaking and entering at 1930 14th Street at 10:15. The preface to their report put the start of the disturbance at just before 10:00 p2m. Operation Bandaid One,” preface, 4-5, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records.

upheaval.296 According to the Washington Post, at roughly 9:54, some men at 14th and U

kicked and broke a window and a man threw a trash can through the storefront of the

Peoples Drug Store before throwing a bottle through a liquor store window.297 Lillian

Wiggins, a reporter for the Washington Afro American, witnessed people looting liquor, clothing, and electronic stores when she arrived at 14th and U at about 10:00.298 The Fire

Department received its first call at 10:50 after two cars were set ablaze at 14th and

Belmont.299

The consistencies in each account reveal the essential story of how the

disturbances began. After the news broke that King was shot, crowds congregated at the

intersection of 14th and U and more people assembled after they learned King was dead.

Stokely Carmichael began asking stores to close shortly before 9:00 and the crowds

following him grew as he went store to store. After 9:30 there were scattered instances of

window-breaking and minor looting. Shortly before 10:00 the uprisings began in earnest

as more and more people broke into shops.

SNCC workers could no longer block people from entering stores and “Youths

with television sets, electrical appliances, clothing, shoes, and other items began

streaming past Carmichael at 14th and U.” Realizing the situation was beyond his control,

296 Virginia Ali Interview,” Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library. 297 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 21. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. 298 Lillian Wiggins, “Stores Looted, rocks thrown at D.C. police,” April 9, 1968, Washington Afro American, 22, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. Due to what appears to be a scanning error, this article (part of the newspaper published on April 9 and 13) is included in the online collection with the April 16th edition of the Afro American. As a bit of D.C. history trivia, Lillian Wiggins is the same reporter who years later coined the term “the Plan” referring to the conspiracy theory that white Washingtonians were working to take the city away from the control of black Washingtonians. 299 Gilbert, Ten Blocks From the White House, 27. The cars were from a used car dealer called Barry-Pate and Addison.

Carmichael got into a Ford Mustang and left the area at 10:40.300 Reporter Lillian

Wiggins saw “whiskey in large quantities…being lifted from the store through the broken plate glass windows. Televisions were being carried from a T.V. repair place and clothing was being stripped from the windows. Mannequins, colored and white, were scattered from one end of the street to the other.” One man approached Wiggins and remarked

“They shouldn’t have done this. Killing Dr. King was the worst thing the white people could have done.”301

“We’re Giving it the Light Touch:” Law Enforcement and the First Night Local and federal government leaders immediately prepared for civil unrest in

Washington after they learned King was shot. President Lyndon Johnson, Mayor Walter

Washington and officials at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of

Investigation (FBI), 116th Army division, and the Army Command Center at the

Pentagon were all briefed on developments in Memphis and the reaction in D.C. and across the country.302 The 116th Division, a military unit responsible for surveilling

civilians, went on “Lantern Spike” alert after King’s assassination and 120 agents were

called to its headquarters. The division dispatched teams to report disturbances and surveil potential black militants in D.C.303 Military leaders traveled from their homes to

the Army Operations Center at the Pentagon to prepare for the possibility of sending

300 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 23-34; “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. 301 Wiggins, “Stores Looted, rocks thrown at D.C. police,” Washington Afro-American. 302 Operation Bandaid One,” 1-4, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records. “Chronological Sequence of Events- April 4-5 1968 (within the Army Operations Center),” 1-2, “Situation Room Information Memos, Troop Movements and Riots 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, Selected Civil Rights Files-- James Gaither, 1968” found in “ “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 35-36. 303 Christopher Howland Pyle, “Military Surveillance of Civilian Politicians 1967-1970” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1974), 97-98.

92 troops into Washington.304 The mayor’s office, Police Department, and Civil Defense

Unit established immediate contact to closely monitor the mood of the city.305 Public

Safety Director Patrick Murphy left his home to go to 14th Street less than ten minutes after he heard the news from Memphis.306 Plainclothes police officers went to 14th and U as early as 8:45 PM to gather intel. Some officers were even in the group following

Carmichael. 307

After observing the crowds around U Street, Patrick Murphy discussed strategy with another officer at 16th and U Streets around 9 PM. The earliest police reports, as well as their own observations, indicated that the gathering citizens were nonviolent. As

Murphy left the area at about 9:30, he allegedly told a reporter “We’ve giving it the light touch. There are no great numbers of [police] visible.”308 While Murphy would later deny using the phrase “light touch,”309 the police’s actions matched this statement. The department justified this “light touch” in its after-action report: “In view of this early nonviolent attitude of the crowd on U Street, it was the judgement of police officials that it would be unwise to engage in what would likely be a futile and probably an incensing

304 “Chronological Sequence of Events April 4-5 1968 (within the Army Operations Center), 1-2, “Situation Room Information Memos, Troop Movements and Riots 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, Selected Civil Rights Files--James Gaither, 1968.” 305 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department relative to April 1968 Disorders in the District of Columbia”, 1, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 306 “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. The authors of the article interviewed Patrick Murphy for their article so it is likely this is from his own account. 307 “Operation Bandaid One,” 4, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. 308 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 36. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. The Office of Emergency Preparedness recorded Murphy at 9:31 pm at 14th and T streets, which would make sense if he were walking back to the area from a meeting with the other officer. “Operation Bandaid One,” 4, Office of Emergency Preparedness. 309 Civil Disturbances in Washington: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress Second Session: Investigation of the April 1968 Rioting, Looting, Damages and Losses, and Police Actions: May and July, 1968 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968), 4-6, 13, 41-21. P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This publication is hereafter referred to as Civil Disturbances in Washington.

dispersal of the assembly.”310 In other words, the police believed a visible presence only

risked public outrage so they stayed on the fringes and instead placed police units on alert

and activated intelligence sources. This strategy was understandable considering the

tensions between the black community and police in D.C. and the police’s recent success

with deescalating situations by reducing visible police presence. Walter Fauntroy thought

the presence of uniformed officers would provoke the crowd and discouraged a robust

police presence in a conversation with a police officer that night.311 As of 10:00, there

were virtually no uniformed police officers around 14th and U.312

Once people started breaking into businesses, however, the police quickly

increased their presence until it was unsafe and impractical to stay. At 10:10, an officer

reported the first incident of property damage over police radios and requested more

police: “Plainclothes cruisers requested; breaking windows at 14th and U Sts., NW.”313

Uniformed officers moved to confront the crowds but were “heavily outnumbered.”

Police radioed that citizens were throwing stones at them and Murphy subsequently

ordered the police to pull back “while reinforcements were summoned and equipped.”

With each new “frantic call” reporting harassment, Murphy emphasized the policemen

should back out if in danger. The retreating police attempted to seal off 14th Street to

310 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department relative to April 1968 Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 311 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 19. “The City’s Turmoil: The Night It Began: Chronology of a Night of Turmoil,” Washington Post. The authors of the article interviewed Walter Fauntroy for their article so it is likely this is from his own account. 312 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 22-23. “Operation Bandaid One,” 5-6, Operation of Emergency Preparedness Records. 313 “Operation Bandaid One,” 4, Office of Emergency Preparedness Records.

“confine the disorder to already damaged blocks” while they waited for backup.314

Meanwhile, police officers rushed to their headquarters downtown to get riot gear and the

Civil Defense Unit mobilized before heading to the 14th Street corridor. Officers

cordoned off the area and began making arrests by 11:15. A rain shower and the

increased presence of law enforcement cleared the streets and at 11:28 police reported

there was “no rioting in Northwest Washington.”315

They were too optimistic. The downpour was short-lived and the streets quickly refilled as crowds moved up the 14th Street hill north to the central shopping district.

“Enforce the law vigorously for any violation and make arrests,” Deputy Chief Pyles

instructed police over the radio.316 The fire department, led by Chief Henry Galotta,

mobilized its entire squad as it implemented “Plan F” at 11:51 PM.317 At 12:30 AM, the

first large fire started at 14th and Fairmont Streets.318 As fire fighters arrived to extinguish

the flames people taunted them and threw stones and other projectiles.319 Police launched

100 baseball-sized canisters of tear gas to disperse the mob and allow the fire fighters to

work. This was the first large-scale use of tear gas during the disturbances but would be

far from the last. In total, 150 stores were damaged, 7 buildings burned, and nearly 200

314 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department relative to April 1968 Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 2-3, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 37-38. 315 “Operation Bandaid One,” 5-6; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 25, 38-39. 316 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 40. This is supported by the Office of Emergency Preparedness report that officers received a radio command for “Any violence, take all proper police action.” “Operation Bandaid One,” 7. 317 “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 318 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 27. 319 “Operation Bandaid One,” 7; Wiggins, “Lillian article, “Stores Looted, rocks thrown at D.C. police,” Washington Afro-American; “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department relative to April 1968 Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 3, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968.

people were arrested Thursday night.320

Although 14th Street was not fully quiet until about 4:00 AM, around midnight

Murphy and Police Chief Layton determined that police could sufficiently quell the

outbreak and did not require outside help.321 At 3:00 AM, Murphy met with officials

from the Army Operations Center at the Pentagon. The men chose to not call up federal

troops because the police had successfully contained the disturbance and they believed

further disorders were unlikely during the day.322 Nevertheless, the city still prepared for

the possibility of renewed violence. The D.C. National Guard was ordered to assemble in

uniform at the D.C. armory for potential deployment Friday night. The CDU was sent

home at 5:30 AM with instructions to report at 5 PM Friday prepared for several days

away from home. The police department cancelled planned leave and days off for all

officers. The Pentagon instructed the Third Infantry at Fort Myer to be ready to head into

Washington. With preparations made and the city calm, Mayor Washington toured the city’s streets before finally arriving home at 4:30 AM.323

“You Just Can’t Expect People Not to Act This Way:” Friday, April 5th

As dawn broke, street cleaners sprayed white foam to wash the glass and debris

320 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 29; “Operation Bandaid One,” 9; “Army Guards D.C. Streets,” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 1. The Hilltop is Howard University’s student newspaper. 321 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department relative to April 1968 Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 3, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 40. 322 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 41-42; “Chronological Sequence of Events April 4-5 1968 (within the Army Operations Center),” 4, “Situation Room Information Memos, Troop Movements and Riots 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, Selected Civil Rights Files--James Gaither, 1968.” The belief that riots only occurred at night was generally accepted: a study of 24 disorders determined that major incidents in each case happened at night (Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 41-42). 323 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 41-42, 44, 90; “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department relative to April 1968 Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 3-4, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; “Operation Bandaid One,” 6.

down the 14th Street hill as burglar alarms still rang “in an unsettling chorus.”324 Flags

flew at half-mast at the request of Mayor Washington.325 Washingtonians opened their

copy of the Washington Post to read the headline “Dr. King is Slain in Memphis.”326 An article in the Daily News entitled “The King Assassination” immediately connected the slaying to urban violence: “And the assassin, perhaps worst of all, has given stature to those other fanatics who cry, ‘Burn, baby, burn.’ Among those to whom Dr. King was a symbol of peace, the message of violence will now seem less extreme.”327 A Washington

Post editorial also urged peace: “It would be the last and final and ultimate repudiation of everything for which Martin Luther King stood if it were to arouse racial hatred and excited the kind of violence that he deplored. Then, indeed, the grave would have its victory.”328

Most Washingtonians went to their jobs as usual hoping the violence had passed.

Traffic was congested as drivers slowed to view the destruction.329 Some store owners

assessed the damage and began repairs with plywood.330 Claudia Howard owned a hair

salon above the Log Cabin Liquor store on 7th Street that had been looted the night

before. Undaunted, she kept her hair appointments for that morning.331 Many parents still walked their children to school, although it was a contentious decision to keep them

324 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 10. 325 “Operation Bandaid One,” 13; Memorandum from Director of the Department of Corrections Kenneth L. Hardy to Deputy Mayor Thomas W. Fletcher, “Corrections’ Participation in Disturbance Commencing April 4, 1968, April 16, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 326 “Dr. King is Slain in Memphis,” April 5, Washington Post, A1, Proquest. 327 “The King Assassination,” April 5, 1968, Daily News, 50, Washingtoniana Periodicals, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C. 328 “A Cruel and Wonton Act,” April 5, 1968, Washington Post, A24. 329 Wiggins, “Stores Looted, rocks thrown at D.C. police,” Washington Afro American. Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 45. 330 “Operation Bandaid One,” 14. 331 Julius Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” June 2, 1968, New York Times Magazine, Series 11, Box 287, Folder 17, Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

97 open.332 William Hall of SNCC and William H. Simons, president of the teacher’s union, wanted the schools to close. The school board, however, decided to remain open so children would stay off the streets. Although the courts worked through the night to process those arrested, judges were determined to stick to “business as usual.”333

It was soon apparent that Friday, April 5th would not be governed by “business as usual.” At 8:45 AM, people were already looting a grocery store in NW.334 The Civil

Defense Unit informed the Department of Corrections at 8:57 that the police expected a

“major disturbance.”335 By 11:00, people once again crowded around 14th and U Streets and other intersections along 14th.336 Sensing a potential resurgence of disorder, the police sent parole officers to potential trouble areas.337 Widow breaking began along 14th

Street at roughly 11:45 AM and the first fires erupted around 12:15 PM. The situation quickly escalated and the fire department confronted “mass fires along 14th St up to Park

Road” by the early afternoon.338

Simultaneously, tensions grew in the schools as citizens and leaders debated if schools should remain open to prevent students from participating or close to honor King

332 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. “Yvonne Baskerville interview transcript,” May 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/216/rec/41. 333 William Dobrovir, Justice in Time of Crisis: A Staff Report to the District of Columbia Committee on the Administration of Justice under Emergency Conditions (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 16. Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 334 “Operation Bandaid One,” 15. 335 Hardy, “Corrections’ Participation in Disturbance Commencing April 4, 1968, April 16, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 336 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 337 Hardy, “Corrections’ Participation in Disturbance Commencing April 4, 1968, April 16, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 338 “Operation Bandaid One,” 16; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 51; “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” 1-2, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968.

and allow students to get home safely amidst the chaos. Parents called asking for their

children to be released, William Hall continued to demand closures, and principals

reported an unusually tense and restless atmosphere. The police department asked schools

to prohibit students from leaving for lunch since schools like Cardozo High were mere

blocks from 14th Street. School officials felt keeping children inside would be impossible.

Sterling Tucker called Deputy Superintendent Benjamin Henley to ask him to keep the

schools open because closing them was “the worst thing that could happen.” “We can’t

hold these kids,” Henley replied, “you don’t know how they have been acting.” By noon,

over half of Cardozo’s 1,700 students had left and groups from McKinley High marched

to Howard University.339 Students were officially released from school at 1:30 PM.340

As 14th Street erupted again, many reporters were at a press conference with

Stokely Carmichael at the New School for Afro Thought on U Street. Black men

searched reporters and in a few cases took penknives and nail clippers before permitting

them to enter the conference.341 The 11:00 AM presser was scheduled to address SNCC

President H Rap Brown’s upcoming trial for allegedly inciting a riot in Cambridge,

Maryland in July 1967. Carmichael’s remarks instead centered on his reaction to King’s

assassination.342

First, Carmichael specifically blamed white Americans for the death of King and

asserted it signaled a fundamental change for the black community:

339 Gilbert, Ten blocks, 46-48. 340 William Manning, “Public Schools of the District of Columbia,” April 30, 1968, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 46. 341 Phil Casey, “Carmichael Warns of ‘Retaliation,’” April 6, 1968, Washington Post, A1, Proquest; “Fauntroy, Carmichael Reactions to Slaying,” April 5, 1968, Final Night Edition, Washington Star, A-3, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 342 “We’re Not Afraid…We’re Gonna Die for Our People,” April 6, 1968, Washington Post, A16, Proquest. The time of 11:00 am is collaborated by Gilbert and the Office of Emergency Preparedness (Ten Blocks, 65; “Operation Bandaid One,” 15).

As for Dr. King’s murder, I think white America made its biggest mistake when she killed Dr. King last night because when she killed Dr. King last night, she killed all reasonable hope. When she killed Dr. King last night, she killed the one man of our race that this country’s older generations, the militants and the revolutionaries and the masses of black people would still listen to. When white America killed Dr. King she opened the eyes of every black man in this country.343 While black leaders had died before, Carmichael stated King’s assassination was

uniquely egregious because he was nonviolent. When white Americans killed Marcus

Garvey and Malcolm X, white people justified it because the leaders were “preaching

hate” or “crazy.” In fact, Marcus Garvey died of two strokes while in London. Malcolm

X was assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam. One can assume

Carmichael meant Garvey and Malcolm X’s legacies and reputations were killed by

white Americans instead of their literal deaths. White America, however, had no such

justification to kill King: “He was the one man in our race who was trying to teach our

people to have love, compassion and mercy for what white people had done.”344

Carmichael rejected the notion that “most” white people mourned King’s death.

“Mr. Carmichael don’t you believe that the vast majority of Americans feel just as badly as you do about what happened to Dr. King?” asked a reporter. “The honky from honky

Lyndon Johnson to honky Bobby Kennedy will not co-opt Dr. Martin Luther King—Dr.

Martin Luther King or black people,” replied Carmichael. “It was not but four weeks ago

when Johnson told King that if he came marching into the District he’d need a voice

343 “We’re Not Afraid…We’re Gonna Die for Our People,” The Washington Post. To watch the video of this press conference, see “Stokely Carmichael, 5th April 1968 after death of Martin Luther King,” Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwYYvOjsxjE. 344 Lester McKinnie, leader of the D.C. chapter of SNCC, also spoke at the press conference and emphasized this same point. “This is a lesson which white America has taught us many times before” he said as he described the deaths of Larry Payne in Memphis and four men in Orangeburg. “This lesson was clear in the day-to-day torture of black people by white people in America and throughout the world. It was to end this torture that Dr. King bravely faced death many times—nonviolent. Dr. King was a brother who dedicated his life to liberating his people through nonviolence. Dr. King was a symbol of nonviolence and white Americans shot him down.” See “We’re Not Afraid…We’re Gonna Die for Our People,” Washington Post.

100

because he should bring his troubles to him and now tonight he’s trying to make as if Dr.

King was his hero.” He thought Bobby Kennedy also “pulled the trigger” because

Kennedy did not sufficiently aid civil rights leaders while he was Attorney General. “And those who feel sorry ought to feel sorry,” Carmichael instructed white Americans.345

The assassination was white America’s declaration of war on black people and

Carmichael was ready to lead the charge to retaliate and fight:

When white America killed Dr. King last night, she declared war on us. There will be no crying and there will be no funeral. The rebellions that have been occurring around these cities and this country is just light stuff to what is about to happen. We have to retaliate for the deaths of our leaders. The execution for those deaths will not be in the court rooms. They’re going to be in the streets of the United States of America….There no longer needs to be intellectual discussion. Black people now that they have to get guns. White America will live to cry since she killed Dr. King last night.

“What do you say to black people who have to die to do what you say?” asked a reporter.

“That they take as many white people with them as they can,” Carmichael responded.

“We die every day. We die in Vietnam for the honkies….We die cutting and fighting

each other inside our own communities….We die in your jails. We die in your ghettos.

We die in your rat-infested homes. We die a thousand deaths every day. We’re not afraid

to die, because now we’re gonna die for our people.” It was “crystal clear,” he believed,

that “today the final showdown is coming” and “the only way to survive is to get some

guns.” Asked what the confrontation would accomplish, Carmichael voiced a pessimistic

but bold answer: “The black man can’t do nothing in this country. Then we’re going to

stand up on our feet and die like men. If that’s our only act of manhood, then Goddammit

345 “We’re Not Afraid…We’re Gonna Die for Our People,” Washington Post.

101 we’re going to die. We’re tired of living on our stomachs.”346

Despite Carmichael’s strong rhetoric, neither Carmichael nor other

Washingtonians killed white people in the disorders.347 In his biography of Carmichael,

Peniel E. Joseph concluded that the King assassination “exposed contradictions, both politically and personally, within Carmichael. He alternated between serene calm and passionate anger.”348 While he urged people to “go home” on Thursday night, on Friday morning he called for “retaliation” for the death of King and for “executions” in the streets. “Let me make clear what happened last night,” he asserted in his Friday morning press conference, “last night we led all of those youngsters up and down the street to close the stores in memory of Dr. King….We weren’t stopping them from kicking in a few windows—we were stopping them from coming out on the streets without guns.

When they come out on the streets we want them to have guns…The only way to survive is to get some guns.”349 Later, however, he obtained special permission from the police for Ben’s Chili Bowl to stay open during the curfew so community leaders would have a place to plan how to restore peace.350 Carmichael was a man both deeply saddened and enraged by the death of a man who had a “powerful hold on him personally and

346 All quotes are from the transcript of the press conference given by the Washington Post in ““We’re Not Afraid…We’re Gonna Die for Our People.” The Office of Emergency Preparedness report Carmichael told “Negroes to arm themselves and take to the streets.” (Operation Bandiad One,” 15). 347347 George Fletcher, a white man from Woodbridge, Virginia, died the night of April 4, 1968. Fletcher’s friends claimed they were driving around D.C. after getting drinks when they stopped for gas and got into an argument with 8 black men who then stabbed Fletcher. The account is uncorroborated, and it is impossible to know if this incident was in anyway related to King’s death or revenge against “whitey.” See Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 26-27. 348 Peniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas, 2014), 253-254. 349 “District: New Wave of Violence Erupts in Northwest,” Washington Evening Star, April 5, 1968, A1. 350 “Architecture and Society Fall Midterm 1996,” Box 5, Folder 5: “School Papers Written about Ben’s Chili Bowl”; “Press Conference,” Box 1, Folder 5: “40th anniversary materials”; “The Shaw Community: The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement, as told by Mrs. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Box 1, Folder 9: “Interview with Virginia Ali,” MS 2285 Ben’s Chili Bowl Papers, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

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politically.”351 His actions and rhetoric reveal a man oscillating between preserving peace

and ordering war.

While few other black leaders condoned “war” and violence as Carmichael did,

many African Americans similarly saw King’s assassination as a “final straw” and

sympathized with those looting and burning. Washington civil rights leader Julius

Hobson declared, “I say that the next white man that comes into the black community

preaching non-violence should be dealt with violently.” “You just can’t expect people not

to react this way,” said Edward J. MacClane, president of the Negro Federation of Civic

Associations. “The city has been heading this way for a long time.”352 Dudley Williams,

a member of the traditionally non-violent NAACP’s D.C. branch, stated that “We are

sitting in a ‘state of shock.’ No one can be blamed for the consequences that may

occur…A lot of leaders are not coming out tonight because they are afraid of becoming

irrational themselves.”353 Others echoed Carmichael’s belief that King’s assassination

revealed a larger truth about the fate of African Americans and the cruelty of white

people. Lester McKinnie, chairman of the DC branch of SNCC, asserted “We can see by

this act of aggression what is in store for all of us—the African people in America.”354

Others criticized any violence as a disgrace to King’s legacy. Maxine Boyd, a member of the D.C. Recreation Board who had participated in the 1965 Selma march, claimed that “The greatest tribute we could make to Dr. King would be to implement his philosophy of non-violence in spite of the Black Power Movement.” “I hope and pray that what Dr. King lived for will prevail and that the black people of America will not riot

351 Joseph, Stokely, 258-259. 352 Michael Adams, “D.C. Leaders Show Grief, Ire,” April 5, 1968, final night edition, Washington Star, A- 3, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 353 “Operation Bandaid One,” 4. 354 “Operation Bandaid One,” 2.

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and cause violence,” wished Benjamin Alexander, an African American member of the

Board of Education.355 Walter Fauntroy traveled from news outlet to news outlet urging

people to stay peaceful. He requested “restraint, calm and nonviolence” and begged

people to “handle your grief the way Dr. King would have wanted it.” Fauntroy believed

those who acted violently “do dishonor to the life and mission of Dr. King.”356

Two ceremonies held at Howard University Friday morning reflected the

divergent responses of many black Washingtonians to King’s assassination. Howard

cancelled classes and the president of the university, James Nabrit, led a memorial

service at the Cramton Auditorium. Simultaneously, militant students held their own

ceremony outside. Nabrit memorialized King as “a man of love, of non-violence—a

black man, an American.” Students outside pulled down the American flag and replaced

it with the black, red, and gold Black Nationalist flag. As the crowd inside the auditorium

sang the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” students on the courtyard carried a

bloodied effigy wrapped in white.357 Although many students made “vehemently” anti-

white speeches at the rally, white Washington Post reporter John Anderson said he never

felt in danger: “I was standing there, very conspicuously white, and yet hardly anyone as

much as glanced at me. I never had the sensation of being in danger. The hostility was

directed at an abstraction that was white, and powerful, and downtown; it was not toward

a specific white man standing in the crowd in the middle of the Howard campus.”358

As the “eulogy type program” ended, Carmichael arrived at Howard after his

355 Adams, “D.C. Leaders Show Grief, Ire,” Washington Star. 356 “Fauntroy, Carmichael Reactions to Slaying,” April 5, 1968, final night edition, Washington Star, A-3, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 357 “Black Banner Replaces U.S. Flag on Bitter Howard Campus,” April 6, 1968, Washington Evening Star, A22. Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 63. Adrienne Manns and Robert Nesnick, “Was It Riot or Insurrection?” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 2. 358 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 63.

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press conference.359 According to the FBI, Carmichael held up a gun and declared

“tonight bring your gun, don’t loot, shoot.”360 The Washington Post, however, reported

Carmichael held up a gun and said “Stay off the streets if you don’t have a gun because

there’s going to be shooting.” Carmichael only briefly stayed and soon after his departure

the assembly dispersed. Although the rally at Howard was heavily covered by the press

and many believed it spurred Friday’s upheaval, 14th Street was already on fire when

Carmichael arrived. 361

Friday, April 5th was the height of the upheaval. Washingtonians started over 500

fires and 200 were burning simultaneously late that afternoon.362 11 buildings were

already aflame on 14th Street when the blazes were set on 7th Street at 1:00 PM. By

roughly 3:00, H Street NE was also on fire.363 By 10:50 PM, the three streets were

“burning for one solid mile.”364 Law enforcement received a call reporting a riot-related

incident every 8 seconds Friday night.365 By midnight, the fire department had been

dispatched to 280 fires. “Driving along ‘Eye’ St. N.E, 24 hours later you couldn’t help

but wonder if the police dispatcher had lost his mind as he frantically directed his police

359 Howard was less than a 15 minute walk from the office where his press conference occurred. 360 Memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover to President Lyndon Johnson, “Selected Racial Developments and Disturbances,” 4:56 A.M., April 6, 1968, DDRS-26392, Reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2015. 361 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 64-67. 362 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 85. 363 “Synopsis of Service Rendered to the District of Columbia by Communities of Adjacent Jurisdictions,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 364 “Operation Badnaid One,”22. 365 “Situation Room Information Memorandum,” April 6, 1968, 12:00 am, “Situation Room Information Memos, Troop Movements and Riots 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, Selected Civil Rights Files--James Gaither, 1968,” in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle.

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and fire equipment to dozens of spots all over Washington,” opined one journalist.366

Across D.C., the attacks on businesses conformed to a general pattern. Once

masses gathered, young people broke store windows and pushed aside glass before

entering. Other teenagers followed, then young children, and finally adults went into the

businesses and emerged with merchandise. Once a store was mostly cleaned out,

someone, normally an older teenager or adult, would set the store ablaze.367 On Seventh

Street 200-300 people crowded each block in the early afternoon before fires started.368

The Fire Department believed there was a “definite relationship between disorderly

crowds and [the] number of fires occurring.”369 A few shops, especially high-end retailers

downtown, were looted even without large crowd cover by pedestrians or people in

cars.370 The fires were often started by one person working along one stretch. For

example, on H Street, witnesses saw one man burn building after building down the

block. He took a coke bottle from under his coat, lit the Molotov cocktail, and threw it to

engulf the store in flames. A small number of arsonists (likely less than 50) belonged to

radical black organizations.371

Before order was restored, the city endured $33 million in property damage ($238

million adjusted for inflation). 1,352 businesses were harmed, nearly 5,000 people were

366 B.B. Colen, “Washington Riot Report: H Street—Like a Combat Zone,” April 23, 1968, The Hatchet, 10, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 367 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 50-51, 53, 70, 72, 80-81; Gilbert Y. Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” May 20, 1968, 74, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. 368 “Operation Bandaid,” 6; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 90. 369 The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. An exception to this pattern were some high-end stores in down-town D.C. Here, a specific store, instead of entire blocks, would be looted and sometimes burned. Some stores, for example, Thursday night were damaged after people left 14th Street and drove to specific retailers. On Friday, some stores were damaged downtown but since these were more isolated incidents instead of entire crowded blocks, police quickly got control of the area. 370 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 78-79. 371 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 81-82. For example, a member of the Zulus and “The Firemen” both gave interviews taking credit.

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displaced from their jobs, and 2,000 people were homeless.372 Such statistics, however,

cannot fully convey events that were chaotic, dramatic, and sometimes—for some— joyful. “Tear gas fill[ed] the eyes and throat” as police in masks and riot gear moved in

“combat-type formations” down the city streets “filled with broken glass, pieces of mannequins, and troops.”373 “The street was crisscrossed with firehoses, some of them

propped untended on chairs, pouring water into the smoldering ruins of what had been a

Safeway, a pawn shop, a liquor store,” reported B.B. Colen of George Washington

University’s student newspaper The Hatchet.374 “Mustard and catsup oozed past burst

boxes of cake mix” in grocery aisles.375 Two men pushed a grand piano down an alley

next to a music shop. A furniture store owner rocked in his chair with a shotgun in his lap

as he smoked a cigar.376 One woman had “so many hams in her arms that she kept

dropping them and when she tried to pick one up another one would roll out of her

arms.”377 “I really chuckled to see people coming out of [stores] with speakers that were as big as that glass,” recalled Jaqueline Rogers Hart, a black Washingtonian. “People were running out of grocery stores with half a cow on their back. So it was a lot of ridiculous sort of things that was happening.”378

African Americans often felt safer than their white acquaintances and colleagues.

Faith Davis Ruffins was at school when she learned of the chaos across town. A student

at National Cathedral School, a private school in upper Northwest D.C., Ruffins was the

372 Ronald Sarro, “Panel to Begin D.C. Riot Probe,” Washington Star, May 26, 1968. 373 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 95; B.B. Colen, “Washington Riot Report: H Street—Like a Combat Zone,” The Hatchet. 374 B.B. Colen, “Washington Riot Report: H Street—Like a Combat Zone,” The Hatchet. 375 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 85. 376 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 76-77. 377 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. 378 Jaqueline Rogers Hart Interview, April 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives: http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/187/rec/16.

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only black pupil in her class. Her classmates were concerned about how she would get

home and she realized “they’re afraid because they’re white. It didn’t seem to me that I

was really in any great danger… It seemed to me that I would actually be in more danger

in a predominantly white area.”379 Downtown, Jaqueline Rogers Hart left her office early

Friday afternoon because everyone in her office was “petrified.” Hart walked over a mile

from the heart of corporate D.C. to the black neighborhood of Shaw. Walking up 13th

Street NW, she was frightened she would be personally attacked as she saw people being

stoned at the top of the hill. As she got closer and saw black people walking with loot,

she thought “oh my, these are, the majority are black people. And I just said, okay,

they’re not going to hurt me.” Hart was surprised because “I had just left 18th and I

[Northwest]. I was in one environment, you know, now I had come, and I was in a totally different environment. From a white environment to a black environment.”380

To many, the mood on the streets Friday was a joyous “carnival atmosphere.”

Washington Afro American journalist Ruth Jenkins observed a “laughing quartet of

young people run against the traffic light pushing shopping carts of looted goods.”381 “It

was sort of carnivalesque,” recalled Faith Davis Ruffins. “That might be a word that a

cultural studies person would call it today…It was kind of funny, actually.”382 Robert

Allen of the Hilltop, Howard University’s student newspaper, asserted that “By the second night of violence…rage had faded and had been replaced by that much deplored

379 “Faith Davis Ruffins interview,” Box 1, Folder 5, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. In her interview, Ms. Ruffins believed this happened on the day King was assassinated. As word that King was assassinated did not spread until after 8 pm that Thursday, it is more likely this was on Friday, April 5th. 380 “Jaqueline Rogers Hart Interview,” South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives. 381 Ruth Jenkins, “No busting Easter shopping just ‘soul’ signs, troopers,” Washington Afro American, April 9, 1968, 15. 382 “Faith Davis Ruffins interview,” 18.

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‘carnival atmosphere.’”383 Bobby Isaac, also of the Hilltop, noted a “Mardi gras-like atmosphere.”384

Some black Washingtonians did not feel safe or find humor in the situation.

“Cameras were showing what was going on, places were on fire, people were afraid

…Older women were crying,” recalled Betty May Brooks-Cole, an African American

Washingtonian. As she sat on her porch in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, she saw young boys steal clothes from the dry-cleaners she used. “God, please please give me my clothes,” she yelled, “Give me my clothes!” But the boys did not stop. Brooks-Cole

reflected that “It was a terrible, terrible situation. I never experienced anything like that in

my entire life. It was quite scary.”385 Mrs. Howard, a black woman who worked as a

cleaner, was feeding her grandchildren dinner when she heard an explosion in the liquor

store below her apartment. “I just stood there and saw everything burn down,” she said,

“I didn’t get out nothing, not one thing….I just stood there, knowing all I had was going

down.”386

Kenneth Tolliver, an African American student, felt a range of emotions as he

journeyed home after his school closed Friday. As the bus went down Georgia Avenue,

some black men got on and attacked the white bus driver. Further down, at Florida and

7th Street, the bus had to stop because the streets in front of it were ablaze and

impassable: “I can remember we finally got down to [Florida] Ave and the 7th St bus had

to turn there because the block in front of us was ablaze. It was like in a movie, like a

383 Robert Allen, “April’s Black Rebellions: A Political Analysis,” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 5. 384 Bobby Issac, “King’s Dream Deferred?,” Hilltop, May 3, 1968, 5. 385 “Betty May Brooks-Cole interview transcript,” South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/250/rec/45. 386 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine.

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battle scene in a movie… I can remember my clothes, I can remember the heat, the

searing heat you know, from the fire.” Tolliver also recalled the looting and to him it

seemed to be “a ball….it was funny.” As he wondered the streets, he saw his father with a

case of Old Tail liquor on his shoulder. They went home together and there his brother

had “about a half a side of cow” in a crate on his shoulder. Still, Tolliver was “frightened

because my mother, she’s the domestic one and she hadn’t gotten home, and it took her

forever to get home and… that was most of my fear, concern.”387

Workers downtown panicked and fled Friday afternoon as news outlets reported

the chaos in Washington. Some could see smoke and looting from their office

windows.388 Petrified, the mostly white work force left its downtown offices to return to

the suburbs and neighborhoods in upper Northwest Washington. Some fleeing were city

employees needed to coordinate the District’s response. “One of the most distressing

things to me was the fact that many of our department heads could not be found on

Friday,” said Julian Dugas, a key member of the mayor’s team. “Many of the people that

we thought were important in government could not be found….I can tell you from my

own experience in my department…they were so frightened that they simply fled the

city.”389 Even those tucked away in the suburbs panicked as many housewives flocked to

grocery stores to stock up on food. “It’s worse than a Saturday afternoon,” one grocer

claimed. “It’s like they’re expecting a three-foot snow.’”390

387 “Kenneth Tolliver interview,” South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives: http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/196/show/189/rec/1 388 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 70, 77. 389 Gilbert Y. Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” May 20, 1968, 45-46, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. 390 Marian Burros, “City Faces Food Crisis,” April 8, 1968, Daily News, 6. Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. Anyone who has ever been in D.C. during a snowstorm knows exactly how strong of a statement this is.

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This mass exodus resulted in one of the worst traffic jams in D.C. history.391

Buses and cars could not travel many routes because of the fires and crowds and the city advised motorists to avoid using “7th, 13th, 14th, and all adjacent streets” at about 3:15.392

These closures meant the available routes were even busier.393 “Traffic has reached the clogged and impossible stage at this time,” reported Mayor Washington, Murphy, and

Layton in a memo to President Johnson.394 The delays were exacerbated because street lights and buses were not yet on the rush hour schedule and the police were too busy to direct traffic.395 To help, some civilians got out of their cars to try to “untangle the hopelessly snarled” vehicles.396 Many commuters experienced delays of “monumental proportions” that added hours to commutes.397 Gerard Ivanhoe Sawyer, a government engineer, abandoned his bus and walked home after the bus took over two hours to go less than two miles.398 People crowded airport and train terminals as they rushed to leave the city.399

Some suburban commuters seeking to flee the city faced violence as they drove

391 “Transportation—Traffic,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. “Growing Doubt: Why the Delay,” April 6, 1968, Daily News, 8; Richard Starnes, “D.C. Loses Its Innocence,” April 8, 1968, Daily News, 7, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 392 “Operation Bandaid,” 19. 393 “Guard Call Late? Mayor is Satisfied, but Questions Asked,” April 6, 1968, Daily News, 6, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. For a personal experience with this, see “Interview with Kenneth Tolliver,” April 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives. 394 “Memorandum to the President of the United States,” From Walter Washington, Patrick Murphy, and John Layton to President Lyndon Johnson, April 5, 1968, “Washington, D.C. civil right issues including Riot Prevention, Poor People's Campaign, and urban renewal, 1968-1969,” Found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 395 “Transportation—Traffic,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. “Growing Doubt: Why the Delay,” April 6, 1968, Daily News, 8, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 396 “Guard Call Late? Mayor is Satisfied, but Question Asked,” Daily News; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 72. 397 “Transportation—Traffic,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968 398 Gerard Ivanhoe Sawyer, Diary entry, April 5, 1968, Box 2 1962-1977, MS 0789 Gerard Ivanhoe and Margaretha Nicol Sawyer Dairies, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.; “Transportation—Traffic,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 399 “Guard Call Late? Mayor Is Satisfied, but Question Asked,” Daily News.

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home through black neighborhoods. Black youths targeted cars driven by white people as

they threw rocks and bottles at passing cars. “There’s one. There’s whitey, get him,” a

young boy yelled.400 Some boys rocked cars stopped at intersections, especially along

14th Street, on Friday afternoon. In one instance, youths pulled a white teenager out of a car and beat him until a Catholic priest intervened.401 Others dropped rocks and bricks

onto cars from the bridge over Kenilworth Avenue in Northeast.402 The WOL radio

station, which predominantly catered to black Washingtonians, instructed drivers to keep

their lights on during the day “in honor” of King. “Thousands of cars, taxis, transit buses,

police cruisers…all with their lights on during the day,” wrote the Washington Afro

American. “It’s the ‘soul brother’ insignia, and it has a smashing impact.”403 “I heard that

anybody who didn’t have his lights on in memory of King would be subject to exposure

to violence,” said Walter Fauntroy.404 While Fauntroy believed this was just a “rumor,”

reporters from the Afro on the streets Friday witnessed several incidents of youths

selectively targeting cars based on their lights.405

D.C. police and firefighters strained to handle the surge of break-ins, theft, and

arson. Friday afternoon, the city and federal government mobilized outside help. General

400 Mary E. Stratford, “District Rioting Unleashed Ugly Emotions,” April 9, 1968, Washington Afro- American, 1, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680409&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. Due to an assumed scanning error, the second-half of the article appears with the April 16th edition of the paper. See “Stark Fear Overcame the Lone Man,” Washington Afro-American, 22, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 401 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 48-49. 402 “Transportation—Traffic,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; “Operation Bandaid One,” 19. 403 Ruth Jenkins, “No busting Easter shopping just ‘soul’ signs, troopers,” Washington Afro American, April 9, 1968, 15. 404 “Drivers Use Lights in Memorial Gesture,” April 6, Washington Star, A2, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. Stratford, “District Rioting Unleashed Ugly Emotions,” Washington Afro- American. 405 Stratford, “District Rioting Unleashed Ugly Emotions,” Washington Afro-American.

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Ralph E. Haines, Jr.—the commander of the military’s response to the disorder called

Operation Cabin Guard—and Pat Murphy toured the city that afternoon and at about 2:45

PM decided to start moving troops towards Washington. To communicate this command,

they had to use a pay phone but the phone lines were so jammed they had to drive from gas station to gas station until they finally found a pay phone with a dial tone. At one gas

station, Haines was hit by a rock as he got out of the car. Eventually, Haines and Murphy

found a working payphone and at about 3:00, Haines instructed the Pentagon to move the

first troops into the city. At 3:30 and 3:45, respectively, troops from the 6th Armored

Cavalry left Fort Meade and the 91st Combat Engineers left Fort Belvoir, Maryland

towards the capital. Additionally, the Pentagon ordered 3,000 troops to be ready to move

to Washington on 30 minutes’ notice. Shortly after, they doubled the number of soldiers

on alert to 6,000.406 At about 4 PM, President Johnson formally ordered federal troops

into Washington to quell the—in his words—“hell-raising.”407

Overwhelmed as 25 to 30 new fires broke out every hour, the D.C. Fire

Department requested aid from nearby suburban firefighters at 4:30 PM. The first

reinforcements arrived around 5:15 PM. 72 fire engines from D.C. and 60 from the

surrounding suburbs worked to limit the destruction. Despite the additional help, there

were so many fires the department could only reduce the flames to embers before moving

to the next blaze. Under normal circumstances, firefighters were required to completely

406 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 90-92; Barrye L. Price, King to King: A Study of Civil Unrest and Federal Intervention 1968-1992 (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 1997), 81-84; “Chronology per General Johnson,” April 15, 1968, “ Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., riots following the assassination, riot prevention measures, and D.C. Riot, from civil rights files of James Gaither, 1968,” found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” Proquest Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 407 “President’s Daily Diary, April 4, 1968,” Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library online, http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/daily-diary.html.

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extinguish a fire.408 “It’s been one continuous nightmare,” remarked one fireman. “Some

of the fires we fought on 14th St and Seventh St would ordinarily have been four-alarm

fires. But the force could only spare one pumper to fight them.” Another fireman was so

exhausted he proclaimed, “I couldn’t even tell you what day it was.” Over that weekend,

many in the fire department worked 16-hour days as they evacuated people from buildings and extinguished flames.409

Finally, at 5:15, Mayor Washington instituted a state of emergency in D.C. and

established a city-wide curfew from 5:30 PM to 6:30 AM. The mayor’s proclamation

banned the sale of alcoholic beverages, gas and flammable liquids (unless gas went

directly into a car), and firearms. It was illegal to carry weapons or flammable liquids. 410

According to Mayor Washington “ninety-nine per cent of the staff was against” imposing the curfew across the entire city presumably because they felt only parts of the city were under siege. Nevertheless, Washington believed a uniform policy was necessary because if it was only implemented in parts of the city, people could simply travel to areas exempt from the curfew and loot there. Further, Washington feared a selective curfew would further anger black Washingtonians and worsen the riots: “The affected areas which were practically totally Negro, if we slapped it on there, it would have been taken as a racial act, with racial overtones. Certainly, it would, no doubt, have reacted.”411

408 “Synopsis of Service Rendered to the District of Columbia by Communities of Adjacent Jurisdictions,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. In addition, 17 D.C. trucks and 7 from the suburbs were used. 409 “Firemen: I couldn’t even tell you what day it was,” April 8, 1968, Daily News, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 410 Walter E Washington, “Proclamation of Emergency,” April 5, 1968, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 411 Gilbert Y. Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” 43.

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As the troops traveled into the city, the traffic jams delayed their arrival.412 Phone

jams also slowed the activation of the D.C. National Guard. Relying on a phone tree to

contact each member, the Guard needed hours to reach its soldiers.413 Federal troops first

arrived in D.C. around 5:00 PM.414 By 5:11, 500 troops stood guard in front of the White

House and not long after surrounded the Capitol building with “their machine guns out of

place against the marble and majesty of the nation’s shrines and monuments.”415 Many of

the armed forces were sent to the most damaged areas: 14th St NW, 7th St NW, and H St

NE. 416 Troops urged people to go home, assisted police, protected firefighters, guarded

some buildings, and cordoned off streets. By 9:00 PM, two 700 man battalions “occupied

and sealed off” the North and South ends of 14th Street. Soldiers also blocked off 7th

Street from K St to S St NW. Troops used a similar strategy to get H Street NE largely

under control by 10:00. Post reporters observed that “The troops had effectively placed

clamps on the three main trouble areas” which made it easier for police to “catch and

arrest hit-and-run looters.” Soldiers also helped by detaining people carrying looted

goods until police could come to the scene to make arrests.417

As the three major disorder areas were contained, sporadic flare-ups persisted

across the city, especially in shopping centers in the Anacostia neighborhood in Southeast

412 “Guard Call Late? Mayor is Satisfied, but Questions Asked,” Daily News; “Growing Doubt: Why the Delay,” Daily News. 413 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 100. 414 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 415 “Operation Bandaid One,” 20; “Guard Call Late? Mayor is Satisfied, but Questions Asked,” Daily News. While the White House and Capitol were not under threat, the troops’ presence was intended to create a “psychological effect” to be a “strong deterrent against rioters challenging the application of force by the disturbance control troops” according to the Army’s riot control doctrine, Field Manual 19-15: Civil Disturbances and Natural Disasters: Field Manual 19-15: Civil Disturbances and Natural Disasters (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968) 7-8. Originally quoted in Price, King to King, 97. 416 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 93. Soldiers headed out after first staging (preparing) at several centers in the city, including the U.S. Soldier’s Home in D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood. 417 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 96-98, 110.

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Washington.418 Stores in Anacostia were first attacked around 5:00 PM and in total about

50 businesses were damaged. 150 men from the D.C. National Guard occupied the far

northeastern section of Anacostia and 700 soldiers from the 91st Engineers patrolled the

far Southeast by Friday night.419

Throughout the capital, troops and police dispersed mobs so the department could work without harassment.420 “We don’t mind fighting the worst kind of fire,” commented

one firefighter, “but it’s kind of unnerving to have to dodge bricks and bottles from

bystanders, and I’ll confess we were worried about being badly hurt.”421 Numerous accounts from newspapers, memos to the President’s Situation Room, and records of the

Office of Emergency Preparedness confirm that firefighters faced verbal harassment and some violence across the city. A firetruck at 14th and Girard Streets “took a battering

from hurdled bottles, bricks, and stones” and a block south crowds stoned firemen Friday

afternoon.422 At 14th and Columbia Streets, firemen were setting up a firehose when a

group of men pushed them aside and warned “We didn’t build the goddamned fire for

any white people to put out.”423 Children and adults cut firehoses at several locations

along 7th Street.424 In a few instances, firefighters felt so threatened that they fled.425

418 “Arsonists and Looters Leave Parts of Capital in Shambles” April 6, 1968, Evening Star, A1, Box 285, Folder “Civil Rights—Riots, Clippings, April 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 419 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 82-85; 98-99. 420 “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 421 “Fireman: I couldn’t even tell you what day it was,” Daily News. 422 “Operation Bandaid One,” 9. Reports of stoning of firefighters even reached the desk of the president. A memo to Johnson reported that “Firesmen are being attached by sticks, stones, and crow bars.” “Situation Room Information Memorandum,” Friday April 5, 1968, 7:15 PM, “Situation Room Information Memos, Troop Movements and Riots 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, Selected Civil Rights Files-- James Gaither, 1968,” in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. See also “Situation Room Information Memorandum,” April 5, 1968, 5:30 PM, “Situation Room Information Memos.” 423 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 51. 424 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 86.

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Police officers and troops also faced targeted violence. The Hilltop’s Robert Allen

noted that “there was open hostility to the cops[.]”426 Officers were attacked at 8th and H

St NE Friday afternoon.427 After someone threw a tear gas canister into a police cruiser,

two officers were hospitalized.428 Reporter Lillian Wiggins was on 14th Street Thursday

night when she saw “six policemen…holding ground with a group of about 50 hecklers.

They were cursing the officers and in general creating a very unpleasant scene.” Near 14th

and Euclid Street, Wiggins was “caught in the middle of a glass, rock throwing session

and had to duck into a D.C. Transit bus for cover to avoid the glass and tear gas.” “Young

militants” used “guerilla type warfare against the officers” and in response, police

“rushed in completely armed with helmets, gas masks and gas guns.”429

Not all of those working to restore order were harassed, however, and very few

were injured. Firefighter Austin Gibson reported that he “didn’t have too much trouble

with looters. They were too busy with the stores.” 430 Some black Washingtonians even helped the firefighters by holding firehoses and bringing them coffee and chairs.431 “Only

the teenagers harassed us,” said soldier Jack Hyler, “And that really didn’t seem to be

racial, just against authority.” When children threatened the military, Hyler claimed,

adults emerged from their homes and “told the kids to go away and leave us alone—that

425 “4:30 PM Local Washington D.C. Status Report,” “Situation Room Information Memos, Troop Movements and Riots 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, Selected Civil Rights Files--James Gaither, 1968,” in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 51-52. For example, firefighters left a fire at 7th and Florida Avenue and at 14th and Columbia on April 5th because of being stoned. 426 Robert Allen, “April’s Black Rebellions: A Political Analysis,” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 5. 427 “4:30 PM Local Washington D.C. Status Report,” “Situation Room Information Memos.” 428 “Selected Racial Developments and Disturbances,” April 6, 1968, time illegible, DDRS-26392, Reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System. 429 Wiggins, “Stores looted, rocks thrown at D.C. police,” Washington Afro American. 430 “Fireman: I couldn’t even tell you what day it was,” Daily News. 431 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 86.

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we just had a job to do. The kids dispersed and there was no trouble.”432 The Mayor’s

Report, co-authored by the Police and Fire Departments, found that “Police and fire

forces working along the line of 14th Street were subjected to a great deal of verbal abuse and were the targets of some thrown missiles.”433 Although “interference to firefighters

from civilians was great at [the] start,” it decreased once “troops were able to secure [the] fire area.”434 Despite some harassment, no firefighters were seriously injured.435

Soldiers and officers used escalating force to remove people from riot-torn areas.

The mayor’s after-action report found that “Resistance to the clearing operation was

difficult to overcome in view of the buildup of the crowd which involved persons from

very young children to very old adults.”436 “We asked people to go home,” said Sargent

Edward Dera. “If they didn’t react immediately, we would walk toward them with our

rifles and they usually would move.” If people did not move, the troops “warned them we

would use tear gas if they didn’t. After I warned them again, we put on our masks and I’d

throw the gas.”437 From April 4th until the end of the state of emergency on April 15th, the

police fired 8,000 canisters of tear gas and the military used 5,258 CS grenades (the

military’s version of tear gas).438 To keep people out of buildings, troops sometimes

threw tear gas into stores because it made it very painful to enter. The chemical irritant

432 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 106. 433 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 3, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 434 “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 435 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 436 Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 437 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 95. 438 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 105. Price, King to King, 97.

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could linger for hours in open air and for days or even weeks in buildings. “CS has a

strong burning sensation that attacks your eyes, nose, and even your skin…All you want

to do is get out so you can breathe,” reported a 6th Calvary officer.439 “I know what it

feels like to have tear gas in your face,” recalled Virginia Ali. “It’s like you can’t open

your eyes. It’s just burning…it’s horrible.”440 One fireman complained his exposure to

tear gas impaired his vision for days.441

To the military and police, using tear gas was a form of restraint because it

dispersed crowds with gas instead of bullets. As will be discussed in depth in later

chapters, city officials prioritized civilian life over property and the D.C. government’s

response was significantly less violent than that in other cities during prior or concurrent

civil disturbances. Ultimately, the military only fired 14 rounds of ammunition in

Washington. In comparison, in 1967 troops in Detroit fired 156,391 rounds.442 Even the

American Civil Liberties Union praised law enforcement’s restraint.443 The abundant use

of tear gas was still a significant display of military and police power. In some instances,

officers threatened violence. One sergeant, for example, instructed soldiers that “If they

give you any bullshit, smash them in the face with the butt of your rifle.” After a car

passed through a check-point without stopping, twenty soldiers surrounded the vehicle

and ordered the car’s occupants to stand against the car as they searched it. The young

black couple stood with the points of unsheathed bayonets against their backs until the

troops let them go.444

439 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 105. 440 “Virginia Ali Interview,” 14, 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library. 441 “Fireman: I couldn’t even tell you what day it was,” Daily News. 442 Price, King to King, 95. 443 “ACLU Praises Judges,” April 11, 1968, Daily News, 4, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 444 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 112.

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Most egregiously, Thomas Williams, a 15-year-old, and 20-year-old Earnest

McIntyre were both shot and killed by police.445 According to police accounts, Thomas

Williams raced past Officer David L. Thompkins who was holding a different person at gun point. When Williams ran by, he hit the officer’s revolver causing it to fire and fatally wound him.446 Albert Lorraine intentionally shot Earnest McIntyre because, according to Lorraine, McIntyre “approached the officer in a threatening manner” with a

“shiny object.”447 Lorraine fired one shot immediately and two more as McIntyre ran away. Both Thompkins and Loraine were found innocent after a U.S. Grand Jury did not bring charges. The two killings of unarmed black people occurred in Anacostia where officers, unlike other sections of the city, were not warned to avoid using firearms.448

Most deaths resulting from the disturbances were the unintentional result of fires.

Georgy Neely, William P. Jeffers, and an unidentified man burned to death. Annie M.

James and Seth Hale died of smoke inhalation. Harold Bentley perished after a 3-story brick building on H Street collapsed on him. Ronald James Ford’s throat was cut close to

445 Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, “Lists of Deaths Positively Established in Connection with Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 5-7, 1968,” DC Public Library, Special Collections, Vertical Files - Riots. 1968 (April), http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll14/id/4. High school students participating in THAT Camp, hosted by the D.C. Public Library, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to attain these police records. Great work! 446 “Lists of Deaths Positively Established in Connection with Civil Disturbances in Washingotn, D.C. April 5-7, 1968,” DC Public Library. While police records list Williams as 14 years old, Gilbert claims he was eight days away from his 16th birthday. I rely on Gilbert as his account contains greater detail in general. 447 Memorandum from Precinct Captain Kenneth L. Knight to Chief of Police Layton, April 16, 1968, “A Chronological Report of Events Relating to Disorders within the Eleventh Precinct beginning Thursday April 4, 1968, problems encountered, solutions utilized and recommendations,” 2, DC Public Library, Special Collections, Vertical Files - Riots. 1968 (April), http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll14/id/17. Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 84. While the names of both officers are given in 10 Blocks, the FOIA’d records still redact the officer’s names. 448 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 83.

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Cardozo High School.449 In total, thirteen people died during the disturbances.450

The city burned, buildings crumbled, and thirteen perished. Many present

compared D.C. to a war zone. In an oral history interview in 2005, John Smith reflected

on why the riots felt like battle: “I mean it’s like you’ve never been in a war, but you’ve

seen things on TV about war. And you think that you’re in a war because the whole city

around you is burning. Sirens are going off everywhere. People are running. You heard

things that sound like shots. Some of them were.”451 “H Street resembled nothing so

much as a set for the TV series, Combat,” wrote the GW Hatchet’s B.B. Colen.452 The

destruction reminded firefighter Austin Gibson of pictures of the ongoing war in

Vietnam.453 The Washington Evening Star reported that “[s]ections of Washington,

ravaged by arsonists and looters for a second night, resembled bombing scenes from

World War II today.”454 “I guess it was like how I always imagined Berlin must have

looked after World War II,” said 21-year old Private First Class Richard Zimmerman,

“Everything was burned, gutted, and crumbling.”455 The Daily News also compared

Friday night’s events to WWII: “For many about the city, the night seemed like those of

the [S]econd World War in Europe. Flames leaped to the sky and the helmeted troops

cast long, fierce shadows as they marched in the light of the blazes.”456

Amid the chaos, Ben’s Chili Bowl was one of the only establishments permitted

449 Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, “Lists of Deaths Probably/Possibly Established in Connection with Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 5-7,” DC Public Library, Special Collections, Vertical Files - Riots. 1968 (April). 450 Price, King to King, 96; “Lists of Deaths Probably/Possibly Established in Connection with Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 5-7.” 451 John Smith Oral History, 24-25, Box 1, Folder 4, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 452 B.B. Colen, “Washington Riot Report: H Street—Like a Combat Zone,” The Hatchet. 453 “Fireman: I couldn’t even tell you what day it was,” Daily News. 454 “Arsonists and Looters Leave Parts of Capital in Shambles,” April 6, 1968, Washington Evening Star, A1, A11, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 455 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 98. 456 “Guard Call Late? Mayor is Satisfied, But Question Asked,” Daily News.

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to stay open despite the curfew. According to Virginia Ali, Stokely Carmichael got special permission from the police for Ben’s to stay open late so that police officers and members of the community working to restore peace would have a place to eat and talk and plan.457 “He went to the precinct,” Ali recalled, “because he said and other officials

said we needed some place to meet to strategize to try to see what we could do to calm

the violence, and they chose this place.”458 While Ben’s was not damaged, it was in the

epicenter of the upheaval. One customer, for example, asked to exchange looted bottles

of Courvoisier liquor for a cheeseburger. Ali was convinced Ben’s survived because it

was well known and respected in the community. “There were all types of rumors like

someone said, ‘I heard their (sic) burning U Street, man I hope they don’t touch Ben’s.’

So we had that kind of neighborhood respect, maybe.”459 The story, however, is a little more complicated. Ben’s Chili Bowl primarily sold hot dogs and did not serve liquor. If people wanted to take food, they could simply go to the grocery store. The fact that Ben’s was open during peak looting hours also meant that it was unlikely to be destroyed.

Some business owners opted to guard their businesses to avoid damage. A white man who owned a carryout store on 7th Street protected his store with a pistol. When a

group came by and threatened to “burn this motherfucking place,” the owner “put a pistol

in his face” and said “If you touch anything in that store, I’m gonna shoot you in the

457 “Architecture and Society Fall Midterm 1996,” Box 5, Folder 5: “School Papers Written about Ben’s Chili Bowl”; “Press Conference,” Box 1, Folder 5: “40th anniversary materials”; “The Shaw Community: The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement, as told by Mrs. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Box 1, Folder 9: “Interview with Virginia Ali,” MS 2285 Ben’s Chili Bowl Papers, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 458 “The Shaw Community: The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement, as told by Mrs. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Ben’s Chili Bowl Papers, 23. 459 “The Shaw Community: The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement, as told by Mrs. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Ben’s Chili Bowl Papers, 25-26.

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face.” The youths ran away.460 Relatively few business owners remained to guard their

stores and instead closed on Friday afternoon and went home. The curfew made it nearly

impossible for many to guard their establishments overnight.

Other business owners adopted different strategies to avoid theft and arson.

Black-owned businesses wrote “soul brother” or “soul sister” in soap on shop windows in

hopes racial solidarity would spare their stores.461 “Somebody came out and said,

‘You’ve got to identify your business as a black business.’ So we write a big old [sign

saying] ‘Soul Brother’ across the window,” recalled Virginia Ali.462 Some white-owned

businesses wrote “soul brothers and sisters work here” or “Soul Brother Managed” in

attempts to use black employees to save them.463 Other businesses wrote “Soul” on

windows without any credible justification other than protection and were spared. “An

Esso pump with ‘soul’ scrawled on it just doesn’t make any sense,” commented Richard

Starnes in the Daily News. “To anybody old enough to remember rotogravure it conjures

up a picture of parchment-wrinkled old John D. Rockefeller done up in blackface.”464 As

the Afro’s Ruth Jenkins noted, the signs became ubiquitous:

‘Soul brother’ signs proclaiming ‘I’m of the black race. Please don’t hurt or damage me.’ Car lights in broad daylight make the same appeal…‘Soul’ scrawled on almost every window that’s left. Sometimes, written on the inside, it looks backward from the street. ‘Soul’ in five-foot letters on the glossy doors of a luxury apartment building. ‘Soul’ at the flower shop overshadows the Easter decorations. ‘Soul’ tied to a magnificent tree in a well tended front garden. ‘Soul’

460 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 72-73. 461 Multiple people in oral interviews recalled seeing “soul brother” signs. See “Ibrahim Mumin interview transcript,” South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/262/rec/3; “Virginia Ali Interview,” 15 & 26, Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library; “Reuben M. Jackson Interview,” 16, Box 1, Folder 2, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 462 “Virginia Ali Interview,” 15, Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library. 463 David Holmberg, “…A Blue-Skied Palm Sunday,” April 8, 1968, Daily News, 7; “Looting Was Often Selective” April 8, 1968, Daily News, 16, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 464 Starnes, “D.C. Loses Its Innocence,” Daily News.

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scribbled on Fords and El Dorados alike.465

Business owners were right to think that their relationship with the African

American community impacted their fate during the disturbances. Although some “Soul

Brother” businesses were damaged, certain stores were targeted during the disorders

because black Washingtonians believed they “shortchanged” their community. “Veteran

Negro newsmen claim that in many instances rioters and looters spared establishments

that were either owned by Negroes, treated Negro employees (sic) favorably or were

owned by ‘White soul brothers,’” noted the Daily News.466 “A few black businesses were

destroyed probably by accident but most remained intact,” the Hilltop reported. “The

direction of the fires was unquestionably against white power.”467 Gerard Ivanhoe

Sawyer wrote in his diary that “I was told practically every Safeway store was attacked

by mobs because of the higher prices these stores charged for their food in ghetto

areas.”468 The white-owned Esso gas station with “soul” written on its survived without damage.469 Patrick Murphy believed there were “certain unexplicable (sic) instances where some stores were deliberately avoided and others hit.”470 Many looters and

arsonists were motivated to lash out against the white businesses they believed hurt their

neighborhoods.

“Cherry Blossoms and Riot Ruins:” The Weekend in Washington

By midnight Friday, 6,600 troops roamed the streets of Washington and 5,000

more joined them by Saturday morning. At his 1:20 AM news conference, Mayor

465 Jenkins, “No busting Easter shopping just ‘soul’ signs, troopers,” Washington Afro American. 466 “Looting Was Often Selective,” Daily News. 467 Manns and Nesnick, “Was it Riot or Insurrection,” Hilltop. 468 Gerard Ivanhoe Sawyer, Diary Entry, Monday 8, 1968, Gerard Ivanhoe and Margaret Sawyer Diary collection. 469 Starnes, “D.C. Loses Its Innocence,” Daily News. 470 “Looting Was Often Selective,” Daily News.

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Washington described the city as “quite calm” despite some sporadic looting and

untamed fires.471 The next morning, John Hechinger, Chairman of the D.C. City Council,

reported that “troops have quelled the disturbance and the worst is over; [the] City should

be able to get back to normal.”472 While the worst was indeed over, Saturday was still

chaotic. “Saturday, April 6th, was a story of old fires rekindling as new fires were lit,”

reported the Fire Department in its after-action report.473 Arsonists started 120 fires

throughout the day474 and “major” looting persisted in scattered locations away from

heavy troop concentrations. The Army Operations Center dispatched additional troops to

Washington throughout the day and by that evening 13,600 active duty troops and 1,800

National Guard soldiers occupied Washington.475 Government employees began to clean

up and assess the damage. Crews surveyed street conditions, inspected fire damage, and

cut off damaged water lines.476 By 11:00 PM Saturday night, Public Safety

Commissioner Cyrus Vance announced in a televised address that the city, with help from federal troops and the curfew, was “secure.”477

This was a very different day than what the city planned. Saturday was supposed

to be the first day of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival—the peak of D.C.’s annual

tourism that showcased the Japanese trees and the federal monuments. As many worried

about the capital’s safety, the city cancelled the Cherry Blossom festival and many

471 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 101-102. For transcripts of the speeches see Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. By 7 AM the next morning, while all fires were under control, 24 still burned. “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 472 “Operation Bandaid One,” 31. 473 “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 474 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 104. 475 Price, King to King, 91. At its peak, Total of 15,530 troops were in D.C.—13,682 active duty troops and 1,848 National Guard troops (Price, King to King, 99). 476 “Public Works Journal,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 477 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 111.

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tourists abandoned their reservations. Journalists noted the contrast between the

programed joyous spring festival and the reality of a city filled with smoke and fear. “The

cherry blossoms were falling. One very long week ago they bloomed around the Tidal

Basin and the tourists came to see them, but yesterday the tourists had gone from the still- smoldering city and the blossoms were fading fast,” mourned David Holmberg of the

Daily News.478 The Washington Evening Star observed that “A thin haze still hung over

the Capital, suspended like a fog over the cherry blossoms and the parks which today

were to have been filled with people celebrating the Cherry Blossom Festival.479

Many tourists and curious suburbanites instead flocked to witness the damage.

The streets were filled with “Thousands of white high school and college-age students, knots of Negro youths, young off-duty soldiers and sailors, couples with their children, out in the car for a bizarre Saturday jaunt.”480 On Sunday, “streams of cars from far

Northeast clogged [Benning] road, their occupants rubber-necking the damage.”481 Some

paid cab drivers to take them on tours of the burnt-out “ghetto.”482 Curious sight-seers

snapped photos of soldiers with machine guns guarding the Capitol.483 In some cases,

black Washingtonians taunted the white voyeurs.484

Business owners also journeyed downtown to check on their stores and were often

devastated by the scene. “I suppose I shouldn’t say this, but it was very hard to stop

478 “…A Blue-Skied Palm Sunday,” Daily News. 479 “Arsonists and Looters Leave Parts of Capital in Shambles,” Washington Evening Star. 480 “Thousands of Spectators Pour into Violence-Hit Areas, Cause Traffic Jams,” April 7, Washington Star, B-1, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 481 “The beginning of Holy Week in Washington,” Monday April 8, Daily News, 7; Starnes, “D.C. Loses Its Innocence,” Daily News, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. Price also recounted the traffic jams on Sunday as “visitors and curious suburbanites glutted District streets by driving into damaged sections of the city.” (Price, King to King, 91.) 482 Pamela Howard, “Cherry Blossoms and Riot Ruins,” April 9, 1968, Daily News, 14, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 483 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 76, 103-104. 484 “Thousands of Spectators Pour into Violence-Hit Areas, Cause Traffic Jams,” Washington Star.

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crying on Saturday,” said business owner Abraham Zevin. Irving Abraham, who owned a store on 7th Street, remarked “We were stunned. We just walked back and forth, back

and forth, looking at it. It was just horrible.”485

Community organizations and the city government went to work to help those

displaced or in need. The Department of Public Welfare searched for housing for those

who lost their homes in the flames. Churches opened their doors so those displaced could

sleep in church pews.486 Local organizations also mobilized to help people whose jobs

were destroyed find new employment. WETA, the local public television station,

broadcast an employment services program coordinated by the Board of Trade and Pride,

Inc., among others. The United Planning Organization and US Employment Service set

up a jobs center on U Street. On Sunday, April 7th over 1,400 young people went to a job training center on Bladensburg Road NE.487

Saturday alone, over 50 churches opened their doors to provide food, shelter, and

medical treatment. Churches also requested donations of the supplies most needed: bread,

milk, and baby food.488 Many in the surrounding suburbs heeded the call and sent food

and other supplies.489 The U.S. Agriculture Department donated 264,000 pounds of food

and distributed 70,000 pounds of it by Monday.490 Giant and Safeway grocery stores

contributed loaves of bread and half gallons of milk. The Department of Public Welfare

worked with the Urban Coalition to set up 35 distribution locations to deliver the food to

485 Duscha, “Postscript to the story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. 486 Burros, “City Faces Food Crisis,” Daily News. 487 “A Time to Start Rebuilding,” April 8, 1968, Daily News, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 488 “Operation Bandaid One,” 40-42. 489 “A Time to Start Rebuliding,” Daily News; “Hollering Whitey-this and Whitey-that, April 8, 1968, Daily News, 16, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 490 “Agriculture Dept. Pouring Surplus Food into City,” April 8, 1968, night final edition, Daily News, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C; Betty James, “Emergency Food is Available for Victims of D.C. Violence,” April 7, 1968, Washington Post.

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residents.491 Pride, Inc. served food at its headquarters.492 Howard students, led by the

radical UJAMMA campus group, operated a 24-hour emergency relief center from April

5th-17th and provided food, clothing, and shelter to D.C. residents. “It shows that black people could organize for the benefit of their brothers and sisters of the community,” said

Howard volunteer Pearl Stewart.493 Because it was hard to refrigerate donated food,

many centers assembled and distributed non-perishable peanut butter and jelly

sandwiches.494

Many living in the most affected neighborhoods faced real difficulties in the

aftermath. Food stores in D.C. relied on deliveries but many truck drivers did not want to

drive into the riot-torn areas. Even if drivers were willing to make deliveries, police

barricades made some stores unreachable.495 Further, since so many grocery stores and

pharmacies were closed or damaged, it was much harder to purchase food and get

medicine. The Food and Drug Sanitation division of the D.C. Department of Health

surveyed 527 food and drug stores and found 129 were out of business because they were

“either burned out completely, are so badly damaged that they will be out of business until completely renovated and reequipped, or had gone out of business before the disturbance.” 39 were temporarily closed because their stock was too damaged by smoke and tear gas to be sold. 83 food and drug stores were closed despite being unharmed and

97 stores were barricaded so the investigators could not determine the level of damage.

With 348 out of 527 food and drug stores closed, residents found it extremely difficult to

491 Winifred G. Thompson, “Role of the Department of Public Welfare During Civil Disturbance,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Burros, “City Faces Food Crisis,” Daily News. 492 “Operation Bandaid One,” 37. 493 John Mercer, “Students Operate Emergency Relief Center for 12 Days,” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 3. 494 “Emergency Health Services Civil Disturbance, April 5-8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 495 Burros, “City Faces Food Crisis,” Daily News.

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access food.496 In Anacostia, some residents had to walk over 1.5 miles to purchase a

gallon of milk.497

Hospitals treated the 1,056 people who came through D.C. emergency rooms with riot-related injuries.498 Few injuries were serious as only 83 people were admitted to

hospitals. Hospitals were generally able to handle the considerable number of patients

because few people came in for their scheduled appointments due to the chaos and

curfew.499 Medical personnel emphasized treating patients equally even if their injuries

were from criminal activity. “District General…had calm and compassionate

style…Intravenous drips found their way as if by magic into those with shotgun wounds,

and the cuts of chronic alcoholics—mostly white and a favorite target of young

hoodlums—were efficiently stitched.” Even medical institutions were not immune from

damage. Someone started four small fires in the Children’s Building of D.C. General

Hospital on April 7th. All were controlled, and the arsonist was never found. After bricks

shattered ambulance windows, medics broke “the rest of the windows and [kept] on

going.”500 Medical workers could not always obtain special passes to be exempted from

the curfew and this sometimes caused personnel shortages. Medical supply deliveries

were sometimes delayed because of traffic and the general difficulty of transporting

496 “Emergency Health Services Civil Disturbance, April 5-8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 497 Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Business and Commerce of the Committee on the District of Columbia United States Senate, Ninetieth Congress, Second Session on Rehabilitation of Areas of the District of Columbia Destroyed or Damaged Incident to Recent Civil Disorders (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968) 332. P1620, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 498 The D.C. government estimated 1,056 were injured while Barrye Price estimated there were 1,201 injuries based on the Army’s After Action report figure comes from Mayor’s report. “Emergency Health Services Civil Disturbance, April 5-8” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Price, King to King, 95-96. 499 “Emergency Health Services Civil Disturbance, April 5-8,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 500 “Hospitals Rise to the Emergency,” April 6, 1968, Evening Star, A-22, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C.

129 goods amidst the tumult.501 For those treated and in need of medication, it was difficult to fill prescriptions because most pharmacies were damaged or closed.502

Processing the thousands of people arrested in connection to the civil disorders necessitated a small army of lawyers. Judge Harold Greene sent out an unattributed call for volunteer lawyers over the radio and television on Friday, April 5th. After the ad aired, over 250 D.C. attorneys showed up at the Court to represent the accused and process paperwork.503 Many of these volunteers were “uptown lawyers” who primarily dealt with corporate or civil law and were inexperienced with criminal cases.504 To familiarize the attorneys with court proceedings, David McCarthy, dean of the Georgetown University

Law School, organized a briefing course Saturday morning.505 To reduce the confusion of both officials and citizens at the courthouse, government lawyers created a central information system.506 Three government lawyers (Steven Waldhorn of Housing and

Urban Development, Lee Saterfield of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Daniel J. Freed of the Office of Criminal Justice) set up a central information center in the Court of General Sessions. The center was staffed by over 50 volunteer lawyers,

501 Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” 22-23. 502 “Emergency Health Services Civil Disturbance, April 5-8,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 503 Clayton, “Riot Cases Jam Court Around Clock”, Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 124-126. In the coming months, over 400 lawyers represented riot defendants in their trials. See William Shumann, “How Courts of 2 Cities Dealt With Riot Suspects,” Washington Post, April 28, 1968, D1. On Friday afternoon, Judge Greene asked John E. Powell, president of the D.C. Bar Association, to ask lawyers to volunteer as defense attorneys. Powell refused because he was afraid volunteers would sue the Bar Association if they were injured. Greene also did not want to send out a request because he refused to admit publicly that “the court was in serious trouble.” Greene neglected to consult the Washington Bar Association, the black lawyer’s organization, and its president, Alexander Benton, later criticized this oversight. See Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 125. 504 David A. Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” April 10, 1968, The Washington Post, A18. Clayton, “Riot Cases Jam Court Around Clock”, The Washington Post. “Justice System Needs Revamping, Study Finds,” The Washington Post, May 18, 1968, Proquest. Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 126. 505 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 126. 506 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 120 & 128; Clayton, “Riot Cases Jam Court Around Clock”, Washington Post, April 7, 1968.

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clergy, and Howard University law and divinity students who worked to learn the

whereabouts of arrested persons, answer questions about court procedures, and “to

expedite the processing of criminal cases by identifying and attempting to overcome

delays or obstruction in the administration of justice.”507 From its establishment on April

6th to its end on April 9th, the center answered more than 1,000 inquires.508

City officials and volunteers also operated hot lines to provide citizens with vital information and calm panic. Set up by the mayor’s office, the Urban League and

Citizen’s Information Service operated a 24-hour hotline staffed by 75-100 volunteers who answered the public’s questions. Over that weekend, an average of 16 people per minute called the service. By 2 AM Saturday morning, the hotlines received 650 calls;

90% rang to offer “personal services, food, clothing, shelter, medical and legal service.”

2,800 people called by late Saturday night but instead of donating goods and services,

90% of callers requested food, shelter, and informational requests.509 Howard Jones, the

project operator, estimated that 60-70% of calls came from suburbanites “concerned

about their welfare.” Many called to investigate the veracity of swirling rumors which

earned the hotline the nickname of “the rumor clinic.” “Every Tom, Dick, and Harvey

was calling up and wanting to know information about how many fires are we having,

what is causing this,” noted Fire Chief Galotta.510 Safety Commissioner Murphy felt such

507 Memorandum from the Director of the Office of Criminal Justice Daniel J. Freed to Attorney General Ramsey Clark, “D.C. Civil Disorder—Administration of Justice,” April 11, 1968, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 508 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 128. Freed, “D.C. Civil Disorder—Administration of Justice,” April 11, 1968, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Clayton, “Court Struggles to Clear Jails,” Washington Post. 509 Robert Rogers, “Summary of Activity—D.C. Citizen Information Telephone Answering Service,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 510 Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” 108; “Batteries of Phones Help lift Fog of Rumor in D.C. Turmoil,” April 11, 1968, Evening Star, B1, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library.

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rumors were “one of the worst parts of this. We’ve heard them all from knocking down

the (Washington) Monument to diverting the Potomac (River.)”511

Some Washingtonians worked to prevent further violence in the city. The

NAACP sent sound trucks to NW and NE and begged for calm.512 On Friday along 14th

Street, three black men drove around and shouted at people to go home.513 On 7th street,

an unidentified black man urged crowds to disperse: “It ain’t worth dying for. If you love

Martin Luther King and all he stood for, please go back. At least let him get in the

ground.”514 Singer James Brown traveled to D.C. at his own expense and pleaded: “Don’t

terrorize, organize. Don’t burn. Give the kids a chance to learn.”515 “I know how everybody feels,” he sympathized. “I feel the same way. But you can’t do anything by blowing up, burning up, stealing, and looting. Please go off the streets. From one brother to another, go home.”516 Walter Washington delivered televised addresses every night at

11 PM so that citizens “could kind of go to sleep and feel that somebody is looking after

them. They knew how to assess the situation.”517 News programs adapted their

broadcasts to avoid worsening the destruction. Most stations avoided using the word

“riot” as the Kerner Commission found some African Americans considered the term

inflammatory. Camera operators frequently did not use any additional lighting because

the bright lights had often angered protestors in previous disturbances. Radio stations

511 “Murphy Meets Topkick,” April 10, 1968, Daily News, 3, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 512 “City Rights Leaders Plead for Calm,” April 7, 1968, Washington Star, A-12, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 513 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 97. 514 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 75. 515 “Conflict in Morals,” April 9, 1968, Daily News, 24, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. The article contrasts Brown’s actions with Carmichael’s and concluded “A lot more James Browns quite obviously are needed.” 516 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 108. 517 Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” 41-42.

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aired frequent “calming statements” and WOL’s Dick Lillard refused to broadcast news related to the disorders. He especially avoided naming “specific locations of trouble. It just encourages people to go there.”518

By Saturday evening much of the city was empty as the curfew went into effect at

4:00 PM.519 “Eight o’clock at night seemed like four o’clock in the morning because

nobody was on the street,” said John D. Jackson, a police officer on duty during the

disturbances.520 By 5 PM, the main streets were “nearly deserted” with only police

officers and troops visible.521 “It was a ghost town,” recalled Karen Keegan Iserd.522 “An

eerie atmosphere dominated the well-lit broad streets of downtown Washington, with its modern office buildings, in a silence broken only by the frequent wails of police, fire, and ambulance sirens," described the Hilltop.523 Contrasted with the usual bustle of a

Saturday night, “The neon lights never went on. The go-go-girls did not dance.”524 Most

of D.C. stayed home.

“Happiness…was drowning a glass of cold, cold beer again”: Everyday Life Resumes in D.C. The capital was tranquil enough Sunday that many observed their Sunday rituals

despite the ruble and troops. Many donned their Sunday best and trekked past debris to

go to church that Palm Sunday.525 Church goers such as Gerard Ivanhoe Sawyer walked

518 “Radio, TV: Restraint,” April 6, 1968, Washington Daily News, 14, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 519 “Proclamation of Emergency,” April 6, 1968, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 520 “John D. Jackson interview,” Box 1, Folder 6, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 521 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 109. 522 “Karen Keegan Iserd interview,” 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/206/rec/44. 523 “Army Guards D.C. Streets,” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 1. 524 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 109. 9 525 For a vivid representation of this, see Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 70-71.

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to places of worship on streets lined with troops.526 “People in Easter finery mince around the rubbish that has spilled from a disemboweled building, the palm fronds in their hands striking a crashing note of dissonance,” remarked a Washington Daily News reporter. At 14th and U, however, the usual Sunday joy was absent. “It’s the most

incongruous sight imaginable,” observed the Afro’s Ruth Jenkins,

A sunny Saturday morning at 14th And U Sts. NW Washington and no Eastertide ‘business as usual.’ No bright-eyed children. No cute frilly dresses. No be- ribboned bonnets. No soft downy bunnies. No colorful jelly beans. No chocolate Easter eggs. But troopers, armed to the teeth, at each street crossing. Drab colored uniforms, rifles and stern looks.527 “Everything is very tentative, like a guy with a bad hangover who is afraid to move

quickly for fear his head will fall clean off,” remarked Richard Starnes of the Daily

News.528 Those wanting to survey the damage once again created traffic jams as “the city

came to look at black Washington spending Palm Sunday at the point of a bayonet.”529

The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Northeast D.C. hosted a memorial service

for King which over 4,000 white and black Washingtonians attended.530 “His Palm

Sunday was four years ago,” preached the minister, “…his good Friday [was] three days

ago in Memphis, when will his Easter be?”531 “Sportily dressed golfers,” presumably white, teed off at the Benning Road Golf Course, close to some of the worst damage in

Anacostia.532 Soldiers who had bivouacked at the same golf course woke up and left to

patrol D.C.’s streets.533 They smoked cigarettes and drank Cokes as they rode in armored

troop carriers to go to their stations and occasionally “leaned over and looked out into the

526 Sawyer, diary entry, April 7, 1968. 527 Jenkins, “No busting Easter shopping just ‘soul’ signs, troopers,” Washington Afro American. 528 Starnes, “D.C. Loses Its Innocence,” Daily News. 529 Starnes, “D.C. Loses Its Innocence,” Daily News. 530 “A Time to Start Rebuilding,” Daily News. 531 “The Beginning of Holy Week in Washington,” Daily News. 532 “A Time to Start Rebuilding,” Daily News. 533 “John D. Jackson interview,” 17, 1968, Oral History Collection, Kiplinger.

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blue skies of Palm Sunday in Washington.”534

The number of fires decreased each hour Sunday and firefighters were mostly

dispatched to tame smoke and flames from fires started previously.535 The Police

Department considered Sunday to be mostly calm.536 After Sunday, “the key word on the

lips of weary city and Federal officials was ‘rebuild.’” The Redevelopment Land Agency announced its plans to estimate city-wide losses and began knocking down buildings along H Street NE to “protect against toppling walls.” On Monday, April 8th, government

employees went back to work although non-essential workers were dismissed an hour

and a half early. Schools were in session but let out early at 1:30.537 Teachers encouraged

students to discuss and draw their experiences during the upheaval because they had a

“great need to talk.” “There are using much stronger colors than usual,” one teacher

noticed. Margaret Labat, a school principal, reported that her school was “much quieter

than normal” and attendance was half the normal level.”538 While private businesses were

encouraged to open, they closed at 4:00 PM to observe the curfew.539 Some retailers

reported increased requests for clothing alterations, presumably for clothing looted from

area shops.540

Troops continued to aid civilian forces and intermingle with the public. Many

534 “…A Blue-Skied Palm Sunday,” Daily News. 535 “The District Fire Department’s Role in the Civil Disturbances of April 4,5,6,7, and 8, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 536 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 6, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 537 “A Time to Start Rebuliding,” Daily News. 538 “Troops Made Home in Schools,” April 9, 1968, The Washington Post, C-1; Joy Manson, “Children Reflect Confused Society: What ‘Soul’ is All About,” Washington Post, April 10, 1968, C2. 539 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” 6, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 540 “Operation Bandaid One,” 75.

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helped clean up debris in the streets and in damaged buildings.541 Monday, April 8th

soldiers performed a concert for students at Spingarn High School. Ironically, or perhaps

appropriately, the forces were armed as they played for the laughing children. Troops

camped in Dunbar, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Spingarn High schools as well as a few

junior high schools. Army helicopters took off from school parking lots, military trucks

lined school playgrounds, and “in the schools’ basement, which is being used as a

dormitory, at least a few paratroopers slept through the racket of children, music, and

aircraft.”542

Many schools and organizations in D.C. were eager to host and entertain the

occupying soldiers. By Monday the troops were “having a ball, they had five or six

affairs planned for them around the schools, and one at the Interdepartmental Auditorium,

one at the Armory…these guys were being paraded around and feted and partied.” A

theatre company even gave a performance of John Brown’s Body at Ford’s Theatre for

the military.543 The police, meanwhile, were still “battling things out on the front line, doing most of the work, [working] overtime 12 to 14 hours, and getting no entertainment.” Mayor Washington perceived this as a “morale problem that was of some substance” and intervened Monday, April 8th to “have all the parties stopped and all of the activities, except those that involved tickets to the theater, [and] the ball game.”544

Tuesday, April 9th was the last day that leaders were seriously concerned about

additional instances of mass violence. Rumors swirled that black militants planned a

revolt to coincide with King’s funeral in Atlanta, Georgia. The FBI received reports that

541 Price, King to King, 91. 542 “Troops Made Home in Schools,” The Washington Post. 543 “District Eases Curfew, Liquor Rules Further,” April 11, 1968, night final edition, Evening Star, 1, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 544 Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” 33.

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black militants were storing guns in the Dunbar Hotel in D.C. and would use them that

Tuesday.545 One agent believed radicals planned to “take the lid off” Tuesday night.546 In

the face of such rumors, the mayor and Board of Trade urged businesses to close for

King’s funeral.547 Many stores ran newspaper ads informing people they would be closed

Tuesday. A & P Food Stores, Giant, Safeway, Woodward and Lathrop, and Rosenthal

Chevrolet ran ads announcing they would be closed “in honor” and “In Memorium” of

King.548 Some businesses did not say they would be closed but simply publicized their

“tributes” to King. Ads for Pep Boys and L. Frank, for example, simply read “IN

MEMORIAM The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 1928-1968.”549 While some

companies included praise for King, few mentioned any specifics about King’s cause or

contributions to American society. For example, an ad for Lewis & Thos. Saltz

proclaimed “We mourn the passing of a great leader/ a great American/ Dr. Martin

Luther King.”550 “Raleighs joins the world in paying tribute to the memory of a great

American Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” read an ad for Ralieghs.551 New York Life

Insurance reduced King’s message to “reason” and non-violence”: “Dr. Martin Luther

King Jr., lived and died in the cause of reason. He was a man of non-violence and his

545 Memo from J. Edgar Hoover to President Lyndon Johnson, “Selected Racial Developments and Disturbances,” April 7, 1968, DDRS-26392, Reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2015. 546 “Selected Racial Developments and Disturbances,” 4, April 8, 1968, DDRS-26392, Reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2015. 547 S. Oliver Goodman, “Bulk of Washington Firms to Close in King Tribute,” April 9, The Washington Post, B6, Proquest. 548 For example, see ads from Ida’s Department Store, Perpetual Building Association, and various grocery stores. April 9, 1968, Daily News, 9, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C.; April 9, 1968, Evening Star, A-11, A-22. 549 “Display Ad 27—No Title,” April 9, 1968, Washington Post, A7; “Display Ad No 13—No Title,” April 9, 1968, Washington Post, A4, Proquest. 550 “Display Ad 32—No Title,” April 9, 1968, Washington Post, A1. 551 “Display Ad No 6—No title,” April 9, 1968, Washington Post, A3. As an exception, an ad for SCAN furniture read: “In Memorium for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

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cause was just. Dr. King’s memory will surely live on in the hearts of men of good will

everywhere.”552 Such ads were transparent attempts to appear sympathetic to African

Americans’ grief to avoid further destruction. Many businesses only closed stores in potential danger “in honor” of King but opened suburban stores. Despite A&P’s ad declaring they would close “in solemn tribute” to King, their stores only closed from

10:30-12 in the suburbs. The Marriott-Hot Shoppes followed the same policy. All banks closed in Washington but as of Monday were undecided if they would close in the surrounding suburbs.553

The day of King’s funeral did not erupt in violence and by Wednesday many

aspects of normal life returned. The Evening Star’s top story on Wednesday covered the war in Vietnam instead of the disorders.554 Cyrus Vance, the special Pentagon

representative in charge of coordinating the city and federal government’s riot response,

departed Washington. The White House resumed giving tours. The Washington Senators

finally played their twice-postponed season opener and Vice President Hubert Humphrey

threw the first pitch. The city also relaxed its liquor restrictions on Wednesday permitting

the 32,000 people attending the baseball game “to solace themselves with beer as the

Senators dropped the year’s first game 2 to 0.”555

The informational hotlines received several hundred phone calls asking “about

where one could get a drink.”556 “Happiness for Russ Harrison today was drowning a

glass of cold, cold beer again at Eddie Spindler’s Café,” reported the Washington Star. “I

552 “Display Ad 39—No Title,” April 9, 1968, Washington Post, A14. 553 “Bulk of Washington Firms to Close in King Tribute,” Washington Post. 554 Evening Star, April 11, 1968, 1. 555 “District Eases Curfew, Liquor Rules Further,” April 11, 1968, night final edition, Evening Star, Box 285, Folder “Civil Rights—Riots, Clippings, April 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. “Game Again Put Off,” April 6, 1968, Evening Star, A1, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 556 “Batteries of Phones Help lift Fog of Rumor in D.C. Turmoil,” Evening Star.

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didn’t know what to do with myself at home,” said Harrison, “I drank orange juice.

Orange juice! I usually get a double shot and a beer.”557 Residents could stay out until 10

PM while firearms and flammables were still banned.558

Over the next several days, the city gradually reduced its restrictions further. On

Thursday, April 11th, the curfew ran from 12 PM to 4 AM and alcohol sales were permitted until 11 PM. The next day, April 12th, Mayor Washington abolished the curfew

and alcohol could be sold until midnight. Washington also asked President Johnson to

gradually remove troops and Murphy, Layton, and General Haines coordinated a

withdrawal plan. The same day, the Maryland suburbs lifted its ban on the sale of

firearms and gun stores were swamped with customers.559 Troops began to depart D.C.

April 13th. Starting April 14th, officials completely lifted the restrictions on alcohol sales

in D.C. Finally, on April 15th the city officially ended the state of emergency and

residents could once again purchase gas and other flammable liquids and purchase and

carry guns and ammunition. The 12 days of federal military occupation in D.C. officially

ended on April 16th at 12:00 PM.560 With order restored, D.C. plunged headfirst into its

quest to understand why the upheaval happened and to rebuild the city.

557 “Barkeep Happy to Be Back,” April 10, 1968, Washington Star, A-4, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 558 “Proclamation of Emergency,” April 10, 1968, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; “D.C. Eases the Curfew Even Further (10 p.m.) and Opens Up the Bars,” April 10, 1968, Daily News, 1, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 559 “Help Plans Growing,” April 12, 1968, Daily News, 5, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 560 “Preliminary Action and Status Reports Relating to the Mayor, Director of Public Safety and the Police Department Relative to April 1968 Civil Disorders in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Price, King to King, 93-94.

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Chapter 3: “And then people say, ‘Well, why would you turn on your own community?’” Explaining the 1968 Civil Disturbances As Washington returned to normal, columnist Drew Pearson posed a question in

the Washington Post: “Why? Why should three percent of the Negro population be so

consumed with hate as to make homeless hundreds of their own race and endanger

relations between both races?”561 Nearly fifty years later, Karen Keegan Iserd, a white

resident of Shaw, similarly asked, “[W]hy would you destroy your own neighborhood

knowing that it’s just going to drag your whole existence back fifty or sixty years?...Why

would you destroy a neighborhood that was there for you?”562 The only black student at a

private school in upper Northwest D.C. in 1968, Faith Davis Ruffins remembered her

classmates inquiring “why are your people doing this?”563 Former radical John Smith

also recalled this common refrain: “And then people say, ‘Well, why would you turn on

your own community?’”564

Two theories on the causes of urban violence were already in circulation by April

1968. After the civil disturbances in the Los Angeles suburb of Watts in 1965, President

Lyndon B. Johnson created the McCone Commission that authored the report entitled

“Violence in the City--An End or A Beginning?” The commission concluded the violence

was the result of a ghetto pathology that included absentee fathers, crime, and single-

mother headed homes. In the aftermath of civil disturbances in Detroit and Newark in

1967, Johnson once again commissioned a committee to study urban uprisings. The

561 Drew Pearson, “Capital Now More Divided Than Ever: Why the Violence?”, The Washington Post, Apr 10, 1968, B7. 562 Karen Keegan Iserd interview transcript, 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/206/rec/44. 563 “Faith Davis Ruffins interview,” 15, Box 1, Folder 5, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. 564 “John Smith Oral History,” 23, Box 1, Folder 4, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C.

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Kerner Commission released its findings shortly before the disturbances in 1968 and

reached a different conclusion: civil disorders were the result of unequal economic

opportunity and racism. To prevent further urban violence, the government needed to

intervene to curtail discrimination and create better social services and job programs. The

response by public figures in Washington to the Kerner Report’s findings demonstrated

the divide between these two schools of thought. Representative Joel Broyhill, a “law and

order” conservative from Virginia, chastised the report’s thesis: “You can very well get

the inference from the report that it’s not the rioter who’s at fault but the decent,

taxpaying, church-going person.” Broyhill further worried the commission’s conclusions

“may encourage riots this summer.”565 Like many conservatives, Broyhill contended the

social change recommended by the commission would only reward “bad behavior.”566

Civil rights activist Walter Fauntroy stated he was “happy to see as responsible a group

as this [Kerner commission] go to the heart of the problem in terms of defining racism as

the heart of the problem….this is another of those reports that is a clear handwriting on

the wall.”567 To Fauntroy, like many liberals, avoiding urban upheaval necessitated

government action to foster social equality.

Some African Americans advocated a third interpretation of civil violence. The militant Julius Hobson praised the Kerner report as it was the “first official admission that the fountainhead of black problems in America emanates in the white community where

565 Betty James, “D.C. Leaders Hail Riot Report, But Hill Reaction Is Mixed,” Washington Star, Vertical Files, “Riots, 1968 (April),” Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C. 566 James Button, Black Violence: Political Impact of the 1960s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 567 Betty James, “D.C. Leaders Hail Riot Report, But Hill Reaction Is Mixed,” Washington Star, Vertical Files, “Riots, 1968 (April),” Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C.

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oppressive power comes from.”568 Hobson and other black leaders, often associated with

the Black Power movement, thought it was inaccurate to view urban upheaval as a

product of a criminal pathology or random outbursts in response to economic inequality.

They argued the root of these social problems was institutional racism and considered the

events as “rebellions” or political protests to overthrow structural discrimination.

This theory, adopted by many scholars in the first half of the 1970s, incorporated

elements of Black Power ideology and argued the disorders were rational political acts. In

his 1970 book Roots of Rebellion: The Evolution of Black Politics and Protest since

WWII, Richard Young argued that the recent civil disturbances were actually a form of

political protest.569 In Violence as Protest: A Study of Riots and Ghettos (1972), Robert

M. Fogelson insisted that urban violence was not the result of deliberative planning by outside agitators or radical fringe groups, but instead revealed the true frustrations and politics of average black citizens.570 David Sears and John McConahay contended that

Watts was a political rebellion, not an aimless riot in their book The Politics of Violence:

The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot. Watts, they asserted, represented a shift from

the southern-focused nonviolent movement to the northern militant movement. Black

Americans were frustrated by the larger lack of change and had community-specific

grievances with the police and merchants. This combination allowed a spark to light the

flames of revolt.571 Finally, in Ghetto Revolts: The Politics of Violence in American

Cities (1973), Joe R. Feagin and Harlan Hahn claimed that throughout history, minority

568 James, “D.C. Leaders Hail Riot Report, But Hill Reaction Is Mixed,” Washington Star. 569 Richard Young, Roots of Rebellion: The Evolution of Black Politics and Protest since WWII (USA: Joan Colter Books, 1970). 570 Robert M. Fogelson, Violence as Protest: A Study of Riots and Ghettos (USA: Doubleday, 1971). 571 David Sears and John McConahay, The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1973).

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groups always entered the American political system via violence. Because the United

States government and society had not permitted legitimate paths to success for African

Americans, they resorted to violent riots as a political tactic to demand equality.572

Little was written on the causes of urban violence in the 1980s,573 but after the

Rodney King protests in Los Angeles in 1992, the topic regained popularity. In 1995,

Gerald Horne published Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s which added

two main ideas to the literature: (1) riots were a way of asserting black men’s masculinity

after they felt feminized for years by racism and (2) riots erupted across the US because

the Cold War context stifled other more democratic means of dissent.574 In 2007, Janet

Abu-Lughod’s Race, Space and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles examined

the different political, economic, and spatial contexts that she believes led to uprisings in

three different cities. According to Abu-Lughod, fewer civil disturbances took place in

New York City because New York was more responsive to citizen’s demands than other

cities.575 Recent books such as Clay Risen’s Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the

King Assassination, the edited collection Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in an

American City, and Michael Flamm’s In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of

1964 and the War on Crime also argue civil violence resulted from increasing tensions

due to enduring racism and economic inequality.576 Samuel J. Walker’s 2018 book Most

572 Joe R. Feagin and Harlan Hanh, Ghetto Revolts: The Politics of Violence in American Cities (USA: Collier Macmillan Ltd, 1973). 573 As an exception, Sidney Fine examined the Detroit riots in 1967. See Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (Ann Arbor: the University of Michigan Press, 1989). 574 Gerald Horne, Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1995). 575 Janet Abu-Lughod, Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles (USA: OUP, 2007). 576 Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009); Edited by Jessica Elfenbein, Elizabeth Nix, and Thomas Hollowak, Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City (Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 2010); Michael Flamm, In

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of 14th Street is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968 emphasizes poverty as a cause

of the disturbances and contends that the events were apolitical opportunistic crimes.577

Today, the question of “why” uprisings occur is still contested and contentious.

As Adolph Reed Jr. wrote in a recent roundtable on civil disorders, “The explosions of

‘urban unrest’ in the 1960s became almost immediately, and have remained, something

like Rorschach tests or ventriloquist dummies for scholars, journalists, and advocates of

political programs across the ideological spectrum.” 578 Indeed, in the aftermath of the

1968 upheaval in Washington, many Americans advanced interpretations of the events

that served their own interests. Some believed the violence was coordinated with

international revolutionaries as part of “urban guerilla warfare” and urged increased

surveillance of radical groups. Many conservatives argued participants were apolitical

criminals who simply wanted to steal goods and demanded stronger law enforcement to

prevent further disorder. Liberals often suggested Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination

intensified African Americans’ anger at the lack of opportunity in the “ghetto,” triggering

mass violence. The government, liberals believed, needed to respond to the disorders by

strengthening its programs to mitigate poverty and discrimination. Many militant black

Washingtonians argued the four days of chaos constituted spontaneous political acts to

attack and expel white institutions from black neighborhoods and demand self-control.

Each theory supported a group’s preestablished political goals and decreased their culpability for the events disrupting D.C.

the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 577 Samuel J. Walker, Most of 14th Street is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 578 Adolph Reed, Jr., “The Kerner Commission and the Irony of Antiracist Politics,” Labor Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 14, Issue 4 (2017): 31.

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After examining the different explanations of the causes and meanings of the civil

disturbances, I argue that different people participated for different reasons. Some were

deliberately political in their actions, others wanted to “get something for nothing,”579

and some people were influenced by both motivations simultaneously. Any accurate

interpretation must acknowledge and embrace this complexity. As concluded by a 1968

editorial in the Washington Afro American, “There is no single reason covering

individual motivation of participants.”580

“This is really a world organization that we are up against now:” The Disturbances as a Planned Conspiracy and Revolution Some believed the civil disturbances were planned as part of a larger, coordinated revolutionary plot. Conservatives holding this view often insisted the violence was instigated by “outside agitators:” people beyond the community (often communists) manipulated the citizenry to participate in violent activity. In an article in American

Security Council, William K. Lambie, Jr. argued a riot could not happen “without a great deal of prior agitation and some active inciting,” including the dissemination of propaganda. According to Lambie, the communist government in Cuba gave Stokely

Carmichael orders that he followed to start the rebellion.581 John R. Immer, the president

of the nearly all-white Washington Federation of Citizen’s Associations, also argued that

the disturbances were “inspired and engineered by the Communists” because black

579 William Raspberry, “Potomac Watch: Punish, Don't Destroy Looters,” Washington Post, Apr 15, 1968, B1. 580 “Riots and the Law,” Washington Afro American, April 13, 1968, News Clippings, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Documents from this report are indicated by their title within the report as the document does not use page numbers. 581 William K. Lambie, Jr., “Summer 1968—Riot or Rebellion?,” American Security Council, April 15, 1969, Box 285a, Folder 36 “TF: Civil Disturbances—Clippings,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

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militants did not “have the intelligence to work this sort of plan out.”582 George

Kalavitinos, a local business owner whose property was damaged in the disturbances, did

not “regard the recent disorders experienced in the Nation’s Capital as riots. To me this

was vandalism, arson, thievery, etc. planned by the demagogues and the criminal

elements of this city many months before. They knew which places to hit, when to hit,

and how to hit.”583 Kalavitinos asserted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

(SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were secretly

controlled by communists and revolutionaries including “several African nations and

Fidel Castro’s Cuba.” Carmichael and 50 other “militant punks” met weeks before the

riot to “train youths” and plot bloodshed.584 Mrs. Ernest Howard, a representative of the

Columbia Heights Citizen’s Association, believed disorders were “not purely a local

problem; this is an organized conspiracy. This is really a world organization that we are up against now, but our leaders refuse to see the forest for the trees.”585

Additionally, the events constituted “guerilla warfare” that would likely worsen in

the future as part of a planned revolution. Dr. Lewis Killian, the chair of the sociology

department at Florida State University, was “afraid the nation was heading for guerilla

warfare in the cities.” Dr. Killian contended the disturbances were part of a longer

trajectory in which “apostles of violence” would become the most prominent force in the

582 Michael Adams, “Voice of the City…School Plan in the Aftermath,” Washington Star, April 13, 1968, Vertical Files, “Riots, 1968 (April),” Martin Luther King, Jr. Public Library Washingtoniana Collection. 583 “Statement of George Kalavitinos, A Washington, D.C. Citizen and Businessman,” 64-76, Civil Disturbances in Washington: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress Second Session: Investigation of the April 1968 Rioting, Looting, Damages and Losses, and Police Actions: May and July, 1968 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968). P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This publication is hereafter referred to as Civil Disturbances in Washington. 584 “Statement of George Kalavitinos,” 64-76, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 585 “Statement of Mrs. Earnest Howard, Representing Federation of Citizen Associations, North Washington Council, and Columbia Heights Citizens Association,” 104-105, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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black community. 586 Washington Post conservative columnists Rowland Evans and

Robert Novak also thought an interest in violence was spreading among African

Americans because “[w]herever militant Negro youths have gathered in recent weeks,

there has been one subject: Guerilla warfare.”587 “Guerilla warfare is now being waged

here and around the country,” George Kalavitinos alleged.588 Washington Post columnist

Ward Just asserted the participants aimed to create a “violent, militant, black unity.”589

Just fretted about potential militant-fostered violence after he learned that students at

Eastern High School were taught how to handle guns in the school’s cadet program.590

William Lambie thought communist groups were “still talking in terms of guerilla

warfare and insurrection now.” “Domestic guerilla warfare will be supported by others in

the world who seek the destruction of our system,” he wrote, “and our will and ability to

resist will be tested as it has never before been tested.” 591

The belief that the events in Washington were part of a coordinated revolution

was not a mere fringe opinion. At a Chamber of Commerce national convention in D.C.,

348 out of 555 businessmen believed the civil disturbances were planned by outside

forces.592 Those present at a White House meeting to coordinate a response to the

violence, including President Lyndon Johnson and the D.C. Mayor Walter Washington,

expressed “some concern about the nature of future disturbances…In the future, we must

586 “The Masses Do Not Need Carmichael, Says Young,” Washington Afro-American, April 16, 1968, 12; http://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 587 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Mystery Call Spurs Carmichael to Take Leadership in Mourning for Dr. King,” Washington Post, April 8, 1968, A17. 588 “Statement of George Kalavitinos,” 70, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 589 Ward Just, “Riot Without Racism,” Washington Post, Apr 16, 1968, A16. 590 Ward Just, “Generation Gap in the Ghetto,” Washington Post, April 7, 1968, B6. 591 Lambie, “Summer 1968—Riot or Rebellion?” 592 John Fialka, “Businessmen See Riots Planned By Outsiders,” Washington Star, May 1, 1968, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library.

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be prepared for guerilla-type warfare, incidents in the suburbs, use of children, Castro-

trained commandos, and various other possibilities, however remote they may seem

now.”593 At the White House meeting, the assembled leaders agreed that better

intelligence on “militant groups” like “Howard University, SNCC, African groups, [and

the] Institute for Policy Studies” would have made the troops more efficient at

suppressing the violence.594 The suggestion that officials could predict where to send

troops based on intelligence of radical group’s activities implies they thought these

groups incited and shaped at least part of the disturbances. Julian Dugas, the Director of

Licenses and Inspection in D.C., believed the government was “dealing with organized

people.” Dugas heard rumors that “articulate young students from some of the chemistry

departments” were planning “sophisticated things” like cutting “all of the major

telephone lines” and “possibly poisoning the water supply.” Dugas worried the FBI, CIA,

and other surveillance agencies lacked adequate information to properly contain and

detect future uprisings.595 In hearings of the D.C. House Committee in May 1968,

Congressman Larry Winn argued the damage was pre-planned and coordinated because

stores marked “Soul Brother” were not harmed. Police officers claimed the “Soul

Brother” signs were in the same handwriting on many blocks.596

No one received more blame for inciting “guerilla warfare” than Stokely

Carmichael. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had argued for years that

Carmichael was orchestrating a black revolution. As part of the Counter Intelligence

593 Memorandum from Joe Califano to President Lyndon B. Johnson, “Minutes: Washington, D.C. Riot and Future Planning,” April 17, 1968. “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” 114; ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 594 “Minutes: Washington, D.C. Riot and Future Planning,” 112-113. 595 Gilbert Y. Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” May 20, 1968, 62, 81-82, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. 596 “Statement of Charles Warden, Jr., On Behalf of the Owners of a Building at 14th and Irving Sts, Washington, D.C.,” 90-01, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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Program (COINTELPRO), the FBI had closely surveilled Carmichael and his associates

for years. In an FBI report written in early 1968, FBI official G.C. Moore sent a pamphlet

written by Carmichael to D.C. headquarters that allegedly revealed “considerable thought and study of revolutionary planning on his part…it is a frightening picture of what

Carmichael would like to achieve."597 Likewise, an FBI memo written mere hours before

MLK’s assassination summarized Carmichael’s involvement with SNCC and promotion

of Black Power. The report concluded that SNCC was “of such potential danger [to

qualify] for counterintelligence consideration,” and the “[p]rimary individual target

would be Stokely Carmichael.”598 As discussed in chapters 1 and 2, Carmichael

repeatedly called for violent revolution so it is unsurprising he was closely monitored or

that some believed he was to blame for the upheaval. In an April 15th White House

meeting, Mayor Walter E. Washington asserted that he would have more effectively

distributed the police and contained the destruction if he could have known “[w]hat

Stokely Carmichael was doing” and “[w]hat was happening at the Howard University

rally.”599 Coverage of Carmichael sometimes even devolved into paranoid obsession. A

White House Situation Room memo reported “Maryland State Police say that Stokely

Carmichael may appear in Baltimore today….A previously unconfirmed report stated

that Carmichael was in Albany, Georgia. Another report mentions that Carmichael made

597 G.C. Moore, “Memo to Mr. C.W. Sullivan: Re: COUNTERINTELLIGCEN PROGRAM,” March, 21, 1968; FBI COINTELPRO Black Extremists surveillance files for April-July 1968 with documentation on Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Elijah Muhammad, LeRoi Jones, SCLC, and the Nation of Islam. FBI Files on Black Extremist Organizations, Part 1: COINTELPRO Files on Black Hate Groups and Investigation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, 6-7; ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 598 “Memorandum to the Director of the FBI,” April 4, 1968. “FBI surveillance records from the COINTELPRO Black Extremist program from August 1967-April 1968, including memo on the establishment of counterintelligence program targeting ‘black nationalist-hate type organizations’ and goals of the program,” FBI Files on Black Extremist Organizations, Part 1: COINTELPRO Files on Black Hate Groups and Investigation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, 195--April 4 report; ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 599 “Minutes: Washington, D.C. Riot and Future Planning,” 112.

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a statement at 16th Street fire in Washington, D.C.”600

Some reporters also blamed Carmichael for the upheaval. Conservative

Washington Post columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak believed Carmichael was

motivated by a “mysterious phone call to ask stores to close in remembrance for King.”

While Carmichael was initially numb after hearing of MLK’s assassination, after the call,

“Carmichael was his old self. He announced that he would immediately go into the Negro

ghetto…to demand that stores close out of respect for Dr. King. Not surprisingly,

Carmichael’s efforts denigrated [sic] into looting by Negro youths later in the evening[.]”

According to Evans and Novak, this call suggested Carmichael was “guided through his otherwise inexplicable shifts of strategy by unseen—and undetermined forces.”601

Reporters Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson wrote that Carmichael told a Cuban newspaper he was considering “guerilla tactics” during the upheaval.602 In “The City

Besieged: A Study in Ironies and Contrasts,” Ward Just claimed white people did not

understand the violence going on downtown because they “did not know what had gone

on earlier at Howard University. At Howard…Carmichael had waved a pistol in front of

the audience and warned the unarmed to stay off the streets tonight.”603 Even days after

the city was under control, a Washington Post reporter worried that “Stokely

Carmichael…was still at large.”604 A political cartoon in the Daily News depicted

600 “Situation Room Information (National), April 6, 1968.” Civil rights issues, including Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, urban disturbances and use of Army units, and situation in Baltimore, April 1968. Found in: Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files, 18. ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 601 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Mystery Call Spurs Carmichael to Take Leadership in Mourning for Dr. King,” Washington Post, April 8, 1968, A17. 602 Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, “Stokely Told Cubans of Guerrilla Plan: State Level Politics,” Washington Post, May 4, 1968, D19. 603 Ward Just, “The City Besieged: A Study in Ironies and Contrasts,” Washington Post, April 6, 1968, A15. 604 “So Far, Well Done,” Washington Post, Apr 8, 1968, A16.

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Carmichael pushing Adolph Hitler off a cracking pedestal as he shouted, “Move over

honkey.”605

Were the events in Washington following King’s assassination part of a planned

insurrection? Carmichael and some radicals certainly encouraged revolution and

considered the disturbances to be a mass uprising influenced by their radical teachings.

As discussed in Chapter 2, Carmichael asserted that the “rebellions that have been

occurring around these cities and this country is just light stuff to what is about to

happen.”606 Chairman Mao of the communist People’s Republic of China issued a

statement supporting the “Afro-American struggle against violence” that demonstrated a

cry for the “oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of

the monopoly of the capitalist class.” To pay tribute to the “extremely powerful

revolutionary force of more than 20 million black Americans,” hundreds of thousands of

people in Peking (Beijing) marched from 7:00 AM until 8:30 PM in support of Mao’s

message and black Americans’ “certain victory” over imperialism. Although it is possible

the grand display was exaggerated and mere propaganda, the statement still represented

international communists’ interest in American racial conflict.607 Communist leaders in

Cuba and Albania depicted the violence as an anti-capitalist civil war and some leaders featured the statements of black radicals as anti-American propaganda.608

At least two radical groups stated they genuinely hoped to incite a revolution after

605 “Move Over Honky,” Washington Daily News, April 8, 1968, 20; Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 606 “We’re Not Afraid…We’re Gonna Die for Our People,” Washington Post, April 6, 1968. 607 Memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover to Mildred Stegall, “Foreign Influences in the Black Nationalist Movement,” May 13, 1968, DDRS-296225, Reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2015. 608 United States Information Agency (USIA), “Major Propaganda Developments in the Communist World Quarterly Report,” May 31, 1968. Folder R-18-68, Box 34, RG 306, Records of the USIA, Research Reports, 1960-1999, R-16-68 RG SIA files, R0306, entry #P142, Research Reports, 1960-1999, National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

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the death of Dr. King. As extremely small, fringe groups, these organizations are not

documented in any historical literature and the only evidence of their existence comes

from interviews. John Smith, the pseudonym used by former president of the Zulus in an

oral history interview in 2002, insisted he maintain his anonymity “due to his regret for

his participation in the riots, as well as his fear of prosecution for his illegal activity.”

Smith, an employee of the D.C. government, spoke candidly and remorsefully about his

revolutionary past with Dana Schaffer, a graduate student in Public History at American

University.609 The other account of radical aspirations in 1968 comes from three men

who were interviewed by a black Washington Post reporter in 1968. They were so

insistent on their anonymity, they wore hoods with eyeholes cut out to obscure their

identities.610 The men claimed to be part of a small, unnamed revolutionary group that I refer to as the Firemen. 611 While it is possible the men exaggerated their actions,

including their account documents the revolutionary aspirations of some radicals in

Washington in 1968.

According to Smith, the Zulus were a revolutionary group of 17 black men who

advocated using violence to affect change and “did the things that kept the flames going

for as long as they did.” “The city was burning….that’s what we wanted,” Smith

reflected. “This was our time...we thought we were in war then…Yes, we wanted a

revolution.”612 The Firemen worked systematically to start fires during the chaos. The

three men interviewed by the Washington Post insisted the civil disturbances be called a

609 “John Smith Oral History,” 1, 1968 Riots Oral History Collection. 610 Ben Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 156. 611 No name was given for this group in their interview with the Washington Post. For ease of reference, I have dubbed them “The Firemen” because they were all men and discussed starting fires across the city. 612 John Smith Oral History, 21 & 25.

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“rebellion” and “revolution” and rhetorically connected themselves to international radicalism. While black people were a minority in the U.S., “in the world, we are a majority and in the world, that’s what’s going on. South America. Latin America.

Vietnam, Asia, and Africa.”613 The men targeted white people who they viewed as

“beasts” and wanted to “destroy the beast in any form I can…economically, physically, or any other form.” To them, the events were “an assault on a racist system, which…must be destroyed if black Americans are to survive.”614 Ultimately, they wanted to overturn

“the system” that “suppresses our people and oppresses our people.”615

Both groups claimed to have stock-piled flammable materials such as kerosene, dynamite, and gasoline prior to King’s assassination.616 Smith asserted the Zulus previously attacked “big establishment businesses” with acts of vandalism after they were accused of slights to black customers or employees.617 The Firemen, meanwhile, strategically waited until the right moment to act:

We were preparing to make our own move with the slightest motivation, with the slightest incident that we could use to move with. We had the reasons, but, in order to move, you must have the people behind you, also…we needed an incident that would make it justifiable even in the eyesight of the mass of people that do not agree with the term ‘black power…’618 King’s assassination provided such an incident and both John Smith of the Zulus and the

Firemen described how their organizations used their stockpiled flammables to start at least 50 fires stores across the city.619 Both groups targeted white-owned shops such as carry-out restaurants and liquor stores they considered to take advantage of or

613 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 165, 172-173, 176. 614 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 157-158. 615 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 163-164. 616 John Smith Oral History, 22-26; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 159-161. 617 John Smith Oral History, 13-15. 618 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 158-159. 619 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 162, 167, 189-169; John Smith Oral History, 22-26.

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discriminate against the black community.620 The Firemen hoped the damage done to

white businesses would be widely reported so it could “really mean” something to black

people.”621

None of these radicals, however, claimed to have instigated the disturbances nor

did they claim to be a large, popular movement. “There were very, very few organized

groups doing things…in the street” insisted John Smith. Most participants were “just

angry people…Your average citizen was out there. Not setting the fires, but looting the

stores…these people [pointing to a photo of a crowded street during the disorders]

weren’t part of any group or anything.”622 The Firemen described the start of the

upheaval with the same sequence of events as the Post: people heard King was shot,

gathered around 14th and U, went door-to-door to ask stores to close in respect for King, and after someone in the group broke a window “that was like—the shot that was heard around the world when the honkies were fighting against their own people.”623 Only after

the crowd was already breaking windows did the Firemen mobilize. Further, as a group

of only 25 people, they were cognizant that they could not take credit for all the burning:

“Let me tell you, I think, man, the majority of the places that were burned were burned by

the mass of black people. I don’t think the twenty-five of us set all of those fires.”624

While both radical groups hoped for a mass revolution, they acknowledged that their

small groups did not start the rebellions nor did they influence most who participated.

As for Carmichael’s influence, Attorney General Ramsey Clark ordered an

620 John Smith Oral History, 22-25; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 163, 169-170. 621 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 173. 622 John Smith Oral History, 23. 623 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 624 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 173. When asked if they thought the uprising was a plot, the Firemen responded: “I don’t think that’s relevant. We took advantage of an incident. If it was planned, you see, there would be nothing left of the city. There would be very few white people around here, also.” (Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 164-168).

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investigation to determine if Carmichael could be charged with instigating a riot in

Washington.625 Internal FBI documents reveal, however, that the FBI found the case

unsubstantial. In a memo on April 15, 1968, an agent concluded that there was “very little

about Carmichael on the ticker.” The report found that “If we wish to proceed with

investigation possible violations of Federal law, we need more man power.”626

Ultimately, the FBI did not pursue this course of action. “It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me and a very comfortable thing to prosecute Stokely Carmichael, but we didn’t have the evidence,” reflected Ramsey Clark, the Attorney General in 1968.

“I reviewed, you know, a good many files where the investigative agencies had brought forth materials that warranted review, but we never found [evidence].”627

Prominent black leaders resented the notion that Carmichael had enough clout to

singlehandedly spark a mass revolution and deplored the media’s obsession with the

young militant. Whitney Young, director of the National Urban League, criticized the

press because Carmichael’s “following right now amounts to about 50 colored people and

about 5,000 white reporters…They have created him….They have projected him and this

has kept him alive.” Black people did not actually want to follow Carmichael, he noted,

but they were flooded with stories about him. Young blamed the sensationalist nature of

the media: “When I make a speech about cooperation between whites and colored

citizens,” he added, “I'm given about four of five inches of space. When Stokely talks

625 “For Stokely: A Hard Look-See,” Washington Daily News, April 8, 1968, 14; Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 626 FBI Memorandum, “Stokely Carmichael,” April 15, 1968. DDRS-296225, Reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System. 627 “Attorney General Ramsey Clark oral history interview on race riots during the Johnson administration,” March 21, 1969, 28-29, Found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963- 1969, Part III: Oral Histories,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle.

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about 'killing Whitey,' his whole speech is reprinted and gets television coverage.”628

Young stated Black church leaders also attacked the media as they claimed “such figures

as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown have gained prominence as a result of undue

attention by newspapers and television…” Church leaders were so annoyed with the

attention given to radical figures like Carmichael and SNCC chairman H. Rap Brown

they established a “Committee for Wholesome News Media.”629 Jackie Robinson, who

famously integrated Major League Baseball in 1947, also rebuked the news media for its

coverage of Carmichael: “Stokely Carmichael has been projected by the white news

media, and I think often purposely, to dramatize the extremists and build up white

hostility. The white press made Carmichael, not the Negroes.”630

Some found it convenient to believe radicals were to blame because opposing the

Zulus was much easier than changing the economic and political circumstances that many

believed caused unrest. Perhaps no example better demonstrates this concept than the

reaction to a satirical New York Times article. The article joked that H. Rap Brown, a

radical black activist, was paid by Congress so it would have an easier time if another

disturbance occurred: "If riots break out, Congress naturally has to investigate the cause

and produce solutions…If you can discover that the riots are caused by outside agitators,

however, you can let the taxpayer off cheap with a bill to provide prison accommodations

628 “The Masses Do Not Need Carmichael, Says Young,” Washington Afro-American, April 16, 1968, 12; “As Whitney Young Sees It,” Washington Daily News, April 16, 16; “Negro Leadership,” Washington Evening Star, April 16, 1968, News Clippings, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Documents from this report are indicated by their title within the report as the document does not use page numbers.) 629 William R. MacKaye, “Church Leaders Attack Youth Leaders' Conduct,” Washington Post, Apr 27, 1968, A20. The committee was created by the Ministers of 100 organization. See Claudia Levy, “Bishop Samuel Kelsey, Broadcast Pastor, Dies,” Washington Post, January 15, 1993. 630 “Robinson Hits News Media on Militants,” Evening Star, April 5, 1968, A-10, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library.

156 for any agitators crossing state lines." In a similar tongue-in-cheek spoof, it claimed

Carmichael was paid to “reduce public support for the civil rights movement and reduce the pressure on the Congress to spend money to redress Negro grievances."631

Finding it to be a funny column, Representative Andrew Jacobs, Jr. inserted the story into the Congressional record. Months later, he and other Congress members received calls praising the program. In an interview about the article, Jacobs disagreed that radical individuals could spark urban violence because “Rap and Stokely don't create vast moods and circumstances. If a person is living in squalor, it's silly to think he's not aware of it until a black militant tells him." However, simplifying the cause of the disturbances to a few instigators made it easier to posit that leaders had a solution.

Weeding out a few radicals was simple, but dealing with the complaints of thousands of

“average” African Americans was not.632

“Professional Robbers, Thieves, and Arsonists:” “Riots” and Crime Most believed the disturbances were spontaneous but debated the reasons why

Washingtonians engaged in widespread looting and arson. Some contended participants were not grief-stricken citizens reacting to King’s death but rather apolitical criminals who seized opportunities to steal. The idea that “that this was a general Negro uprising in resentment against the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King…is a gross libel on predominantly Negro Washington,” a columnist from the Daily News opined. “The mobsters couldn’t have cared less about Dr. King, alive or dead. They violated every decency for which he stood, seizing upon his death as an excuse to destroy. Those of Dr.

King’s race who sincerely mourned him weren’t out screaming in the streets. They were

631 William Raspberry, “News Satire Misconstrued,” Washington Post, May 26, 1968, D1. 632 Raspberry, “News Satire Misconstrued,” Washington Post.

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in church, if they dared to leave their homes.”633 “[T]here was no grief for [King] in the

streets, only greed and mindless plundering,” concluded another Daily News article.634

An Evening Star editorial similarly claimed “Large sections of the city have been

smashed, burned and looted in a mindless orgy which has had nothing to do with Dr.

Martin Luther King or any other grievance.”635 A black watch repairman interviewed by the Washington Post believed “hTis [sic] is no sympathy thing for Dr. King. It’s hooliganism. They want to know where they can get stuff to steal.”636 “I think some are

rioting for fun not for Martin Luther King, Jr.,” wrote a child at a Cardozo area school.

“They are rioting just to do it.”637 “I think it happened, frankly, because people saw an

opportunity to get some stuff they wanted and didn’t have the money to buy,” posited Dr.

Harold Greene.638 “They’re not doing this because of Dr. King’s death,” theorized

Washingtonian James Gattling. “They just needed a reason.”639

Some insisted the “carnival” mood on the streets demonstrated the events were

not a display of grief over King’s assassination. In a letter to Mayor Walter Washington,

Washingtonian Leonard Smith argued that “The attitudes displayed by the rioters plainly

were not related to Dr. King’s shameful murder. Rather, the looters displayed a carnival

633 “While Washington Burned,” Washington Daily News; Series 11, Folder: “Civil Rights—Clippings— April 9, 1968,” Box 287, BOT papers, Folder: “civil rights—clippings—April 9, 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 634 “The Face of the City,” Washington Daily News, April 6, 1968, 12. Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 635 “Coping with the Violence,” Washington Evening Star, April 6, 1968, A-14, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 636 Just, “The City Besieged: A Study in Ironies and Contrasts,” Washington Post. 637 “Children of Cardozo Tell It Like It Is,” 43, P3700, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. 638 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. 639 “Hollering Whitey-This and Whitey-That,” Washington Daily News, April 8, 1968, 16, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C.

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mood.”640 Senator Robert Byrd thought the “carnival spirit” present in the looting had

“no logical connection whatsoever with Dr. King’s death.”641 Two Washington Post

reporters suggested police should “get the kids out of the street to stop the circus

atmosphere.”642 Journalist Ward Just believed the youth roaming the streets “were

skylarking…knocking out windows, laughing and jostling, running with clicky heels down the pavement…The sound of breaking glass mixed with the laughter.”643 Clarence

Washington of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) stated that “Dr.

King's murder may have triggered this looting yesterday but it's not causing it now… The

whole thing had a carnival atmosphere--not solemn, not mournful, not vengeful.”644

“They were in a festive mood,” wrote Post reporter Jesse Lewis, Jr., “bent upon grabbing

what they could while the grabbing was good.”645 In a letter to the editor of the

Washington Daily News, Tom Donnelly clearly articulated the position that the “riots” were a carnivalesque spree of greed unconnected to grief:

Riots in the recent past may have been expressions of ‘accumulated bitterness,’ but it would seem that the uproar in Washington was set off by a mixture of one part accumulated bitterness to two parts “it’s our turn now” and maybe three parts “here’s a golden opportunity, folks!” Only a small minority was ready, willing, and eager to be “triggered,” but, as the new saying goes, a minority can move a mountain of goods. Can a laughing looter be a sorrowing looter? Does the death of a loved one inspire an urgent need to smash store windows and remove the contents, or to set fire to city blocks, and to throw rocks at firemen? I really don’t see how any sensible person could believe that the looters and rioters who have been tearing up the country lately were expressing their deep grief at the death of the Rev. Dr. King….It seems more likely that the revelers were simply carrying

640 Letter to Walter Washington from Leonard Smith, April 17, 1968, 56, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 641 Elsie Carper, “Hill Wants Troops to Stay; Police-Aid Pacts Suggested: Arrest Powers Planned,” Washington Post, Apr 9, 1968, A5. 642 Robert L. Asher and Martin Weil, “City's Diary of Violence Goes On Without Letup: Troops Ten Paces Apart, Washington Post, April 7, 1968, A10. 643 Just, “The City Besieged: A Study in Ironies and Contrasts,” Washington Post. 644 Jesse W. Lewis Jr., “Baltimore Troubles Follow Washington Pattern,” Washington Post, Apr 8, 1968, A2. 645 “The Mindless Mob Spurns Dr. King’s Creed,” Sunday Star.

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out a ritual that is by now well established, an unlovely tradition. The juveniles begin by smashing store windows, then, the kids start grabbing, then the grown- ups move in…. [Were looters] really thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr.?....the notion is grotesque.646 Thus, while some overdetermined the disorders as an international communist

conspiracy, others ascribed no political motivations to participants.

Without fear of arrest, some argued, “criminals” took advantage of the chance to

steal consumer goods. An editorial by the Evening Star Broadcasting Company opined

that “Looters used Dr. Marin Luther King’s death as an excuse to steal.”647 “Criminals

have used the assassination of Dr. King as an excuse to take the law into their own

hands,” stated Senator Storm Thurmond in an interview with the Post.648 Senator Russell

B. Long, a Democrat from Louisiana, described the protestors as “professional robbers,

thieves, and arsonists.”649 In a letter to O.W. Weird of the Board of Trade, businessman

Joseph H. Deckman wrote that “The recent wholesale looting and burning of business

properties by hoodlums, teenage delinquents, black power advocates of violence and

criminal elements, should convince the most naïve liberal, that what we have experienced

was not a race riot but the willful pillaging of properties under the guise of lamenting the

death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”650 An ad from the D.C. Retail Liquor Dealers

Association, Inc. similarly rejected any political motivation in the upheaval: “This is no

revolt of the poor against the wealthy. This is no part of the Civil Rights movement

646 Tom Donnelly, Letter to the Editor, Washington Daily News, April 9, 1968, 25; Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 647 “An Editorial Broadcast by WMAL—The Evening Star Broadcasting Company,” April 14, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 36: “TF: Civil Disturbances—Clippings,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 648 Elsie Carper, “Hill Wants Troops to Stay; Police-Aid Pacts Suggested: Arrest Powers Planned,” Washington Post, Apr 9, 1968, A5. 649 “Congress’s reactions split over violence in big cities,” Washington Afro-American, April 16, 1968, 3. 650 Letter from Joseph H. Deckman to O.L. Weird, April 8, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: Civil Disturbances, Correspondence, March-June 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records.

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whose real leaders know that Utpoia doesn’t have to be built on ashes. It is an open attack

by a few criminals against a community that lacks firm leadership and the courage to

demand that its leaders exercise their authority—or resign.”651

While both Republicans and Democrats endorsed this understanding of the

disorders, the position was “conservative” in that it rejected much of the theory

undergirding liberalism and the policies of Johnsons’ Great Society. In this

conceptualization, “law and order” had diminished in American society thanks to liberal

court rulings and the tactics of civil disobedience employed by black leaders like King.

The federal government’s tolerance of civil disobedience already resulted in rampant

crime in D.C. Now, “criminals” were so emboldened they were stealing in broad daylight

as the police did nothing. Stronger enforcement of the law, many believed, could prevent

future disturbances. Senator Byrd stated he hoped “the troublemakers and looters and

other lawbreakers will not be given a mere tap on the wrists and turned loose, but will be

dealt with severely.”652 Senator Long claimed he “didn’t approve of the police being

weak or namby-pamby” and that “If (looters) cannot be arrested, they (police) should

shoot them if they are trying to escape. If they fail to use strong methods, it just

encourages more of the same.”653 Gladys N. Spellman, the chairman of the Board of

Commissioners in Prince George’s County, authorized the police to shoot looters to

prevent property damage.654 Spellman believed looters did not come to Prince George’s

County (which borders D.C.) because “we displayed force…I made it clear that I did not

651 Advertisement, “Ben Brown is Dead,” Washington Post, May 7, 1968. 652 Carper, “Hill Wants Troops to Stay; Police-Aid Pacts Suggested: Arrest Powers Planned,” The Washington Post. 653 “Congress’s Reactions Split Over Violence in Big Cities,” Washington Afro-American. 654 Gilbert, Ten Blocks From the White House, 110.

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want a single policeman to stand by if looting began.”655 In his Congressional testimony,

Hilliard Schulberg, the executive director of the Washington D.C. Retail Liquor Dealers

Association stated: “The uncontrolled destruction, burning, and looting that took place

certainly was not of our making; we became the innocent victims of a deliberate policy of

forbearance by the authorities which permitted an unjust enrichment of law violators at

the expense of small neighborhood merchants.”656 According to a poll of businessmen at

a national convention in Washington, 457 out of 551 thought the police were too

lenient.657

In a speech given on the Senate floor mere days after King’s assassination,

Senator Robert Byrd alleged King’s assassination was ultimately King’s fault for

“inviting violence” by “defying the law:”

There is a lesson to be drawn from what happened in Memphis and what has been happening with increasing intensity throughout the nation in recent years. That is, that mass protests, mass demonstrations, and mas marches and the like—whether labeled nonviolent or otherwise—can only serve to encourage unrest and disorder, and to provoke violence and bloodshed. And, in the end, those who advocate such methods often become, themselves, the victims of the forces they themselves set in motion. This, in a manner, is what happened to Dr. King. He usually spoke of nonviolence. Yet, violence all too often attended his actions. And, at the last, he himself met a violence end…One cannot preach nonviolence, and, at the same time, advocate defiance of the law, whether it be a court order, a municipal ordinance….For to defy the law is to invite violence, especially in a tense atmosphere…Thus we are exhorted to obey the law and to respect authority, and those who refuse to do this cause serious risks to themselves and to others….This, I hope, will be the lesson we will all draw from the tragic events of recent days in Memphis.658 David Lawrence, a reporter for the Evening Star, wrote that Byrd’s words were

655 Just, “Generation Gap in the Ghetto,” Washington Post. 656 “Statement of Hilliard Schulberg, Executive Director, Washington, D.C. Retail Liquor Dealers Association,” 141, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 657 John Fialka, “Businessmen See Riots Planned By Outsiders,” Washington Star, May 1, 1968, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 658 David Lawrence, “To Defy Law is to Invite Violence,” Washington Evening Star, April 8, 1968, A-13, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library.

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“singularly prophetic of the disorders and riots during the weekend.”659 In other words,

civil rights advocates were to blame for both King’s death and the resulting civil

disturbances because their limited use of civil disobedience spurred many—including

King’s assassin—to choose to defy the law writ large.

John Satterlee, Chairman of the People’s Republican Committee, even articulated

the unusual argument that the installation of the D.C. City Council spurred

Washingtonians to commit crimes. Satterlee believed that because the City Council was

appointed by the President, the governing body was illegal. “Now, may I say with all

sincerity and without the slightest rancor if you, the highest local authority in the District

of Columbia could show such light regard for truth and the law, how can you be surprised

if the unstable element of the population follows your example,” he asserted. “If you can

transfer what amounts to a board of advisory people into a city council and mayor, how

do you find it difficult to acknowledge that a violent person of low mentality, or a child

could [riot]? It seems to me that one naturally follows the other.”660

Most participants were not “professional robbers, arsonists, and thieves” as

Senator Long claimed. According to the D.C. Bail Agency, the “typical suspect” arrested

during the disturbances had no prior record.661 “Reporters and photographers on the

streets during the disorders described the typical looter as inexperienced and, in some

cases, unsure about what to do next,” wrote Washington Post reporter Ben Gilbert.662

William Raspberry, a revered black columnist for the Post, described the typical

659 Lawrence, “To Defy Law is to Invite Violence,” Washington Evening Star. 660 “Statement of John Satterlee, Chairman, People’s Republican Committee,” 319, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 661 David Lawrence, “Tragedy of Riots Deep-Rooted,” Washington Evening Star, April 9, 1968, A-15, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 662 Gilbert, Ten Blocks.

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participant as “mainly bewildered types who, for the first time in their lives, saw a

chance to get something for nothing—and got caught.”663

There were, to be sure, people who gleefully took advantage of the lack of police

presence to take items with little thought to Dr. King’s death. As discussed in Chapter 2,

African Americans sympathetic to the disturbances also recalled the “carnivalesque”

environment on the streets. “By the second night of violence,” wrote Robert Allen of the

Howard Hilltop, “rage had faded and had been replaced by that much-deplored ‘carnival atmosphere.' No targets of political significance were hit[.]”664 Bobby Issac, also of the

Hilltop, described a “mardi gras-like atmosphere which many observers noted as being

motivated more by greed than grief[.]”665 “There is no question that some simply seized

the opportunity to steal what they could not afford to buy and made no pretext that they

were avenging Dr. King’s death,” concluded an editorial in the Washington Afro

American.666 Bonnie Perry admitted that while out on the streets April 5th, she thought,

“‘Oh, I can go get some records.’ Because I saw people taking other things out of there.

Because I always wanted to have records, and I didn’t even have a record player.”667 “I took things because everybody did and we did not have anything so we took what we want,” said one Cardozo student.668 Al, a sixteen-year-old 9th grader, told a reporter he

took goods for reasons unrelated to King’s assassination: “Ain’t but one way you gonna

get anything from the white man, and that’s take it.”669 Seventeen-year-old Nancy looted a drugstore because “The manager was nasty and mean, and the bastard overcharged.”

663 Raspberry, “Potomac Watch: Punish, Don't Destroy Looters,” Washington Post. 664 Robert Allen, "April's Black Rebellions: A Political Analysis,” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 5. 665 Bobby Issac, “King’s Dream Deferred?,” Hilltop, May 3, 1968, 5. 666 “Riots and the Law,” Washington Afro American. 667 “Bonnie Perry Interview,” 9. 668 “Children of Cardozo Tell It Like It Is,” 7. 669 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 140.

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For her “It had nothing to do with Dr. King’s murder.”670 Linda also took items from a

drugstore because “I knew I could away with it and because everybody else was doing it.

Most of the stuff I didn’t need, but I wanted to do it.”671 One woman told a reporter that

she was “looting” a store because she shopped for groceries every Friday night and there

was nowhere else to go.672 In another store, a mother told her son, “Don’t grab the

groceries…grab the book.” As one reporter explained, “The book of course, was where

the accounts were kept” and taking it would erase the merchant’s records of customer’s

debts.673 Some took items and later sold them to make money.674 Even the radical Zulus

looted merchandise and the Firemen resold “liberated” items.675

Further, participants mostly harmed businesses that possessed merchandise. The

National Capital Planning Commission’s survey of the damage concluded that “looting

and burning were aimed at commercial establishments.”676 1,352 businesses sustained

damage and many were shops with attractive, expensive merchandise.677 Other

establishments with desirable goods like liquor stores, dry cleaners, and beauty shops

were also common targets. On 7th Street, a total of 250 businesses were vandalized, looted, or burned: 80 general merchandise, apparel and furniture stores; 34 convenience stores, 62 personal services stores (barbershops, beauty salons, dry cleaners, tailors, etc);

670 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 144. 671 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 144. 672 Gilbert, 10 Blocks, 179. 673 Just, “Generation Gap in the Ghetto,” Washington Post. 674 Jaqueline Rogers Hart Interview, April 2012, South of U Oral History Project. Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 145. 675 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 172-173; John Smith Oral History, 16-17, 27-28. 676 U.S. National Planning Commission, Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 4-8: A Preliminary Damage Report (Washington: s.n., 1968), 14-16; Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 677 U.S. National Planning Commission, Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 4-8: A Preliminary Damage Report, 4; “Testimony of Edward C. Hromanik, Accompanied by Leo Schmittell,” 3121, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders; “Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3176; Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders.

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22 restaurants and/or entertainment spots; 18 liquor stores, bars, and clubs; 3 auto stores;

5 hardware stores; and 25 vacant lots. On 14th street, 308 buildings were harmed: 66 were

general merchandise; 37 convenience stores; 86 personal service establishments; 27

restaurants; 12 liquor stores; 12 auto shops and dealerships; 4 offices, and 7 vacant

buildings. On H Street 374 buildings were aversely affected: 113 were general

merchandise; 25 convenience; 83 personal service; 35 restaurants; 15 liquor stores and

bars; 29 auto shops; 46 offices; and 19 heavy commercial and industrial buildings.678 In

total, “About 95% of the [damaged] business establishments were in retail trade and

services. This means they had merchandise.”679

One should not assume, however, that looting was always an apolitical act that

had “nothing to do” with King’s death. While still acknowledging their desire for goods,

for some people looting articulated a political message. “I don’t see nothing wrong in

stealing from those white men,” said a young black man. “I have been looking for a job

for over a year now, but I can’t find nothing…What you see out here ought to teach white

people a lesson. They got to stop going around killing Negroes.”680 When asked why he

looted by a Star reporter, an anonymous man replied, “I’m doing this because they killed

Martin Luther King. This is my way of getting them.”681 For some, harming businesses

or taking goods were an act of rebellion that flipped the normal order on its head. As

former black police officer John Jackson put it: “Man, they were trying to get even with

all these things that they thought people were, that they perceived people were doing to

678 U.S. National Planning Commission, Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 4-8: A Preliminary Damage Report, 8-20. 679 Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3206, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 680 “The Looter’s Point of View,” Washington Evening Star, April 6, 1968, A-22; Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 681 “The Looter’s Point of View,” Washington Evening Star.

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them over all these years. And they were turning the tables. They were having some fun.” 682 “The looter may get his hands on something that he didn’t earn, that he didn’t

pay for,” one person critically noted. “He may get a moment of temporary glory or thrill

out of having achieved that.”683 When asked about young men who took fancy pants and

shoes, the Firemen responded, “They just been denied that all their lives. And if they can

wear it now, well, that’s beautiful.”684 “The rebellions were largely apolitical except to the extent that ‘reclamation’ (i.e. looting) is a political act and rage is a political emotion,” wrote Robert Allen. “Despite the personal motivation of individual looters, however, the significance of the rebellions should not be overlooked. The mere fact that so many ordinary Black People are willing to take to the streets, if only to ‘reclaim’ a color TV set or a fifth of Johnny Walker Red, is clearly one of the most significant political facts of this decade.”685

Alexander Padro, the former Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in the Shaw neighborhood and historian of the neighborhood, similarly asserted that political motives and consumeristic gain were not mutually exclusive. 7th, 14th, and H Streets were targeted because they were “primarily commercial:”

So in rioting and looting, obviously you want to go where potentially you’re going to get the most bang for your buck. So those were streets where you had furniture stores where you might be able to pick up a TV, where you had clothing stores where you might be able to get a couple of suits or a couple of dresses. They weren’t usually the types of businesses that were not in possession of very attractive merchandise that could have potentially been fenced in or sold after the rioting took place. The tensions were seething for a long time and the death of (King) was basically the last straw…And folks felt that society—white society

682 “John D. Jackson interview,” 15-16 & 20, Box 1, Folder 6, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 683 “Testimony of Edward C. Hromanik, Accompanied by Leo Schmittel,” 3173, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 684 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 176. 685 Allen, "April's Black Rebellions: A Political Analysis,” Hilltop.

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particularly—had not dealt with them and with the civil rights movement up to that date in the way that they would like to have. So it was an opportunity to have a backlash and, while some people were only interested in the political aspects of it, if they could take advantage of the fact that the stores were already all broken open and the doors were wide open and they could help themselves to some merchandise then by all means they felt that it was comfortable.686 For some participants, looting was both a political and opportunistic act.

“A Great Outburst of Frustration:” The Liberal Response Many sympathetic to King and the civil rights movement believed the disturbances were an emotional response to King’s death and years of inequality. These commentators typically described King’s assassination as a cataclysmic event that produced extreme grief and anger. African Americans connected these emotions to long-

standing grievances, culminating in urban uprisings. “The tensions were seething for a

long time and the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. basically was the last straw,”

Washingtonian Alexander Padro described in an oral history interview. “It was the match

that hit the tinder that was already very dry.”687 “I think it’s like a crockpot,” said Ruben

Jackson, “It’s like the steam sort of builds up and builds up.”688 “The compounding

insecurities had brought the black community to the flash point of the explosion realized

with the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,” said activist and future mayor

Marion Barry. “This spark created a spontaneous combustion which exploded into the

flames we witnessed….”689 Each metaphor emphasized that people’s frustrations had

been building for a long time but Washingtonians debated what exact injustices had been

simmering.

Most liberals believed the core frustration was that African Americans’ basic

686 Alexander Padro interview transcript, 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/238/rec/2. 687 Alexander Padro interview transcript, 2012, South of U Oral History Project. 688 “Reuben M. Jackson interview,” 20, Box 1, Folder 2, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. 689 “Prepared statement of Marion Barry, Director of Operations, Pride, Inc.,” 151, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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needs were not met by society. Faced with economic inequality, unequal rights, and

community hardships, black Washingtonians felt neglected and hopeless. A Washington

Post article stated that the blame “lies broadly with a city and a society which has ignored

for too long the urgent needs which gave rise, however indirectly and irrationally and

irresponsibly, to violence.”690 Mrs. John Burns wrote, “When America provides a society

that produces a decent and reasonably abundant life for our disadvantaged, the

Carmichaels will be hard put to develop a constituency and whatever support they muster

will be overwhelmed and drowned in a preponderance of good will and brotherhood.”691

“I don’t know what caused this…but the government has got to look out more for those

people who live there,” said a Greek immigrant whose business was destroyed. “They

need a bit more help on education, on housing, a little more help from the Welfare

Department.”692 Days after King’s assassination, the President’s Riot Commission

proposed programs to “aid the Negro poor, including jobs, housing, and welfare reforms”

to prevent future uprisings.693

Sentiments of disillusionment, alienation, despair, or of “hopes being dashed” 694 by government inaction led black people to make their demands violently. A speechwriter for President Johnson believed the disturbances were caused by “rising expectations and inadequate fulfillment.” Black people had “lost confidence in programs.”695 “The richest Nation in the history of mankind sees its streets aflame

690 “So Far, Well Done,” Washington Post. 691 Mrs. John Burns, “Letter to the Editor,” Washington Daily News, April 9, 1968, 22, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 692 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. 693 “Riot Panel Meeting Planned,” The Washington Post, Apr 11, 1968, A8. 694 “Righting Wrongs Done Negro Is Only Part of Needed Action,” Washington Post, Apr 11, 1968, A21. 695 “Memorandum for the President,” April 6, 1968. Civil rights issues, including Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, urban disturbances and use of Army units, and situation in Baltimore, April 1968. Found in:

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because many of its citizens believe they have nothing to live for, nothing to lose,”

argued Senator Joseph Tydings. “A nation spending $30 billion a year for the minds and

hearts of the citizens of a distant land in Asia has witnessed its own cities put to the torch

by alienated members of its own country.”696 The Evening Star argued that “until the

malignant despair of the ghetto is overcome and until the spreading decay of the inner

city is checked, the raw materials for violence and disaster will exist.”697 Dr. John P.

Spiegel, the director of the Lernberg Center for the Study of Violence at Brandeis

University, contended a “breakdown in communications” between the government and

black youth led to the violence. Young African Americans did not believe the

government responded to their needs so “many of these people in the ghetto feel ‘we’ve

got to do something desperate, something dramatic to end our troubles’—and so they

riot.”698

This perspective sometimes deemphasized the idea that the disturbances

expressed black Washingtonian’s anger at white people writ large and white-owned businesses. In “Riot Without Racism,” Ward Just claimed that “[t]he recent disturbances here were marked by the relative absence of personal violence, of open racial hostility in confrontations between whites and blacks...” Just argued black Washingtonians had few qualms with the local government since “the pro-civil rights stance long adopted by the

District's government, by most of its citizens, and by many of the suburban areas” blunted their complaints. Additionally, “[t]he facts that Mayor Washington is a Negro and that the President, who is in fact the District's governor, is an ardent supporter of civil

Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files, 15. ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 696 Civil Disturbances in Washington, 1. 697 “Civil Rights Act, 1968,” Washington Evening Star, April 11, 1968, A-14. 698 Paul Robbins, “Riots 'Spontaneous,' U.S. Authority Says,” Washington Post, Apr 11, 1968, A6.

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rights removed officialdom from its customary role as the target of the rioters.”699 Some

in the White House agreed that race played a small role in the disorders. In a memo

offering feedback on a draft of the President’s speech to address the upheaval an aide

wrote, “The speech should also point to a very obvious fact--that this has not yet become

a racial war.” The aide believed this was the case because black and white troops were

cooperatively preventing looting and because “casual conversations can be overheard

between white and Negro policemen who talk about what ‘we’ (the police) will do about

‘them’ (the rioters).700 When asked if white-owned stores were damaged more than black-owned stores, researcher Robert Gold answered, “I simply cannot believe that the picture was as clean-cut as being able to say that these were white islands in Negro communities which were deeply resented by everybody in those communities.” Gold

concluded that “the kind of resentment which people have cited for being a reason for the

civil disturbance” was not supported by the surveys of business owners and the damage

taken by the National Capital Planning Commission.701

While sympathetic to the poverty and discrimination faced by many participants,

liberals often emphasized that the violence was futile, irrational, and must be denounced.

Senator Peter Dominick concluded that “There isn’t any doubt that this (the civil

disturbances) was a great outburst of frustration.” “Equally as important,” Dominick

insisted,” …there was complete disregard for law and order, and for American ideals of

developing individual abilities and earning what you obtain rather than just taking it.”

699 “Riot Without Racism,” The Washington Post. 700 “Memorandum for the President,” April 6, 1968. Civil rights issues, including Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, urban disturbances and use of Army units, and situation in Baltimore, April 1968. Found in: Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files, 15. ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 701 “Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3206-3207, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders.

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While “effective remedies directed to the root causes of the ghetto must be found and

expedited,” “law and order” must be the first priority or else “we all will surely fall.”702

“Children of Cardozo Tell It Like It Is,” a booklet of drawings and written responses of

Cardozo area school children to the civil disturbances, ended with a statement from the

educators who compiled and published the pamphlet. “Sometimes people break laws

when they are angry or when they want to call attention to something that is wrong,” it

noted. Black people were upset with merchants, unemployment, “and many other things

that do not allow them to be free.” Violence, however, was an unacceptable means to

express that frustration: “Like you, we want to make ourselves heard without using the

weapons of violence. Law is man’s greatest invention to help himself.”703

The repudiation of violence as a tactic was certainly not a position exclusive to

white moderates. As discussed in chapter 2, black liberals such as activist Walter

Fauntroy and Mayor Washington also condoned the violent tactics and urged peace.704

The Washington Afro’s editorial on the disturbances wrote that “Looters and arsonists,

generally, seemed to have no clear idea of why they reacted with violence to news of Dr.

Martin Luther King’s death. To observers, it seemed to be a blind outpouring of pent-up frustration of long standing.” The editorial concluded that “Everybody lost in this tragic devastation[.]”705 Radical leaders in Newark “discouraged rioting on the theory that they

are about to take over the cities and they don’t want to inherit burned-out ruins.”706 Even

Huey Newton of the Black Panthers tried to “contain the community from open

702 Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders, 3. 703 “Note from the Education Team,” “Children of Cardozo Tell It like It Is,” 48. 704 “Fauntroy, Carmichael Reactions to Slaying,” Washington Star, April 5, 1968, A-3; Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 705 “Riots and the Law,” Washington Afro American. 706 Allen, "April's Black Rebellions: A Political Analysis,” Hilltop.

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resistance” in the wake of King’s assassination.707 These leaders, however, did not tie

their criticism of the violent disorders to the need for “law and order” like many

conservatives and moderates did.

Many people did attach the sense of loss of King to longstanding frustrations with

discrimination, poverty, and exploitation and “lashed out.” A Daily News journalist who had interviewed people who admitted to looting found “[M]ost Negroes blamed poor housing, high unemployment, and old and overcrowded schools. They blamed congressional inaction and a heritage of broken promises.”708 “[T]here was some

significant poverty here and…It left many people without resources,” reflected former

community organizer Ibrahim Mumin, “and there was some significant pent-up anger on the part of these residents who lashed out after the assassination of Dr. King.”709

Reverend Channing E. Phillips, a prominent minister and civil rights leader, argued that the participants really just wanted to “opt-in” to the opportunity of the American dream:

“When we become sensitive enough to the acute frustrations stockpiled in our ghettos, and begin to recognize riots as communication that seeks to inform of ‘wanting in,’ or a frustrated desire to rightfully share in the American abundance, then we are on the verge of really searching for solutions to urban alienation and disruption.”710 In public hearings

held by the City Council, many expressed frustrations over poor housing, the lack of jobs,

707 Robyn C. Spencer, “The Language of the Unheard—Black Panthers, Black Lives, and Urban Rebellions,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 14, Issue 4 (2017): 23. 708 “Hollering Whitey-This and Whitey-That,” Washington Daily News. 709 “Ibrahim Mumin interview transcript,” South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/262/rec/3 710 “Statement of Re. Channing Phillips, President, Housing Development Corp.,” 343, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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and especially the lack of promotions for workers.711 The City Council’s report on the

hearings concluded “The Lack of housing, employment, and other opportunities for

ghetto residents were pointed to as basic factors contributing to the disturbances.”712

Nearly 40 years after the disorders, native Washingtonian Reuben M. Jackson

expressed many of the same sentiments while explaining the causes of the disorders. He

recollected many of his African American neighbors asking ʺWhy would you burn down,

in some cases, your own neighborhood[?]”713 This was a question about tactics, however,

not of motivation: “I don’t think any of them ever said, ‘Why did this happen?’ I mean

that was never really a [question], because everyone knew why it happened.” Jackson

criticized the bafflement of many Americans at why black people reacted so strongly to

King’s death and years of injustice:

‘[W]hy’ does not seem to be a part of the American lexicon, like ‘why things happen.’ And it doesn’t mean that they are right, but whether something is beyond the capacity of ‘why’ is another question. I would say that while there’s no question in my mind and heart that what happened last September [11, 2001] was horrendous… I don’t understand this, peoples’ wondering ‘why.’ That baffles me. And if I come and say, well, ‘Why would someone kill Dr. King?’ Well, there are some ugly truths centered in an around my presence here. You know African Americans were not brought here for fun. We were not brought here because someone knew Elvis Presley needed somebody to imitate...And, so I don’t know, what do you do with that anger? Elijah Mohammed…once said, ‘the most dangerous man is the man with nothing to lose.’ And I think if you find people in a situation where they feel they have no recourse, I mean, look out. Really. Look out...I think that’s what it comes down to.714 “The Main Enemy is Official, Institutional White Racism!”: Race and Rebellion Some Washingtonians, most often militant African Americans, contended that

711 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 22. 712 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 4-6, P1614, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. 713 “Reuben M. Jackson Interview,” 20, Box 1, Folder 2, MS 0769, 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 714 “Reuben M. Jackson Interview,” 20-22, Box 1, Folder 2, MS 0769, 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C.

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liberals and moderates missed the deeper meaning of the upheaval. The violence was not

a mere outpouring of hopelessness, it was political protest and rebellion that targeted

institutionalized white racism and economic exploitation. Marion Barry articulated this

theory as he testified in Congress:

Most white oriented reports say that poor housing, bad schools, and unemployment are the major physical causes of riots, rebellion, and civil disorders. This may be true to some extent; however, the fact of the matter is that the white society has forced the low income community into a position of economic dependency and insecurity. The economic insecurity is based upon the stifling and unsettling dependency of the low income community on outside economic forces…Jobs are dependent upon outsiders as employers. The economic security of property ownership has been denied the black resident because in general his housing is owned by outside slum lords. The black resident produces almost nothing with his own institutions and purchases almost everything he consumes from economic institutions which are controlled by white outsiders. Many blacks see the situation as what one could call ‘gray flannel’ slavery… Its lack of control of these institutions places the decision making power for the existence and future of the community in the hands of alien people who superimpose their value system upon that community and therefore often moves those institutions and programs in directions which are not in the best interest of its citizens. These same institutions most often are directed toward giving advantages to the whites who control that society. The sum total of his mounting insecurity acts as an ever increasing pressure for changes within that community and creates a damaging situation where citizens of that society are brought to the point of destroying the institutions.715 Barry acknowledged that black Washingtonians were frustrated with social inequality but

he rejected the idea that the civil disturbances were a mere cry for more government

programs or aid. Instead, Barry characterized such liberal reforms as part of the problem:

“The planning for and administration of the lower income community, heretofore, has

been in the hands of outsiders …Laws, regulations, and law enforcement have moved in

the direction of making conditions safer and more secure for the white, non-ghetto

715 “Prepared statement of Marion Barry, Director of Operations, Pride, Inc.,” 150-151, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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residents who are exploiting the lower income black community residents.”716 Barry

argued people on the street were demanding power over their communities and sought to

upend the institutions that exploited them.

While people with this viewpoint agreed with liberals that black people were frustrated with unequal housing, police power, economic inequality, discrimination, and other issues, they emphasized that people were attacking the root of all these issues: white institutions infected with racism. The building frustrations went beyond mere contempt for racism and the lack of opportunity that often accompanied it, it also stemmed from an entire system of white power and people who would only half-

heartedly oppose it. “The Kerner Commission said the real danger was white racism,”

said Arthur Waskow of the radical Institute for Policy Studies at the City Council

hearings. “[T]he dangerous aspect of white racism is not what the whites do or do not

have in their hearts. It is what they have put in the institutions. It is the institutions tainted

by white racism that kill people—the schools, the welfare system, the sales and credit

system, the job system, the police—and it is these we have to change.”717 A flyer

distributed by the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC) bemoaned

that “Newspaper editors, radio & TV commentators beat their breasts, political bigots

shed crocodile tears, white businessmen and liberals form coalitions for the handout of

temporary goodies.” Although these liberals condemned “the individual bigot,” they left

“the system of bigotry untouched! The main enemy is official, institutional white

716 Prepared statement of Marion Barry, Director of Operations, Pride, Inc.,” 152, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 717 “Statement of Arthur Waskow, Institute for Policy Studies,” 327-328, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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racism!”718 “You see, in America, you cannot deal with the symptoms of racism and this

is what we are combatting,” argued R.H. Booker, the Chairman of the ECTC and a leader

in Carmichael’s Black United Front. “This is what we are combating, we are combating

white racism, its system and its institution.”719

In contrast to some liberals who contended participants were not targeting whites,

this theory emphasized that the disorders targeted white-owned businesses considered by the community to be exploitative. William Raspberry wrote that violence started with the outrage that a white man killed King and “in a matter of hours, the victim had become, in the eyes of too many of us, all black people; and the murderer was no longer one stupid, hate-filled white man, nor even bigoted white Southerners. It was that generic Whitey[.]”

Many African Americans felt that “Whitey had declared war on black people” and were

not comforted that “the world’s leaders, white men included, seemed more genuinely

shocked by Dr. King’s murder than many blacks…Black people, all over the country,

poured out on the streets, first to share with one another their disbelief over what Whitey

had done.” According to Raspberry, “Dr. King may not have been murdered by ‘white

America,’ as Stokely Carmichael put it, but Carmichael saw correctly that other white

fingers would gladly have joined that one on the assassin’s trigger.” 720 While Raspberry

was not a radical, he still argued that the disturbances did not merely result from poverty,

the desire for consumer goods, or because of Carmichael’s words. Black people reacted

with shock at King’s death and anger at “Whitey” writ large.

718 Flyer, “It’s Easy to Condemn These Individual Acts of White Racism,” Series I, Box 19, Folder “Washington, D.C. 2/2 1968,” Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis collection, Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C. 719 “Statement of R.H. Booker, Chairman, Emergency Committee on Transportation Crisis,” 385-388, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 720 William Raspberry, “Dr. King and His Killer Became Symbols,” The Washington Post, April 7, 1968, D1.

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Many who shared this view considered the disorders as intentional, rational,

political actions to destroy the visible signs of white power in black neighborhoods even

if they did not endorse it. “This idea of burning, man, was to destroy what this white man

stood for,” said former Pride, Inc. leader and activist Rufus “Catfish” Mayfield. “The

Indians burned. They were striking out at the structure then. They’d burn—to erase what

the white man stood for. I might have had the impulse to burn; a man can just restock his

store and raise his prices a little bit if it’s just looting.”721 Reverend Channing E. Phillips,

a prominent minister and civil rights leader, justified the violence by connecting it to a

larger American tradition of protest: “I use the word rebellion advisedly…We need to

take seriously the Declaration of Independence which lays an obligation upon American

citizens when they find their Government not serving their needs, to rise up and

overthrow it.”722 “Any time oppressed people are so denied, and so oppressed, and the

usual channels of the so-called usual mechanisms of dealing with these ills, if they cannot

solve the problem, then black people and all other people have the right to burn and bring

destruction if that alleviates their misery,” asserted ECTC chairman R.H. Booker. Booker

considered burning and “taking back what was theirs” to be “a means of self-expression”

and the only way of affecting change: “Singing won’t get it, prayer won’t get

it…Running down to the White House and sipping tea with Johnson, that won’t get it no

more. The only that this city and the Nation seems to recognize is fire and flames and

gasoline.”723 Booker connected the looting and burning to policy changes: “You see, this

721 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. 722 “Statement of Re. Channing Phillips, President, Housing Development Corp.,” 343, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 723 “Statement of R.H. Booker, Chairman, Emergency Committee on Transportation Crisis,” 385-388, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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is the only thing that this country responds to. The civil rights bill came about because of

the fact that black people had to put theirs out on the line, out in the streets.”724 The

disorders were not expressions of hopeless desperation, many contended; the people were

tactically forcing change.

If the burning and looting were considered deliberate political tactics, then some

excused or politized the consequences of the strategy. “Now, a whole lot of these

hypocritical white folks, they said, ‘well, look, they even burned down some of their own

people so it couldn’t have been racial,” said Booker. “They were just out to steal

something.’” Booker rejected the notion that taking things from white-owned businesses was theft: “How can you steal from a crook? You tell me, and I’ll tell you.” Further,

Booker argued some black people were burned out because some didn’t know they were black owned.725 Mayfield also excused the damage:

I don’t think the cats really knew how drastic the fires would be. A lot of fires carried. I don’t think they really knew the danger. A lot of fires were set in stores they looted. They didn’t think there was anybody around. I don’t want it to seem I’m trying to defend them now. But like in Vietnam, a lot of times we hear they are bombing and civilians are killed. If the United States can make excuses about that, we can make them about the burning here.726 “The white press talks about us burning our own houses,” said one black student at

GWU. “Damn…don’t they know we don’t own houses…Our black brothers and sisters

are just trying to break away from Honkey repression. We want economic freedom.”727

Some radicals saw violence as a personal liberating reclamation of black

masculinity. “[W]e all had this sense of powerlessness,” recalled John Smith, the

724 Statement of R.H. Booker, Chairman, Emergency Committee on Transportation Crisis,” 386. 725 “Statement of R.H. Booker, Chairman, Emergency Committee on Transportation Crisis,” 385-386, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 726 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. 727 Jim Schiffer, “Riots—‘The Redistribution of Wealth,’” The Hatchet, April 23, 1968, 10, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

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anonymous former leader of the Zulus. “And when you have this sense of powerlessness

you try to feed that by being involved in some power…You think that you’re being

macho.” Although Smith was critical of this view in hindsight, he remembered his

actions gave him a “sense of manhood.”728 “See, you have robbed the black male of his

masculinity and his dignity,” said Rufus “Catfish” Mayfield. “And until this is restored,

the man has no alternative but to strike out.”729 At his Friday press conference,

Carmichael also articulated that violence and even death was a tool for restoring black

manhood: “The black man can’t do nothing in this country. Then we’re going to stand up

on our feet and die like men. If that’s our only act of manhood, then Goddammit we’re

going to die. We’re tired of living on our stomachs.”730

Of course, the idea that the disorders were an endorsement of the radical agenda

to oust white institutions from black neighborhoods suggested mass support and extreme

urgency for the long-standing agenda of many Washington activists. Many espousing this

view in City Council hearings, newspaper op-eds, interviews, and Congressional

testimony had worked for years to change the very system they believed participants

rebuked. R.H. Booker was the head of the ECTC which led the charge in urging Congress

and local leaders to reject “white men’s roads through black men’s homes.” Stokely

Carmichael created the Black United Front to create a “black take-over” of the police,

schools, and the welfare department. Marion Barry and Rufus “Catfish” Mayfield both

created Pride, Inc. to provide jobs to “hard-core” unemployed young black men to “prove

728 John Smith Oral History, 16-17, 27-28. 729 “Statement of Rufus ‘Catfish’ Mayfield, District of Columbia Citizen,” 401, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 730 All quotes are from the transcript of the press conference given by the Washington Post in “We’re Not Afraid…We’re Gonna Die for Our People.” The Office of Emergency Preparedness report Carmichael told “Negroes to arm themselves and take to the streets.” (Operation Bandiad One,” 15).

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to the world and to themselves that they had the ability to be economically powerful.”731

Barry also launched the Free D.C. organization which foregrounded the power that home rule would grant Washington African Americans. In other words, these were men who had worked for years to challenge institutionalized racism and increase black

Washingtonian’s power. To them, the disturbances showed the public was so supportive of the militant agenda, they would resort to violence to urge change.

“Inexplicable Instances:” Explaining the Selective Targeting of Businesses

Many liberals and radicals largely agreed that participants, at least in part, targeted businesses that engaged in practices that took advantage of or discriminated against black Washingtonians. They believed such businesses gouged customers with high prices, engaged in exploitative credit practices, and refused to hire African

Americans for anything but menial jobs. Betty Furness, appointed in 1967 by Johnson as the Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs, said that the poor were affected by bad merchant practices: “I believe there has been selective looting and burning of stores where they [Negroes] think they have ‘been had,’ whether it was true or not.”732 In a column entitled “Let’s Talk,” local NAACP leader C.W. Rolark wrote “I cannot honestly term this as a Riot for it was not the case of Black against White but rather youths against business, in other words, I consider it to have been a CONSUMERS REBELLION.”733

“The consumers had the opportunity to get off their frustrations towards some of the

businessmen who took advantage of them,” Rolark added.734 In a letter to the mayor, Earl

731 Susan Philpott, “Pride, Incorporated and the Legitimacy of Black Culture,” February 17, 2017, https://history-susanphilpott.org/uncategorized/pride-incorporated-and-the-legitimacy-of-black-culture/. 732 Duscha, “Postscript to the Story of Seventh Street,” New York Times Magazine. 733 C.W. Rolark, “Let’s Talk,” Washington Informer, April 11-April 17, 1968, News Clippings, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 734 Michael Adams, “Voice of the City…School Plan in the Aftermath,” Washington Star.

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Johnson stated: “The subtle, sophisticated lawlessness of slum merchants breeds the

lawlessness of their victims. We must assist in removing this explosive powder that has

been accumulating in the ghettos for decades.”735 Senator Peter Dominick, who toured

the damage after the disturbances were over, also commented on the selectivity:

“Probably the most striking thing to me was the selectivity of the looting…Perhaps a

factor was whether the local grocery store was giving credit and on good terms with those

who were short on cash when they came to get groceries.”736

Some, often radicals, framed these concerns not as bad business practices but as

the economic exploitation of black neighborhoods. In the first issue of Shaw’s Last Stand,

M.L. Mitchell wrote that the events displayed Shaw’s “feeling about the idea of white

ownership, control, and exploitation of their community.” To Mitchell, the owners of

damaged businesses were “racist exploiters.”737 “Lower Seventh St. stood out as the heart

of the exploitative body in Washington,” opined Orville Greene of the Washington Afro

American. “The body was severely damaged two weeks ago…”738 Marion Barry asserted

that “In these rebellions the point of attack has been the exploitative businessmen in the

735 Earl Johnson, Letter to Mayor Washington, Quoted in “Statement of Bennie Kass, Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee on Consumer Relation Protection,” 345-347, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 736 Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Business and Commerce of the Committee on the District of Columbia United States Senate, Ninetieth Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), 3; P1620, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This report is hereafter referred to as Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders. 737 M.L. Mitchell, “Reflections on the Meaning of the CURAC Demands,” Shaw’s Last Stand, Issue No. 1, Vol . 1, April 1968; Series III: Chronological 1965-1969, Box 23, Folder “Chronological April 1968,” Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis collection, Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C. 738 Orville Greene, “Riots Cause Look at Roles,” Washington Afro American, April 20, 1968; Vertical Files, “Riots: April 4-15, 1968,” Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C.

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lower income community shopping strips.”739

The targets of most participants were clearly businesses with merchandise, but

was the damage selective? And if participants did target select stores, was this an assault

that spoke to a rejection and critique of institutionalized racism? According to data

collected in a survey study in 1968-1969, 97% of properties damaged were owned by

white people. Because many business owners rented the space for their stores, the figures

for properties damaged and businesses damaged were different. 86% of businesses

damaged were owned by white people. “Only 22 privately owned real properties”

damaged were owned by people who were non-white, 12% of businesses damaged were

owned by black people, and 2% of businesses damaged were owned by people who did

not identify as black or white.740 The survey did not look at, however, how many stores

were owned by black people as opposed to white people in the damaged neighborhoods.

Second, the majority of the stores damaged were owned and/or operated by white people

who did not live in the neighborhood. Only 5% of businesses damaged were owned by

people who lived within 10 blocks of their stores. 54% of business owners who sustained

damage lived in the suburbs and only 35% lived in the District. For the 41% of damaged

businesses that were managed by people other than the owners, only 6% of those

managers lived within 10 blocks of the businesses and 53% lived in the suburbs. 741 Of the damaged properties that were managed by someone other than the owner, 94% were

739 “Prepared statement of Marion Barry, Director of Operations, Pride, Inc.,” 152, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 740 “Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3180, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 741 “Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3180, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders.

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managed by white people.742 Most businesses harmed were owned and/or operated by

white people who lived outside of the neighborhood.

Next, most of the businesses damaged were stores that primarily served the

immediate community. According to the National Capital Planning Commission’s

survey, “Nearly two-thirds of the establishments depended on immediate neighborhoods within 10 blocks for 50% of more of gross sales.” 72% of damaged stores had been open in the same location for 8 or more years, 49% for 18 or more, and 28% for 28 or more years. According to Robert Gold who conducted survey, “[A] very high proportion, and I believe the figure is close to 90 percent, served primarily neighborhoods. These were not unfamiliar establishments in those neighborhoods.”743 Thus, the data suggests that a

substantial majority of damaged businesses were owned and/or managed by white people

who did not live in their neighborhood. People often knew what businesses they damaged

because they were very familiar with such neighborhood establishments.744

Informed observations corroborate the idea that white businesses were loosely

targeted for perceived exploitative practices. Public Safety Commissioner Patrick

Murphy believed his surveys of the damage strongly suggested that looters had targeted

certain stores. Murphy said there were “certain unexplainable instances where some

stores were deliberately avoided and others hit.” Barbershops, which were almost always

black owned, were rarely damaged and “at 14th and Clifton streets, a barbershop stood starkly whole amid the burned-out hulks of a cleaning store and an office furniture store.”

742 “Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3180, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 743 Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3206, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 744 “Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3180, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders.

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In the Southeast neighborhood, an A&P store marked “Soul Brother Managed” was

undamaged yet the same store managed by a white man in Northeast was a “blackened

shell.” Veteran African American reporters claimed “that in many instances rioters and

looters spared establishments that were either owned by Negroes, treated Negro employes

(sic) favorably or were owned by “White soul brothers.” For example, the Star Pontiac

and Northeast Ford car dealerships were untouched and “Both the spared firms employ

Negro salesmen.”745 Afro reporter Mary Stratford observed that businesses marked as

“soul,” with a few exceptions, were spared. 746 “Soul saves: A few black businesses were destroyed probably by accident but most remained intact,” asserted Adrienne Manns of the Hilltop. “The direction of the fires was unquestionably against white power.”747 The

Washington Daily News reported that “looters have been using an often sophisticated

selection process about what stores they attacked, officials and inspections by newsmen

have found.”748

Even many conservatives thought white-owned stores were the deliberate targets

of the crowds. The general manager of the Associated Groceries (a group of 63 small

food stores) believed white stores in the neighborhoods were targeted.749 In “The

Mindless Mob Spurns Dr. King’s Creed,” the author asserted that the events “had definite

anti-white overtones…Most of the shops and stores that were looted were owned by

whites. In the main, those bearing the ‘Soul Brother’ insignia were spared.”750 Daily

745 “‘Inexplicable Instances:’ Looting Was Often Selective,” Washington Daily News, April 8, 1968; Vertical Files, “Riots: April 4-15, 1968,” Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C. 746 Mary K. Stratford, “Stark Fear Overcame the Lone Man,” Washington Afro-American, April 13, 1968, 22. 747 Adrienne Manns and Robert Nesnick, “Was It Riot or Insurrection?” Hilltop, April 26, 1968, 2. 748 “‘Inexplicable Instances:’ Looting Was Often Selective,” Washington Daily News. 749 “‘Inexplicable Instances:’ Looting Was Often Selective,” Washington Daily News. 750 “The Mindless Mob Spurns Dr. King’s Creed,” Sunday Star, April 7, 1968; Box 287, Folder: “Civil

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News columnist Richard Starnes lamented that an Esso gas station with “soul” written on

it was spared while right next door a liquor store was “blackened and empty.”751

“Woodward and Lothrop’s windows had been spared,” reported the Washington Star. “In

the last [window], they had set a large color portrait of Martin Luther King, surrounded it

with ferns and beside it a sign that said, ‘We are saddened that he lost his life in the

crusade to win equality for all through peace.’”752 Harold T. Pinkett wrote in the Upper

Northeast News that “Racist sentiment seems to have fostered much of the looters and

burners to spare establishments marked with the words Soul Brother.”753

Thus the data, eye witness accounts, and the analysis of a variety of

Washingtonians suggests at least some participants targeted white-owned stores while sparing those respected in the community. Further, even if the evidence does not definitively establish that white-owned businesses were targeted, many black

Washingtonians seized every opportunity to communicate their frustrations with white business owners in the aftermath. In late April, the City Council held four public hearings to hear testimony from citizens. “Under severe attack were white suburban owners of inner city businesses, and this criticism applied not only to those whose businesses were destroyed, but also to those still operating,” the Council concluded in their report summarizing the hearings. “The charge was repeatedly made that the business profits made in the neighborhood stores supported by neighborhood residents were often taken

Rights—Riots, clippings, April 7, 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 751 Richard Starnes, “D.C. Loses Its Innocence,” April 8, 1968, Daily News, 7, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 752 “King Death: A Turning Point?,” Washington Star, April 7, 1968, A-4, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 753 Harold T. Pickett, “It Happened Here,” The Upper Northeast News, Vol. 11, No. 1, May 1968, Series I, Box 19, Folder “Washington, D.C. 2/2 1968,” Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis collection, Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C.

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out of those neighborhoods and often out of the District.” 754 Specifically, people were

frustrated with “high mark-ups, off-brand of inferior merchandise, high pressure sales

tactics coupled with fast closings and incomplete disclosure, and ‘easy credit’ which is

often high interest and contains hidden charges.”755 The Council concluded “It was apparent that many witnesses felt that consumer problems and exploitative practices were a contributing and indirect cause of the recent disturbances[.]”756

Did this communicate mere frustration with exploitative business practices or was

this connected to a larger critique of institutionalized white power and presence? Black

radicals who intentionally started fires certainly indicated it was their intention to destroy

white institutions. When asked why they burned a white-owned restaurant called Wings-

N-Things, one of the Firemen replied, “Oh man, that honkie been taking black people’s

money for all-for a long time. Ride down there in Cadillacs and pick up the money. Black

man was slaving there, man.”757 The men described such stores as “exploiter[s] of our

people” and connected it to specific business practices: “They’ll put on the news that in

some stores in the ghetto areas, on the day that the people receive their welfare checks,

the prices are hiked two and three cents on each item, so they can make a better profit on

poor people who are living on welfare as it is.” 758 When asked why the Firemen wanted to “destroy white people,” one man answered:

Why do I want to destroy the white man? Not only for what he has done to us in this country. He has oppressed us, he told us he made us free 100 years ago, we still slaves…Wings-N-Things—he does it there. He does it by employing us in all

754 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 15 & 27. 755 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 28 & 35. 756 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 15 & 27. 757 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 169. 758 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 163-164.

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them government jobs and not paying us. He does it in Washington here today by not giving us home rule. He does it here in this country by not letting us have nothing to do with who we want to govern at all….Let me tell you about some other things. Loan companies. They’re rotten motherfuckers, boy.759

Some participants who were unaffiliated with radical groups also sought revenge

on generalized white people. Mamie Roberts, a back Washingtonian, explained acts of

violence and anger towards “whitey” as she told a reporter, “You’d see things like a

white coming down the street and a black would come up the street the other way and

swing at him. Little kids were hollering Whitey-this and Whitey-that. It’s a known fact:

Whitey’s been pushing us around. They’d reached their breaking point.”760 “I’m glad that

something has shown the white man that we’re tired of being the underdog,” said a young

black woman named Brenda Travers.761 “The whole thing goes back to the

resentment…the pent up emotion,” Michael Adams told a Washington Star reporter.762 In another instance, a young boy was stopped by a black police officer who said he was breaking the law. “The owner’s a white man,” the boy responded. The guard asked why that mattered and the boy answered: “A whole lot. Who shot Martin Luther King yesterday?” The guard asked him what the boy wanted and the boy answered “Jobs, equality.”763 The young boy once again expressed a desire for revenge against white people and attached this to a political need or desire as motivation. “For over100 years our ansesters (sic) have been slaves for the White man,” wrote one student. “And if things don’t change we will always be. And so I feel that this may be the negroes way of

759 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 175. 760 “Hollering Whitey-This and Whitey-That,” Washington Daily News. 761 “Hollering Whitey-This and Whitey-That,” Washington Daily News. 762 Michael Adams, “Voice of the City…School Plan in the Aftermath,” Washington Star. 763 “The Looter’s Point of View,” Washington Evening Star, April 6, 1968, A-22; Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library.

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revenge.”764

As they analyzed the disorders, Washingtonians clearly communicated a

resentment of white “outsiders” who exploited the black community. Mary Stratford, a

Washington Afro American reporter, quoted a man who explained that white businesses were targeted because blacks were sick of white exploitation. The man stated, “Whitey comes in here, gets our money, and then leaves town. You ought to see whitey at night,

getting out of town. We got a colored mayor and he ain't done nothing!" 765 Black

business manager Burgess Howard similarly asserted, “It is time for these merchants,

who live in their suburbs in their $30,000 and $40,000 houses, to pour some of their

money where they got it!”766 “Hell, there’s no such thing as riots, it’s all a redistribution

of wealth,” said a black George Washington University undergraduate. “Our black

brothers and sisters are just trying to break away from Honkey repression. We want

economic freedom.”767 Even school children from schools in the Shaw neighborhood echoed this condemnation of white influence and exploitation in their communities. In answering the prompt “The stores in my neighborhood should have been burned because,” students replied: “The stores should have been burned because a white man killed Dr. Martin Luther King;” “because the owners are white;” “because the people who worked in them acted mean and nasty and the owners were not trying to do anything about it;” “because they cheat people and the storekeepers are mean;” “because the keepers of the stores always take little children money;” “because they were white;”

764 “Children of Cardozo Tell It Like It Is,” 26. 765 Mary K. Stratford, “Stark Fear Overcame the Lone Man,” Washington Afro-American, April 13, 1968, 22. 766 Greene, “Riots Cause Look at Roles,” Washington Afro American. 767 Jim Schiffer, “Riots—‘The Redistribution of Wealth,’” The Hatchet, April 23, 1968, 10, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

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“because the prices were to hi (sic).”768

Washingtonians also expressed their frustrations with the lack of control over

their government and communities. “In one way or another what came through was the

universal demand for the right of self-determination for the neighborhoods that need rebuilding,” concluded the City Council.769 “It is no secret that a great number of people

in our community have been denied for too long the right of participating in the decisions

which determine their destiny and the destiny of neighborhoods throughout the

Washington metropolitan area,” asserted Rev. Phillip Newell of the Urban Institute.770

“Almost without exception, the lower income black communities of this country have

been planned and administered from persons coming primarily outside that community,”

Barry alleged. “Laws, regulations, and law enforcement have moved in the direction of

making conditions safer and more secure for the white, non-ghetto residents who are

exploiting the lower income black community residents.”771

To many, the police were the enforcers of such discrimination and operated as an

occupying force tinged with corruption. In his statement before the City Council,

Washingtonian Theodore Thalis said many participants in the civil disturbances were

angry with the police and courts. Police frequently took their belongings and covered up

misconduct.772 Charles Cassell, the vice chairman of the ECTC, argued the police had

768 “Children of Cardozo Tell It Like It Is,” 4-8. 769 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 2-3. 770 “Statement of Rev. Phillip Newell, Urban Institute; Father Geno Baroni, Office of Urban Affairs, Catholic archdiocese of Washington; and Rabbi Eugene J. Lipman, Urban Problems Subcommittee, Jewish Community Council,” 337, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 771 Prepared statement of Marion Barry, Director of Operations, Pride, Inc.,” 150-152, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 772 “Statement of Theodore Thalis,” 433, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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been a major problem for over 15 years especially since the department’s leadership was

white and the force heavily recruited from the south. “These are the things that are on the

minds of those people who we find ourselves eventually advising to go home when there

is a disturbance,” he warned.773

The targets of the destruction suggest that some Washingtonians participated in

the disorders as an act of rebellion against “the system” of white power. For some, the

harassment of police officers, soldiers, and firefighters was a rebellion against what many

viewed as an “occupying force” that communicated a resentment of and willingness to

challenge the enforcers of white institutions. White-owned businesses were longstanding opponents to desegregation and home rule as well as the most accessible manifestation of white institutions in black neighborhoods. While incidents of physical violence against

white people were rare, they occurred where whites “invaded” black neighborhoods:

suburbanites commuting to work on inner city roads and a few people in black

neighborhoods that were deemed “not to belong.” The participants thus attacked the

closest junctures that represented white people’s power over black communities: white-

owned and/or operated stores that demonstrated a sort of colonialism in their

communities; commuter highways that exemplified white people abandoning the city for

the suburbs while still extracting resources from it; “occupying” police forces; and

(rarely) white people who they identified with the larger “whitey” who assassinated King.

Ibrahim Mumin, a D.C. resident reflecting on the riots in an oral history in 2012,

summarized this political sentiment. He commented that commercial corridors were

773 “Statement of Charles L. Cassell, Vice Chairman, Emergency Committee on Transportation Crisis,” 382, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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attacked because:

People were, in some respect, striking out at where they considered the power structure was. In many instances they felt that…people…were making money and it wasn’t them. You know, it’s one thing to be in poverty and you’re surrounded by everybody else, but many of the merchants were considered the people who were making money but taking it out of the neighborhood. They were not reinvesting in the neighborhood…It was anger and I think people were striking out at what they considered the enemy. And people who they had access to were the other merchants who were in the neighborhood.774 Additionally, Washington activists had targeted these manifestations of the

“power structure” for decades as they demanded freedom, economic opportunities, good

education, accountable policing, voting rights, and political power for over a century.

African Americans targeted businesses for discriminatory practices in the 1930s with

pickets and boycotts by the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign. The

Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the DC Anti-Discrimination Laws,

Julius Hobson, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), and the Associated Community

Teams (ACT) all mobilized black Washingtonians against white businesses to oppose

discrimination, gain employment opportunities, and obtain home rule. Free D.C. directly

urged Washingtonians to boycott small white-owned businesses who refused to back home rule in Shaw and along H Street. Organizations like the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC), Model Inner City Community Development

Organization (MICCO), and others criticized city planning by white outsiders which bulldozed black neighborhoods to create amenities for white Washingtonians. Citizens

had also long demanded police accountability and an end to police brutality. “We want to

free D.C. from our enemies,” Marion Barry said before the upheaval, “the people who

make it impossible for us to do anything about the lousy schools, brutal cops, slumlords,

welfare investigators who go out on midnight raids, employers who discriminate in hiring

774 “Ibrahim Mumin interview transcript,” South of U Oral History Project.

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and a host of other ills that run rampant throughout our city.”775 At least some

participants in the civil disorders wanted to “free D.C.” from these “enemies.”

Many black Washingtonians supported the uprising and believed it would lead to

“social change.” According to a report conducted by the U.S. Senate that surveyed black

Washingtonians in the “ghetto,” “nearly half its youth residents believed riots served a

useful purpose.” In total, over 25% of those surveyed “condoned civil violence” and over

20% of people under 24 and over 60 “believed rioting necessary to produce social

change.” More than half of people with less than a high school education believed the

“riots have positive effects,” while a little less than 40% with high school diplomas

believed this. Even 20% of people making over $6,000 annually ($43,428 today—a

middle class income) believed the disturbances were “necessary for social change.”776 In

an interview, one student said he didn’t participate but said he was “glad it happened.

Now…I feel that Congress will get up off their backs and start reading and listening and

start passing some of those bills that have been sent up to them. Congress should get up

off some of their money.” Mamie Roberts expressed her hope that after the upheaval

Congress would act so “our people can have the type of things that they actually need and

want so they won’t have to do this type of thing.” Mrs. Avis Carter, a middle-class

woman putting her son through university, did not participate because “We middle class

Negroes do not express ourselves in the same manner.” Nonetheless, she was hopeful: “It

took Dr. King’s death to bring what had to happen. We’ve moved ahead—probably 20

years—because of this.” “There’s a lot of suffering that’s taking place and it’s

unfortunate that good has to come out of violence,” said Carl Fisher, a black priest at the

775 Borchardt, “Making D.C. Democracy’s Capital,” 261. 776 Jonathon Cottin, “Senate Report Finds: Rioting ‘Indorsed’ Here,” Washington Daily News, July 31, 1968.

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Society of St. Joseph. “But this is the only way that is going to bring about change.”777

As chapter 5 will discuss, the federal government did not “bring about” the change many people hoped it would. Nevertheless, it is important to note that many believed the disorders would push the federal government to be more responsive to black demands and needs

“There is no single reason covering individual motivation of participants:” Interpretation and Conclusion The answer, then, to the question of “Well, why would you turn on your own community” is that almost all who participated did not think that is what they were doing.

Washingtonians did not try to burn down housing in their own neighborhoods because

“Most of the housing damaged were (sic) in mixed units that included commercial uses.”778 While 439 residential units were damaged, only 12 were single-family residences. Over 50% of housing units harmed were along 7th Street where many people lived above businesses.779 Both the Zulus and Firemen specified they targeted commercial establishments.780 When the American Ice Building was burning, some of the Firemen worried the flames might spread to nearby apartments. Members of the

777 “Hollering Whitey-This and Whitey-That,” Washington Daily News. 778 “Testimony of Edward C. Hromanik, Accompanied by Leo Schmittel,” 3224, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders: Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Ninety-First Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969); P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This Report is hereafter referred to as Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. U.S. National Planning Commission, Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 4-8: A Preliminary Damage Report (Washington: s.n., 1968), 5 &10; Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 779 “Testimony of Edward C. Hromanik, Accompanied by Leo Schmittel,” 3224, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders: Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Ninety-First Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969); P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This Report is hereafter referred to as Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. U.S. National Planning Commission, Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C. April 4-8: A Preliminary Damage Report (Washington: s.n., 1968), 5 &10; Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 780 “John Smith Oral History,” 22-23, 25; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 162-169.

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group then aided residents out of the building.781 Alexander Padro found that “folks that

I’ve talked to who were on the street that day said that they did not want to harm the

homes of African-Americans because that would be totally antithetical to what they were

trying to demonstrate by their actions.”782 Further, almost no one attempted to damage

the government that represented their community. Only eight public properties (less than

.1% of the damage) were affected.783

Acknowledging the political aspects of the upheaval does not suggest that

everyone who participated was doing so as a protest of the white power structure. Many

participants were, by their own admission, primarily motivated by opportunism amid

chaos. While many white businesses were targeted, some black businesses also suffered

damages. Virginia Ali was proud that Ben’s Chili Bowl was spared but she also thought

racial solidarity only went so far in protecting black-owned establishments. Although

“community support” kept Ben’s from being burned, Ali believed that for “clothing

stores, I don’t think it really mattered what color [the owners] were. If they wanted to go

in those clothing stores, [they did].”784 As noted by Calvin Rolark, “Some businesses that

are truly equal opportunity employers were destroyed. As in all cases however, the good

must suffer with the bad.”785 John Jackson, one of the few African American police

officers on the force during the disturbances, thought participants were careful to only act

when they thought they would not get caught: “Whenever a criminal goes to commit a

crime, he’s got to have what they call shade. In other words, he’s got to have some place

781 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 164-168. 782 Alexander Padro interview transcript, 2012, South of U Oral History Project. 783 “Testimony of Robert N. Gold, Accompanied by F.R. Aranoff, Research Assistant,” 3176, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 784 Virginia Ali Interview,” February 23, 2003, 18. 785 C.W. Rolark, “Let’s Talk,” Washington Informer, April 11-April 17, 1968, News Clippings, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968.

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to go so that he won’t be detected[.]”786 Although Reuben Jackson believed the

disturbances were politically motivated for many, he acknowledged the other aspects of

it: “Yeah, one can say there were some opportunists who just took things. It was a good

time to get a good TV or something.”787 In other words, while there were political

dimensions to the disturbances, people participated for a variety of reasons. As concluded

by the Washington Afro American, “There is no single reason covering individual

motivation of participants.”

Earl,788 for example, was a graduate student in philosophy at Howard University whose father was a doctor. He and his friends drove around town looting for hours and took, among other things, 9 pairs of shoes, three or four cases of good liquor, 28 bottles of wine, and several frozen turkeys. They had a community meal with the food and drinks and had “a ball…just a ball.” He explained his participation in the upheaval to a

Post reporter:

I was hoping they’d burn the whole town down. I’m not particularly fond of Washington. I’m not sorry about anything. All I worried about was whether black people would get hurt. All the white stores in town could burn down. I wouldn’t care. Dr. King’s death was a tragedy. Everybody I saw out there said whitey shouldn’t have done it, and things would never be the same. I felt like striking back, maybe making up for what I hadn’t done. I always stood back and refused to be an activist. Before, my only way of helping in the civil rights movement was to work in the poverty program. If another riot occurred, I would not let hate overcome me. But I’ve have just enough greed to cause me to take what I needed, instead of what I wanted.”789 Earl insisted he was “not sorry about anything” but also said he would act differently in

the future. He described both the “tragedy” of King’s death and the “ball” of a dinner

with friends using the loot. Earl considered his actions both “revenge” against white

786 John Jackson Oral history. 787 Ruben Jackson Oral History. 788 This was a fictitious name used by the Post. 789 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 142.

196 people and a contribution to the cause of civil rights.

P.J. Wilson, a pseudonym, wrote an article for the Washington Post describing why she participated.

For those ten seconds after we got the liquor, I felt that the System had finally given me something for nothing. White people do not realize the mixed emotions that an educated Negro feels every day. They tell you to go to school and get educated and then they give you some penny-ante job and expect you to feel like the world has been so gracious. But even that white secretary feels that she is better than you because she is white. But I enjoy being a black woman in D.C. I belong to a community where I can walk down the street and speak to people and know that I belong someplace…When the cops came down the street with the tear gas guns, the men turned around to make sure I was all right. I have never felt like that in a white world. I went to a black university and I loved every minute of it because there I was fighting for my identity as a woman and a person. Not as a Negro. It felt good, real good. If I ever have any children, I hope they will live in a community where they belong. You can’t fight the race issue constantly and find your identity at the same time. The police were wonderful. The black cops made me proud that I was black….It’s nice when I talk to all of my intellectual friends and they say that it is all right for us to burn and loot. But the little people do get hurt. My feelings were that most of us who were locked up were only sorry that we had gotten caught. But the black people in this city were really happy for three days. They have been kicked so long and this is the one high spot in their life. Most of the buildings that got burned should have.790 Wilson celebrated that “intellectual friends” condoned burning and looting while simultaneously praising the police. While finding comfort in black men ensuring her safety against police officers coming down the street, the black police officers made her

“proud to be black.” She acknowledged that the “little people” got hurt while insisting that the activities made black people “really happy for three days.”

Interpretations of the events must acknowledge the complexity of both the black community as well as individual people. Fred Wilkes, the Chairman for the Civil Rights

Committee of the Government Workers Union, offered important insight while speaking to the City Council after the violence subsided: “Too many people want to twist and shape our civil disorder to fit their own theories of the future of our society.” “Who does

790 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 153-154.

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speak for the citizens of the black inner-city population?” he further asked. “If we learned

anything during our week of fire, surely it is that we do not really know the answer to this

question.” Wilkes was right: no matter how accurate their accounts, each group discussed

tied their interpretation to a political agenda. While it is important to acknowledge the

political motivations of many in the disorders, there is no one entirely accurate, all-

encompassing theory. “We might as well admit that even though we can list a dozen or

more explanations of why the burning and looting took place, we still do not know what

it all proves,” he argued. “The difficult task before us now is to come up with workable

plans.”791

791 “Statement of Fred Wilkes, Chairman, Civil Rights Committee, Government Workers Union,” 331-332, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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Chapter 4: “Tempering Firmness With Restraint:” The Justice System and the Civil Disturbances On March 4, 1968, exactly one month before Dr. King’s assassination and the

following unrest, African American Washington Post columnist William Raspberry wrote an article praising D.C.’s preparations for potential civil violence. “City officials seem to be making most of the right moves to deal with possible summer violence, at least as far as the police end of it is concerned,” he wrote. Washington was “not turning to armed vigilantes” or ordering “the menacing police tanks or .50 caliber machine guns or Stoner rifles that can rip a four-inch hole in a man.” Instead, “the plans rely heavily on snuffing out rumors before they can work their mischief, on moving quickly to make arrests when they have to be made (and just as quickly quitting the scene), on tempering firmness with

restraint.” Raspberry credited this policy to Mayor Walter Washington who understood

“ghetto unrest,” the “remarkable” Director of Public Safety Patrick Murphy, and the easy

availability of federal troops in the capital. While other cities were “laying in such huge

stockpiles of exotic weapons to crush riots,” Washington had “intelligent leaders who

have seen that police power has triggered more riots than it has prevented.” “Study after

government funded study” indicated people rioted because economic and racial

inequalities, but “still we try to deal with the problem either by insisting that poor people

remain docile or by shooting them down.” “There is, in the attitude of local officials, a

glimmer of hope that Washington may have the wisdom and the courage to try another

way.”792

Washington did “try another way.” City and military officials developed plans

and trained law enforcement personnel to avoid escalating the disorders. During the

792 William Raspberry, “Washington Lays Antiriot Plans Wisely,” Washington Post, March 4, 1968.

199 crisis, troops and police officers mostly adhered to this policy of “restraint.” As the courts processed the thousands arrested by the police, judges avoided administering the “mass justice” that many criticized in previous disorders. Overall, Washington, D.C. respected the rights and lives of “rioters” better than other cities affected by major civil disorders in the 1960s. That fact should not be used, however, to suggest that the institutions many black Washingtonians critiqued before, during, and after the disorders did not merit rebuke. While the city did “temper firmness with restraint,” it still sometimes needed greater emphasis on “restraint.”

I: “Minimum force…will be used:” Washington’s Policy of Restraint and its Backlash “Prepared for Any Eventuality:” Planning for another Long, Hot Summer

The planning Raspberry praised was initiated by the city and federal government as a rejection of the tactics employed by the police and Michigan National Guard in

Detroit, Michigan. At around 3:45 AM on July 23, 1967, the Detroit police raided an unlicensed after-hours bar (called a blind pig) and arrested most of the 82 people inside.

Onlookers protested the arrests and looted nearby stores. After the demonstrations and destruction escalated the following day, Governor George Romney mobilized the

Michigan National Guard. Romney gave the commanding officer permission to “use whatever force necessary” and the Guard fired mounted machine guns, rifles, and tear gas on civilians. Two days after the protests of police power began, Romney requested federal aid and President Lyndon Johnson ordered federal troops into the city. By July

29th, the Army was entirely withdrawn and 43 people were dead. The majority were shot

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by National Guard troops or police officers.793

According to historian Barry Price, “Detroit was a watershed that brought riot

control to the forefront within the Johnson Administration and U.S. military.”794 A

military after-action report found that both the federal troops and Michigan Guardsmen

necessitated better training to handle and apprehend looters and arsonists. The

Department of the Army launched a task group to study how to better control urban

disturbances. The group made 66 recommendations and the military subsequently created

the Department of the Army Civil Disturbance Committee to implement the suggested

policies and plan for future urban upheaval. By December 1967, the military had acted on

all 66 recommendations, developed better training programs, and coordinated with

police, Guard Units, and city governments. The Army created a riot training course for

senior officers, designed minimum riot training requirements for all units in August 1967,

and developed a mock riot city at Fort Gordon, Georgia for training exercises.795 Some

D.C. National Guard officers trained at Fort Gordon and others went to a 24-hour field training exercise at Fort Meade, Maryland.796

The Army task force also created a specific action plan for a potential disorder in

Washington called Operation Cabin Guard. This design used military units that were highly trained and experienced with sensitive missions. The 503rd Military Police

Battalion from Fort Bragg, North Carolina previously served in Oxford, Mississippi to

allow James Meredith admittance to the University of Mississippi and in Selma, Alabama

793 For more on the Detroit disorders, see Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (Ann Arbor: the University of Michigan Press, 1989). 794 Barrye L. Price, King to King: A Study of Civil Unrest and Federal Intervention 1968-1992 (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 1997), 58. 795 All National Guard units were required to participate in 32 hours of training on riot operation techniques, an eight-hour exercise, and 16 hours of command and staff training. 796 Price, King to King, 40-51; 74.

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to protect Dr. King and his followers as they marched for voting rights. The 3rd Infantry

from Fort Myer, Virginia and the 91st Engineer Battalion from Fort Belvoir stifled

demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the Pentagon in October 1967. Further, as

part of the preparations, military units were assigned to police precincts in D.C. Many

commanders had toured the precinct they were responsible for in early 1968. Such

preparations led Washington Post reporter Ben Gilbert to conclude that the units had been

“trained thoroughly in the latest riot-control techniques, which emphasized restraint in the use of physical force.”797

The Washington police and government also prepared to handle disorders with

restraint. After Patrick Murphy was appointed Public Safety Commissioner in 1967,

Murphy consulted with Police Chief John Layton and they “simply increased [police]

training and planning.” The department created a full-time position dedicated to “the

function of the planning and training for disorder prevention and control.”798 Murphy was critical of how police handled recent American civil disorders, alleging “police had demonstrated an unexpected depth of incompetence, insensitivity, and lack of preparedness in dealing with these civil disorders; and despite all this, there was unfortunately no indication that the bottom of the barrel had been plumbed.”799 Instead of

797 Ben Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 90; Price, King to King, 85. 798 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Government, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 2, Civil Disturbances in Washington: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress Second Session: Investigation of the April 1968 Rioting, Looting, Damages and Losses, and Police Actions: May and July, 1968 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968). P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This publication is hereafter referred to as Civil Disturbances in Washington. 799 Original quote from Patrick V. Murphy and Thomas Plate, Commissioner: A View from the Top of American Law Enforcement (New York: Sion and Schuster, 1977), 99; cited in Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: American in the Wake of the King Assassination (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), 77.

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stockpiling weapons to prepare for potential violence, Murphy focused on “minimizing a

department’s potential contribution, to heightened racial tension, and its occasional

proclivity toward pointless exercises in brutality and other forms of macho-policing.”800

In a Washington Post article on March 26, 1968, Murphy indicated the city’s police force

could “prevent any serious disorder in the city this spring and summer” and it was

“prepared for any eventuality.”801 Chief Layton said police needed to carefully avoid

inflaming riots “even if demonstrators egg them on.”802 In a study of the city’s response

to the civil disturbances done by the Brookings Institute, the researchers found that the

city preplanned to use “police restraint and the notion of a massive show of military

strength” by federal troops.803

The D.C. police were certainly prepared, however, to also make a “massive show

of military strength” if desired. After the Harlem civil disorders in 1964, Congress passed

Johnson’s Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965 to create the Office of Law

Enforcement Assistance (OLEA) which supported experimental surveillance programs

for police serving urban areas.804 After the upheaval in Watts, California in 1965, the

OLEA funded the modernization of police departments with “advanced weapons and

technology” including military-grade rifles, riot gear, tanks, helicopters, and bulletproof

vests.805 D.C.’s police department received $1.2 million from Congress to increase the size of its force and outfit it with modern technology and weapons including computers

800 Original quote from Patrick V. Murphy and Thomas Plate, Commissioner, 102; quoted in Risen, America on Fire, 77. 801 “Force Ready for Summer, Murphy Says,” March 26, 1968, Vertical Files, “Riots: April 4-15, 1968,” Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (MLK), Washington, D.C. 802 “Give a Little to Avert Riot, Says Layton,” Washington Post, February 20, 1968, B2. 803 Gilbert Y. Steiner, “The Brookings Institution Seminar on the District of Columbia Riot,” May 20, 1968, 23, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. 804 Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 56-57. 805 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 87-89.

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and walk-talkies.806 The police developed “so-called sophisticated tools of riot control”

including chemical mace, a foam machine, and even a “banana oil” technique where the

“police would smear the streets with banana oil so rioters and looters would fall

down.”807

In April 1968, the military followed its pre-established policy and encouraged

troops to practice restraint in Washington instead of utilizing these new technologies for

control.808 Federal soldiers were ordered to “assist the civilian law enforcement

authorities to restore law and order, and in accomplishing this mission, to do so with the

minimum use of force.”809 A memo from General Ralph Haines, the Jr. Vice Chief of

Staff for the Army and the military contact for the D.C. police during the disorders,

ordered:

Minimum force, consistent with mission accomplishment, will be used by both military and civilian personnel. Moreover, commanders and their personnel will avoid appearing as an invading, alien force rather than a force whose purpose is to restore order with a minimum loss of life and property and due respect for the great number of citizens whose involvement is purely accidental. Further, Haines instructed personnel to “be civil; the use of epithets and degrading

language will not be tolerated.”810 In one incident when police officers used the barrels of

their loaded weapons to move unresisting citizens, Murphy and Deputy Chief Jerry

Wilson stopped the police and ordered them to “request” people to move instead.811

806 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 91-92. 807 Nicholas Horrock, “D.C. Police: No Faith in Mace,” Washington Evening Star, April 11, 1968, 11. 808 Horrock, “D.C. Police: No Faith in Mace,” Washington Evening Star; Price, King to King, 100-101. 809 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Government, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 4, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 810 Memo to Gen Ralph E Haines, JR Vice Chief of Staff, United States Army, Metropolitan Police HQ From Gen Harold K. Johnson, Chief of Staff, US Army, April 6, 1968, Appendix, 97, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 811 Leonard Downie Jr., “Praise Heaped on D.C. Police: Police Handling of Emergency Praised,” Washington Post, April 8, 1968, A1; Leonard Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,”

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Safety Commissioner Murphy deliberately avoided any scenario that risked the

use of police firearms. In several instances on Thursday night and Friday afternoon, he

ordered officers to retreat because they were outnumbered. While this tactic was later

denounced by many conservatives, Murphy and others defended it as an effective

strategy to sidestep potential escalation of violence. If police did not have enough officers

to control a situation, they might resort to excessive force for self-protection. “If I had not

withdrawn them,” Murphy said in reference to a confrontation between police and

citizens in an area heavily looted, “it might have been necessary to discharge their

firearms to protect themselves.”812 “Once we start shooting,” said another officer, “the

other side is liable to start shooting back.”813 When police officers were sufficiently

concentrated in an area, the preponderance of force present “discouraged fighting back

and subsequent retaliatory violence by police.”814

The thousands of troops in Washington held unloaded rifles, although they did

carry ammunition. Soldiers were not allowed to load their rifles unless commanded to do

so or under an imminent threat. Troops were banned from using warning shots and if they

did fire a weapon, they must intend to wound rather than to kill. To reinforce these

restrictions, each soldier carried a card that, in part, read:

2. I will BE COURTEOUS in all dealings WITH CIVILIANS to the maximum EXTENT POSSIBLE UNDER EXISTING CIRCUMSTANCES. 3. I will NOT LOAD OR FIRE my weapon EXCEPT WHEN AUTHORIZED by an OFFICER IN PERSON, when authorized IN ADVANCE BY AN OFFICER under certain specific conditions, or WHEN REQUIRED TO SAVE MY LIFE. 4. I will NOT INTENTIONALLY INJURE OR MISTREAT CIVILIANS,

Washington Post, April 11, 1968, B1; William Chapman, “Containing Riots: Manpower, Not Gunpowder, Check Nation’s Disorders,” Washington Post, April 13, 1968, A1. 812 Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post; Downie Jr., “Praise Heaped on D.C. Police,” Washington Post. 813 Downie Jr., “Praise Heaped on D.C. Police,” Washington Post. 814 Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post.

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including those I am controlling, or those in my custody NOR will I WITHHOLD MEDICAL ATTENTION from anyone who requires it.815 The police also were instructed to avoid using their service revolvers when interacting

with civilians.816 Famously, Murphy insisted that he would resign from his position as

Public Safety Manager before he would order police to shoot looters.817 In one instance,

police under fire from a sniper in the woods refrained from “spraying bullets around the

area” and instead “tossed in tear gas and moved in to arrest three men.”818

Unlike in Detroit, firearms were a method of last resort. As opposed to the

156,391 rounds fired by the military in Detroit, troops fired only 14 in D.C.819 The police

killed 16 civilians in Detroit; 2 Washingtonians were shot and killed by police officers.

No one was killed by the National Guard or federal soldiers in D.C.; in Detroit 11 died at

the hands of the National Guard and 1 by a federal troop. Both African Americans killed

by police were shot in Anacostia where, unlike in the rest of the city, the police had not

received direct instruction to avoid using their guns.820 “We didn’t shoot and they didn’t

shoot,” reported one police official. “With all the guns that we know the people have out

there and with all the guns that we have, I believe a miracle has occurred.”821

“In the good old days…rioters and looters were shot on sight:” The Backlash to Restraint Many, however, condemned this approach and demanded the police and military

use more force. These critics, primarily “law and order” conservatives, insisted that the

police were ordered to “do nothing” and made no effort to prevent looting. F.O. Hinz, the

815 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 105-106. 816 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 83. 817 Martin Weil, “Patrick V. Murphy, who advocated police restraint during 1968 D.C. riots, dies at 91,” Washington Post, December 17, 2011. 818 Chapman, “Containing Riots: Manpower, Not Gunpowder, Check Nation’s Disorders,” Washington Post. 819 Price, King to King, 95. 820 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 83. 821 Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post.

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executive manager of the Connecticut Avenue Association, was so upset he distributed a

flyer entitled “Order From White House: ‘Don’t Shoot Looters.” “On Friday, April 5,

when negro rioters, looters, plunderers, and arsonists ran free to perpetrate havoc in

downtown Washington, District police were told to avoid making arrests,” the flyer

claimed. “Looters were told to be ignored—unless they were white!”822 A letter from the

Federation of Citizens Associations asserted that “outnumbered police simply stood by—

under orders—[and] watched the arson and pillage.”823 Representative Roy A. Taylor, a

Democrat from North Carolina, contended that “police made little effort to stop looters or

recover merchandise.”824 In Congressional hearings on the disturbances, the head of the

House Committee on the District of Columbia John McMillan grilled Patrick Murphy

about “the reason for not stopping some of the looting that appeared here in the Nation’s

Capital on these days.” McMillan said business owners reported that troops guarding

stores “weren’t permitted to touch the looters or the people setting fires.” Rep. Thomas

Abernathy claimed there was a “policy that directed the police on the streets to stand by

and watch the people break these windows and march out of stores with the

merchandise…”825

Murphy, Layton, and the Undersecretary of the Army David E. McGiffert all

agreed that the police and troops never received orders to allow looting or arson. Murphy

822 “Order from White House—‘Don’t shoot looters”,” Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: Civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 823 “Federation of Citizens Associations of District of Columbia Bill of Particulars Relative to the District of Columbia Riots of April 1968,” 57, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 824 Jonathon Cottin, “Byrd Wants Troops to Stay Indefinitely,” Washington Daily News, April 9, 1968, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library, Washington, D.C. 825 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Government, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 6, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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said if any officers were told to not make arrests “those instructions would not be in

accordance with the policy of the Department…There was no policy of leniency.”826

Layton insisted that “There was positively no directive or order, or in any way, to members of the Force not to arrest looters.”827 McGiffert clarified that some troops did

“stand by,” but for specific reasons. “[T]he soldier or soldiers had been given an

assignment to guard, let’s say, a store or something of that kind and could not, without

violating his orders, move away from his post in order to accomplish some other

mission.”828 As discussed in chapter 2, police records corroborate their claims.

Despite these statements, many citizens were highly critical of Murphy and the

city’s actions because they believed the riot-suppression methods were not violent enough. Specifically, these commentators argued that the city would have sustained less property damage if looters and arsonists were shot by police and soldiers. In a letter to

Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Washington stated that in cities where public officials gave orders to shoot to kill “rioters,” the disorders were kept under control: “In the good old days—which we remember well

since our members must be at least fifty years of age and some are over 90 years of age—

looters and arsonists were shot on sight in times of emergencies.”829 They demanded

“adequate protection not restraint. We want to sleep at night without fear of uncontrolled

826 Ibid, 5. 827 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Government, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense, Resumed,” 41, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 828 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Government, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 5, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 829 Letter from the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Washington to Attorney General Ramsey Clark, May 13, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: Civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records.

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rioting.”830 Citizen Virginia P. Raisbeck equated the officials celebrating the city’s response to those who appeased Adolph Hitler at Munich: “The recent action arbitrarily cancelling the law of this country by responsible (?) officials in Washington, D.C., ‘in order to save lives’ is an astounding thing!…Hitler showed what appeasement means when Chamberlain rejoiced in ‘saving lives.’”831 Joseph Deckamn of the Washington

Suburban Mortgage Inc. asserted that the failure to shoot arsonists “clearly indicates that

law and order cannot be restored in Washington under the direction of the present

officials. What will result is more inflammatory actions by the advocates of violence and

other opposing groups[.]”832 The Federation of Citizens Associations claimed that “Tying

the hands of our armed forces and law enforcement officials lent encouragement to the

philosophy that riot destruction is the most certain method of enforcing demands.”833

Washingtonian Arthur J. Howe contended in a letter to the editor of the Washington Star

that killing arsonists and maiming looters “had much greater merit than the drivel of the

sob sisters who refuse to separate lawlessness from civil rights issue….The bleeding

hearts about us would have us believe that restraint and permissiveness toward those who

violate our laws is the only solution to our current wave of racial disturbances.” Howe

concluded that “No citizen, white or black, will be safe on the streets of Washington until

the police show their teeth and notify the would-be violators in advance that force will be

830 Letter from the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Washington to Attorney General Ramsey Clark, May 13, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: Civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 831 Letter from Virginia P. Raisbeck, 59, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 832 Joseph Deckman, Letter to William Calomiris from Washington Suburban Mortgage, Inc., April 29, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: Civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 833 “Federation of Citizens Associations of District of Columbia Bill of Particulars Relative to the District of Columbia Riots of April 1968,” 57, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

209 met with superior force[.]”834

Politicians also demanded that the police and troops be authorized to utilize more violence. Representative Joel Broyhill called for legislation to “[make] it mandatory that all police, National Guardsmen and militiamen shoot to kill each and every looter or rioter henceforth.”835 Broyhill was additionally frustrated that officials calling for such measures were “charged by the bleeding hearts of this nation with being callous and reckless insofar as human life is concerned.”836 Congressman John Dowdy praised the individual police officers but criticized the “undue restraints that were put upon the

Police in their attempts to enforce the law and preserve order.”837 “We are trying to untie the hands of the police,” Dowdy asserted, “they have been tied for too long[.]”838 In hearings held in May 1968, multiple Congress members inquired about the policies to shoot looters in other cities such as Chicago and Miami. Congressman Thomas

Abernathy insisted that Miami’s policy was not “inflammatory” but “On the contrary, hasn’t it been pretty quiet and respectable down there?”839 Another congressman asserted that “when troops are carrying guns, and not even loaded guns—it seems to me this is

834 Arthur J Howe, “Letters to the Editor,” Washington Star, May 11, 1968; 69, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 835 “Strong Man,” Washington Post, April 14, 1968. 836 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Government, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 18-20, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 837 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Government, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense, Resumed,” 39, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 838 Ibid, 51. 839 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Governemnt, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 9-10, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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rather a joke.”840 Senator Russell B. Long of Lousianna commented,

I just don’t approve of the police being weak or namby-pamby…If [looters] cannot be arrested, [the police] should shoot them if they are trying to escape. If they fail to use strong methods, it just encourages more of the same. It might cost a few lives to be strong, but I don’t see that we are too badly off if a few professional robbers, thieves and arsonists do lose their lives.841 For his part, Senator Robert Byrd called the White House on Friday, April 5th to say “he

wanted to be on record as believing…the looters should be shot, if they are adults (but not killed, just shot in the leg); that he feels the time for restraint is ended.”842

Some business owners and politicians were so upset with the city’s response they

sought to force the D.C. government to cover the cost of the damage. The House

Committee on D.C. held hearings on HR 16948, “a bill to direct the Commissioners of

the District of Columbia to remove at the expense of the District of Columbia buildings

destroyed or damaged in riots or other civil disorders.”843 In the hearing on the bill,

George Kalavitinos, a self-proclaimed “slum lord” whose property was damaged in the

disorders, asked “Where was the police protection for these merchants? Why should

these merchants be held responsible for the removal of the debris[?]” Kalavitinos insisted

it was “the City’s responsibility to remove the debris and demolish the buildings, for they

did not render the necessary ‘police protection.’”844 Richard O. Hasse of the Washington

840 Ibid, 12. 841 “Congress’ Reactions Split Over Violence in Big Cities,” Washington Afro American, April 16, 1968, 3, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 842 Memo for President Lyndon Johnson from Joseph Califano, Saturday April 6, 1968, “Washington, D.C. civil right issues including Riot Prevention, Poor People's Campaign, and urban renewal, 1968-1969,” Found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files,” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 843 “Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings,” 1, Civil Disturbances in Washington: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress Second Session: Investigation of the April 1968 Rioting, Looting, Damages and Losses, and Police Actions: May and July, 1968 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968). P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This section of the publication is hereafter referred to as Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings. 844 “Statement of George Kalavitinos, A Washington, D.C. Citizen and Businessman,” 64, Bonds for

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Board of Realtors asserted that “If the local government had performed its function and

duty to maintain law and order during the riots of April, there would be no need now to

determine who bears the responsibility of removing the damaged buildings.”845 Hillard

Schulberg, the executive director of the Washington D.C. Retail Liquor Dealers

Association, said that the city “invited” the looters to act so the city should “pick up the

check.”846

As Congressman Basil Whitner pointed out, the bill’s proponents often posited

white small business owners as the true and most deserving victims of the disorders.

“This is the thing that bothers me, so many having the zeal for the removal of rubble and

debris,” said Whitner. “I am wondering about those people who have had hospital bills,

funeral bills, the loss of earnings…the employees in some of the businesses who were

innocent of any wrongdoing who have been deprived of their weekly paychecks.”847 The

witness, Richard Haase, insisted that “these merchants pay real estate taxes. That

represents the greatest single revenue that the city has, and that money from taxes on real

estate goes to pay for the police force. The merchants are entitled to protection under the

law.” Whitner responded, “Of course, other citizens pay their sales taxes and their

property taxes, and the other taxes imposed by law which entitles them to be protected in

their pursuits, too.” 848 He further asked why no one was discussing paying for the funeral

Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings. 845 “Statement of Hilliard Schulberg, Executive Director, Washington D.C. Retail Liquor Dealers Association,” 141; Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders: Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Ninety-First Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969); P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This Report is hereafter referred to as Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 846 847 “Statement of Richard O. Haase, Chariman, Legislation and Taxation Committee, Washington Board of Realtors,” 80, Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings. 848 Statement of Richard O. Haase, Chariman, Legislation and Taxation Committee, Washington Board of Realtors,” 80, Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings.

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expenses for a woman who died in the flames or aiding black business owners who

sustained damage. Raymond R. Ruppert, a realtor in the 7th Street area, said that he

thought welfare payments should be enough for those costs. 849 Such comments led

Whitner to wonder if the legislation “put a premium on rubble and lower[ed] it on life

and limb.”850

In May 1968, a local group of merchants, most of whom suffered property

damage during the disorders, created a group called “We the People” and sued the DC

government for not adequately protecting their businesses. Abe Liss, the head of “We the

People,” stated the group aimed to “demand the domestic tranquility guaranteed in the

preamble to the Constitution.”851 The insurance companies who covered the businesses

also sued D.C. as they claimed the government should cover the damages. Aetna

Insurance Co. asked the D.C. and federal government to reimburse it for the $1.2 million

it paid in business insurance claims following the upheaval. According to Aetna, the

government was responsible because it “deliberately sacrificed property to burners and

looters” and thus “‘consciously abandoned the rights and interest of property issues,’

denying the owners the constitutional rights to equal protection of the law.”852 Another

suit filed a year later lodged similar complaints as it claimed, “no action was taken or

attempted to restrain…agitators and revolutionaries.” The plaintiffs contended that the

D.C. anti-disorder plan was insufficient and thus the city was negligent because it was

obvious that “any incident of a significant nature involving the black race would be likely

849 Statement of Richard O. Haase, Chariman, Legislation and Taxation Committee, Washington Board of Realtors,” 80; “Statement of Raymond R. Ruppert, Realtor, 1017 7th Street, Northwest, Washington D.C.,” 100, Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings. 850 Statement of Richard O. Haase, Chariman, Legislation and Taxation Committee, Washington Board of Realtors,” 81, Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings. 851 Paul W. Valentine, “Merchants to sue city for riot related losses,” Washington Post, May 10, 1968; B1. 852 Thomas W. Lippman, “Insurance Firm Sues for D.C. Riot Losses,” Washington Post, April 26, 1969, B1.

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to touch off domestic violence, disorders and rioting which would…result in vast damage

and destruction to private business and property.”853

By August 1970, nearly 30 merchants sought compensatory and punitive damages

from the District for negligence during the disorders.854 The District, in partnership with the Justice Department, defended its actions, claiming “that ‘great care, consideration and detail’ went into the response to the riots.” Government lawyers argued the decision to not immediately call federal troops into the city was justified because it minimized the loss of lives. The state also alleged the case was nonsensical because “neither common law nor statute exists to hold federal agencies liable for damage suffered by private individuals during civil disturbances.”855

In a ruling on October 13, 1970, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the

District, absolving its liability for the damage. Because the Court of Appeals refused to

establish a “new principle of municipal responsibility,” it delegitimized the 26 other

lawsuits against D.C. still pending. The Court agreed that there was no statute to “hold

government liable for destruction during disturbances” and found “prolongation of the

controversy…wasteful and useless.” The suit was further untenable because if it accepted

riot-compensation claims, “efforts might be made to extend the argument of police

negligence to every robbery or burglary…government might be asked to compensate the

victim of every crime.” The judges on the panel also believed the state had the right to

decide not to use police “at a certain location because of danger to them or the likelihood

of increasing or extending the general violence.” Finally, the panel concluded that

853 Sanford J. Ungar, “4 Damaged in Riots Ask $3 Million; 4 Ask $3 Million in Riot Damages,” Washington Post, August 21, 1970, C1. 854 Ungar, “4 Damaged in Riots Ask $3 Million; 4 Ask $3 Million in Riot Damages,” Washington Post. 855 Ungar, “4 Damaged in Riots Ask $3 Million; 4 Ask $3 Million in Riot Damages,” Washington Post.

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legislative bodies, rather than the courts, should establish guidelines to determine

compensation for damages during a civil disorder.856

“I never thought I’d say anything [good] about the police here:” Analyzing the City’s Response While the city faced criticism and challenges from many conservatives and

business owners, many Washingtonians, the press, and national leaders praised the

capital’s handling of the upheaval. President Johnson’s press secretary George Christian

said Johnson felt Mayor Washington and the city had done “an exceptionally fine job of

curtailing the situation with a minimum of death and injury.”857 The Washington Evening

Star complimented the city’s response and specifically commended Mayor Washington

for his “superb exercise of leadership.”858 An editorial by local broadcaster WTOP also

applauded the city’s restraint: “The problems of our cities—including the national

capital—won’t be solved by firepower….A principal objective of the effort by authorities

to control violence should be to avoid planting the seeds of further violence.

Reconciliation with the angered thousands in the ghetto is what we are all after—and

reconciliation will not be achieved by a gunshot.”859 The Washington Post editorial staff

praised that “Human life has been valued ahead of property….Force has been brought to

bear, but with restraint.”860 Even William Calomiris, the president of the Washington

Metropolitan Board of Trade, said “The city government is to be commended for keeping

856 Sanford J. Ungar, “Court Absolves D.C. In Riot Damage Suit,” Washington Post, October 14, 1970, A1. 857 “Washington riots cooling down slowly,” Washington Afro American, April 9, 1968, 1, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680409&printsec=frontpage&hl =en 858 “The City’s Response,” Washington Evening Star, April 9, 1968, A14; Washington Star online collection, Washington, D.C. Public Library. 859 WTOP Broadcasting, “Restraint,” April 22, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 36: “TF: Civil Disturbances— Clippings,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 860 “So Far, Well Done,” Washington Post, April 8, 1968, A16.

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down bloodshed…Their judgement has been for the good of the entire city.”861

Many black Washingtonians also expressed pride in the city’s response. “I never

thought I’d say anything [good] about the police here,” commented a middleclass black

man, “but I was out on the streets and I think the police were great.”862 P.J. Wilson, the

pseudonym used by a black Washingtonian who looted, said that “[t]he Police were

wonderful. The black cops made me proud that I was black.”863 Rev. W.R. Fairley wrote in the Washington Afro American that “The police and National Guard have set a noble example for the nation.”864 The D.C. chapter of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) adopted a resolution which commended the

police for the “restraint shown in attempting to control and contain looters and other

lawless persons in a way which has resulted in minimum injuries and fatalities.”865

Robert Allen, a student journalist for Howard’s Hilltop, wrote that “Once the rebellions

started, authorities employed ingenious techniques other than repressive force to control

the situation.”866 “The fact that the list of fatalities was kept to a minimum indicates the

authorities may have learned some valuable lessons in riot control since the tragedies

which left a toll of death in its wake in many cities throughout the country last summer,”

wrote the Washington Afro American editorial staff. “It was evident that Mayor Walter

Washington and his advisors deliberately kept the military and police under restraint.”867

861 Downie Jr., “Praise Heaped on D.C. Police,” Washington Post. 862 “Riots Show Washington Has Strong Civic Leadership,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 14, 1968, News Clippings, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 863 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 154. 864 Rev. W.R. Fairley, “Post-Riot D.C. Stronger,” Washington Afro American, April 16, 1968, 4, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 865 Downie Jr., “Praise Heaped on D.C. Police,” Washington Post. 866 Robert Allen, “April’s Black Rebellions: A Political Analysis,” Hilltop, April 26, 1968. 867 “Riots and the Law,” Washington Afro American, April 13, 1968, News Clippings, Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Gelman Library Special Collections at the George

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For his part, Marion Barry was frustrated because he believed too many people were

fixated on congratulating the police and troops instead of working to help the city recover.868

Some used the praise for the police’s response to dampen wider critiques of police

power and racial bias. “It is entirely possible that one of the major false doctrines of the

day—the characterization of the policeman as the enemy of the citizen—has been

effectively buried in the ashes of Washington’s violent weekend,” wrote the Washington

Evening Star. The policemen’s “courage and their discipline have given the most

effective answer possible to those who preach violence and discord and who are

dedicated to the destruction of this community[.]”869 Washington Post columnist Leonard

Downie Jr. opined that “Among the few valuable legacies of the rioting here are the

performances of the Metropolitan Police Department…[The police] emerged with an

enhanced reputation and new respect.”870 In contrast, while the National Capital Area

Civil Liberties Union noted the police mostly “performed magnificently” during the

disorders, it remarked that the “excellent performance during the April disorders is most

notable for the fact that it came out of a police force which before and since has

consistently performed so badly.”871

While D.C. deserved credit for withstanding the pressure to shoot participants, its

performance did not invalidate criticisms of the police. First, “restraint” did not mean that

Washington University, Washington, D.C. Documents from this report are indicated by their title within the report as the document does not use page numbers.) 868 Paul Delaney, “Work on City Problems, Barry Urges Coalition,” Evening Star, April 11, 1968, B3. 869 “Trial By Fire,” Washington Evening Star, April 9, 1968, A-14, Washington Star online collection, D.C. Public Library. 870 Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post. 871 National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union, “Report and Recommendations of the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union,” August 1, 1968, Series 2: Act, Box 4, Folder: ACT—Black Power, Papers of Julius Hobson, 1960-1977, D.C. Community Archives, Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.

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soldiers and police officers entirely refrained from utilizing force. As mentioned in

chapter 2, the police fired 8,000 canisters of tear gas and the military used 5,258 CS

grenades (the military’s version of tear gas).872 Additionally, the police were still guided

by the same policy on the use of firearms that had been in place since 1954.873 Under

such provisions, two unarmed African Americans were killed by policemen and both

officers were cleared by a U.S. Grand Jury. Many were outraged the officers would not

be prosecuted and demanded greater police accountability.874 Officers and soldiers also

threatened to use their weapons against unarmed citizens. In one instance, a Washington

Post reporter moved through a crowd to ask what happened as several African Americans

were arrested and a white police officer with a gun drawn ordered the citizens to “Get out

of here. You are going to be shot.”875 Other journalists witnessed officers firing into

stores or in pursuit of people with looted merchandise. In another instance, police

unnecessarily utilized tear gas.876

The policy of restraint did not mean officers were lenient. According to Murphy,

police were told to make “all arrests that were humanly possible.”877 The police

sometimes took advantage of this power and enforced the law in racially biased ways. In

drafting the curfew regulation, the Corporation Counsel and Mayor Washington did not

specify an extensive list of exceptions and instead expected “judicious enforcement” by

872 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 105. Price, King to King, 97. 873 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Governemnt, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 7-8, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 874 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 85. 875 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 108; Downie Jr., “Riot Less: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post. 876 Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post. 877 “Statement of Patrick V. Murphy, Director, Office of Public Safety, District of Columbia Governemnt, Accompanied by John B. Layton, Chief, Metropolitan Police Department; Henry A. Galotta, Chief, Fire Department; David G. Bress, Esquire, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and Hon. David E. McGiffert, Under Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense,” 5, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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the Police Department. While the Corporation Counsel intended arrest for violating the

curfew to be used only as a “last resort” if someone did not leave when asked, the police

“made use of the curfew as a mass arrest device for controlling the civil disorder and

charged defendants with curfew wholesale because this was a convenient way of clearing

the streets.”878 Many officers were “frank to admit that a black violator was much more

likely to be arrested than a white violator.”879 For example, “carloads of homeward-

bound, Negro paper handlers from the Washington Post, dressed in their work clothes,

were more than once brusquely ordered out of their automobiles, made to lean against the

hood of their cars, and frisked.” The white newsmen dressed in suits, however, were

rarely asked to leave their cars if stopped during the curfew.880

Some officers expressed racist resentment both on the streets and back at their

precincts. The Post reported some police taunted citizens, calling them “welfare people”

and other “thinly veiled racial epithets.”881 Any person who gave “back talk” was almost

always arrested by police officers. In one egregious instance, a black fireman was

arrested by white police as he wearily rested while walking home from work. Officers said he was “surly” when they talked to him. Eventually, a judge dropped the fireman’s

case because he had a reason to be on the streets as he was leaving his job.882 In another

instance, a policeman arrested a man sitting on his own front porch because he reportedly

“sassed” the officer.883 Other officers said “dress and general appearance” were used to

878 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 6. 879 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 10. 880 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 138 881 Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post. Downie Jr., “Praise Heaped on D.C. Police,” Washington Post. 882 “Charge is Dropped on Curfew Violation,” June 2, 1968, The Washington Post. 883 William Dobrovir, Justice in Time of Crisis: A Staff Report to the District of Columbia Committee on the Administration of Justice under Emergency Conditions (Washington: U.S. Government

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determine who was a “troublemaker.” If someone did not look respectable enough, they were arrested. Finally, some law enforcement officials arrested “everything that moved” including people walking their dogs, a man taking out his garbage in front of his house, and even a man rushing across town to take his girlfriend in labor to the hospital.884 As police returned to their stations after completed shifts, they used “racial epithets and

[made] strong complaints about the order for restraint that Murphy had given them.”

Their words suggested many “still harbored strong resentment toward the Negroes they saw in the streets.”885

The federal government and the city of Washington did alter its policies for

dealing with civil disturbances after the “long hot summer” of 1967. The troops and

officers in Washington behaved with considerably more restraint than those in Detroit

and far fewer people died as a result. Although some criticized this policy and sued the

D.C. government to hold it liable for disorder damages, the courts upheld Washington’s

approach to the upheaval. As William Raspberry wrote, the city “tempered firmness with

restraint.” This does not mean, however, that the police and troops were flawless or that

histories of the disturbances should ignore the racial biases exhibited in the chaos.

II: “You Have a City in Flames…And So Some People Will Have to Languish in Jail:” the Administration of Justice in the Disorders “Serious Delays:” Difficulties Processing Defendants April 4-9, 1968 On the morning of Friday, April 5th, General Sessions Chief Judge Harold Greene

led a meeting of judges to determine how to operate the courts that day. Greene, along

with Judges Alfred Burka, Tim Murphy, and Milton Korma were all recent appointees to

Printing Office, 1969), 10; Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 884 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 10-11. 885 Downie Jr., “Riot Lesson: Restraint, Planning Work,” Washington Post. Downie Jr., “Praise Heaped on D.C. Police,” Washington Post.

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the D.C. Court of General Sessions as part of a reform measure to select judges more

sensitive to individual circumstances and less inclined to automated justice.886 The judges

determined to maintain “business as usual” because they incorrectly thought the city

would not erupt in violence again.887 Judge Greene set up a special assignment court to

process the nearly 200 people arrested Thursday night and assigned Judge Justin L.

Edgerton to oversee the hearings.

It was soon apparent that the day would not be governed by “business as usual.”

By early afternoon, judges smelled smoke from their chambers and some witnessed

looting of downtown shops from their office windows. Around the courthouse, “there

was a touch of tear gas in the air and the wail of police-car sirens.”888 Judge Greene

ventured out to observe the ongoing damage but retreated after hearing shouts that a mob

was coming up the street throwing rocks and bricks.889

Amidst this chaos, the judiciary tackled an enormous task. From Thursday, April

4th to Sunday, April 7th, approximately 4,200 people were arrested for looting, rioting,

and curfew violation.890 In those four days, the court filed as many felony and

misdemeanor charges as it normally did in six weeks.891 To handle the crisis, the courts

ran non-stop from Friday, April 5th to Monday, April 8th. The District Court “suspended

886 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 122. 887 Dobrovir, Justice in Time of Crisis,16; Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. ; Harold Greene, “A Judge’s View of the Riots,” D.C. Bar Journal, August- October 1968; Riots Vertical Files April 4-15, 1968, Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Public Library, Washington, D.C. 888 Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House, 123; Greene, “A Judge’s View of the Riots,” D.C. Bar Journal; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 16. 889 Greene, “A Judge’s View of the Riots,” D.C. Bar Journal. 890 “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Documents from this report are indicated by their title within the report as the document does not use page numbers. 891 “Justice During a Crisis,” April 10, 1968, Washington Post, A18; David A. Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers court,” April 9, 1968, The Washington Post, A7. A total of 1825 people were processed from 11 pm on Thursday to Monday at 9:30 PM.

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the hearing of scheduled criminal cases” so that attorneys and judges could help with

disorder cases in the General Sessions Court.892 Despite the efforts to increase efficiency,

the flood of prisoners created confusion and delays as the legal system strained to process

all detainees.

By the time Judge Greene instructed judges to maintain “business as usual”

Friday morning, the Court of General Sessions was already behind schedule in processing defendants. Completing and keeping track of the forms needed to charge and identify defendants “caused the biggest tie-up in the smooth administration of justice” during the upheaval.893 Since many police officers who made the arrests went home without

completing their paperwork Friday morning, the prosecutors did not have enough

information to charge some of the accused.894 The problem only worsened on Friday and

Saturday as the number arrested and subsequent backlog grew. Prisoners came to court in

large groups with little paperwork and usually without the arresting officer so as many

police officers as possible could be on the streets. 895 A single marshal was responsible

for matching prisoners with their documents while he also answered phone calls. The

U.S. Deputy marshal reported Saturday morning that while he had 150 signed complaints

and 150 prisoners at the courthouse, “none of the complaints matched any of the

prisoners.”896 By Saturday afternoon April 6th, only 25 out of 225 prisoners in the

892 “Justice During a Crisis,” April 10, 1968, The Washington Post, A18; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 16. 893 Russel Chandler, “Riot Arrest Set up Called Paper Maze,” May 18, 1968, Washington Star, Washington Star Collection at the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library, Washington, D.C. While the Justice Department had designed simplified police forms to use in case of a civil disorder, they had not yet printed them when the upheaval began. See Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 122. 894 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 122. 895 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 127. Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 14; “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 896 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 127.

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courthouse cellblocks had been formally charged with a crime.897 General Sessions Judge

Harold Greene recognized that many people were imprisoned for extended periods without charges and “warned the US attorney’s office and the police that he couldnot

[sic] hold people for any substantial period of time without charges.”898

Suspects could not have a hearing until their paperwork was complete so those

arrested were held for hours or even days in cellblocks not intended for overnight or

extended stays while they waited.899 Some arrested Thursday night were still imprisoned

and had still not been charged with a crime on Saturday afternoon because of the “serious

delay[s]” preparing documents.900 That evening, 20-30 prisoners were released because

they had been detained for over forty-eight hours without being charged. “No trace” or

record of their crimes could be found.901 In one of the most extreme cases, Robert

Skelton, an African American postal clerk, was detained for over four days before he was finally released. He was arrested and charged with looting on Friday, April 5th. The next

day, he had a hearing and his bond was posted the same day. No one could find Skelton

to release him until he was discovered in the D.C. Jail on April 10th.902

To reduce the paperwork delays and confusion, the courts adopted a less formal

method of charging the accused beginning Saturday afternoon. The arresting officer no

897 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 129. 898 Clayton, “Riot Cases Jam Court Around Clock”, Washington Post; James E. Clayton, “Court Struggles to Clear Jails,” April 8, 1968, Washington Post, A14. 899 Lawrence Speiser, Ralph J. Temple, and WM Warfield Ross, “The Administration of Justice,” Washington Post, April 13, 1968, A10; “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 11. People were held in the cellblocks of the Court of General Sessions and U.S. District Court, and beginning Saturday night the Occoquan work house in Lorton, Virginia while they waited. “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 900 “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 901 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 129-130. 902 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 132; “Looting Suspect ‘Lost’ in D.C. Jails for 4 ½ Days,” The Washington Post, April 28, 1068, D1.

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longer personally swore to the complaint and officials collected only the bare minimum

information for each charge.903 The police department shifted schedules to allow officers

the time to come in to fill out the required forms and encouraged officers to do paperwork

directly after they completed their shifts.904 The police and courts also adjusted their

approach to curfew violations on Saturday to expedite processing. After Mayor Walter E.

Washington imposed the curfew Friday evening, over 1,000 people were arrested for

violation the first night.905 At first, judges held hearings for those accused of violating the

curfew and set bail.906 As the backlog grew, Police Chief John B. Layton recommended

that the curfew violations be considered a different class of offense. Beginning Saturday,

the courts processed those accused of violating the curfew who already spent the night in

jail under Title 7 of the 1967 D.C. Omnibus Crime Bill. This specified that people

arrested could be released if they were issued a citation requiring a later court

appearance. The 2,532 people arrested for violating curfew were then booked at a police

precinct, photographed, and held overnight. The next day, they were driven back to the

police precinct, given a citation like a traffic ticket, and released without being arraigned.

Judges believed this policy was a middle ground between holding defendants until they

appeared before a judge (which normally would not occur until the morning after arrest)

and immediate release with a ticket.907 As will be discussed later, judges eventually

903 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 129. 904 “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Clayton, “Riot Cases Jam Court Around Clock”, The Washington Post; Clayton, “Court Struggles to Clear Jails,” The Washington Post. 905 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 7. 906 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 121. 907 “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Gilbert, Ten Bocks, 128; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 5, 7, 11; Hardy, “Corrections’ Participation in Disturbance Commencing April 4, 1968, April 16, 1968,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968; Clayton, “Riot Cases Jam Court Around Clock,” Washington Post.

224 allowed those accused of violating the curfew to avoid appearing in court by posting

$25.908

As the judiciary adapted to the mayhem and arrests tapered off on Sunday, the courts were able to catch up with processing defendants. By 4:00 PM on Sunday, the courts had reduced the number of detainees from 1,550 to 400. By 12:00 PM Tuesday,

“virtually all” of those arrested Monday night and Tuesday morning had been arraigned.909 In total, 1,675 people appeared before a judge over the weekend.910

“Well, that will keep him out of trouble tonight:” The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Judges, and Bail Policy When these 1,675 citizens appeared in court, the only significant ruling at the initial hearing was setting bail.911 Recent legislation established new guidelines for how judges should determine a defendant’s bail. Passed by Congress in 1966, the Bail Reform Act specified that judges could only consider a defendant’s “likelihood of reappearance for trial” when setting bail. The severity of the crime could only be factored in as it related to the chances the accused would return for trial.912 The act also mandated that individuals could be released on personal recognizance instead of monetary bond. This meant the defendant was released on their promise to return for trial instead of demanding bail in

908 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 7; William Shumann, “Curfew Violation Trials May Be Avoided,” The Washington Post. The policy was so uniform that analyst William Dobrovir concluded “it seems fair to say that the penalty for violation of curfew was one night in jail and a $25.00 fine. Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 7. 909 “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 44 defendants who remained the morning of April 7th refused to identify themselves after giving false names when booked. Rufus “Catfish” Mayfield, an activist and former head of Pride, Inc., agreed to obtain the names of these prisoners after Judge Halleck promised to release most into Mayfield’s custody on personal bond. “Catfish Gets Docket Clear,” April 9, 1968, Washington Daily News, 4, Washingtoniana Periodicals, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.; Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 131. 910 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, xxiv; “Report of Arrest Procedures on and After April 4, 1968 in the District of Columbia,” Report on Civil Disturbances in Washington, D.C., April 1968. 911 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 123, 127; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 16-17, 47; James E. Clayton, “Riot Cases Jam Court Around Clock”, Washington Post, Apr 7, 1968, A1. 912 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 21.

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the form of property, cash, or a purchased bond. If the defendant did not reappear, they

faced a $500 fine and up to a year in prison. The D.C. Bail Agency was responsible for

gathering information to make a bail recommendation. While the Agency could not

recommend monetary bonds for a defendant, it could choose to not suggest release on

personal bond. A recommendation to grant pretrial release on personal bond was based

on “considerations of employment, length of residence, past record and family ties.”913

The bail reform was intended to prevent individuals from remaining in jail for minor

offenses due to their inability to raise money for the bond.914

Some, however, thought that this law was not suitable amidst a crisis. The U.S.

Attorney’s office encouraged the judges at the D.C. Court of General Sessions to not only

consider if the defendant would return to trial, but also if they would commit another

crime in the civil disorders. Prosecutors asked judges to set monetary bail for those

accused of riot-related crimes because they feared the defendants would leave the

courtroom to go further participate in the disturbances.915 Despite this urging, from the outbreak of the disturbances through Friday afternoon, the judge in charge of the special court to process those accused of riot-related offenses set bail in compliance with the Bail

Reform Act and released most defendants on personal bond.916 While Judge Edgerton acknowledged the “difficulty and trouble” outside the courthouse, he released defendants

913 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 18-20; Lawrence Speiser, Ralph J. Temple, WM Warfield Ross, “The Administration of Justice,” Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 123. 914 Lawrence Speiser, Ralph J. Temple, and WM Warfield Ross, “The Administration of Justice,” Washington Post; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 19. 915 “Three Judges Hold Night Session,” April 6, 1968, Washington Daily News, 6; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 123- 124; “Memorandum from Lloyd N. Cutler to Walter E. Washington, John N. Mitchell, David L. Bazelon, Harold H. Greene,” June 18, 1969, Justice in a Time of Crisis, Justice in Time of Crisis: A Staff Report to the District of Columbia Committee on the Administration of Justice under Emergency Conditions (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), iii. Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 916 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 22-23. Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 122-124; Jewell, “Liberties Union Suit Angers Court,” Washington Post.

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on personal recognizance because “Under the Act of Congress [Bail Reform Act] under

which we act we are told that we may not take into account the safety of the

community.”917

At 5:30 PM Friday, April 5th, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia David Bress

held a meeting with Chief Judge Greene, Judge Tim Murphy, and Judge Dewitt. S. Hyde.

Bress argued that the circumstances in the city and the rumors of released defendants

returning to damaged sections of the city necessitated that judges stop releasing

defendants on personal bond and begin setting bail at $1,000 for those accused of a

felony and $300-$500 for those accused of a misdemeanor. Bress contended the Bail Act

allowed judges to deny personal bond if the “nature and the circumstances of the offense”

risked the defendant returning to riot.918 While Judge Murphy believed such a policy

violated the Bail Reform Act, Judge Greene thought the “extraordinary” circumstances of

the riot allowed for more restrictive bail policies. Greene told Bress he would follow such

policy of restricted release until the “Court of Appeals told him otherwise” and urged

Bress to make his argument in open court. After the conference with Bress, Judge Greene

called another meeting with judges working riot cases and asked that they set bail at

$1,000 for those accused of looting unless a “responsible person” was in court to vouch

that the accused would reappear for trial and not return to the upheaval. Greene, either

directly or through a clerk, pushed restricted release on each judge handling disorder

cases until Sunday, April 7th. By then, the city was calm enough that Greene felt the

917 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 22-23. 918 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 24-25; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 124; David A. Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” April 9, 1968, Washington Post, A7.

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policy was no longer necessary.919

The U.S. Attorney’s request and Judge Greene’s urging yielded immediate results.

Bress spoke at Edgerton’s next bail hearing and argued that the “conditions…extant to

the city” meant that the judge should consider not only the likelihood the defendant

would return for their trial, but also would “assure a nonreturn to the kind of conduct that

is involved in the charge[.]”920 Edgerton set bail at $1,000 “in view of the representation

of the United States Attorney.”921 Similarly, Judge Hyde abruptly changed his bail determinations after the meeting between Bress, Greene, Murphy, and Judge Hyde himself. Initially, Hyde released five of nine defendants on personal bond because he felt they would likely return for their trial. In each case that he set monetary bond, he set bail at $500 or less. Following the meeting, Hyde set bail at $1,000 for four of five defendants charged with felonies and $500 for the one misdemeanor case he adjudicated the rest of the night. Hyde justified the financial bond because of “the emergency” and the “situation in this city and the nature of these cases.”922 Contrary to the rumors that initiated this

policy on Friday, only one man was rearrested Friday and he was rearrested on the court

steps for scuffling with a police officer. In total, out of 6,230 adults arrested during the

upheaval, only 6 were rearrested for serious crimes that contributed to property

damage.923

Nevertheless, after Friday evening, the court adopted a “loose” standard of $1,000

bond for felony cases and judges frequently used the “emergency situation” as

919 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 26; Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court, Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 131; “A Time to Start Rebuilding,” April 9, 1968, Washington Daily News. 920 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 24-26; Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 123-125. 921 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 26. 922 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 26-27, 31-32. 923 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 56-59; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 124.

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justification.924 Friday evening, Judge Murphy set monetary bond in 13 out of 15 cases

because it was the “unanimous view of all the judges” that “nobody involved in looting is

to be released on their personal bond. So, one thousand dollar bond in each case.”925

While setting bail, Judge Ryan remarked “You have a city in flames and there are certain

facts you deal with. You deal with the facts in the order of their priority and so some

people will have to languish in jail.”926 When a defense lawyer claimed that the

defendant posed “no evidence of flight,” Judge Charles Halleck said “I am not interested

in that” because he needed to consider “the facts that we are faced with” on the streets of

Washington.927 In another case, Judge Halleck urged a lawyer to “go up Fourteenth

Street, or up Seventh Street, and take a look at some of the results of these civil

disturbances” after he asked for a lenient bond be granted to his client.928 After a defense

attorney stated that the defendant would not be able to get a bond that evening, Halleck

replied “Well, that will keep him out of trouble tonight.” Judge Hyde made the policy of

restricted release the most explicit on Saturday, April 7th to allow for the possibility of an

appeal. “Because of the emergency situation in the city,” Hyde proclaimed, “of riots and widespread arson, and because of the fact that it has been reported to us that many people released on bond when they were in trouble originally, have started to return to the streets and engage in the same activities, and because of the representations made by the United

States Attorney for the district of Columbia, this Court feels obliged to set bond in this

924 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 124. 925 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 32. Even as he followed restricted release, Murphy stated in court that it was problematic. As he set bail for a person who was a good candidate for personal bond, he stated “This is what’s wrong with automatic bond on looters.” 926 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 39. 927 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 32. 928 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 37-38.

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case. Bond will be set at one thousand dollars.”929

It was consistently difficult for defendants to make bail. To post bail, the court

required cash or a bank-certified check. Banks were closed from Friday afternoon until

Monday morning so if the defendant or their loved ones did not have cash to pay the

bond, they could not go to a bank to retrieve the cash or certify a check.930 Further, many

of the accused struggled to obtain a bond because they had no prior record and were thus

unknown to bondsmen. Bondsmen were generally unwilling to write bonds to unknown

people so ironically it was easier to get a bond as a proven “previous customer” with a

prior record than as a first-time offender.931 Additionally, the phone lines were jammed

so verifying the reliability of the defendant was challenging. This was especially

problematic because the volunteer lawyers were unfamiliar with their clients and thus

could not vouch for the “strong community ties” used to establish accountability when

writing a bond. Finally, many prisoners and their family members were so confused with bond procedure that they were duped by opportunistic “bondsmen” who falsely claimed they would post bond in exchange for cash sums. In one instance, a group of women chased a man around the Court of General Sessions who had posed as a bondsman and tricked them out of their money.932

Making matters worse, few bondsmen were at the courthouse to write bonds

despite the great need. Some bondsmen fled the city in fear while a few quickly met their

capacity to fulfill bonds and left the courthouse. Others never arrived because they

929 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 35. As will be discussed later, the American Civil Liberties Union did file a lawsuit claiming, among other things, the judge’s actions violated the Bail Reform Act. It was dismissed the same day. 930 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 49. 931 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 130; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 48. 932 Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” Washington Post; Jim Hoagland, “86 Defendants in Riot Cases Still in Jail for Lack of Bail,” Washington Post, April 26, 1968.

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thought “the people who were responsible for burning and looting should be put in jail

and kept there.”933 Mickey Lewis of the Stuyvesant Insurance Co. was the only black

bondsmen in D.C. and wrote 91 out of the 148 bonds in civil disorder cases. Despite the

challenges described above, Lewis was willing to work diligently to verify the

information of first-time offenders. Only 1 out of 91 people he wrote bonds for did not

show up in court.934

As the judges realized the disorders were quieting down and many defendants had

been in jail for days, judges started granting more release.935 Greene met with the judges

Monday morning and they decided to “resume full use of the Bail Reform Act.”936 The

courts revisited prisoner’s bail on Monday, April 8th and many judges granted personal

bond upon review.937

The policy of restricted release and the challenges of making bail resulted in

extended periods of incarceration for many Washingtonians. Of the 604 people assigned

monetary bail, only 155 were released from the courthouse by posting cash or a surety

bond through a bondsman. The remaining 449 defendants were remanded to jail.938 On

April 10th, 172 people were still imprisoned because they could not make bail. By April

25th, 67 were still behind bars and on July 26—nearly three months after their arrest—16

defendants were still imprisoned. One man was still incarcerated three months later

because he could not raise $50; another remained in jail over a $100 bail. Overall, 15.7%

933 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 47-49; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 130. 934 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 48-49. 935 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 26, 43; Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court, Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 131; “A Time to Start Rebuilding,” April 9, 1968, Washington Daily News. 936 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 26; Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court, The Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 131; “A Time to Start Rebuilding,” April 9, 1968, Washington Daily News. 937 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, xxvi. 938 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 47. Hoagland, “86 Defendants in Riot Cases Still in Jail for Lack of Bail,” Washington Post.

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of those remanded to jail were released the same day they were committed, 19.7% spent

one day in jail, 15.2% spent two days in jail, 11.4% spent three days in jail, 24.1% spent

4-10 days, and 12% spent more than 10 days in jail.939

“They…were confronted with a crisis and they met it as best as they could:” Criticism and Praise of the Administration of Justice A few lawyers and organizations challenged the court’s actions during the

upheaval. The Howard Law Alumni Association of Greater Washington issued a resolution on April 8th in “total disapproval” of the suspension of the Bail Reform Act.940

The same day, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit claiming the

administration of justice in D.C. came to a “virtual standstill” during the disorders. The

ACLU alleged that judges suspended the Bail Reform Act and the city wrongfully held curfew violators overnight.941 The night of April 5th, the suit asserted, “curfew violators

were transported to Occoquan, Va., in wholesale lots, held overnight, and released the

following day with citations.” Instead, prisoners should have been “ticketed” at police

precincts and immediately released. The ACLU believed this was a “blanket imposition

of preventative detention, which at present is wholly unauthorized by law.”942

The Chief Judge of the District Court, Edward M. Curran, dismissed the ACLU

suit the same day it was filed. General Sessions judges and the D.C. Bar Association were

incensed at the criticism. At a public courthouse event, Chief Judge Harold H. Greene

refused to discuss the suit with reporters and stated the ACLU attorneys that filed it were

no longer his friends. Greene and other judges and lawyers working the cases believed

939 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 53. 940 Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” Washington Post. 941 Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 131; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 55-56. 942 Lawrence Speiser, Ralph J. Temple, and WM Warfield Ross, “The Administration of Justice,” Washington Post.

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they took the necessary measures to process the cases as quickly as possible and prevent

further violence.943

The analysts tasked with evaluating D.C.’s administration of justice during the

disorders concluded the court’s actions were justified. The District of Columbia

Committee on the Administration of Justice Under Emergency Conditions, a task force

established by Mayor Washington to examine the performance of the courts during the

disturbances, concluded that restricted release “was neither unreasonable nor unlawful”

and the Bail Reform Act was “sufficiently flexible” to justify the judges’ policy during

the civil disorder. While the report noted that some judges set bail regardless of “facts

relevant to the charge,” the Committee on the Administration of Justice applauded the

“imaginative way” judges adjusted the Bail Reform Act and the Committee

recommended modifying the Bail Reform Act to allow consideration of a defendant

committing a “serious crime” while waiting for trial.944 In Justice In a Time of Crisis,

William Dobrovir criticized the courts because some defendants were detained too long,

assigned bail “based on considerations other than the likelihood that riot defendants

would return to jail,” and because some judges used bail as “a form of punishment.”945

Despite these critiques, Dobrovir asserted the courts did a “superb” job and concluded

“the pressures and difficulties facing these agencies and the men and women in them

would have excused deviations from the ideal of justice far greater than those that may

943 Jewell, “Liberties Union’s Suit Angers Court,” Washington Post; Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 131; Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 55-56. 944 “Memorandum from Lloyd N. Cutler to Walter E. Washington, John N. Mitchell, David L. Bazelon, Harold H. Greene,” June 18, 1969, Justice in Time of Crisis: A Staff Report to the District of Columbia Committee on the Administration of Justice under Emergency Conditions (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), iv-viii. Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 945 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 42.

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have occurred.”946 Overall, most legal analysts agreed that it was justifiable for judges to

“find a way of detaining arsonists and snipers until order is restored, regardless of what

the statutes say” because this constituted “self-defense action on the part of a city in great peril.”947

The District of Columbia judiciary was better than other cities during the nation-

wide April disorders. In Baltimore in 1968, for example, curfew violators were “tried,

convicted, and sentenced to terms of up to thirty days in jail within a few hours after their

arrest.”948 D.C.’s bail policy was also much more flexible than other cities. In Chicago in

April 1968, monetary bond was set in nearly every case with a $5000 minimum for

looting and as high as $100,000. In Detroit in 1967, 74% of bonds were higher than

$5000. During the Watts rebellion, bond was set at a minimum of $3,000. In D.C.,

however, judges were flexible enough that 43% of people were released on non-financial

bond. Even when financial bond was set, 87% of the bonds were $1,000 or less and many

judges allowed defendants to post just a percentage of that sum to be released.949 Further, a judge was even removed from the bench because they were “gaveling through” defendants without regard to the details of the case.950

Nevertheless, some criticism is warranted. Judges did deviate from the Bail

Reform Act and were more willing than normal to ignore the Bail Agency’s

recommendations. While judges adhered to the Bail Agency’s recommendations 90% of

the time normally, during the disorders, the court only followed the Bail Agency’s

suggestion in 60% of cases. The court released 25-30% fewer defendants who were

946 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 3. 947 “Bail and Riots,” The Washington Post, May 27, 1968, A18. 948 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 123. 949 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 47, 53, 60-62. 950 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 125.

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recommended for release on personal recognizance than it usually did.951 In his report

“The Administration of Justice in Washington During the Disorder of April 1968,”

William Goldfarb concluded that some judges “evaded the spirit, if indeed, not the letter,

of the law covering bail.”952 Nearly 50% of those denied personal bond spent three or

more days in jail before they were able to obtain bail or had their case reevaluated. Three

months after the disorders, two men remained imprisoned because they could not raise

$50 and $100. This long of a period in jail while presumed innocent is unacceptable.953

Additionally, judges sometimes decided if someone was a “responsible” person or

a flight risk based on racially biased judgments when setting bail. “Some judges believe

that they could tell intuitively whether or not a person was dangerous,” wrote Dobrovir.

“One judge likened the procedure to playing a violin. One judge referred to the ‘dark

glasses, green pants,’ the ‘fourteenth street crowd.’ Another judge relied on the

defendant’s attitude, whether he seemed to show remorse.”954 Many black lawyers felt that some judges “openly display[ed] hostility toward Negro defendants and their attorneys, by setting ‘astronomically high bonds.’”955 Structurally, fifteen of the eighteen

judges handling the disorders were white. Although Chief Prosecutor Joel D. Blackwell

was African American, almost his entire staff was white. Nearly all defendants were

black and most lawyers representing defendants were white volunteer lawyers. Ironically,

or perhaps appropriately, as black Washingtonians rebelled across the city against white

racism and power, those arrested faced a white criminal justice system: “It turned out that

951 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 27-29. 952 Chandler, “Riot Arrest Set Up Called Paper Maze,” Washington Star. 953 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 49-51, 68; Hoagland, “86 Defendants in Riot Cases Still in Jail for Lack of Bail,” Washington Post. 954 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 65. 955 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 125.

235 most proceedings during the hectic riot period involved black defendants, prosecuted by white men and defended by white men who were appointed by white judges.”956

III: “The time has come when the law will be enforced:” Trials in the Court of General Sessions and U.S. District Court The courts’ response to the disorders did not end with concerns over paperwork, detaining curfew violators, and setting bail. The Court of General Sessions and the U.S.

District Court now had to try and, if convicted, sentence the 6,230 adults arrested in connection to the disorders from April 4th to April 15th, 1968.957 The court proceedings were shaped by the 1967 District Anti-Riot Bill that created harsher punishments for crimes associated with riots. The bill set a minimum sentence of two years imprisonment for Burglary II, the charge used to prosecute those accused of looting.958

Just as many “law and order” advocates urged the police to use more force to deter looters, some commentators encouraged the courts to prosecute those accused of riot offenses to the fullest extent of the law. The Board of Trade, for example, contended

“Severe penalties should be given for possession of weapons or explosives, and to those caught looting or destroying property.”959 The Evening Star and station WAML released a joint statement demanding “justice:” “The rioters are arsonists, looters and vandals.

956 Gilbert, Ten Blocks, 125-126, 136. Additionally, while three of the eighteen judges handling the disorders were black, they were not present when the much-criticized bail policy was determined. One judge was sick and the other two were not on duty. 957 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, xxiv. The Lernberg Center for the Study of Violence reported that 8,236 people were arrested in this time period (Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, Riot Data Review (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1968), 62, 227). I use Dobrovir’s numbers since he specifies that 6,230 people were arrested in connection to the disorders. Additionally, Dobrovir’s report was more deeply researched over a greater period of time. 958 William Raspberry, “Punish, Don’t Destroy Looters,” Washington Post, April 15, 2015, B1. It also created a maximum sentence of 90 days imprisonment for “rioting,” defined as engaging in “a public disturbance involving an assemblage of five or more persons which by tumultuous and violent conduct” damages people or property. Rioting could be tacked onto felony charges of looting or could be a standalone misdemeanor charge. William Shumann, “Looting Suspects held for grand jury as court tackles riot cases,” Washington Post, April 18, 1968, D19. 959 “Minutes: special meeting, board of directors, April 11, 1968,” Box 42, Folder 10 “Board of Directors Executive Committee 4/11/68,” MS 2029 Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

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These lawbreakers must be punished individually according to the seriousness of their

crimes. There are over 900 businessmen and hundreds of homeless who have suffered

needlessly at their irresponsible hands.”960 Senator Robert Byrd stated he hoped “the

troublemakers and looters and other lawbreakers will not be given a mere tap on the

wrists and turned loose, but will be dealt with severely.”961

Cases were initially prosecuted to the “fullest extent of the law” as a felony.

During the upheaval, the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged defendants accused of looting

with the harshest possible crime: Burglary II (Burglary in the second degree), a crime

punishable by 2-15 years of imprisonment. The prosecutors believed that the serious

charge would give them more flexibility in determining charges when they later reviewed

cases with more complete information.962 After the city was restored to order, Bress and

the U.S. Attorney’s office created guidelines to “break down” Burglary II charges in

exchange for a plea to a misdemeanor with a lesser sentence such as petty larceny,

attempted burglary, unlawful entry, or destruction of private property.963 Although the

U.S. Attorney’s office developed the criteria to reduce charges,964 many felonies were not

reduced for several reasons. First, the U.S. Attorney’s Office marked the guidelines as

“confidential” and distributed them to few people, so many defense attorneys were not

aware that their client’s charges could be broken down. Further, some of the volunteer

lawyers representing the accused only had experience in civil law so they were not aware

960 “An editorial broadcast by WMAL—The Evening Star Broadcasting Company,” April 14, 1968, Box 284A, Folder 36 “TF: civil disturbances—clippings,” MS 2029 Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 961 Carper, “Hill Wants Troops to Stay; Police-Aid Pacts Suggested: Arrest Powers Planned,” Washington Post. 962 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, xxiv, 14-15. 963 Raspberry, “Punish, Don’t Destroy Looters,” Washington Post. Jared Stout, “Federal Grand Jury To Hear Riot Cases Starting Wednesday,” Washington Post, April 21, 1968, D1. 964 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 69-70.

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or were unsure of the possibility of plea bargaining.965 Additionally, many defendants

refused to plea guilty to a lesser charge that still risked imprisonment. Defendants and

their lawyers often determined that the evidence against them was “thin,” so they

preferred a trial and possible acquittal.966 Due to such limitations, all but 104 of the 121

defendants eligible to reduce their charges for looting while coming or going from a store

declined to do so.967 Thus, despite the desire of the U.S. Attorney’s office to avoid felony

trials, many accused of looting were still charged with a felony.

The process of prosecuting a felony Burglary II charge was different and more

involved than trying a misdemeanor. The Court of General Sessions, which handled

misdemeanor criminal cases, was the closest thing to a state lower court in D.C. The U.S.

District Court of the District of Columbia was a federal court and tried D.C. felony cases.

For a felony case, the defendant first went to a preliminary hearing in the Court of

General Sessions. There, the judge either dismissed the charge or recommended the case

for review by a grand jury. If the judge recommended the case to a grand jury, the

defendant would then appear before the grandy jury which would either indict the

accused or drop the charges. If indicted, the District Court would hold arraignment

hearings for the accused and, finally, try the case before a jury. At this trial, the defendant

would be found guilty or acquitted. Alternatively, misdemeanor cases could be tried

entirely within the Court of General Sessions.968

Cases tried as misdemeanors were processed faster than felonies. The first

965 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 71-73, 95. 966 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 73, 92. 967 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 74. For this reduction in charge, the defendant could not have been seen breaking and entering. 968 Raspberry, “Punish, Don’t Destroy Looters,” Washington Post. Jared Stout, “Federal Grand Jury To Hear Riot Cases Starting Wednesday,” Washington Post, April 21, 1968, D1.

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General Sessions trials started in April 1968 and the last trial ended on April 3, 1969.969

Most cases, however, were resolved much quicker. 90% of defendants tried in the Court

of General Sessions were sentenced by September 1968 and only 15 cases remained on

December 1, 1968.970 The Court of General Sessions also handled the more than 4,000

curfew violation cases. As previously mentioned, the court issued “citations” for curfew

violations that assigned a later court date. On April 14th, Judge Greene announced that if those charged with violating curfew paid $25, they would not need to appear in court.971As of late April, only 249 people paid the $25 and by July only 1,164 of the

3,789 people arrested for curfew violation had paid, leaving the court with over 1,000

curfew violation cases to try.972 The backlog was so severe that Chief Assistant

Corporation Counsel Robert Campbell warned policemen, who were required to appear

in court to identify the defendants, that if the curfew violations were not dealt with by

July 22, the remaining 1,338 cases would be dismissed.973 After this ultimatum, the

proceedings sped up as nearly 1,000 cases were processed in three weeks. Only about 2%

of people arrested for curfew violations went to trial. 974

To try those accused of felonies, the Court of General Sessions held about 20

preliminary hearings a day from mid-April until it completed the preliminary hearings in mid-May 1968.975 While judges often felt that the evidence against a defendant was

weak, they were not permitted to dismiss “even a weak case as long as probable cause of

969 “Gun owner convicted in last riot case,” Washington Post, April 3, 1969, B2. 970 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 86. 971 Shumann, “Curfew Violation Trials May Be Avoided,” Washington Post. 972 Shumann, “234 Looting Suspects Held for Grand Jury,” Washington Post. Thomas L Lippman, “Riot’s Curfew Cases Sped After Warning,” Washington Post, July 28, D2. 973 Jared Stout, “Police Told to Act by July 22: Deadline Set on Curfew Trials,” Washington Post, July 2, 1968, B1. 974 Lippman, “Riot’s Curfew Cases Sped After Warning,” Washington Post. Most had their charges dismissed or pled guilty. 975 William Shumann, “234 Looting Suspects Held for Grand Jury,” Washington Post, April 27, 1968, B2.

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the offense ha[d] been shown.” In one instance, for example, the judge stated: “I’m

inclined to believe that no Grand Jury in this city would hold these people for any felony

charge, but on the other hand, it is not for the Court to waive the sufficiency of the evidence.976 General Sessions judges recommended about half of those accused of felony

charges for grand jury review. 977 Those whose cases were not sent to the grand jury had

their charges dropped or “broken down” to misdemeanors. 978

In mid-April, the U.S. District Court created a 23-person special grand jury, headed by US Attorney David G. Bress. The grand jury either indicted or dismissed the charges against defendants. The grand jury hearings started on April 23 and were completed in December 1968. 510 people were indicted by a grand jury for offenses related to the civil upheaval. Rufus Catfish Mayfield, the former leader of Pride, Inc., was the final person to be indicted by the special grand jury.979

The US District Court tried the defendants indicted by the special grand jury starting in July 1968. Anticipating the onslaught of cases, in early June the court selected five U.S. District Court judges to try the more than 500 riot felony cases starting August

1st.980 To further reduce the backlog, the 3 top department heads of the U.S. Attorney’s

office were appointed to try criminal cases starting September 15, 1968. Judge Bress

acknowledged this “new measure resulted from a drastic increase in the size of the

backlog attributed to the April riots here.”981 These special appointments, however, were

not enough to curb the case backlog in the U.S. District Court which increased by 60% in

976 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 78-79. 977 Shumann, “234 Looting Suspects Held for Grand Jury,” Washington Post. 978 Stout, “Federal Grand Jury To Hear Riot Cases Starting Wednesday,” Washington Post. 979 J.R. Roseberry, “Mayfield Indicted in Riot-Linked Case,” Washington Post, December 10, 1968, C1. A small portion of the 510 were indicted by a regular grand jury (Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 85). 980 “5 Judges Picked to Try Riot Cases,” Washington Post, June 6, 1968, D14. 981 David Jewell, “Desk-Bound Prosecutors to Ease Court Backlog,” The Washington Post, August 1, 1968, B4.

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the five months following the upheaval.982 By October, the District Court had only

processed 33 cases, very few of which resulted in convictions, and still had to try 452

people indicted by the grand jury. 983 By the end of 1968, only 169 cases were completed and 63% of defendants charged with Burglary II had not been tried.984

The backlog problems were so severe that in October 1968, the prosecuting

attorneys decided to try only the "hard core" cases and sent the rest of the cases back to

the Court of General sessions as misdemeanors.985 This measure was not only taken

because of the severe backlog, however. From the very first felony trial in July,

prosecutors expressed concern over the weakness of many cases. After the first two

defendants were acquitted, officials from the US attorney’s office admitted that “the case

was not one of their strongest…If we have a consistent record of not guilty verdicts with

the stronger cases, then there will likely be a serious reassessment of our entire position

with regards to these riot indictments.”986 The officials’ fears were warranted. In early

October, only 10 of the 47 people tried for riot-related felonies had been convicted.987

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Alfred A. Hantman felt the cases were of “poor quality” and

considered offenses “too trivial and belonged in a lower court.” Policemen also created

difficulties because in “many instances” during the trials, testifying policemen claimed

they misidentified the defendants in the previous grand jury hearing. In October 1968, the

982 David Jewell, “Huge Backlog of Cases Jams U.S. District Court,” Washington Post, August 4, 1968, D10. This is based in a comparison to the backlog in April 1968 prior to the upheaval. 983 David Jewell, “25 Riot Cases of 452 Due Felony Trial,” Washington Post, October 10, 1968, E10. 984 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 81-82, 86. 985 David Jewell, “25 Riot Cases of 452 Due Felony Trial,” Washington Post, October 10, 1968, E10. 986 “Jury ‘Acquits’ 2 in first riot trial,” Washington Post, July 12, 1968, A22. 987 In the few cases where individuals were convicted of Burglary II, court records suggest that the judges were fairly lenient as they commonly suspended jail sentences. In a sample of 14 individuals convicted of Burglary II, only 4 served jail time.“32 offenders sentenced in US District court,” Washington Post, December 7, 1968, B4; “Sentences meted out in district court,” Washington Post,” March 22, 1969, E2; “Sentences given by district court,” Washington Post, March 15, 1969, A16.

241 attorney’s office believed that no more than 25 of the 452 felony cases still awaiting trial were strong enough to prosecute in the District Court. 988 In total, only 11% of felony trials for disorder-related offenses resulted in a conviction.989

The U.S. Attorney’s office’s decision to charge defendants with felonies and its insufficient guidelines to reduce charges greatly increased the District court’s backlog. As discussed, many defendants refused to break down their charges to a misdemeanor because the prosecutors required a guilty plea. If no plea was required and prosecutors automatically reduced the charges it considered viable for reduction, two-thirds of cases would have never gone to the grand jury and the backlog in the U.S. District Court would have been considerably smaller. While this would have increased the burden on the Court of General Sessions, the court was much quicker in disposing of cases and it would have not required grand jury hearings.990 The number of felony trials and backlog is especially frustrating considering the comparable sentencing in the two courts. If convicted, only

18% of those sentenced in the District Court actually served time in prison. 14% sentenced in the Court of General Sessions served time.991 In other words, the punishment was similar in both courts for those convicted so the heavy use of felony charges did not produce firmer punishments, but it did worsen backlog. The attempt to prosecute defendants to the fullest extent of the law actually resulted in less efficient courts and delayed justice for many defendants.

For those who were convicted, less than 20% served jail time. 992 Most judges reserved harsh punishments for those with previous records. For example, on June 11th,

988 Jewell, “25 Riot Cases of 452 Due Felony Trial,” Washington Post. 989 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 89. 990 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 92-93. 991 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 86-88. 992 Dobrovir, Justice in a Time of Crisis, 86-88.

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only one man out of nine sentenced by Judge Burka received jail time.993 On another

occasion, Burka suspended the jail sentences and gave probation to all defendants, except

for James M. Carroll who had a prior record.994 In mid-June, Burka gave suspended

sentences to all 12 men he sentenced.995 Judge Tim Murphy commonly imposed part-

time jail sentences to try to allow men to maintain family ties.996 As an exception, Judge

Charles A. Halleck sentenced three young men to the maximum sentence of one year in

jail because he believed their actions “were without justification and or excuse” and the

young men displayed no remorse.997

Conclusion

In an article in the D.C. Bar Journal in the fall of 1968, Chief Judge Greene wrote that he imagined the courts as “islands of calm” during the upheaval:

The courts, rather to [sic] participate in the symbolic burning of individual rights, should be islands of calm in the midst of the hysteria, the burning, the looting, and the violence…Whenever American institutions have provided a hysterical response to an emergency situation, we have come later to regret it…But as long as the civil courts operate, they must operate as courts, not as adjuncts of the Police Department or the National Guard.998 D.C. was better at living up to this vision than other American cities and its leaders

deserved praise for the decision to prioritize saving lives over private property. Murphy

and others resisted demands that looters and arsonists be shot and emphasized

deescalating confrontations between the police and citizens. The courts were significantly

less retributive than other judiciaries amidst civil disturbances. Still, it is important to not

overlook the ways justice was imperfect in the aftermath of the civil disturbances.

993 “9 in riot cases wary of force,” Washington Post, June 11, 1968, B2. 994 Stout, “Riot Terms Meted, Court Rebukes City,” Washington Post. 995 “12 held in riots get suspended sentences,” Washington Post, June 18, 1968, A9. 996 “Riot offenders get part-time jail sentences,” Washington Post, July 4, 1968, B2. 997 Stout, “’Remorseless’ Trio Sentenced in Riot,” Washington Post. 998 Greene, “A Judge’s View of the Riots,” D.C. Bar Journal; Dobrovir, Justice in A Time of Crisis, 17.

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Prosecutors and judges disregarded a law intended to protect the poor from unnecessary detention while awaiting trial. As a result, many Washingtonians were detained for days or even months due to their inability to make bail. The police and judges were often racially biased. Some officers did use excessive force and two people died as a result.

Despite these limitations, D.C. did emphasize restraint as it administered justice in the civil disturbances. In response, “law and order” proponents criticized the District’s approach and demanded the police and military shoot looters and inflict severe punishments on those arrested. Some even claimed the D.C. and federal governments were responsible for the severity of destruction and sued. These challenges to D.C.’s management of the urban upheaval generally failed. Washington leaders maintained that the police restraint deescalated the violence on the streets and saved lives. Few accused of riot-related crimes were convicted and judges rarely sentenced those convicted to jail.

The courts determined that D.C. was not responsible for damages to business during the civil disturbances. Thus, examining Washington’s administration of justice in the upheaval demonstrates D.C.’s determination to reject “law and order” solutions to urban violence.

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Chapter 5: “This Has Created Both a Vacuum and an Opportunity:” Rebuilding Washington, D.C. “Washington now has the opportunity to rebuild politically, socially, as well as

physically,” insisted Rev. Channing E. Phillips, the chairman of the local Kennedy for

President campaign and member of the Black United Front. “The Administration-shelved

Kerner Commission Report on Civil Disorders documented all too painfully that the

American consensus, contrary to American ideals, is racist,” Phillips remarked. He

further maintained that “the people in whose neighborhoods it will take place” should plan and execute the rebuilding efforts in Washington. “The day will not permit back- slapping business-as-usual but demands creative leadership from a representative D.C.

Central Committee. Senator Kennedy has called it ‘participatory democracy.’ We mean

to have it in the District of Columbia.”999

Phillip’s statement embodied many Washingtonian’s response to the civil

disorders. Citizens embraced the task of rebuilding with hope and seized it as an

opportunity to create a more just society with a politically empowered populace.

Residents of the affected neighborhoods insisted they should have a deciding role in the

planning and physical reconstruction of the city. “Business as usual” was near-universally denounced by D.C. officials and citizens alike. While not everyone tied these goals as explicitly to liberal reports such as the Kerner Commission or politicians like Robert F.

Kennedy, the blueprint for reconstruction embraced, or at least reclaimed, much of the

Great Society’s liberal aims and strategies.

Others, however, chose to condemn and abandon Washington in the aftermath.

999 “Sees city’s chance for new identity,” Washington Afro American, April 16, 1968, 1, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en.

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While attending a soccer match at D.C. stadium with his Boy Scout troop, Mary E.

Brigg’s son was mugged and beaten by a group of African American boys. A resident of suburban Silver Spring, Maryland, Briggs was so angry she refused to return to the city or to care about its future:

These young hoods that beat up on the good kids of society are nothing more than animals and you have absolutely seen me and mine in Washington for the last time. Washington could burn to the ground, and I’m going to be just like Nero, I’m going to sit back and watch it and think good ridence (sic). Come “Hell or High water,” I have had it with President Johnson’s so called fair city and National Capital. I have been told by both professional people and those who work in their offices, to discourage people from coming to Washington, until constructive and positive methods are taken to get the hoodlum element and those animals off the streets and on to some work farms or into some institutions where they properly belong. If they can’t join society and be a constructive part of it, they have no business being in it at all…If suburban wives and mothers cannot be assured of safety and protection when they bring their families into the city, then perhaps it is time to warn all the suburban areas that the streets of Washington are not safe… African Americans failed “to realize that people here have worked for what they have, and have worked hard…A lot of sweat and tears never hurt anyone.”1000

Many Americans shared Briggs’ anger at high crime rates, her rejection of

President Lyndon Johnson’s social programs, and her backlash to black demands for equal rights. Yet the post-disorder concerns and politics of white, suburban, middle-class

Americans like Mary Briggs have received much more analysis than those of urban

African Americans like Channing Phillips. Historians such as Thomas Sugrue, Michael

Flamm, Kevin Kruse, Matt Lassiter, Lisa McGirr, and Robert O. Self have documented how white suburbanites reshaped American politics as they rejected the civil rights

1000 Mary E. Briggs, Letter to William Calomiris, July 17, 1968, Box 287, File 17: “Riots of 1968— comments, aftermath, reactions,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

246 movement and Great Society agendas.1001 This literature often argues the disorders contributed to the decline of liberal programs and ideals such as community participation.

After the Harlem disorder of 1964, New York residents rejected police community control boards and President Johnson deemphasized community participation programs in the wake of Watts in 1965.1002 Further, anti-poverty programs were increasingly used to combat crime and delinquency as the Johnson administration attempted to curb the spike in crime and urban uprisings. In her book From the War on Poverty to the War on

Crime, Elizabeth Hinton convincingly connected the response to civil disorders to the rise of mass incarceration. “The expansion of the carceral state should be understood as the federal government’s response to the demographic transformation of the nation at mid- century, the gains of the African American civil rights movement, and the persistent threat of urban rebellion,” she argues.1003

The 1968 civil disturbances are considered by many to be the “nail in the coffin” of liberalism. According to Michael Flamm, by 1968 “both conservatives and radicals were united and vocal in their condemnation of the Great Society and the ‘false

1001 For more, see Thomas J. Sugrue, “Crabgrass-Roots: Race, Roots, and the Reaction Against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964,” The Journal of American History, 82.2 (Sep 1995), 551; Thomas J. Sugure, The Origins of The Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005); Michael Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Michael Flamm, In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 1002 Flamm, In the Heat of the Summer, 273-275; Flamm, Law and Order, 58-66; Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 65-79. 1003 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 11.

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expectations’ it had supposedly bred.”1004 Richard Nixon used law and order as a key

campaign issue and his election signaled the end of “liberal ascendancy in national

politics.”1005 This narrative of law and order politics, the death of liberalism, and the growth of the carceral state is succinctly summarized by Clay Risen in the introduction to

Nation on Fire:

The 1968 riots provided an entrée for conservatives to finally, fully assert law and order as a national political issue. Something that had been brewing for decades at the local level…became the single most important domestic concern in the 1968 presidential race….Richard Nixon, who had largely avoided talking about riots and civil rights before April, now made law and order—and the revulsion of white suburbia against the violent images of rioters reacting to King’s death—a central theme in his campaign. The riots played a critical role in giving the campaign a bridge to capture the white racial backlash, which it recast as the ‘Silent Majority’…Along with the growing appeal of law and order as a political attitude came a rejection of liberal domestic policy, which had dominated national politics since Franklin Roosevelt, and its ameliorationist, integrationist attitude toward the inner-city poor. Conservatives drew a direct line connecting ghetto unrest and liberal social policy, an accusation that also appealed to the pocketbooks of a new generation of middle-class, suburban whites. And whereas politicians beforehand had often portrayed the ghetto as something to integrate into the rest of society, the riots gave impetus to a new domestic militarism that saw the ghetto as an alien territory within American cities, a cancer that had to be isolated from the rest of the body public.1006 Examining the local response to the 1968 civil disorders in Washington supports much of

this account. Suburbanites avoided the city, Washingtonians feared the high crime rates,

local groups advocated a “return” to law and order, and Nixon made D.C. the focal point

of his anti-crime agenda.

Yet there is more to the story. Many African American Washingtonians did not

abandon the city; they poured themselves into the efforts to rebuild it. If the Johnson

administration deemphasized community participation following urban unrest, D.C.

1004 Flamm, Law and Order, 97. 1005 Flamm, Law and Order, 10. 1006 Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), 4-5.

248 embraced it at an unprecedented level. As the federal government urged “law and order,” the D.C. City Council passed legislation to limit police power and improve community- police relations. Using the ideals, programs, and financing generated by Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society, Washingtonians sought to rebuild the city and address the root causes of civil unrest.

In Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level, Peniel Joseph criticizes historical narratives that depict the late 1960’s as a “period of decline, white flight, [and] urban alienation[.]” Too often, Joseph argues, Black Power is “seen as triggering the demise of the civil rights era, dooming more promising and effective movements for social justice, and abandoning grassroots community organization in favor of jaw- dropping polemics, galloping sexism, and crude appeals to urban violence and mayhem.”

New scholarship, however, suggests that black power advocates often did not abandon community organizing and instead coalesced “around concrete objectives at the neighborhood level.” Black Power groups vowed “to take control of the democratic institutions that shaped black life in urban cities and rural town across America.” “Civil rights and Black Power, far from being mutually exclusive,” Joseph contends, “paralleled and intersected with one another.”1007 While Joseph challenges the notion that Black

Power was isolated from local institutions, historians Devin Fergus and Karen Ferguson suggest these organizations were often dependent on such institutions. Liberals took the threat of further uprisings seriously and allied with radicals to constrain further violence and revolution. Fergus argues liberals were successful and Black Power was “protean and

1007 Peniel Joseph, ed., Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 1-9.

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permeable, thus making it vulnerable to reform.”1008

The response of the people and government of Washington, D.C. to the civil

disorders adds to the history of liberal-radical cooperation. Moderate civil rights leaders

and militant black power advocates shared many objectives and often collaborated with

each other on efforts to rebuild Washington. African American radicals sought to wield

the local government to enact their agendas. In response, the D.C. City Council and

mayor often incorporated the demands of black militants into the government’s proposals

to rebuild Washington. These ambitious plans were ultimately limited by the federal

government’s waning enthusiasm for “law and order” and its waning support for citizen

participation programs.

I. “Lawlessness threatens everyone who enters the city:” White Backlash, Law and Order, and the “Crime Capital” In a letter to President Lyndon Johnson, Lee Nichols of Tallahassee, Florida asked

if it was “safe this summer” to bring his grandchildren to Washington, D.C. While

Nichols had previously visited the capital with his children and grandchildren, “Now, we

are apprehensive. What is happening when patriotic Americans are concerned for the

safety of their grandchildren touring the Nation’s capital?”1009 “We have received a

number of inquiries such as yours,” D.C. Police Chief John Layton responded. He

encouraged Nichols to visit and assured him that “the areas in which practically all of the

[riot] damage occurred, are in sections of the city not in proximity to the usual points of

1008 Devin Fergus, Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics 1965-1980 (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 1-10. Karen Ferguson, Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 1009 Lee Nichols, Letter to President Lyndon Johnson, “Washington, D.C. civil right issues including Riot Prevention, Poor People's Campaign, and urban renewal, 1968-1969, found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files;” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle.

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tourists’ interest.”1010 The Washington Convention and Visitors Bureau instructed local

travel agents to inform tourists that they would not stay close to the damaged sections

while visiting Washington.1011 Both Layton and travel agents distinguished between two

versions of the capital; one featured the monuments and was clean and safe, the other a

dangerous black urban inner city.

Efforts to attract visitors were undermined by some members of Congress who

urged their constituents to avoid the capital. “I would not be sensitive to my

responsibility as a Member of the Congress if I failed to warn my constituents that they

should not plan to visit the Nation’s Capital this summer,” said Republican Congressman

Joe Waggoner of Louisiana. “It is not safe on the streets at any hour of the day or evening, singly or in groups.” Waggoner admonished that “lawlessness threatens everyone who enters the city” and predicted it would be “a miracle if the streets are not

covered with blood before the summer is over.” “Perhaps sometime in the future it may

be safe to walk the streets here in the Capital, but there is no indication that the extremists

and liberal cranks now in control intend for it be anytime soon.”1012 The same day

Waggoner delivered this speech on the House floor, the Chairman of the House

Committee on the District of Columbia John McMillan entered a statement into the

Congressional Record asserting that on a recent trip back to North Carolina, “The chief

topic of discussion with practically every person I talked to was the lack of law

1010 John Layton, Letter to Lee Nichols, “Washington, D.C. civil right issues including Riot Prevention, Poor People's Campaign, and urban renewal, 1968-1969, found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files;” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 1011 Elise Carper, “Visitors Bureau Reports Sharp Drop in Tourism,” Washington Post, June 1, 1968, A1. 1012 Joe Waggonner, House of Representatives Congressional Record, May 13, 1968, Box 284a, “Folder 34: “Special TF: civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records, Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

251 enforcement in Washington[.]”1013 McMillan lamented that “it is a sad day when we have experienced the receiving of messages from people back home, from groups of students, high school graduates, who normally look forward to a pleasant visit to the Nation’s

Capital” but now were afraid to come. “These youngsters, I guess, will have to forego their rights as American citizens to come and enjoy the Nation’s Capital because of the threats,” he concluded.1014

Crime in Washington was indeed high and rising in 1968. The murder rate in

Washington tripled between 1960 and 1969 and by 1969 the D.C. crime rate was nearly three times the national rate.1015 In 1968, instances of rape were 50% higher than in 1967 and there were on average 13 robberies a day.1016 In the months following the disorders, four merchants were murdered by thieves and newspapers reported multiple “pay or burn” incidents—groups threatened to burn businesses down if they did not give them money.1017 Ben’s Chili Bowl co-owner Virginia Ali recalled that patron’s cars would be broken into outside of the restaurant: “It was just kind of these horror stories.”1018 As scholar James Forman wrote, “whatever the reason, the stark fact remains: D.C. had

1013 John McMillan, Letter entered in the House of Representatives Record, Box 284a, “Folder 34: “Special TF: civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1014 “Statement of Hon. L.H. Fountain, a representative in Congress from the State of North Carolina,” 25, Civil Disturbances in Washington: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress Second Session: Investigation of the April 1968 Rioting, Looting, Damages and Losses, and Police Actions: May and July, 1968: Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Building (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968). P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This section of the publication is hereafter referred to as Bonds for Parade Permits, and Removal of Destroyed Buildings. 1015 James Foreman, Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017), 48; Jerry V. Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia 1955-1975 (Washington: National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Administration, United States Department of Justice, 1978), 84. 1016 “How Race, Crime, Affect Life Today in Washington,” Washington Afro American, January 28, 1969. 1017 Ben Gilbert, Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 190-193. 1018 “The Shaw Community: The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement, as told by Mrs. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Box 1, Folder 9: “Interview with Virginia Ali,” MS 2285 Ben’s Chili Bowl Papers, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

252 become a much more dangerous place in the 1960s, as residents witnessed the largest decade-long crime wave ever recorded, then or since.”1019

As Washington recovered from the disorders, dealt with increasing crime, and braced for the upcoming Poor People’s Campaign, national politicians and local advocates often argued tougher law enforcement would prevent crime and future disorders. The Federation of Citizens Associations of the District of Columbia criticized the D.C. government for placing “unreasonable curbs and restraints” on the troops and police officers,1020 endorsed a bill that would make it impossible to hold office if one was convicted of a riot crime,1021 demanded Public Safety Commissioner Patrick Murphy be fired since they did not trust him to maintain law and order,1022 and adopted a resolution that requested troops patrol the Poor People’s March.1023 In a statement before the City

Council, the President of the Federation John Immer emphasized that “First and foremost, we are concerned about the physical safety of the people of the District and their protection from acts of violence on the streets or in their homes. Personal security is basic to an orderly society.”1024 Similarly, the Board of Trade called for more police officers on

1019 Foreman, Locking Up Our Own, 50. 1020 “Federation of Citizens Associations of District of Columbia Bill of Particulars relative to the District of Columbia Riots of April 1968,” 57, Civil Disturbances in Washington: Hearings Before the Committee on the District of Columbia House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress Second Session: Investigation of the April 1968 Rioting, Looting, Damages and Losses, and Police Actions: May and July, 1968 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968). P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This publication is hereafter referred to as Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1021 “Resolution of the Federation of Citizen’s Associations of the District of Columbia, April 25, 1968,” 58, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1022 “Minutes for May 9 Meeting Briefed,” Federation of Citizens Association Records, Series: Office Files, Box 2, Folder: “Office Files: 1968-1969,” Washingtoniana Collection, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library (MLK), Washington, D.C. 1023 “Law and Order in the National Capital Parks,” June 21, 1968, Federation of Citizens Association Records, Series: Office Files, Box 2, Folder: “Office Files: 1968-1969,” Washingtoniana Collection, MLK Library. 1024 “Statement of John R. Immer, President, Federation of Citizens Associations of the District of Columbia and Acting Chairman of independent Democrats,” 316, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Business and Commerce of the

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the streets and condemned the Poor People’s Campaign.1025

Some calls for “law and order” in Washington justified federal intervention,

military occupation, and even dictatorship. Senator Robert Byrd encouraged federal

troops to “stay indefinitely” because “[i]f Washington is to be subjected to a summer

campaign of demonstrations, as has long been planned, the presence of Federal troops

will be reassuring.”1026 In May, Broadcast company WMAL “reluctantly” supported

Byrd’s proposal “to station troops throughout the crime-ridden areas of the city until order is restored.”1027 Board of Trade President William Calomiris also advocated

prolonged troop occupation in D.C. to contain crime.1028 One month later, a WMAL

editorial again asked that “troops be brought into the city to help restore order.” “Semi-

martial law is not a pleasant idea,” the editorial claimed, “but there seems little

choice.”1029 “Many say dictatorship is not the answer,” said local business owner George

Kalavitinos in his testimony before Congressional hearings on riot insurance. “Well, I say

we could use some now. They certainly would never put up with what is going on here in

Washington, D.C. and the nation.”1030

Many Americans avoided cities altogether after the disorders. Mrs. A.E. Maddox

Committee on the District of Columbia United States Senate, Ninetieth Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968); P1620, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This report is hereafter referred to as Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders. 1025 “Resume of Minutes, Special Meeting, Board of Directors, May 10, 1968,” Box 42, Folder 12 “Board of Directors Executive Committee, May 19, 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1026 Jonathon Cottin, “Byrd Wants Troops to ‘Stay Indefintitely,’” Washington Daily News, April 9, 1968, Washingtoniana Periodicals, MLK Library. 1027 “Troops in Washington,” Editorial Broadcast by WMAL, May 12, 1968, 65-66, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1028 “WMAL Editorial June 10, 1968,” Box 297, Folder “Law and Order—Restoration—Correspondence, April 1968-Jan 1969,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1029 “WMAL Editorial June 10, 1968,” Box 297, Folder “Law and Order—Restoration—Correspondence, April 1968-Jan 1969,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1030 “Statement of George Kalavitinos, A Washington, D.C. Citizen and Businessman,” 74, Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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of Camp Springs, Maryland, cancelled her membership in the Global Menu Club because

she no longer was willing to travel into D.C. to attend the meetings. Due to the “rioting,”

Poor People’s March, “and who knows what next,” she and her husband would “stay

away from the city.”1031 When Mary Briggs took her son to seek medical attention after

being mugged, the doctor gave her “the dickens for even permitting the boys to go to

Washington. He called it a JUNGLE and so did…at least half of the people I have spoken

to[.]”1032 In the Washington suburbs, the Fairfax School District placed an indefinite ban on school trips to D.C. following the unrest. “We want to keep the field trips away from all city slums until the atmosphere is less tense,” reported school officials.1033 Hotel and

restaurant business in Washington was 25% lower in April 1968 than in the previous year

and 21.5% lower in May.1034 In comparison to April 1967, 800,000 fewer people visited

the major Washington tourist spots in April 1968.1035

As white suburbanites were reluctant to enter the District, some establishments took measures to assuage their concerns over crime. Reuben Jackson, a Washingtonian who was a teenager in 1968, and his brother were “big baseball fans” and before the disorders he used to arrive early to D.C. stadium to watch batting practice. Previously, people who came to see players take their warm-up swings could go to the lower seats to watch and then return to their “nosebleed” seats once the game began. After the disorders,

1031 Mrs. A.E. Maddox, Letter to Global Menu Club, April 30, 1968, Box 287, File 17: “Riots of 1968— comments, aftermath, reactions,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1032 Mary E. Briggs, Letter to William Calomiris, July 17, 1968, Box 287, File 17: “Riots of 1968— comments, aftermath, reactions,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1033 Susan Jacoby, “Fairfax School’s Field Trips Into City Banned After Riots,” Washington Post, April 19, 1968. 1034 “Resume of Minutes, Special Meeting, Board of Directors,” May 10, 1968, Box 42, Folder 12: Board of Directors Executive Committee, May 10, 1968, Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1035 Elise Carper, “Visitors Bureau Reports Sharp Drop in Tourism,” Washington Post, June 1, 1968, A1.

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[T]here was clearly a concerted effort to protect the people from the suburbs who ‘dared’ quote come into D.C. And there were cops sort of ringing the stadium. Literally, if you left your seat to go to the bathroom, you had to have your ticket stub with you. And I mean they may have stopped the white kids, but they stopped us every chance they got. When we’d try to go down to watch batting practice, because a lot of the kids from the suburbs, I think, parents had those, we called them the ‘good seats,’ we weren’t’ allowed to do it. They’d look at your ticket stub and go, ‘Uh, uh. You don’t sit here. Go back upstairs.’ So, there was a much more palpable tension…..It was like some little, I don’t know, it’s like the stadium became this little South Africa where you had your little area. I kind of said to my parents, you know, ‘I don’t remember having to carry a ticket just to go to the bathroom to prove that you were in there.’ And it stopped me from going. I didn’t go. That was ’68. Jackson was so dismayed at the Senator’s new policy, he did not go to another baseball

game even up until the Senators left Washington in 1971.1036

It was not just tourists and suburbanites who were concerned over crime and

safety in the District. The D.C. Central library, located near some of the worst damage on

7th Street, had fewer visitors after the upheaval. “On fall and winter evenings when we

normally would expect to have quite a number of students and other young people asking

for help on assignments or for magazines…we had instead an almost empty division after

about 6:30 or 7:00 PM,” wrote librarian Eleanor Bartlett. Many patrons called the library

and “told us on the telephone that they would not come to Central nor would they allow

their children to come.”1037 “Due to the serious crime situation, we can no longer expect

our members to attend evening meetings,” wrote the Brookland Citizens Association. The

Association suspended its membership in the larger Federation of Citizens Associations

“until such a time as the streets of our great city will once more be safe for the average

citizen in his pursuit of serving his community.”1038 Ben’s Chili Bowl owner Virginia Ali

1036 “Reuben M. Jackson Interview,” 18, Box 1, Folder 2, MS 0769 1968 Riots Oral History Collection, Kiplinger Library, Washington, D.C. 1037 Eleanor Bartlett, “Annual Report,” “Annual Reports 1968-1969,” Records of the Public Library of the District of Columbia, Washingtoniana Collection, MLK Library. 1038 Brookland Citizen’s Association, Letter to George Brady, October 7, 1968, Collection 28: Federation of

256 also recollected people being scared to come into the damaged U Street area: “The riots had a very profound effect, and people were actually afraid to come into the neighborhood.” Some of her white and black acquaintances were frightened to eat at the restaurant. Instead, some called and asked, “could you get someone to fix me six chili dogs and just run them right into the car?”1039 The Washington Afro American reported that “crime has become a major preoccupation of Washington residents. The danger of being robbed, raped, mugged, or murdered now surpasses sex—and even politics—as a topic of conversation.”1040

Many white Washingtonians connected their fear for their personal safety to criticism of Great Society programs and the African American community writ large.

After declaring she would “stay away from the city,” Mrs. Maddox added she was “sick of hearing about those ‘poor’ and ‘underprivileged’ people, who are too lazy to work or clean up their surroundings; who want a minimum wage and have everything handed them on a silver platter; having my tax money used to clean up behind demonstrators and pay for extra wages for the police and troops to keep order.”1041 “We cannot redress the past wrongs of our minorities by bankrupting the country to pay some form of tribute to present generations for the actual or imagined misdeeds of past generations,” said the former president of the of the Prince George’s County Chamber of Commerce Joseph

Citizens Associations, Box 2, Folder “FCADC 1967-1968 office files,” Washingtoniana Collection, MLK Library. 1039 “The Shaw Community: The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement, as told by Mrs. Virginia Ali, owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Box 1, Folder 9: “Interview with Virginia Ali,” MS 2285 Ben’s Chili Bowl Papers, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 1040 “How Race, Crime, Affect Life Today in Washington,” Washington Afro American, January 28, 1969, 5. 1041 Mrs. A.E. Maddox, Letter to Global Menu Club, April 30, 1968, Box 287, File 17: “Riots of 1968— comments, aftermath, reactions,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records.

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Deckman.1042 Leonard Smith had also grown weary of the “out of hand” situation, especially in a city where “so much has been done for the colored population.” Smith wrote that although Jewish people, Irish immigrants, and Italians had experienced discrimination, “as these people demonstrated their willingness to study, to work, to accept responsibility, and to become respected members of the community, discrimination has faded out. Now it is up to the Negro segment to make its own place.”1043 “I protest,” stated a citizen only identified as “A White Middle-Class

American” in a letter to the editor printed in the Washington Star. “I am not going to remain silent while being accused by high public officials of being the cause of ghettos, riots, crime in the street, and the Vietnam war.” The writer insisted “we each have an opportunity to live here in a way which is within the scope of our capabilities” but “some people are more intelligent, some more ambitious, some are willing to work harder to achieve more, both financially and socially.”1044

According to a study by the National Riots Commission that interviewed more than 5,000 white and black people in 15 American cities in 1968, such views were common to white Americans. The study found that there was a “strong tendency among white people to blame colored people themselves for their disadvantages in jobs, housing and income.” Just one out of five white Americans believed such disadvantages were

“mainly due to discrimination” while 56% “attributed colored difficulties to laziness, lack

1042 “A Rebirth of Fundamental Americanism,” May 27, 1968, Box 285, Folder 24: “Pamphlet: A Rebirth of Fundamental Americanism,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1043 Leonard Smith, Letter to Walter Washington, April 17, 1968, 56, Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1044 “A ‘White, Middle Class American,’” Washington Star, April 11, 1968, A14.

258 of ambition, or other alleged failures of [the] colored themselves.”1045

To white supremacists, urban violence and crime justified extremist “solutions.”

Describing itself as speaking on behalf of a “non-profit organization for the promotion of civil rights,” a flyer for the National Association for the Protection of White People exclaimed “White Power: The American Way.” The group urged that “now is the time to rally ‘round the flag, boys” and encouraged white Americans to use their “white voting power” to make their voice heard.1046 Others advocated for the government-sanctioned removal of African Americans from cities. “Since you have all the colored people on the resurrections ground in Washington please keep them there,” wrote JF Palmer.1047

Writing to the Board of Trade, Ed Burke opined that “As long as Congress continues to permit this city to be over-populated and dominated by negroes, the crime rate will continue to rise (despite the appointment of a hundred or more commissions) as will risks to the persons and properties of DC citizens.” Congress should use its “power to limit and define the the (sic) citizenship of the District of Columbia,” he argued, to “clear the

District of this ever-increasing floor of negroes, a substantial number of whom are shiftless and a serious tax burden, at an early date.”1048 An anonymous person argued that black people had failed to assimilate to American life because after Congress bowed to

“super-sentimental religionists” and relaxed “legal and social restraints,” “many negroes could no longer contain themselves within the confines of law and order and…revert[ed]

1045 Louis Cassels, “Whites Feel Colored Citizens to Blame for Plight,” Washington Afro American, July 30, 1968, 1. 1046 “White Power: The American Way,” Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968”; Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1047 J F Palmer, Telegram to the Chamber of Commerce, May 17, 1968, Box 287, Folder 17: “Riots of 1968—Comments, Aftermath, Reactions, 1968,” Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1048 Ed Burke, Letter to the Board of Trade, May 25, 1968, Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968”Greater Washington Board of Trade Records.

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to the lawlessness and savergy (sic) of their jungle inhertznce (sic) of thousands of

years.” This racist advocated that African Americans be removed “from the District of

Columbia” and “re-settled” in “large colonies.” “It is unthinkable that this great City, the

Capital of the Nation, an important world center, with millions upon millions of dollars

invested in public and private property should be run over and dominated by

negroes!”1049 As revolting as these statements are, this extremist “white backlash” was not anything new nor was it unique to the greater Washington area.

Johnson struggled with how to respond to the April upheaval in a way that did not

further anger Americans whose top priority was order. This difficulty was apparent as

Johnson and his advisors debated what to say in a planned address to Congress following

the civil disturbances. In a meeting of Johnson administration officials on the “D.C. Riot

and Future Planning,” Special Assistant to the President Joseph Califano opened by

expressing his “concern about the loss of confidence in the community, in Congress, and

in the Press about the ability of the Government to maintain law and order in

Washington.”1050 Congressman Don Riegle urged Johnson that “the text should be brief

and philosophical” and shy away from discussing new programs because the “people are

program weary. They won’t be moved by more programs.” Johnson should “separate[e]

out and condemning in stark terms at the outset the 1% of Americans who have given up

on America, law and civilization.”1051 White House aide George Reedy stressed that

1049 Anonymous Letter, Box 284a, Folder 34: “Special TF: civil disturbances, correspondence, March-June 1968”Greater Washington Board of Trade Records. 1050 “Minutes: Washington, D.C. Riot and Future Planning,” May 7, 1968, “Washington, D.C. civil right issues including Riot Prevention, Poor People's Campaign, and urban renewal, 1968-1969, found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files;” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 1051 Fred Bohen, Memo to Joe Califano, April 6, 1968, “Civil rights issues, including Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, urban disturbances and use of Army units, and situation in Baltimore, April 1968,” found

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“Basically, the speech should be a report to the Nation and a statement of the policy of

this Administration on the bloody riots and the exhortations to anarchy and civil war by

leaders like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown.” Johnson must communicate that

“The Federal Government will move immediately—wherever it has the authority—to

suppress rioting and will not tolerate the use of looting and arson as forms of political

argument.” He similarly discouraged “new programs for social reform—programs which

to the whites will look like a reward for looting and arson and to the Negro will look like

more ‘pie in the sky.’” While African Americans had “lost confidence in programs,”

white people “are beginning to ask the question: Was it worth it?—meaning the civil

rights and poverty legislation of the past few years. They assume that there has been

tremendous generosity to the Negro and that this generosity is being repaid with

ingratitude.”1052 Ultimately, Johnson never gave the speech, in part because he was

unsure of how to be the figure of unity and reason he and his advisors wanted him to

be.1053

Johnson did not push for more “pie in the sky” programs but did support the Safe

Streets Act. In 1967, Johnson introduced the legislation in Congress to distribute federal

grants to municipal police departments to be used for “equipment, training, and pilot

programs.” The House altered the bill so that cities and states would receive block grants

for law enforcement with no specific mandates or guidelines on how police should use

the money. Additionally, the House added $25 million to fund riot control instead of

in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files;” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 1052 George Reedy, “Memorandum for the President,” April 6, 1968, “Civil rights issues, including Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, urban disturbances and use of Army units, and situation in Baltimore, April 1968,” found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files;” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 1053 Flamm, Law and Order, 147-148.

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training or research. The Senate also changed the legislation so it used block grants,

allowed broader electronic surveillance, and placed greater controls on hand gun

ownership. The bill challenged the Mallory and Miranda Supreme Court decisions as it

specified that confessions were admissible if a judge ruled it voluntary, narrowed the

grounds on which a confession could be ruled involuntary, and banned the federal

judiciary from “issuing writs of habeas corpus to prisoners who felt unjustly imprisoned.”

“It epitomized, above all, the conservative contention that the Supreme Court’s rulings

had handcuffed the police, making it almost impossible to arrest and convict criminals,”

concluded Michael Flamm. After the House and Senate passed the bill in the months

following the nation-wide disorders, Johnson signed the Safe Streets Act into law in July

“with considerable reluctance” over the measures that curbed civil liberties. Nevertheless,

it was law.1054

In the District, Johnson pushed gun control as an anti-crime measure.1055 In a letter to the speaker of the House John W. McCormack, Johnson pressured Congress to grant the D.C. City Council more authority so it could pass and enforce stricter gun control laws. Johnson praised Congressional actions to curb national crime but urged that

“in the “Nation’s Capital, the Nation can rightfully expect the Congress to do more—to make Washington a showcase of safety and security for all the people.” “When crime’s lengthening shadow falls on the Nation’s Capital, it touches not only the citizens who live and work here—it reaches out to every American.”1056

1054 Flamm, Law and Order, 132-141. Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 135-142. 1055 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 154-155. Flamm, Law and Order, 141-146. 1056 Lyndon Johnson, letter to John W. McCormack, July 3, 1968; George Christian, “Memorandum for the President,” June 10, 1968, “Washington, D.C. civil right issues including Riot Prevention, Poor People's Campaign, and urban renewal, 1968-1969, found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files;” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle.

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In addition to gun control, Johnson encouraged better police training, higher pay

for officers, court modernization efforts, and 1,000 additional officers in the D.C. police

force.1057 Behind the scenes, the Johnson administration, in coordination with Mayor

Washington, established an expanded intelligence system to infiltrate black radical

groups in D.C. In a White House meeting on April 17, 1968, the leaders present decided

to create an improved intelligence system in collaboration with the F.B.I and Secret

Service to obtain “better knowledge of the activities of militant groups.”1058 While FBI counterintelligence projects such as COINTELPRO already existed, the committee thought a larger program with better-trained agents was needed. The police would seek information on “what groups are particularly powerful, who are the real leaders, what are the opposing forces and their leadership, who should the police chief deal with, what positions should the department take on particular issues, etc.” Officers would collect information that indicated the “potential for civil disorder” such as “speeches and statements of various militants, emergence of new groups within the ghetto, [and] changes in leadership of groups[.]” Successfully analyzing such intelligence would require “special training,” “the use of undercover agents to infiltrate and cover various organizations with potential for violence,” and officers who had “an understanding of the ghetto and its problems.”1059 The Department of the Army paid the D.C. government

1057 Lyndon Johnson, letter to John W. McCormack, July 3, 1968; George Christian, “Memorandum for the President,” June 10, 1968, “Washington, D.C. civil right issues including Riot Prevention, Poor People's Campaign, and urban renewal, 1968-1969, found in “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files;” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 1058 “Memorandum from Joe Califano to President Lyndon B. Johnson, “Minutes: Washington, D.C. Riot and Future Planning,” April 17, 1968. “Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The White House Central Files.” ProQuest History Vault: Black Freedom Struggle. 1059 Warren Christopher (Deputy Attorney General), “Improvement of Civil Disorder Intelligence Capabilities for Washington Metropolitan Area,” May 4, 1968. From Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., riots following the assassination, riot prevention measures, and D.C. Riot, from civil rights files of James Gaither, 1968. Found in: Civil Rights during the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969, Part I: The

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$150,000 to start this counterintelligence program because the Army thought “[i]t would

be very useful if the Army could receive information…which could help indicate the

time, place, nature, and possible duration of potential civil disturbances[.]"1060

In the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon made the recent disorders and

crime rates in Washington a central campaign issue. Nixon famously pronounced himself

the “law and order” candidate and argued the national crime rates proved Johnson’s

liberal agenda had failed. “It is not a Great Society when millions of women refuse to

walk in their neighborhoods or visit their parks after dusk—out of fear. It is not a Great

Society when millions of men buy locks for their doors and watchdogs for their homes

and rifles and pistols for themselves—out of fear,” Nixon proclaimed at a meeting of the

Republican Platform Committee.1061 Nixon criticized his opponent Hubert Humphrey as

he directly connected the disorders to the failure of LBJ and Humphrey: “The great

majority are fed up with the policies of my opponent. They have seen the visible ruins of

Watts and Harlem and Detroit and Washington, D.C.”1062 Nixon released a position paper

on crime which asserted that “the role of poverty as a cause of crime in America has been

grossly exaggerated” and advocated that the police must have more power to solve

crime.1063

Nixon gave special attention to Washington, alleging Johnson bore direct

responsibility for crime and the civil disturbances in the capital. “Washington, D.C. is the

White House Central Files, pg 147. 1060 Undersecretary of the Army David E. McGiffert, Letter to Walter E. Washington, June 6, 1968; Letter to David E. McGiffert from Walter E. Washington, June 7, 1968; Box 47, Folder 9: Metropolitan Police Records 1968, Walter E. Washington Papers, Mooreland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University Library. 1061 Robert C. Albright, “Nixon Blasts Administration on Attitudes Toward Crime,” Washington Post, August 1, 1968, A1. 1062 Don Oberdorfer, “Nixon Hits D.C. Crime: Vows to Stem Lawlessness, Criticizes HHH,” Washington Post, September 28, 1968, A2. 1063 Chalmers M. Roberts, “Nixon Hits Rise in Crime,” Washington Post, May 9, 1968, A1.

264 one city in this country where the Federal Government is the agency responsible for law enforcement,” Nixon asserted at a campaign rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “It is the one city in American where crime statistics give a precise reading of a national

Administration’s concern over the national crime crisis.”1064 After Hubert Humphrey,

Johnson’s vice president and the democratic presidential nominee, said he was “proud” of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Nixon responded, “Is he proud of the fact that under this Administration a violent mob burned down a great section of America’s

Capital—something that hasn’t been done to Washington, D.C., since British troops left

155 years ago? No mob tried to burn down Washington, D.C. when Dwight D.

Eisenhower was in the White House.”1065 On the campaign trail, Nixon repeatedly called

Washington the “crime capital of the world”1066 and used it as the prime example of why

“get tough” policies were needed: “Crimes are committed almost routinely…When I see a Congressional or Senate secretary cannot work at night unless she is escorted home, I say we need new leadership which can sweep the Nation’s capital streets clear.” “I pledge that a Nixon Administration will make it a first order of business to sweep the streets of

Washington free of these prowlers and muggers and marauders, and restore freedom from fear to the Nation’s capital,” Nixon proclaimed.1067

Further, Nixon framed D.C. as a testing ground for his “law and order” initiatives that would shape national policy. Washington, D.C. “should be a model city as far as law

1064 “Nixon on D.C. Crime: ‘Disgrace,’” Washington Post, September 28, 1968, A4. 1065 William Raspberry, “Crime Capital? Let’s Look at the Record,” Washington Post, September 27, 1968, B1. 1066 Don Oberdorfer, “Nixon Hits D.C. Crime: Vows to Stem Lawlessness, Criticizes HHH,” Washington Post, September 28, 1968, A2; Robert L. Asher, “Nixon Labels D.C. A ‘Crime Capital,’ Blames Johnson,” Washington Post, June 23, 1968, A1; “Nixon on D.C. Crime: ‘Disgrace,’” Washington Post, September 28, 1968, A4. 1067 Don Oberdorfer, “Nixon Hits D.C. Crime: Vows to Stem Lawlessness, Criticizes HHH,” Washington Post, September 28, 1968, A2.

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enforcement is concerned—a national laboratory in which the latest in crime prevention

and detection can be tested and the resulted reported to a waiting nation.”1068 Nixon

urged a larger police force, higher arrests, speedier trials, and a less “permissive system.”

These steps would help make D.C. “a model for the cities of this Nation, and an example

to the world.” “D.C. should not stand for Disorder and Crime,” he argued. “A Nixon

administration will sweep the streets of Washington clean of these marauders and

criminals and remove from this city the atmosphere of aggression that hangs over it.”1069

In November 1968, Americans narrowly elected Nixon to the presidency and he

quickly made D.C. the cornerstone of his “law and order” policies.1070 Less than a week after his inauguration in January 1969, Nixon announced a “War on Crime” in the

District which proposed measures he described as a “model anti-crime package.” 1071

Nixon’s proposed 12-point plan included no-knock police warrants, altering the 1966

Bail Reform Act to permit “preventative detention” that allowed allegedly dangerous

criminals to be held without bail while awaiting trial. Nixon suggested 10 additional

judges for the D.C. courts, 40 more assistant U.S. attorneys, and 1,000 more police

officers. Nixon would also give funds to D.C. through “Large City Special Grants” via

the Safe Streets Act.1072 The National Law Enforcement Council considered the plan a

“golden opportunity” to experiment with different methods that could eventually be used

nationally.1073 Ironically, despite his criticism of Johnson’s alleged lack of interest and

1068 Chalmers M. Roberts, “Nixon Hits Rise in Crime,” Washington Post, May 9, 1968, A1. 1069 Robert L. Asher, “Nixon Labels D.C. A ‘Crime Capital,’ Blames Johnson,” Washington Post, June 23, 1968, A1. 1070 “BUF Hits Nominees to Council,” Washington Afro American, February 18, 1968. 1071 "Congress Clears Controversial D.C. Crime Control Bill." In CQ Almanac 1970, 26th ed., 05-208-05- 219. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1971. http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/cqal70- 1292937. 1072 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 154-159. 1073 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 141.

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ineffectiveness on crime, Nixon’s strategy relied heavily on provisions of the Safe Streets

Act and funding from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration—both created by

Johnson.

Many of Nixon’s proposals were included in the District of Columbia Court

Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970, better known as the 1970 D.C. Crime Bill.

The bill incorporated much of the long-standing agenda of conservatives: it reversed the expansion of rights for the accused created by liberal Supreme Court decisions such as

Miranda and Mallory and restructured D.C.’s liberal courts. Further, the legislation required mandatory minimum sentences for armed offenses and created harsher standardized punishments for certain crimes. The law “pioneered” techniques such as preventative detention (“the practice of detaining suspects without bail for up to two months”), enhanced the police’s power to wiretap, and legalized “no knock” raids so the police could enter homes without a warrant or without announcing their purpose.1074 By a

vote of 54-33 in the Senate and 332-64 in the House, the District of Columbia Court

Reorganization Act of 1970 became law on July 29, 1970.1075

Walter Fauntroy characterized the D.C. Crime bill as “the cutting edge of fascism

and oppression in the United States.”1076 The Afro opined that while it knew the crime

situation was bad, “officials are grabbing at straws…Holding people because they

‘probably’ will commit a crime is ‘probably’ unconstitutional.”1077 The NAACP’s Roy

Wilkins wrote that “[i]n Washington, no matter how it is lorded over with statistics, the

District Crime law, with its preventative detention and no-knock provisions is a

1074 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 153-158. 1075 “Congress Clears Controversial D.C. Crime Control Bill,” CQ Almanac, https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal70-1292937. 1076 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 153-158. 1077 “’Probably’ Unconstitutional,” Washington Afro American, February 18, 1969, 4.

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crackdown measure that can bring unfair detention and persecution as well as the

wholesale branding of a race.”1078 To sidestep such opposition, Nixon purposely

excluded Washington officials from the legislative process. After Congress initially failed

to act on the legislation, Nixon invited House and Senate leaders for a briefing on crime

in the District and his legislation. He did not give city officials notice of the meeting or

invite them and scheduled the meeting when Mayor Washington was out of town.1079

Nixon worked to make D.C. a “model city” in additional ways. In January 1970,

the president summoned Deputy Mayor Graham Watt to the White House and “bluntly

informed” him that the “immediate objectives of the Nixon Administration were 1) to

achieve a reduction of street crime by May 1, 1970 and 2) to develop a community

climate of confidence in public safety.” If the D.C. government and police could not meet

those goals, Nixon would use his power to replace the city government and appoint a new

D.C. City Council and mayor. The following Tuesday, Mayor Washington announced a

project to strengthen “the criminal justice system.”1080 The Nixon administration

subsequently directed considerable amounts of LEAA money to the police. During

Nixon’s tenure, almost 1/8 of LEAA’s funding went to D.C, resulting in the highest rate

of police to citizens in the world. President Nixon also met with police in October 1970

and wrote letters to the police officers commending their achievements in an attempt to

reduce crime by improving police morale.1081 Police Chief Jerry Wilson, at the

president’s request, toured the country to discuss the methods used by D.C. police and the

1078 “Roy Wilkins Speaks,” Washington Afro American, August 11, 1970. 1079 Jerry V. Wilson, The War on Crime in the District of Columbia 1955-1975 (Washington: National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Administration, United States Department of Justice, 1978), 22-23. 1080 Wilson, Crime in the District of Columbia, 22-24. 1081 Wilson, Crime in the District of Columbia, 22-24. Additionally, Nixon invited DC police officers who won awards for valor and merit to the White House to thank them in 1972.

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success Nixon believed they had achieved. “Basically, I was to emphasize three points:

contemporary polls showed that Americans viewed crime as the worst urban problem;

President Nixon shared this concern and was personally committed to keeping crime

reduction as a high national priority; and achieving significant crime reduction required a

commitment by state and local government and strong interest and leadership at all levels

of government,” Wilson reflected. In his 1972 reelection campaign, Nixon touted his

“law and order” program in Washington. D.C. 1082

Despite Nixon’s claims that “law and order” worked in Washington, crime

remained high and devastated the black community in D.C. In 1974, the number of

murders in D.C. reached a new high and gun violence became the leading cause of death

for men under the age of 40 in Washington. In 1975, a commission created by Mayor

Washington “found that 20 percent of men in D.C. and an astonishing 45 percent of

women said they never went out alone at night.”1083 The increase in the police

department’s size, funds, and permitted investigative tactics did not “sweep the streets of

Washington clean of these marauders and criminals ” as Nixon promised in the 1968

presidential election.

Nonetheless, the D.C. Crime Bill set a precedent and other governments used it to

create “more punitive approach to patrol, arrest, and sentencing and the wider adoption of

mandatory minimums and preventative detention.”1084 “No Knock” raids increased along

the East Coast and New York State modeled the bill’s mandatory minimum sentences in

1973. In 1978, the state of Michigan also established minimum sentences for certain drug

1082 Wilson, Crime in the District of Columbia, 22-24. 1083 Foreman, Locking Up Our Own, 48-52. 1084 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 158.

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offenses.1085 In the 1970s, D.C. did, indeed, become a model for the rest of the nation.

II: “To rebuild our community with vision and imagination:” Creating a Framework for Reconstruction “Washington is a great city, the capital of a great Nation,” Walter Washington

said as he testified in front of Congress. Although the “recent civil disturbances”

accentuated the District’s problems, “[n]ow, the citizens of Washington…have an

opportunity to rebuild our community with vision and imagination…[T]he time has

arrived to stop looking backward so that we can create the kind of city we all want.”1086

Washingtonians, however, did not always agree on what kind of city they wanted and

many activists worried that the rebuilding plans would not meet their demands. Marion

Barry articulated this concern at a Congressional hearing in May 1968. After describing

many of the longstanding social issues in Washington, Barry remarked that “because of

the recent rebellions in in Washington, much of the area that spawned these problems has

been destroyed. This has both created a vacuum and an opportunity.” Something would

be done to reconstruct damaged neighborhoods but no one knew “what and how and by

whom. More importantly, will what is done correct the basic situation that created…the

rebellions?”1087

To determine how to rebuild Washington, the D.C. City Council held four public

hearings in late April 1968. The Council invited “all citizens and organizations in the

1085 Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 158. 1086 “Statement of Hon. Walter E Washington, Mayor, Washington, D.C., Accompanied by John Hechinger, Chairman, District of Columbia city Council; Thomas Appleby, Executive Director, District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency; Charles H. Conrad, Executive Director, National Capital Planning Commission; Julian R. Dugas, Director of Licenses and Inspections; James C. Gilman, Acting Director, Office of Community Renewal; and Robert F. Kneipp, Assistant Corporation Counsel, District of Columbia,” 109, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders. 1087 “Statement of Carroll Harvey, Executive Director, Pride, Inc., Accompanied by Marion Barry, Director of Operations Pride, Inc.,” 149-150, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders.

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community to express their views and make recommendations on the rebuilding of the

damaged areas.”1088 Roughly 1,500 people attended the hearings and nearly 100

testified.1089 The speakers represented a diverse political spectrum of Washingtonians:

burned-out business owners who sought compensation, citizens who wanted a more

responsive government, established political leaders who called for Home Rule, and

representatives of white Citizen’s Associations who demanded “law and order.”1090 Of all

the perspectives presented in the hearings, “[i]t was felt by the Council that the ‘black

separatist’ voices were the most startling[.]” “The more militant voices spoke up for a

‘no-white’ policy, suggesting that unless all planning and rebuilding by white people be

stopped, another burning would occur,” summarized the City Council’s report on the

hearings.1091

Some advocates of separatist policies at the City Council hearings were members

of the Black United Front (BUF). Stokely Carmichael founded the Front in January 1968

to expand “the lines of communication between, and affecting togetherness among, all

the Black people in the District of Columbia in order to obtain a rightful and

proportionate share in the decision making councils of the District, and rightful and

proportionate control of the economic institutions in the Black community.”1092 Moderate and radical black activists joined the BUF and its leaders hoped to “keep down political

1088 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 2, P1614, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. 1089 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 2; “Statement of John W. Hechinger, Chairman, District of Columbia Council,” 129-130, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders. 1090 For examples, See the transcript of community hearings testimony in “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1091 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 6. 1092 “Minutes of the Black United Front, February 13, 1968,” Box 16, Folder 14 “Black Empowerment, Black United Front, April-May, 1968,” MS 2070, Walter Fauntroy Papers.

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infighting in the black community, and let the black community speak with one united

voice[.]”1093 The BUF considered the City Council hearings a valuable opportunity to

shape the city’s rebuilding plans. Before the hearings, the Front announced a special

meeting and invited 70 of the individuals scheduled to testify before the Council. “The

meeting that the Front calls has special significance because it knows that the Black

people living in the Black communities want to decide what will happen to, as well as

what goes on, in their communities,” read a BUF press release. “In order to insure that

this will, in fact, be the case with the ‘rebuilding,’ the Front is requesting that these

seventy (70) people meet with our body” so they could collaboratively “come up with

one, just one (1), proposal.”1094

Marion Barry and Reginald H. Booker were both established D.C. political

figures and members of the BUF’s Board of Conveners—essentially its steering

committee.1095 Marion Barry founded the Home Rule advocacy group Free D.C. and co-

founded Pride, Inc., the federally-funded black jobs program. Reginald H. Booker was

the outspoken chairman of the Emergency Commission on the Transportation Crisis—the

group working to create the Metro rail system and block the planned inner-city highway.

In their testimonies, Barry and Booker outlined three principles for rebuilding D.C.: (1)

1093 “Booker, Reginald H. (1941), Chairman, Washington (D. C.) Construction Area Industry Task Force. July 24, 1970,” 13. Peniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas, 2014), 235; “Minutes of the Black United Front,” February 13, 1968, Box 16, Folder 14: “Black Empowerment, Black United Front, April-May 1968,” MS 2070 Walter Fauntroy Papers, Gelman Library Special Collections at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 1094 Memo from the Black United Front to “All members of the Black United Front,” April 23, 1968, Box 4, Folder “Black United Front,” Papers of Julius Hobson, MLK Library. 1095 R.H. Booker described Board of Conveners as the “steering committee” and leadership of the Black United Front. “Booker, Reginald H. (1941), Chairman, Washington (D. C.) Construction Area Industry Task Force. July 24, 1970,” 13. Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection (formerly The Civil Rights Documentation Project). Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. “Minutes of the Black United Front March 19, 1968,” Box 4, Folder “Black United Front,” Papers of Julius Hobson, 1960-1977, D.C. Community Archives, Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.

272 black citizens should plan their own neighborhoods, (2) the reconstruction should economically empower black Washingtonians, and (3) reconstruction should reduce economic and racial inequality.

“If you are planning for a black community,” Barry insisted, “the planning should be in the hands of black people.”1096 Barry contended that low-income black people wanted “self-sufficiency and self-determination” and would consider “outside control…as paternalism on one hand or as colonialism on the other.”1097 Second, the black community should comprise the reconstruction labor force and own the businesses that were rebuilt to produce black economic power. Barry hoped that as a result of rebuilding, African American Washingtonians would “own at least 51% of the

District”1098 and believed burned-out businesses should only be permitted to reopen if the white owners agreed to be less exploitative.1099 Finally, Barry argued that the city’s plans for reconstruction should rectify Washington’s social ills. “Both the governmental and nongovernmental societal institutions have failed the black residents,” Barry asserted.

Schools did not adequately teach children, businesses exploited customers, and housing was destroyed by urban renewal. “Housing, education, economic development, public services, etc. are all a part of the fabric that makes up a society and these problems intersect, cross, and overlap at many points,” Barry maintained. “Planners must take this

1096 “Statement of Marion Barry, Pride, Inc.”, 313, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1097 “Prepared statement of Marion Barry, Director of Operations, Pride, Inc.,” 149-151, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders. 1098 “Statement of Marion Barry, Pride, Inc.”, 313-315, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1099 “Partnership Seen as Goal,” Washington Afro American, April 16, 1968, 1, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en.

273 into consideration and attack the total state of the problem of the ghetto.”1100

To implement these objectives, Barry suggested that the government and financial institutions should grant black Washingtonians the time and resources necessary to create a “self-determined” neighborhood. To ensure the community had enough time to develop a plan before rebuilding began, Barry requested the Small Business Administration wait to write disaster relief loans. Further, the city should not grant licenses to rebuild until

“the total community has been involved in a plan[.]”1101 In other words, Barry asked the government to deny burned-out business owners the money and bureaucratic approval necessary for them to start reconstruction so black people could first decide if those business owners would even be allowed to rebuild. To foster black economic development, Barry recommended that “the city banks, the financing institutions and their officials should move immediately to establish at least a $5 million revolving fund so we will have money to borrow from, because we don’t have money.” Next, Barry argued the city should hire African Americans from the riot-damaged neighborhoods to tear the destroyed buildings. Since “black people have not been trained as managers and salesmen and runners of business,” Barry advocated that “businesses and [the] government should set up a plan to train black people to be accountants, and how to run a business.” Once African Americans learned to be business owners, the white business leaders who taught these skills would be “let…go.” Barry contended it was reasonable to expect such financial and technical aid because the U.S. government loaned billions of dollars to developing nations in Europe and Asia: “It seems that the same U.S.

1100 “Prepared statement of Marion Barry, Director of Operations, Pride, Inc.,” 150-154, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders. 1101 “Statement of Marion Barry, Pride, Inc.”, 313, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington.

274 government that does that for other countries ought to be able to do the same thing [for us].” Finally, to solve the “root causes” of urban violence, Barry suggested the city government investigate exploitative practices by merchants to better protect consumers and to build public housing throughout the entire city instead of concentrating it in the

“ghetto.”1102 Ironically, Barry’s plan to create a “self-determined” black community relied heavily on government intervention and white financial institutions.

Like Barry, Booker insisted white people could not understand or plan for African

Americans so black Washingtonians should create their own reconstruction designs.

“Devastated areas where black people are living in hell holes and concentration camps must be rebuilt by black people,” he contended. Booker additionally argued that the city must address social issues facing black Washingtonians such as insufficient public housing, police brutality, unequal employment opportunities, and economic exploitation.

If the city failed to address such issues, “we are going to see more of the same this summer. Not only will it be a long hot summer, but it is going to be a long hot winter and a long hot all year round.” Booker recommended policies similar to Barry’s suggestions.

The city should not permit rebuilding until certain conditions were met: “I think before any money, before one brick, before one spade of mortar is put up, a moratorium should be declared on all rebuilding…and there should be an immediate investigation to see why black people have been exploited for so long[.]” To address the deep-seated social inequalities harming low-income African Americans, Booker demanded the D.C. government research why discriminatory policies persisted. Booker asked the City

Council to investigate why black people were “economically exploited,” why “all the top

1102 “Statement of Marion Barry, Pride, Inc.”, 313, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington.

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jobs in the District of Columbia government are held by white folks who live in

suburbia,” why the National Capital Housing Authority was “the greatest slum lord,” why

public housing was concentrated in one area of the city, and why “there is a very small

percentage of black people on the police force.”1103

A week after the City Council hearings concluded, the BUF held a press

conference to outline its proposals for rebuilding D.C. First, like Barry and Booker

suggested, the BUF advocated a moratorium on rebuilding until the black community had

time to create a “unified and comprehensive” design. The BUF asked the SBA to freeze

disaster relief loans and the Department of Licenses and Inspections to stop issue

rebuilding permits until the black community created a proposal. The Front insisted that

such a plan be submitted through the BUF because it believed “the Black United Front is

the black community of Washington, D.C." To ensure black community members led

rebuilding, the BUF demanded work done by white contractors cease and only restart

with black contractors and workers. “This is the first step the District government which

is headed by a colored mayor can take to show its good intentions toward the black

community,” it urged. “Unless such a step is taken now and taken immediately, then the

black community must question the sincerity of subsequent steps toward

reconstruction.”1104 To teach the black community how to develop and maintain

economic power, the BUF recommended that government agencies such as the United

Planning Organization and the Department of Housing and Urban Development “serve as

1103 “Statement of R.H. Booker, Chairman, Emergency Committee on Transportation Crisis,” 384-389, “District of Columbia City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of the City,” Civil Disturbances in Washington. 1104 “Black movement leaders seek right to rebuild,” Washington Afro American, May 7, 1968, 16, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680507&printsec=frontpage&hl =en.

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technical consultants to the black community.” The BUF concluded its statement with a

threat: "We wish to emphasize very strongly that black people are going to rebuild this

black community. Unless we do rebuild it, there will be no stability in the District of

Columbia.”1105 Barry, Booker, and the BUF’s proposals all emphasized black autonomy and self-determination. Simultaneously, each proposal requested funding and support

from “establishment” institutions.

Although the City Council was “startled” by these recommendations, it realized

many Washingtonians likely supported these proposals. “We recognize that very possibly

the ideas behind those firebrand attitudes are no different from the views of the vast

majority of witnesses,” concluded the City Council in its report.1106 Rather than ignore

“firebrand attitudes,” the Council chose to endorse many of the militant’s suggestions.

The City Council largely endorsed the three themes articulated by Barry and Booker.

First, citizens should have some control over how the city was reconstructed. “The basic

message of the hearings was clear and it is the dominant theme of this report: all citizens

need to be involved in the economic and social processes of this city,” said City Council

Chairman John Hechinger. “There is a need for a good measure of self-determination for

the neighborhoods which must be rebuilt.”1107 Second, the rebuilding efforts should foster, and even prioritize, black economic development. The City Council found “that special measures are needed now to improve the economic and social opportunities for

1105 “Rebuilding of Black Neighborhoods,” 1968, Folder 29, May 3, 1968, Walter Washington Papers. “Black movement leaders seek right to rebuild,” Washington Afro. 1106 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 3, P1614, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. 1107 “Statement of John W. Hechinger, Chairman, District of Columbia Council,” 131, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders.

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Negroes, particularly in such areas as business and housing[.]”1108 “[P]olicies must be realistic in recognizing the need for economic and political power in the Negro community,” the Council stated, “particularly in housing and business development.”1109

Finally, the city must alleviate the systemic causes of the disorders: “Every avenue of support for facilities and programs to raise standards of housing, education, recreation, and health must be explored.”1110

Additionally, the City Council directly advocated some of Barry and Booker’s specific ideas. Barry suggested local financial institutions should create a pool of capital to finance black-owned enterprises. The City Council urged Congress to create “a revolving fund so that Negro entrepreneurs and cooperatives can borrow capital at low interest rates and over long terms in order to start businesses and to finance training in management techniques.” Further, the City Council encouraged “the local business community, financial institutions, and government agencies take all necessary steps to create a several million dollar loan fund or pool to encourage new business activity, particularly by Negro-owned enterprises.” To “compensate for the effects of past discrimination” in lending practices to African Americans, the Council believed “[b]anks and other financial institutions” should develop “new lending techniques…which go beyond equal treatment to Negro borrowers and to a substantial degree actually compensate for the effects of the past discrimination.”1111 To economically empower

1108 “Statement by John W. Hechinger, Chairman of the City Council at a news conference on rebuilding and recovery of the city,” in “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968.” 1109 “Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 7. 1110 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 5. 1111 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 15-18.

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black Washingtonians, Booker insisted the neighborhoods be rebuilt by black people and

Barry encouraged the government to hire local black workers to demolish damaged

buildings. The D.C. Council proposed that “the District and Federal governments, where

legally possible, restructure their construction and purchasing policies so that contracts

are let to businesses and industries which are located in the areas requiring building and

which contribute economic support to those areas and their residents.” The government

should favor businesses “which employ ghetto residents, which are willing to employ the

unemployed, which participate in skill and management training programs, and which

have compensatory hiring practices.” 1112 “To the fullest extent possible,” black builders should subcontract the reconstruction and neighborhood residents should “furnish the principal labor pool.”1113 To create more job opportunities for young African Americans,

the City Council encouraged the local and federal government to fund employment

programs such as the Barry-led Pride, Incorporated.1114 Booker and Barry were critical

that public housing was concentrated in black neighborhoods in D.C.; the Council

suggested the decentralization of public housing.1115 To address the exploitation of black

consumers, the Council requested Congressional funding to create an office of consumer

affairs.1116 Finally, the City Council advocated insurance reform as a consumer protection

measure. When merchants could not obtain insurance, it resulted in “higher prices, lower

quality goods, and/or lack of adequate shopping facilities in black communities.” The

1112 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 15-18. 1113 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 19-20. 1114 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 15-18. 1115 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 19-20. 1116 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 27-30.

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Council endorsed the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Act to require D.C.

insurance companies to cover businesses and homes in disturbance-affected areas.1117

While the City Council endorsed many proposals made by D.C. militants, the

Council firmly rejected the suggestion that white planners and businesses be barred from

the rebuilding efforts. The Council denounced “the ideology of two separate societies…The simple fact is that the talents and energies of all races and all economic groups are needed in this city[.]”1118 While the BUF urged the SBA to cease granting

loans to damaged businesses, the City Council encouraged the Small Business

Association grant long-term loans at low interest rates to merchants who wished to

reopen their businesses.1119 “We must recognize and understand the reasons for bitterness

of deprived Negro citizens, as we must recognize and understand the bitterness of

innocent victims of the destruction, whether they be black or white,” the Council

emphasized. “All must receive fair treatment as the city moves forward.”1120

Walter Washington also incorporated and moderated radical demands as he

presented his plan to rebuild the city. In his testimony before the Commerce

Subcommittee of the Senate District Committee on May 20, 1968, Mayor Washington

announced a “crash program to rebuild riot-torn areas of the city with planning to be completed in 100 days.” Washington recommended that the plan include “citizen participation in planning, additional ownership and operation of businesses by Negroes,

1117Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 38-40. Richard M. Cohen, “Pool Formed For Ghetto Insurance: Insurance Firms Form Pool To Cover Ghetto Merchants,” Washington Post, September 27, 1968, B1. 1118 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 8. 1119 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 36-37. 1120 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 5.

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[and] more job opportunities for inner-city residents.” “Surely,” Washington insisted,

“this is a time for citizens and public officials to work urgently together…I know call on all citizens, white and black, to join hands in this endeavor.”1121 Washington created the

Community Development Committee “to oversee rebuilding” and instructed city officials

to meet with “community leaders, business groups, private foundations and Federal

agencies” throughout the process.1122

The Black United Front was one of the groups that consulted with city officials to

help formulate the reconstruction designs.1123 In May, members of the BUF met with

Julian Dugas, the director of the Department of Licenses and Inspections, and Mayor

Washington. After these meetings, the BUF thought the D.C. government would support its objectives. Charles Jones, a representative of the BUF’s Press Conference Delegation, was encouraged that Dugas “committed himself to making sure that if the brothers get their bids in, they will get the contracts” to rebuild the city. To ensure black contractors received these contracts, the committee created a Committee on Bidding and Black

Contractors. Jones and other BUF members believed Mayor Washington would obtain funding to support the BUF and other community-led planning efforts. “I think the Mayor

(Walter E. Washington) understands now that we are a united Black community,” said

Jones. “He has committed himself to working through the Black United Front as the

1121 Elsie Carper, “To Rebuild,” Washington Post, May 21, 1968. Prior to giving this speech, Mayor Washington sent a copy of his planned remarks to Chuck Stone, another member of the BUF’s Board of Conveners to solicit his comments and “to give him an opportunity to suggest changes.” See “The B.U.F. Task Force Meeting,” May 23, 1968, Box 16, Folder “Black Empowerment: Black United Front, April- May 1968,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1122 Wolf Von Eckardt, “City Pushes to Meet Deadline on Plan to Rebuild Riot Areas—25 Days to Go,” Washington Post, July 23, 1968. “Mayor Unveils 1st Plans to Rebuild Riot Areas,” Washington Post, August 29, 1968, A1. 1123 Von Eckardt, “City Pushes to Meet Deadline on Plan to Rebuild Riot Areas—25 Days to Go,” Washington Post. “Minutes of the Black United Front Board of Conveners Meeting May 15, 1968” and “Minutes of the Black United Front May 22, 1968, ” Box 16, Folder 14 “Black Empowerment, Black United Front, April-May, 1968,” MS 2070, Walter Fauntroy Papers.

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united Black community.”1124 Nonetheless, the BUF also believed it should continue to

pressure and, if necessary, threaten the D.C. government to fulfill the Front’s wishes.

“The committee is to make clear to anyone in charge that there will be none other than

Black contractors in charge of the rebuilding,” the BUF insisted. “The committee should

not be afraid to issue warnings of what could occur if the contracts are awarded to white

contractors (the possibility of the white contractors’ establishments being burned, and so

forth).”1125

Simultaneously, the BUF wanted to prove to the local government that it could

lead the community and was a reliable organization. After the BUF created a Task Force

on Rebuilding Proposals, it aimed to complete its reconstruction plans within 60 days of

the disorders. Finishing the proposal quickly, the BUF believed, would demonstrate to

the government that it was self-disciplined and a good-faith partner. If the BUF could

shape the rebuilding process, it thought it could “coopt anything the city government may

do.”1126 Far from abandoning community organizing and local politics, the BUF worked

to be a reliable organization and trusted it could use the political process to create self-

determination in black neighborhoods.

At the conclusion of the 100 day period, Mayor Washington announced he secured a $600,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support rebuilding. With the grant,

Mayor Washington created the Reconstruction and Development Corporation (RDC) in

August 1968.1127 Charles Cassell, another member of the BUF’s steering committee,

1124 “Minutes of the Black United Front May 22, 1968,” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1125 “Minutes of the Black United Front May 22, 1968,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1126 “The B.U.F. Task Force Meeting,” May 23, 1968; “Minutes of the Black United Front May 22, 1968,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1127 D.C. Office of the Mayor, Ten Years Since April 4, 1968: A Decade of Progress for the District of Columbia, 7, F 200.T 46, Kiplinger Research Library.

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praised the RDC as a “cross section…of knowledgeable and responsible people who

would help to guide the reconstruction in the devastated areas, so that what grows from

such rebuilding will not be a replacement of what was there before, but will be some kind

of community development which will bring to the people living in that community the

control of that community.” Further, Cassell suggested that there had been “no problems

in dealing with any government agency” as the BUF collaborated on rebuilding efforts.

While it was “too early to say what the net effect of these relationships will be,” Cassell

applauded the city government’s efforts and believed it wanted to “bring…the

people…control of that community.”1128

While the RDC and other D.C. agencies created the rebuilding plan, the city

launched numerous efforts to foster citizen participation. The RDC hired groups to go

door-to-door and ask residents, “What would you like to have in this area? This area has

been burned out. We want to rebuild it. What do you want?”1129 With a grant from the

Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA), Uptown Progress, Inc. surveyed 1,500 businesses

in the area to learn their desires as well.1130 As will be discussed, the Model Inner City

Community Organization (MICCO) surveyed thousands of D.C. residents to learn how

people wanted their neighborhoods to be rebuilt. Planners held many meetings and

invited people to learn about the plans for their community and communicate their input.

In total, over half of the Shaw neighborhood’s 50,000 residents were surveyed by various

1128 Report of the City Council Public Hearings on the Rebuilding and Recovery of Washington, D.C. from the Civil Disturbances of April, 1968,” 30-33. 1129 “Testimony of Thomas W. Fletcher, Lt. Col. Sam Starobin, and John G. Stone III,” 3242, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders: Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Ninety-First Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969); P1621, Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. This Report is hereafter referred to as Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 1130 “Testimony of Thomas W. Fletcher, Lt. Col. Sam Starobin, and John G. Stone III,” 3237-3238, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders; Peter Braestrup, “Fletcher: Riot Area Rebuilding on Target,” Washington Post, April 13, 1969, 55.

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agencies.1131

As the rebuilding got underway, the city sought to hire African Americans. The

National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) hired Shaw Joint Venture, an all-black

survey team, to assess the damage to 5,000 buildings.1132 By 1971, 40% of the construction contracts granted by the Redevelopment Land Agency went to minority contractors. Through a collaboration with the Small Business Administration, the RLA hired black firms to perform “plumbing, heating, electrical work, carpentry, plastering and rooftop repairs.” The RLA also established special provisions for the training and employment of renewal area residents. When building the Lincoln Westmoreland apartment complex, the RLA contracted black firms to perform 10 out of 19 subcontracting jobs. By 1972, all but one of the redevelopment projects underway included black architects, attorneys, planners, housing consultants, or mortgage brokers on the development teams.1133

Several of the proposals to reduce economic exploitation and increase black

opportunity were enacted. The Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Act

became law in fall 1968 and required “the 200 companies that write property insurance

here to provide coverage for business’s or homes that have been denied insurance

because they are located in areas where riots have taken place.”1134 The Labor

Department gave Pride, Inc. a $3.8 million grant in August 1968 to create jobs for 1,100

1131 Vincent Paka, “Shaw Area Results Show,” Washington Post, February 8, 1970, D1. 1132 Jim Hoagland, “Negro Team to Survey Shaw,” Washington Post, May 2, 1968, B1; Peter Braestrup, “Fletcher: Riot Area Rebuilding on Target,” Washington Post, April 13, 1969, 55. 1133 Letter to Fauntroy form Melvin Mister, March 3, 1972, Box 24, Folder 36: “Correspondence, D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency, 1971-1972, 1974, n.d.,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1134 Cohen, “Pool Formed For Ghetto Insurance: Insurance Firms Form Pool To Cover Ghetto Merchants,” Washington Post.

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DC teens.1135 Also in August 1968, the Small Business Administration created “Project

Own” to increase minority lending. Over the next year, the SBA nearly tripled loans to

minorities.1136 Through the RDC, the city granted modest loans to minority

contractors.1137 In 1969, D.C. created an office under the Department of Economic

Development to investigate bad business practices and protect consumers.1138

Home rule was the biggest success for Washingtonians after the disorders.

Congress granted D.C. home rule in 1973 at the urging of politically savvy and persistent

Washingtonians. Fed up with John McMillan’s refusal to permit any bill on D.C. home

rule out of the D.C. House committee, D.C. Non-voting Delegate Walter Fauntroy

organized a campaign to unseat McMillan. Washingtonians took buses into McMillan’s

North Carolina district and canvassed against him. It worked and with McMillan voted

out of office, home rule came to Washington. The District enshrined the importance of

citizen participation into its new government. In a referendum vote on May 7, 1974, D.C.

citizens voted to create Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and the D.C. Council

divided the city into 36 ANC’s each with its own elected representatives creating a

“remarkable space for neighborhood autonomy.”1139 The “sunshine” provision of the

Home Rule Act “provided machinery to give the people notice of proposed governmental

actions affecting their well-being” to assure “the much-needed two-way communication between the people and their government which had been identified as a prime need at

1135 “Pride Gets $3.8 Million to Open Two Work Projects,” Washington Afro American, August 13, 1968, 3. 1136 Robert Samuelson, “Bleak Facts Slow ‘Black Capitalism,’” Washington Post, August 31, 1969. 1137 Ten Years Later, 7. 1138 Ten Years Later, 7. 1139 Chris Meyers Asch and George Derek Musgrove, Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 380.

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the time of the riots.”1140 In the first elections after home rule, 9 out of 11 African

Americans and both white members elected to the District Council were veterans of the

civil rights movement, reflecting “a remarkable shift from protest to politics.” The newly

elected Council passed provisions to protect and aid historically discriminated groups.

Among other initiatives, D.C. passed rent control measures, incentives for contracts for

minorities, strong affirmative action and anti-gender discrimination laws, and consumer protection laws.1141

These actions suggest the response to the civil disorders was much more complex than calls for “get tough” policing from conservatives and the rejection of liberal institutions by black radicals. Ultimately, D.C.’s proposal for rebuilding incorporated the concepts, programs, and funding mechanisms that liberal politicians crafted. Community action and “maximum feasible participation” were mandated in many of Johnson’s War on Poverty programs. Even the idea of large scale planning for a neighborhood drew upon the liberal program of urban renewal. Rather than banishing or condemning black radicals, the city listened to them and incorporated many of their ideas. In turn, the Black

United Front participated in the District government’s planning process. The Front established a Rebuilding Task Force, met with the government and community, and engaged in the nitty-gritty of city planning. Many Washingtonians believed the D.C.

government could help the city recover from the disorders and were willing to participate

in the process.

1140 Washington, Ten Years Since April 4, 1968. 1141 Dash and McCombs, “New Kind of City Emerging out of Ruins of ’68 Riot,” Washington Post.

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III: “Specific, Concrete Steps:” Government and Community Action

As the District of Columbia rebuilt physically and socially, it often ran into

opposition from the federal government. The next section examines two efforts launched

in the aftermath of the civil disorders: improving police-community relations and rebuilding Shaw. Examining these campaigns broadens the historical narrative of how

Americans responded to urban violence. Instead of passing laws that gave more power to the police, the City Council sought to limit police use of firearms and grant citizens more control over law enforcement. Rather than abandoning the “ghetto,” many

Washingtonians were optimistic that the city could create neighborhoods that were affordable, beautiful, and empowered black citizens. The limitations of these projects reveal the power the federal government held over the capital. With little autonomy, D.C. reformers struggled to implement proposals that ran counter to the agenda of President

Nixon and federal agencies.

“These Guidelines in No Way Disarm…Our Police Force!” Solutions to Crime in D.C.

In the late 1960s, numerous American cities considered increasing citizen’s control over the police. Many civil disorders began as protests against police action and cities were desperate to avoid further unrest. Some believed granting neighborhoods more power over police departments would reduce the animosity of African Americans towards the police and reduce the likelihood of riots. When tensions surrounding the police spiked in the summer and fall of 1968, the capital considered several measures to limit police power.

After a police officer was killed by a black man on July 2, 1968, the Black United

Front released a statement urging that the police “in the black community should be

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under the control of the black community” and asserted “the alleged slaying of the

honkey cop is justifiable homicide.”1142 On July 14, a police officer killed Theodore

Lawson, a black man, at the corner of 14th and U Streets.1143 In response, the City

Council created the City Council Public Safety Committee on Police-Community

Relations, which Council Chairman Hechinger directed to “prepare a report for action.”

“What is needed now in this city,” he emphasized, “is to develop and implement the specific, concrete steps to an effective policy community relations program, not additional hearings.”1144 In creating the report, the committee consulted with the local

ACLU, the Black United Front, and the community, whose written and spoken feedback

it solicited.1145 The resulting report concluded that improved police-community relations were a prerequisite to an effective police force that would allow for “safe streets:” “The present situation creates a climate where a minor incident can escalate into one of major proportions. Unless relationships between the police and major elements of the community improve, it is difficult to see how the current high rates of crime which threaten the well-being of the city can be substantially reduced.” The report encouraged community influence and input, noted the need to better handle citizens’ complaints about the police, and urged the department to hire more black police officers.1146 On

1142 “Furor Grows Over Police Death,” Washington Afro American, July 9, 1968, 1. 1143 James McNeirney, “Husband Killed by Police, Wife Grief Stricken,” Washington Afro American, July 9, 1968, 1; “Urge Better Police Community Efforts,” Washington Afro American, July 23, 1968, 3. 1144 “A move to Improve Community Relations,” Washington Afro American, August 27, 1968, 20; “Statement of Council Chairman John W. Hechinger concerning police-community relations at the City Council meeting July 16, 1968,” in “Report of the City Council Public Safety Committee on Police- Community Relations,” P 2341 Kiplinger Research Library Archives, Washington, D.C. 1145 “Transmittal and summary of report on police-community relations,” August 5, 1968, P 2341 “Report of the City Council Public Safety Committee on Police-Community Relations.” 1146 “Introductory Statement by Councilman William S. Thompson on the Booklet Concerning City council action on police-community relations,” Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations (Government of the District of Columbia City Council, 1968). P 2342, Kiplinger Library Archives.

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August 20, 1968, the City Council adopted the report as a statement of policy.1147

The urgency for action increased after the police killing of another black man at

14th and U on October 8th, 1968 sparked community outrage and nearly resulted in

another civil disorder.1148 In November, the City Council proposed several specific

measures to better police-community relations. To improve the grievance mechanism for

citizens and the police, the Council recommended creating a board composed of two

citizens and a police officer to hear complaints, determine “the facts” in the situation, and

set a punishment if necessary. Previously, a special trial board of one civilian attorney

and two police officers evaluated citizen complaints.1149 The Council also suggested a

precinct advisory board system. Each precinct board would have 9 members—seven

citizens and two police officers. The Committee would interview any new officers

coming into the precinct and those up for promotions, develop “comprehensive

community relations and crime prevention programs,” and “advise the Captain, the Chief,

the Public Safety Director…Mayor [and] Council regarding personnel and police

matters.” The Board would meet with the precinct captain at least monthly and the

captain would “give reasonable adherence to the advice of the board.” If its

recommendations were not followed, the board could ask the Police Chief and Public

1147 “Status Chart of Council Actions,” ii, Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations. 1148 “Coalition Demands Civilian Control of Police Officers,” Washington Afro American, October 15, 1968, 1. For his part, Mayor Washington then created an ad hoc committee on public safety to address the issue. The committee suggested “radical changes in the handling of homicide cases involving policemen,” according to the Washington Afro American. These included ending the coroner’s power to declare a homicide “justifiable” or not, ending the US Attorney’s power to present homicide cases to a grand jury since they believed they were too close to the police (a civil rights attorney from the Justice Department would do it instead), and more citizen control over police discipline and police use of firearms. See “Mayor’s Safety Committee Asks for sweeping changes,” Washington Afro American, October 29, 1968, 18. 1149 Later drafts of the bill also added lawyers for both the police and citizens making the complaints. “Statement of Mr. Thompson,” November 21, 1968, 32, 34-42, Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations.

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Safety Director to review the captain’s decision to ignore the Board’s recommendation.

As the City Council noted, the plan was “an attempt to structure a significant bargaining process on the part of the police captain and the community[.]” It was “not citizen control as the phrase is often used. But the powers are sufficient so that policies of the

Department can be carefully scrutinized by citizens[.]”1150

The City Council also considered legislation that would change the circumstances under which police officers could discharge their guns. “The regulations would require that an officer use only the minimum amount of force necessary to subdue a suspect,” said William S. Thompson, the chairman of the District of Columbia Public Safety

Committee. “In all cases an officer would be required to exhaust all reasonable means of apprehending a person before he could resort to deadly force.” Additionally, the measure would ban warning shots, firing weapons from a moving vehicle, and firing when attempting to apprehend a fleeing person for a misdemeanor or felony (except in very specific circumstances). The City Council believed that under their new guidelines, 6 out of the 17 recent instances of police shootings of civilians would have been prohibited and six more “would have been subject to investigation to determine whether the officer had been justified.” Further, two lives would have been saved.1151 The Washington Afro

American described the legislation as “stiff gun rules.”1152

The City Council’s consideration of these regulations “generated a great deal of public interest and debate.”1153 Police Chief Layton opposed the proposed guidelines

1150 Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations, 46-53. 1151 “Statement of William S. Thompson, November 21, 1968, Chairman of the District of Columbia Public Safety Committee,” Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations. 1152 “Council slaps stiff gun rules on cops,” Washington Afro American, December 28, 1968, 6. 1153 Statement of William S. Thompson, December 17, 1968: Chairman of the District of Columbia public Safety Committee,” Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations.

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although he agreed “there is a full realization of the need for strict control and

supervision of police officers in the use of their service revolvers.”1154 Many white

Washingtonians expressed the concern that the legislation would limit the ability of police officers to do their job and worsen the crime epidemic. “We were disappointed that we did not find any words in the report regarding the responsibilities of the individual citizen in maintenance of law and order,” read a statement passed by the

Federation of Civic Associations. “One might almost say that the emphasis in the report on the demand for changes in police actions and attitudes would lead one to think that lawlessness is the fault of the police.” It suggested that the “vast majority” of

Washingtonians supported the police and urged the Council to “give full support to the police from the top of the Government down…give short shift to those who attempt to downgrade the police to satisfy their own political aims.”1155

Eventually, the Council passed the police regulations on December 17 and the bill went to the mayor the following day.1156 Mayor Washington vetoed the bill. While he

agreed “in principal” with the regulation, the mayor explained, it presented “enforcement

problems from an administrative point of view and, in my opinion, must be clarified and

strengthened, particularly with respect of the meaning of ‘deadly force’ and the provision

relating to moving vehicles.” The mayor suggested the Council substitute the term

“physical force” for “deadly force,” allow warning shots in more circumstances, and

1154 John Layton, Memo, November 30, 1968, Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police- Community Relations. 1155 “Statement to D.C. Council’s Public Safety Committee on its Report on Police-Community Relations,” August 16, 1968, Federation of Citizens Associations Records, Collection 28, Box 2, Folder ““FCADC Office Files 1968-1969,” MLK. 1156 “Status Chart of Council Actions,” ii, Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations.

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expand the allowances for shooting at a vehicle.1157 This created a substantially broader

interpretation of when police weapons could be discharged. Hechinger refused to accept

the mayor’s proposed amendments because he believed it gave too many allowances. “I

say again—as I have said repeatedly before—that these guidelines in no way disarm or

handicap our police force!” he declared in response. “This police force at any strength

cannot do its job without the support of its citizens.”1158 The Council fell one vote short

of overriding Washington’s veto and later altered the legislation to incorporate the

Mayor’s revisions. Mayor Washington signed it into law on January 21, 1969.1159 While

the City Council passed the provision on community review boards and precinct boards,

Walter Washington did not act upon it as he considered them “recommendations” instead

of a requirement to implement.1160

There is no clear documentation of why Mayor Washington did not approve the

community review and precinct boards. The Council passed the provisions slightly more

than a month before President Nixon was inaugurated. Under the 1967 reorganization of

the D.C. government, the President appointed D.C.’s mayor-commissioner. Washington was likely wary of passing legislation that ceded some police control to the community right before the self-proclaimed “law and order candidate” determined if he would reappoint Washington as mayor. While Washington personally opposed many of Nixon’s suggestions to decrease D.C. crime, Nixon’s presidency likely influenced his position on

1157 Walter Washington, letter to Walter Fauntroy, December 28, 1968, 15; “Statement of Mr. Hechinger,” January 6, 1969, 16-17; Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations. 1158 “Statement of Mr. Hechinger,” January 14, 1969, 18, Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations.” 1159 “Status Chart of Council Actions,” ii, Report on City Council Actions to Improve Police-Community Relations.” 1160 John Hechinger, “Black and Blue: The D.C. City Council vs Police Brutality,” Washington History Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1999/2000, 4-22.

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police reform.

“With, By, and For the People:” The RLA, MICCO, and Citizen Participation

While most of the city’s redevelopment was orchestrated through a complicated process involving the D.C. government, the Department of Housing and Urban

Development, and the National Capital Planning Commission, the process in the Shaw neighborhood was controlled by the Redevelopment Land Agency. 1161 The RLA

established Northwest #1—an area bounded by 15th St. NW, Florida Ave NW, North

Capitol St, and M St NW—and designated it for urban renewal in the early 1960s. 1162

The RLA was a federal agency and had the power to buy land, condemn buildings, and purchase property in urban renewal areas like Northwest #1.1163

Civil rights leader and City Council member Walter Fauntroy had worked for

years to ensure that urban renewal in Shaw would take place “with, by, and for” its

residents.1164 Fauntroy created the Model Inner City Community Organization (MICCO)

in 1966 to seize the RLA’s provision for citizen input in planning and to demand

redevelopment occur on the terms of the community. MICCO’s membership was

comprised of nearly 150 citizen groups that included local churches, school Parent

Teacher Associations, and service organizations.1165 In March 1967, the RLA hired

MICCO to “involve the community in urban renewal planning” and help citizens draft

1161 Eugene Meyer, “City asks Funds for Riot Areas,” Washington Post, June 26, 1970. 1162 “Shaw School Urban Renewal Area,” Box 27, Folder 1: “Map, Shaw School Urban Renewal Area, n.d,.” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1163 Braestrup, “Fletcher: Riot Area Rebuilding on Target,” Washington Post; Day, “Urban Renewal: A Slow, Painful Process,” Washington Post. 1164 “MICCO and You,” Box 24, Folder 5: “Brochure, MICCO and You, n.d.” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1165 Elaine Barber Todd, “Urban Renewal in the Nation’s Capital: A history of the Redevelopment Land Agency in Washington, D.C., 1946-1973,” PhD Diss, Howard University, 1986, 200-201.

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their own proposals for renewal.1166 Although MICCO advised the RLA on rebuilding

Shaw, the RLA had sole authority over what developers it selected and plans it

adopted.1167

After much of the Shaw neighborhood was damaged in the disorders, the RLA

and MICCO crafted a plan to rebuild. This proposal would be implemented under the

Neighborhood Redevelopment Plan (NDP) program recently created by Congress as part

of the Housing Act of 1968. Through the NDP, neighborhoods created a long-term plan for the entire redevelopment of the community to guide future planning. The specific funding and year-to-year development projects were determined each year in different

“action programs.” Every year, the community and public agencies would create and approve the next year’s plan. Over time, the yearly incremental changes would “achieve the objectives set forth in the urban renewal plan for the whole area."1168

To formulate the long-term, overarching plan, MICCO surveyed community

residents by going door-to-door and holding community meetings. MICCO found that the

community wanted a housing plan that would “not force residents to move out of Shaw,”

“provide new and rehabilitated housing at rents they can afford,” “reduce overcrowding,”

provide maximum opportunity for home ownership, and minimize relocation.” 97% of

Shaw residents wanted to limit traffic to a few main streets. 97% of those surveyed

desired a subway station in their neighborhood and agreed that major business centers

1166 Eugene Meyer, “RLA Sets Bidding on Shaw Land,” Washington Post, November 11, 1971. Barber, “Urban Renewal in the Nation’s Capital,” 209, 229-230. 1167 Barber, “Urban Renewal in the Nation’s Capital,” 221. 1168 "14th Street Development" 1973, Box 35, Folder 1: “14th Street Development,” Walter Washington Papers. “The Shaw Urban Renewal Area Urban Renewal Plan and Annual Action Program,” BOX 27, Folder 4: “Plan, the Shaw Urban Renewal Area, c. 1969,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. “Annual Report 1970,” Box 27, Folder: “Annual Report 1970,” Walter Fauntroy Papers.

294 should be constructed around the stations. 100% agreed with MICCO’s proposal to put

“major public agencies like welfare, a health clinic, social security and local government offices in one central location in or near one of the major shopping areas.”1169

The resulting plan, approved by city and federal agencies in January 1969, reflected the desires of Shaw residents.1170 The plan focused on staged redevelopment that rehabilitated existing structures as opposed to razing entire blocks like in Southwest.

It would create “new and rehabilitated, low and moderate income housing, shopping malls, new schools, a job training center, a civic center and a clinic.”1171 As requested by the community, the plan developed “social services and community facilities within the

Shaw area” and would locate “major social services (such as health, welfare, and employment) at a centralized point, with other services (such as recreation spaces and day care facilities) being located throughout the area for convenience.”1172 The design further proposed new schools, a library, and parks. Traffic flowing through the community would be limited to specific areas. Shopping centers would be located around the proposed subway stop. Finally, the plan would create “new employment, job training, ownership and business opportunities for Shaw residents.”1173

The plan utilized the government and non-profit community groups to rebuild instead of private developers. The District government would buy land from the current property owners in damaged areas and then sell it to “non-profit sponsors,” primarily churches and community organizations, who were willing to improve the property in

1169 “Results of the MICCO Questionnaire,” Box 25, Folder 16: “Questionnaire, MICCO Community Results, c. 1968,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1170 Peter Braestrup, “Fletcher: Riot Area Rebuilding on Target,” Washington Post, April 13, 1969, 55. 1171 George Day, “Urban Renewal: A Slow, Painful Process,” Washington Post, July 2, 1969, C1. 1172 Status Report: First Action Year,” Box 26, Folder 1: “Report, First Action Year, c. 1968,” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1173 “The Shaw Urban Renewal Area Urban Renewal Plan and Annual Action Program,” Box 27, Folder 4: “Plan, the Shaw Urban Renewal Area, c. 1969,” Walter Fauntroy papers.

295 accordance with the city-approved redevelopment plan. The federal government

(specifically HUD) would provide ¾ of the money and D.C. the other ¼ to buy the property. Churches and other nonprofits could then buy the property at its fair market value from the government. The money paid by the non-profit groups could then be loaned back to the organization to help pay for construction in the form of a Federal

Housing Administration loan.1174

For NDP 1, the redevelopment plan for 1969-1970, the RLA would create four sites for renewal by purchasing property including riot-damaged buildings along 7th

Street and vacant lots. Further, the RLA would rehabilitate row houses through the

Turnkey III program. This initiative contracted outside organizations to fix up existing housing. Tenants could then pay an affordable rent that went toward eventual homeownership.1175 The biggest success of NDP 1 came when the RLA broke ground on the Lincoln Westmoreland apartment complex. Sponsored by two churches and designed by a firm of black architects, the project was the “first nonprofit, low-and moderate- income housing development built anywhere in the country under the provisions of the

1968 housing Act.”1176 NDP 2 aimed to build new housing for large families, replace the rest of the buildings on blocks where redevelopment started in the first year, tear down the worst housing in Shaw, and build a shopping center along 7th Street.1177 “The MICCO

1174 “Testimony of Edward C. Hromanik, Accompanied by Leo Schmittel,” 3159-3169, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. “The Shaw Urban Renewal Area Urban Renewal Plan and Annual Action Program,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. The Redevelopment Land Agency would administer the loan. 1175 “The Shaw Urban Renewal Area Urban Renewal Plan and Annual Action Program,” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1176 “Annual Report 1971,” Box 25, Folder 20: “Report, Annual Report, 1971,” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1177 “Statement of the Model Inner City Community Organization, Inc. The Reverend Walter E. Fauntroy, President/Director at the D.C. Council Public Hearings on the Proposed Second Urban Renewal Action Year For Shaw June 3, 1970,” Box 26, Folder 8: “Statement, 2nd Urban Renewal Action Year, June 30, 1970,” Walter Fauntroy papers.

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process’ really works,” proclaimed a pamphlet outlining the second year action plan.1178

The RLA’s support for citizen participation and “the MICCO process,” however,

was quickly eroding as projects faced worsening delays. By the summer of 1970, the

Lincoln Westmoreland remained the only new building under construction. Rebuilding

delays primarily resulted from two issues: relocating displaced people and funding. The

Redevelopment Land Agency was required by law to provide relocation housing for

residents who would be displaced by redevelopment before a project could begin. It was

increasingly difficult, however, to find adequate housing for relocation. In June 1970, for

example, a joint RLA-NCPC report found that the plan for the National Capital Housing

Authority to provide 1,000 units of housing for low-income rentals through subsidized leasing was in serious trouble because the NCHA was “bankrupt.” The RLA’s projects had counted on using those units to house the families that would be displaced by rebuilding in Shaw and on 14th Street.1179 "One of the major factors affecting our ability

to accelerate the development process and meet these schedules is the availability of

adequate relocation resources,” wrote D.C. RLA head Melvin Mister.1180 “The recent

expansion of the District's urban renewal activities under the Neighborhood Development

Program, and the extensive acquisition of occupied properties as part of the NDP, has

resulted in a tremendous increase in the Agency relocation workload.” 1181 By 1971, the

issue of insufficient relocation housing was so severe that Mister insisted that the RLA

1178 “2nd Action Year for Shaw,” Box 25, Folder 10: “Pamphlet, ‘2nd Action Year for Shaw,’ n.d.” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1179 Eugene L. Meyer, “Renewal Plan Cuts Foreseen,” Washington Post, June 22, 1970, B1. 1180 Letter to Terry C. Chisholn from Melvin Mister, June 4, 1971, Box 35, Folder 1: “14th Street Development," Walter E. Washington Papers. 1181 Letter to Terry C. Chisholn from Melvin Mister, June 4, 1971, Box 35, Folder 1: “14th Street Development," Walter E. Washington Papers.

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could not undertake any new rebuilding projects.1182

Additionally, the NDP process required the RLA to obtain funding every year but

securing funding became more difficult. To build low-income housing, developers relied upon federal mortgage subsidies from the FHA which reduced the cost of building. These cost reductions allowed developers to charge a lower rent so more people could afford the housing. Luis Vitt, the financing specialist for DC’s RLA branch, said “It’s impossible to construct housing that anyone can afford any other way.” Yet, Congress appropriated only $25 million dollars for the nation-wide program and $129.9 million worth of projects were already backlogged awaiting money. While low-income housing and urban renewal was planned and even approved in D.C., the funding did not exist.1183 In 1970,

President Nixon put a moratorium on new construction of subsidized housing, worsening

the funding crunch.1184 With little available money, RLA Director Mister struggled to

fund projects the RLA had already begun and the RLA greatly limited its proposals for

new undertakings.1185

In response to the very real obstacles to redevelopment and the resulting delays,

the RLA advocated solutions that countered the original intent of the community. The

RLA increasingly adopted policies that moved away from the community non-profit

development approach towards large, private companies. First, the RLA hired out a

renovation project to a housing consultant company. “Until now, the RLA has limited

rehabilitation to nonprofit sponsors,” noted the Post.”1186 Then, in July 1971, the RLA

1182 Letter to Walter Fauntroy from Melvin Mister, Box 24, Folder 36: “Correspondence, D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency, 1971-1972, 1974, n.d.” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1183 Robert J. Samuelson, “Low, Moderate Income Housing Stalls,” Washington Post, June 15, 1969, 53. 1184 5 Years Later: Riot Areas Not Rebuilt,” Washington Post, April 8, 1973. 1185 Letter to Walter Fauntroy from Melvin Mister, Box 24, Folder 36: “Correspondence, D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency, 1971-1972, 1974, n.d.” Walter Fauntroy Papers. 1186 Eugene L. Meyer, “D.C. Beings Independent Renewal Try,” Washington Post, December 17, 1968, D1.

298 proposed “[a] new housing plan for the Shaw area, designed to attract large, experienced developers to build in the riot-scarred area.” Instead of waiting for developers to come up with a proposal that could be negotiated and approved by the city and community, the

RLA would combine properties slated for renewal into larger parcels and select a developer through competitive bidding. The RLA contended that competitive bidding on parceled properties would speed up rebuilding, reduce costs, and improve the quality of housing: “The mere fact of competing made the prospective developers sharpen their pencils on costs, and sharpen their wits to produce the best possible benefits for the community.”1187 Some in Shaw worried that if RLA used a competitive bidding process, the non-profit sponsors slated to develop projects would not have the capital to win over private businesses.1188 “It seems that the community senses the danger of losing meaningful and fruitful community participation if competitive bidding is your choice,” said Rev. Earnest R. Gibson, pastor of the neighborhood’s First Rising Mt. Zion Baptist.

Despite the RLA’s efforts to lobby MICCO to support competitive bidding,

MICCO preferred a different approach. The organization had spent the last year negotiating a proposal with the Development Corporation of America (DCA) to develop the set of lots referred to as “Parcel A.” Fauntroy and MICCO believed the Boston-based firm “offered the community the best deal: Eventual ownership of land by two co- sponsoring Shaw churches; a development team selected with MICCO’s advice; employment of blacks at all levels, and 150 relocation units assured for displaced Shaw

1187 Letter to “MICCO Board Member” from James Woolfork, Box 24, folder 36: “Correspondence, D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency, 1971-1972, 1974, n.d.” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1188 “5 Years Later: Riot Areas Not Rebuilt,” Washington Post.

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residents in DCA’s Edgewood Terrace Apartments.”1189 Additionally, the DCA would

start work before the RLA could select a developer through competitive bidding.1190

Nevertheless, in November 1971, the RLA rejected MICCO’s proposal to develop

“Parcel A” with DCA and opened competitive bidding on the land.1191

The relationship between the RLA and MICCO subsequently quickly

deteriorated. In February 1972, the RLA made Walter Fauntroy’s resignation a

precondition to renewing MICCO’s contract as a community developer. Although the

RLA had previously concluded that Fauntroy could remain MICCO president after he

was elected as D.C.’s non-voting delegate to Congress, the Agency now insisted

Fauntroy’s position was too much of a conflict of interest. Fauntroy did resign and the

RLA renewed MICCO’s contract, but the partnership did not last long. In January 1973,

the RLA ended MICCO’s contract based on two different reports repudiating citizen

participation.1192 Later that year, the RLA recommended heavily curtailing community

participation and consolidating city planning power. “The present diffused

responsibilities for urban renewal planning as well as related community development

programming should be eliminated,” the RLA insisted. “The authority and responsibility

for approving plans should be clearly lodged in the Mayor and the City Council.”1193

The RLA’s erosion of support for community participation mirrored President

1189 Eugene L. Meyer, “RLA Sets Bidding on Shaw Land,” Washington Post, November 11, 1971, B1. Letter from Walter Fauntroy to Melvin Mister, July 12, 1971; Letter to Walter Fauntroy from Robert E. Tracey, August 30, 1971, Box 24, Folder 32: “Correspondence, Melvin Mister, July 12, 1971,” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1190 Letter to Melvin Mister from Walter Fauntroy, August 31, 1971; Letter to Walter Fauntroy from Robert E. Tracey, August 30, 1971, Box 24, Folder 32: “Correspondence, Melvin Mister, July 12, 1971,” Walter Fauntroy papers. 1191 Eugene L. Meyer, “RLA Sets Bidding on Shaw Land,” Washington Post, November 11, 1971, B1. 1192 Howard Gillette, Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 185-188. 1193 Letter to Walter Fauntroy form Melvin Mister, March 3, 1972, Box 24, folder 36: “Correspondence, D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency, 1971-1972, 1974, n.d.” Walter Fauntroy papers.

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Nixon’s opposition to the process. After Nixon toured the disturbance-damaged areas during his first month in office, he made it clear that he wanted “action” fast.

Specifically, Nixon insisted construction begin on 7th Street by September 1969.1194 On

April 9th, 1969, Nixon again called for faster rebuilding and promised D.C. $29.7 million to do so. “No wonder our citizens are beginning to question Government’s ability to perform,” Nixon chastised. “There could be no more searing symbol of governmental inability to act than those rubble-strewn lots and desolate, decaying buildings, once a vital part of a community’s life and now left to rot.”1195 Nixon blamed the slow progress on community participation: “Nixon Administration sources have said that citizen involvement in planning delays decision-making to appoint at which urban renewal has become intolerably slow.”1196 The president showed “little enthusiasm for ‘citizen participation” and “sought to return most of the power to city halls.”1197

Despite the repudiation of citizen participation and the insistence that private corporations would speed up rebuilding, the renewal process did not accelerate nor did the funding and relocation issues disappear. “The biggest problem in rebuilding has been this: the housing planned for all three riot corridors was mostly for moderate-income families earning between $6,000 and $13,000 a year, while most of those facing displacement were the poor,” Susan Jacoby wrote. “Without housing to accommodate the displaced, the program could only proceed so far.”1198 Private firms could not proceed since they could not find anywhere to place the current residents. The dire lack of

1194 Braestrup, “Fletcher: Riot Area Rebuilding on Target,” Washington Post. 1195 William Grider, “President Orders Aid to Riot Areas,” Washington Post, April 9, 1968, A1. 1196 Peter Braestrup and Carl Bernstein, “President Nixon…has promised me a…timetable under which the construction in these areas would begin next fall,” Washington Post, April 10, 1969, B1. 1197 Braestrup, “Even Messy ‘Model Cities’ Programs Beat a Riot,” Washington Post. Kirk Scharfenberg, “Model Cities’ Aid Revised,” Washington Post, March 1, 1972, C1. 1198 “5 Years Later: Riot Areas Not Rebuilt,” Washington Post.

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housing for displaced families was only made worse in 1973 when Nixon announced

federal cuts to many urban programs including low and moderate-income housing

programs and urban renewal. Nixon further imposed a moratorium on subsidized housing

construction, affecting private developers who also relied on federal loans and grants to

build the housing.1199 Reginald Greene of the D.C. Development of Housing and

Community Development Center commented that “There’s just not enough money to do

the kinds of things that need to be done. There was no real eagerness on the part of

private investors to invest in the city after the riots and civil disturbances.”1200

Ten years after the disturbances, all completed housing was non-profit sponsored and a community-planned project. In Shaw, the Lincoln-Westmoreland apartment

complex and housing built by the First Rising Mt. Zion Baptist, the New Bethel Baptist,

the Deliverance Church of God in Christ, the Immaculate Conception church, and the

United House of Prayer were complete.1201 On H Street NE, the Horning Brothers/Group

Ministry Community Housing Corporation built housing in several different locations.

On 14th Street, the completed Columbia Heights Village project was created by the

CHANGE—All Souls Housing Corporation, a shared undertaking between the All Souls

church and a Great Society-created antipoverty community group.1202 “During the past

few years, some of the largest housing developments in the City have come through the

cooperation and sponsorship of church and community coalitions working with the city

government,” summarized a report on the city’s progress ten years later. “These groups

1199 “5 Years Later: Riot Areas Not Rebuilt, Washington Post. 1200 Patricia Camp, “14th Street Struggles Back from Riot,” Washington Post, April 3, 1978, A1. 1201 Walter Washington, Ten Years Since April 4, 1968: A Decade of Progress for the District of Columbia, 6-7; Kiplinger Research Library. 1202 Camp, “14th Street Struggles Back from Riot,” Washington Post. Washington, Ten Years Since April 4, 1968, 7-8.

302 have done tremendous amounts of work to plan with the city for housing to meet the needs of the community.”1203 In the same report, the section labeled “Private Sector

Activities” only listed projects “underway or planned.” Despite the RLA’s insistence that private bidding would speed up reconstruction, the only completed projects originated from the original, community-driven blueprints.1204 The process, however, destroyed the public’s confidence in urban renewal after the second attempt failed to produce the results the community had demanded. Urban renewal in the capital “totally lost credibility among all elements of the community,” a citizens’ commission appointed by the City Council found. The panel concluded the urban renewal had “lost the confidence of the people of our neighborhoods, our businessmen, our professionals, and, in fact, most of those public officials who are charged with its responsibility.”1205

In the wake of the disorders, D.C. embarked on an ambitious plan to reconstruct its damaged neighborhoods based on citizen input and by utilizing community organizations. Instead of rejecting liberalism, these initiatives embraced it. D.C. officials and activists alike hoped that the process would generate jobs for African Americans, provide quality housing for low-income Washingtonians, and create a beautiful community out of the riot ruins. Federal support of community participation and non- profit sponsors quickly dissipated as Nixon and the RLA did not obtain the quick results they unrealistically expected. Washingtonians’ efforts to reform the police and rebuild

Shaw broaden our understanding of how cities reacted to urban unrest.

Conclusion

Too often, histories of the late 1960s present the period as one of urban decline,

1203 Washington, Ten Years Since April 4, 1968, 9. 1204 Washington, Ten Years Since April 4, 1968, 10. 1205 Eugene L. Meyer, “Credibility Lost,” Washington Post, September 28, 1972, C1.

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white backlash, and turmoil. Of course, the anger of many white Americans at crime and

urban rebellions and their rejection of Great Society liberalism certainly shaped this

period. Nixon made D.C. crime a focal point of his 1968 presidential campaign. Once in

office, Nixon turned D.C. into a “model” of “law and order” programs. Washingtonians

often opposed Nixon’s efforts and rhetoric and liberal and radical leaders worked to

resolve the root causes of urban unrest as they designed plans to rebuild the capital. Many

black radicals in Washington worked with the government to plan the reconstruction

instead of abandoning community organizing. The federal government’s control over the

capital limited the success of police reform and community-driven rebuilding in Shaw.

After Washingtonians successfully lobbied for limited home rule, D.C. ingrained the importance of citizen participation into its new government and passed many reforms with the intention of curtailing economic and racial inequality. Thus, the aftermath of the civil disorders is certainly not simple. Emphasizing the complexity of the political response to urban unrest improves and complicates the narrative of urban decline.

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Conclusion

“Fifty years after burning in the riots, 14th Street is a glittering stretch of

gentrified DC,” proclaimed Marisa Kashino in Washingtonian magazine on the 50th

anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. Although the “14th Street corridor lay

in ruin” in 1968,

Fifty years later, it’s all hard to picture. On the corner of 14th and R, studio apartments start at $2,100 a month in a building that once was a homeless shelter; on the ground floor, a [luxury goods] Shinola store hawks $800 watches. A block away, Teslas and Range Rovers queue at the valet stand outside the French restaurant Le Diplomate, once the crumbling shell of a dry cleaner. Up at T Street, an old auto showroom used for decades as a black Pentecostal church now houses [upscale furniture store] Room & Board.1206 Writing to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the civil disturbances ten years earlier,

Paul Schwartzman and Robert Pierre of the Washington Post similarly contrasted the

D.C.’s past and present. “The intersection where it all began that catastrophic night, the once-ragged corner of 14th and U streets, is now a crossroads at the center of Washington

affluence.” The other two “riot-corridors” were also transformed from “beyond

desperate” to thriving neighborhoods: Seventh Street became “a neon-lit pathway lined

with boutiques, taverns, restaurants serving fusion cuisine and a world-class convention

center;” H Street boasted $1 million condos and nightclubs “throb[ing] with the young

and hip.” D.C., Schwartzman and Pierre proclaimed, had transitioned from “ruin to

rebirth.”1207

This narrative of the “revitalization,” “rebirth,” “renewal, or “renaissance” of

Washington and other American cities credits private businesses and real estate investors

1206 Marisa M. Kashino, “The Reinvention of 14th Street: A History,” April 4, 2018, Washingtonian, https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/04/04/how-14th-street-came-back-reinvention-a-history/. 1207 Paul Schwartzman and Robert E. Pierre, “From Ruin to Rebirth in D.C.,” Washington Post, April 6, 2008.

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for the changes in urban neighborhoods.1208 Schwartzman and Pierre attributed Shaw’s

transformation to developers who “rediscovered cities:” “Boarded-up husks and rubble- strewn lots were reborn as faux-loft apartments, luring white professionals to predominantly black neighborhoods.”1209 A 1993 Post article suggested private business

had succeeded where the government failed:

At a time when cities nationally are scavenging for ways to salvage blighted areas, the U Street corridor is emerging as an illustration of urban renewal occurring largely without city subsidies, federal financing or the blueprints of urban planners. Instead, the revival is being led by an eclectic group of young entrepreneurs…and other investors who have been closely watching the area’s demographic shifts for years. Their efforts could make U Street…the first commercial area in the city to recover from the torching and looting that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination 25 years ago this month.1210 To Luci Blackbrun, a senior manager in the D.C. Housing and Development Department,

the arrival of restaurant chains such as Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts was

“‘confirmation’ of the rebirth of U Street.”1211 Gay Jervey, writing for the New York

Times real estate section, posited skyrocketing real estate values demonstrated that D.C.

had recovered from the urban insurrections. After describing the property destruction of

1968, Jervey contended that “the U Street Corridor has since had a rebirth. ‘In the last six

years, real estate values have nearly quadrupled[.]’”1212 The wealth of the neighborhood

and the businesses within it are used as barometers of a community’s health.

Gentrification, or the process where “affluent residents replace those of more

1208 For more on neoliberalism and gentrification, see Sabiyha Prince, African Americans and Gentrification in Washington, D.C.: Race, Class and Social Justice in the Nation’s Capital (New York: Routledge, 2014); Brandi Thompson Summers, “H Street, Main Street, and the Aesthetics of Cool,” in Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, D.C., eds. Derek Hyra and Sabiyha Prince (New York: Routledge, 2016). 1209 Schwartzman and Pierre, “From Ruin to Rebirth in D.C.,” Washington Post. 1210 Rene Sanchez and Liz Spayd, “U Street, New Street?” Washington Post, April 11, 1995, A1. 1211 Linda Wheeler, “A Whole New U: Businesses Spring Up Along Historic Street in NW,” Washington Post, December 26, 1995, B1. 1212 “A Reviatlization for Washington’s U Street Corridor,” New York Times, June 12, 2005.

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modest means, especially as housing markets heat up,”1213 has certainly transformed

Washington, D.C. While African Americans comprised 90% of the U Street/Shaw

neighborhood’s population in 1970, by 2010, 53% of its residents were white.1214 Black

Washingtonians comprised over 70% of D.C.’s population in 1970; in 2011, D.C.’s black

population dipped below 50%.1215 After an influx of young professionals—often white—

D.C. has one of the highest medium incomes in the nation. Simultaneously, one in five

Washingtonians live in poverty.1216 The rapid rise in real estate prices and changing

demographics have displaced many long-term African American Washingtonians both

residentially and culturally.1217 To Kenneth Tolliver, an African American who grew up

in Shaw, gentrification felt like losing his home and history:

Man, I walk my block [I grew up on] on occasion for a nostalgia trip, and on a couple of occasions I’ve gotten looks, like, you know, because I walk slow and I may have stopped in front of the house I used to live in, like…What am I doing here? That’s an eerie feeling. I walk through the back yard and the bricks that I helped the guy up the street lay are still there—we put a patio down with dirt, a brick patio—and think about the cookouts they used to have, you know, how nice it used to be to sit out back and stuff. Now it’s like I’m a stranger in my own home.1218 When asked if Shaw today was “more friendly” or “better off economically” than it used

to be, black Washingtonian Elizabeth Williams Frazier replied, “Economically, yes. More

friendly?...No.”1219

1213 Howard Gillette, “Introduction,” in Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, D.C., 2. 1214 Derek Hyra, Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 8. 1215 Gillette, Introduction, in Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, D.C., 5; Derek Hyra and Sabiyha Prince, “Forward” in Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, D.C. xiv; Prince, Gentrification in Washington, D.C., 3. 1216 Hyra and Prince, “Forward,” in Capital Dilemma, xiv. 1217 Hyra, Race and Politics in the Cappuccino City, 12-13. 1218 “Kenneth Tolliver interview,” South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives: http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/196/show/189/rec/1 1219 “Elizabeth Williams Frazier interview transcript,” April 2012, South of U Oral History Project- Life, Riots and Renewal in Shaw, Dig DC archives, http://digdc.dclibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16808coll9/id/227/rec/42.

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An entire literature has emerged examining gentrification and its impact on D.C.

Scholars often focus on the former “riot corridors,” especially 14th Street, in their studies.

Sabiyha Prince, Derek Hyra, Brandi Thompson Summers, Gabriella Gahlia Modan, Brett

Williams, Greg Squires, and others have analyzed D.C.’s transition from “Chocolate

City” to “Cappuccino City.”1220 In Capital Dilemma, editors Sabiyha Prince and Derek

Hyra brought together a wide range of academics to help foster a “DC school” of urban studies. Historians, sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, urban planners, and sociologists examined the “dilemma confronting the people living in and governing the nation…meeting the challenge of fostering urban revitalization while directly and simultaneously addressing the problem of existing social hierarchies.”1221 These scholars take a critical approach to gentrification to explore “the formation of hierarchies and how diverse populations have been differentially impacted during these decades of marked change.”1222 By exploring “the tension between growth and inequality,” D.C. gentrification literature challenges the triumphant narrative of privatized “rebirth” and documents the inequality and displacement that often accompanies “revitalization” in the areas damaged in 1968.

This dissertation also complicates D.C.’s “urban renaissance” by illuminating the efforts of Washingtonians who worked to rebuild D.C. long before private businesses

1220 See Sabiyha Prince, African Americans and Gentrification in Washington, D.C.: Race, Class and Social Justice in the Nation’s Capital (New York: Routledge, 2014); Derek Hyra, Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Sabiyha Prince and Derek Hyra, eds., Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington, D.C. (New York: Routledge, 2016); Gabriella Gahlia Modan, Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); Brett Williams, Upscaling Downtown: Stalled Gentrification in Washington, D.C.(New York: Cornell University Press: 1988); Gregory D. Squires and Charis E. Kubrin, "Privileged Places: Race, Uneven Development, and the Geography of Opportunity in Urban America," Urban Studies 42, (1), 2005: 47-68. 1221 Hyra and Prince, “Forward,” in Capital Dilemma, xv. 1222 Hyra and Prince, “Forward,” in Capital Dilemma, xiii.

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considered urban areas a “hot market.” While many groups who fled urban centers in the

wake of desegregation, urban violence, and high crime rates are now “rediscovering” the

city, hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians never left. D.C. did not lie in hopeless

ruins, waiting passively for loft apartments, fusion cuisine, and hipster coffee shops to

save it. Determined leaders proclaimed they “believed in the city” and generated

partnerships between the government, community organizations, and citizens with the

goal of creating a racially and economically just capital.

This dissertation builds upon the work of other scholars to complicate several narratives of the late 1960s. I highlight the political aspects of the disturbances and connect the events to the demands of decades of prior activism. The civil disorders challenged the same powerful institutions that generations of activists had previously picketed, boycotted, and sued. The participants most commonly attacked the most accessible representations of white people’s power over black communities: white-owned and/or operated stores, white commuter highways “occupying” police forces, and (rarely) individual white people. Black Washingtonians had targeted these manifestations of the

“power structure” as they demanded freedom, economic opportunities, good education, accountable policing, voting rights, and political power for over a century. African

Americans ran for office in D.C. during Reconstruction, they operated businesses along

U Street to foster economic power within the black community, and they defended their neighborhoods with arms during the 1919 race riots. Black Washingtonians picketed and boycotted white businesses to protest employment discrimination as part of the “Don’t

Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign in the 1930s. Pauli Murray, the Coordinating

Committee for the Enforcement of the DC Anti-Discrimination Laws, Julius Hobson, the

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Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), and the Associated Community Teams (ACT) all mobilized black Washingtonians against white businesses to oppose segregation and gain employment opportunities. Free D.C. instructed Washingtonians to boycott small white- owned businesses in Shaw and along H Street who refused to back home rule.

Organizations like the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis (ECTC) and the Model Inner City Citizens Organization (MICCO) criticized city planning that displaced black residents for the benefit of white Washingtonians. Prior to 1968, the city nearly erupted in riots several times as citizens protested police brutality and abuse of power. Thus, the 1968 upheaval was not a radical break from previous civil rights activism or the dawning of the “Black Power Era:” the urban violence predominantly affected the institutions that both moderates and militants had long worked to change.

This, of course, does not mean that all participants were politically motivated or that all damage carried a revolutionary message. Civil disorders, riots, and/or rebellions are complex events that cannot be compressed into a single, coherent narrative. The human element of such events and the complexity of individuals, even if unified by race and class, must be preserved. This dissertation carefully incorporates oral histories and first-person accounts beyond the official record of the state to bolster our understanding of the complexities of the historical moment. Different people participated for different reasons and despite the desire by many for “the people” to speak with one voice, they did not. Nevertheless, leaders across the political spectrum used the disorders to push their preexisting agendas. This point is not a criticism of those who harnessed the upheaval to demand racial and economic equality, but rather an examination of how urban violence translated into political advocacy and change.

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In the aftermath, government officials and citizens alike agreed that D.C. must

“rebuild politically, socially, as well as physically.”1223 The mayor, D.C. Council, community organizations, and citizens loosely agreed on process that prioritized community participation and black economic development and would alleviate the economic and racial inequalities they considered the root causes of unrest. This framework utilized, or at least reclaimed, the preexisting principles and programs of liberalism such as “maximum feasible participation,” piecemeal urban renewal, Model

Cities, and the United Planning Organization. Black Power leaders and organizations often worked within these liberal institutions to advocate for black autonomy and economic development. Radical organizations often believed that to realistically achieve self-determination and political power, it would take the financing and support of white liberal institutions.

While this work broadens the narrative of 1968 beyond reactionary calls for “law and order,” it simultaneously contributes to the study of the “long backlash” to the black freedom movement. As shown in chapter 1, leaders used crime statistics to oppose black freedom long before George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and “the New Jim Crow” of mass incarceration.1224 Even when crime in D.C. was lower or comparable to that of other urban areas, politicians claimed criminal activity in the capital demonstrated that desegregation was a failure and that black people could not govern. Additionally, while many cities militarized their police forces in response to the growing threat of urban insurrections after the “long, hot summer” of 1967, not every city prioritized armaments.

1223 “Sees city’s chance for new identity,” Washington Afro American, April 16, 1968, 1, https://news.google.com/newspapers/p/afro?nid=BeIT3YV5QzEC&dat=19680416&printsec=frontpage&hl =en. 1224 See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010).

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D.C. chose to prepare itself for civil disturbances by better training their officers and

emphasizing restraint. Despite repeated calls to shoot participants, the D.C. police

adopted a policy of minimal force. While the administration of justice was certainly

tainted by the same systemic racism many participants protested, the D.C. courts

respected citizens’ due process rights and primarily delivered relatively lenient sentences.

As civil rights activist and future mayor Marion Barry declared at a D.C. Council

hearing in May 1968, the civil disorders “created a vacuum and an opportunity.”

Something would be done to reconstruct the damaged sections, but it remained to be determined “what and how and by whom. More importantly, will what is done correct the basic situation that created the need for…the rebellions?”1225 This dissertation tells the

stories of the Washingtonians who ambitiously seized the “opportunity” to rebuild the

capital so that it would protect and foster black political and economic power. “I believe

in the city,” they asserted. “I believe in the people.”

1225 “Statement of Carroll Harvey, Executive Director, Pride, Inc., Accompanied by Marion Barry, Director of Operations Pride, Inc.,” 149-150, Rehabilitation of District of Columbia Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders.

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