returned to the Special Services Office. After talking to the youngsters again, Dr. Reid left to attend a meeting elsewhere.

Soon after, some of the youngsters headed for the junior high school, where the meeting protesting the Frakes arrest and the antiloitering ordinance was scheduled to take place.

The police department, alerted to the possibility of a disturbance, mobilized. However, the police were wary of becoming, as some Negro militants had complained, an inciting factor. Some months earlier, when Ku Klux Klansmen had been attracted to the scene of a speech by Stokely Carmichael, a Negro crowd, reacting to the heavy police patrolling, had gathered about the car of a plainclothesman and attempted to overturn it. On Monday, June 12, the department decided to withhold its men from the immediate area of the meeting.

It appeared for a time as if this policy might be rewarded. Near the end of the rally, however, a Negro real estate broker arose to defend the police and the antiloitering ordinance. The crowd, including the youngsters who had had the encounter with the police officers only a short time earlier, was incensed. When the meeting broke up, a missile was hurled through the window of a nearby church. A small fire was set in the street. A Molotov cocktail was thrown through the window of a drug store.

The police were able to react quickly. There was only one major confrontation between them and the mob. Little resistance was offered.

Although windows were broken in some two dozen stores, there was virtually no looting. There were 14 arrests, some unconnected with the disturbance. Among those arrested was a community worker, now studying for a doctorate at Brandeis University. When he went to the area to help get people off the streets, he was arrested and charged with loitering.

The next morning, a judge of the Municipal Court, before whom most of the persons charged were to be brought, said he intended to mete out the maximum sentence to anyone found guilty of a riot-connected offense. Although the judge later told the Commission that he knew his statement was a "violation of judicial ethics," he said that he made it because the "city was in a state of siege," and he intended it to act as a deterrent against further violence.

Maximum sentences were, in fact, pronounced by the judge on all convicted in his court, regardless of the circumstances of the arrest, or the background of the persons arrested. Police were charging most white persons arrested with disorderly conduct-for which the maximum sentence is 30 days in jail and a $100 fine. Many Negroes, however, were charged with violation of the Riot Act-for which the maximum sentence is 1 year in jail plus a $500 fine. Consequently, a major portion of the Negro community viewed this

as an example of discriminatory justice.

Tuesday morning, Negro leaders presented a list of 11 demands and grievances stemming from the Monday night meeting to the municipal government. Included were demands for repeal of the antiloitering law, release of all prisoners arrested during the disturbance, full employment for Negroes, and equal justice in the courts.

Municipal officials agreed that the city council would consider the demands. However, they rejected a suggestion that they attend an open-air meeting of residents in the Avondale section. City leaders did not want to give stature to the militants by recognizing them as the de facto representatives of the community. Yet, by all indications, the militants were the only persons with influence on the people on the streets.

Mayor Walton H. Bachrach declared that he was "quite surprised" by the disturbance because the council had "worked like hell" to help Negroes. Municipal officials, whose contacts were, as in other cities, generally with a few middle-class Negroes, appeared not to realize the volatile frustrations of Negroes in the ghetto.

Early in the evening a crowd, consisting mostly of teenagers and young adults, began to gather in the Avondale District. When, after a short time, no one appeared to give direction, they began to mill about. A few minutes before 7 p.m., cars were stoned and windows were broken. Police moved in to disperse the gathering.

Fires were set. When firemen reached the scene they were barraged with rocks and bottles. A full-scale confrontation took place between police riot squads and the Negro crowd. As police swept the streets, people scattered. According to the chief of police, at approximately 7: 15, "All hell broke loose."

The disorder leaped to other sections of the city. The confusion and rapidity with which it spread made it almost impossible to determine its scope.

Many reports of fires set by Molotov cocktails, cars being stoned, and windows being broken were received by the police. A white motorist-who died 3 weeks later and a Negro sitting on his porch suffered gunshot wounds. Rumors spread of Negro gangs raiding white neighborhoods, of shootings, and of organization of the riot. Nearly all of them were determined later to be unfounded.

At 9:40 p.m., following a request for aid to surrounding communities, Mayor Bachrach placed a call to the Governor asking for mobilization of the National Guard.

At 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, the first Guard units appeared on the streets. They followed a policy of restraint in the use of weapons. Few shots were fired. Two hours later, the streets were quiet. Most of the damage was minor. Of 40-odd fires reported before dawn, only 11 resulted in a loss of more than $1,000.

The fire department log listed four as having caused major damage.

That afternoon, the city council held an open session. The chamber was jammed with Negro residents, many of whom gave vociferous support as their spokesman criticized the city administration. When the audience became unruly, a detail of National Guardsmen was stationed outside the council chamber. Their presence resulted in a misunderstanding, causing many of the Negroes to walk out and the meeting to end.

Wednesday night, there were virtually no reports of riotous activity until 9 p.m., when scattered incidents of violence again began to take place. One person was injured by a gunshot.

Despite fears of a clash between Negroes and SAMS-white Southern Appalachian migrants whose economic conditions paralleled those of Negroes—such a clash was averted.

H. "Rap" Brown, arriving in the city on Thursday, attempted to capitalize on the discontent by presenting a list of 20 "demands." Their principal effect would

III. ATLANTA

On Saturday, June 17, as the National Guard was being withdrawn from Cincinnati, the same type of minor police arrest that had initiated the Cincinnati riot took place in Atlanta.

Rapid industrialization following World War II, coupled with annexations that quadrupled the area of the city, had made Atlanta a vigorous and booming community. Pragmatic business and political leaders worked to give it a reputation as the moderate stronghold of the Deep South.

Nevertheless, despite acceptance, in principle, of integration of schools and facilities, the fact that the city is the headquarters both for civil rights organizations and segregationist elements created a strong and ever-present potential for conflict.

The rapidly growing Negro population, which, by the summer of 1967 had reached an estimated 44 percent, and was scattered in several ghettos throughout the city, was maintaining constant pressure on surrounding white residential areas. Some real estate agents engaged in "block-busting tactics" to stimulate panic sales by white homeowners. The city police were continually on the alert to keep marches and countermarches of civil rights and white supremacist organizations from flaring into violence.

2

In September 1966, following a fatal shooting by a police officer of a Negro auto thief who was resisting arrest, only the dramatic ghetto appearance of Mayor

A block is considered to have been "busted" when one Negro family has been sold a home in a previously all-white

area.

have been total removal of all white persons, whatever their capacity, from the ghetto area. Demand No. 18 stated that "at any meeting to settle grievances any white proposal or white representative objected to by black representatives must be rejected automatically." No. 20 demanded a veto power over police officers patrolling the community.

His appearance had no galvanizing effect. Although scattered incidents occurred for 3 days after the arrival of the National Guard, the disorder never returned to its early intensity.

Of 63 reported injuries, 12 were serious enough to require hospitalization; 56 of the persons injured were white. Most of the injuries resulted from thrown objects or glass splinters. Of the 107 persons arrested Tuesday night, when the main disturbance took place, 75 were 21 years of age or younger. Of the total of 404 persons arrested, 128 were juveniles, and 338 were 26 years of age or younger. Of the adults arrested, 29 percent were unemployed.

Ivan Allen, Jr., had averted a riot.

Boasting that Atlanta had the largest KKK membership in the country, the Klan, on June 4, 1967, marched through one of the poorer Negro sections. A massive police escort prevented a racial clash.

According to Mayor Allen, 55 percent of municipal employees hired in 1967 were Negroes, bringing their proportion of the city work force to 28 percent. Of 908 police department employees, 85 are Negro-a higher proportion of Negroes than in most major city police departments in the Nation.

To the Negro community, however, it appeared that the progress made served only to reduce the level of inequality. Equal conditions for blacks and whites remained a hope for the future. Different pay scales for black and white municipal employees performing the same jobs had been only recently eliminated.

The economic and educational gap between the black and white populations may, in fact, have been increasing. The average white Atlantan was a high school graduate; the average Negro Atlantan had not completed the eighth grade.

In 1960, the median income of a Negro family was less than half of the white's $6,350 a year, and 48 percent of Negro families earned less than $3,000 a year. Fifty percent of the men worked in unskilled jobs, and many more Negro women than men, 7.9 percent as against 4.9 percent of the respective work forces, held well-paying, white collar jobs.

Living on marginal incomes in cramped and deteriorating quarters-one-third of the housing was overcrowded and more than half substandard-fami

lies were breaking up at an increasing rate. In approximately four out of every 10 Negro homes the father was missing. In the case of families living in public housing projects, more than 60 percent are headed by females.

Mayor Allen estimated there were 25,000 jobs in the city waiting to be filled because people lacked the education or skills to fill them. Yet overcrowding in many Negro schools forced the scheduling of extended and double sessions. Although Negroes comprised 60 percent of the school population, there were 14 "white" high schools compared to nine Negro.

The city has integrated its schools, but de facto segregation as a result of housing patterns has had the effect of continuing separate schooling of nearly all white and Negro pupils. White high school students attended classes 61/2 hours a day; Negroes in high schools with double sessions attended 412.

One Atlanta newspaper continued to advertise jobs by race, and in some industrial plants there were "Negro" jobs and "white" jobs with little chance for advancement by Negroes.

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 17, a young Negro, E. W., carrying a can of beer, attempted to enter the Flamingo Grill in the Dixie Hills Shopping Center. When a Negro security guard told the youth he could not enter, a scuffle ensued. Police officers were called to the guard's aid. E. W. received help from his 19-year-old sister, who flailed away at the officers with her purse. Another 19-year-old Negro youth entered the fray. All three were arrested.

Although some 200 to 300 persons had been drawn to the scene of the incident, when police asked them to disperse, they complied.

Because the area is isolated from the city in terms of transportation, and there are few recreational facilities, the shopping center is a natural gathering place. The next night, Sunday, an even bigger crowd was on hand.

As they mingled, residents discussed their grievances. They were bitter about their inability to get the city government to correct conditions and make improvements. Garbage sometimes was not picked up for 2 weeks in succession. Overflowing garbage cans, littered streets, and cluttered empty lots were breeding grounds for rats. Inadequate storm drains led to flooded streets. Although residents had obtained title to several empty lots for use as playgrounds, the city failed to provide the equipment and men necessary to convert them.

The area lacked a swimming pool. A nearby park was inaccessible because of the lack of a road. Petitions submitted to the mayor's office for the correcting of these and other conditions were acknowledged, but not acted upon.

Since only one of the 16 aldermen was a Negro, and a number of black wards were represented by white aldermen, many Negroes felt they were not being properly represented on the city government. The small

number of elected Negro officials appeared to be due to a system in which aldermen are elected at large, but represent specific wards, and must reside in the wards from which they are elected. Because of the quilted pattern of black-white housing, white candidates were able to meet the residency requirements for running from predominantly Negro wards. Since, however, candidates are dependent upon the city-wide vote for election, and the city has a white majority, few Negroes had been able to attain office.

A decision was made by the Dixie Hills residents to organize committees and hold a protest meeting the next night.

The headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is located in Atlanta. Its former president, Stokely Carmichael, wearing a green Malcolm X sweatshirt, appeared, together with several companions. Approaching a police captain, Carmichael asked why there were so many police cars in the area. Informed that they were there to make sure there was no disturbance, Carmichael, clapping his hands, declared in a sing-song voice that there might have to be a riot if the police cars were not removed. When Carmichael refused to move on as requested, he was arrested.

Soon released on bail, the next morning Carmichael declared that the black people were preparing to resist "armed aggression" by the police by whatever means necessary.

Shortly thereafter in the Dixie Hills Shopping Center, which had been closed down for the day, a Negro youth, using a broom handle, began to pound on the outside bell of a burglar alarm that had been set off, apparently, by a short circuit. Police officers responded to the alarm and ordered him to stop hitting the bell. A scuffle ensued. Several bystanders intervened. One of the officers drew his service revolver and fired, superficially wounding the young man.

Tension rose. Approximately 250 persons were present at that evening's meeting. When a number of Negro leaders urged the submission of a petition of grievances through legal channels, the response was lukewarm. When Carmichael took to the podium, urging Negroes "to take to the streets and force the police department to work until they fall in their tracks," the response was tumultuous.

The press quoted him as saying: "It's not a question of law and order. We are not concerned with peace. We are concerned with the liberation of black people. We have to build a revolution."

As the people present at the meeting poured into the street, they were joined by others. The crowd soon numbered an estimated 1,000. From alleys and rooftops rocks and bottles were thrown at the nine police officers on the scene. Windows of police cars were broken. Firecrackers exploded in the darkness. Police believe they may have been fired on.

Reinforced by approximately 60 to 70 officers, the police, firing over the heads of the crowd, quickly regained control. Of the 10 persons arrested, six were 21 years of age or younger; only one was in his thirties. The next day city equipment appeared in the area to begin work on the long-delayed playgrounds and other projects demanded by the citizens. It was announced that a Negro youth patrol would be established along the lines of the Tampa White Hats.

SNCC responded that volunteers for the patrol would be selling their "black brothers out" and would be viewed as "black traitors," to be dealt with in the "manner we see fit." Nevertheless, during the course of the summer, the 200 youths participating in the corps played an important role in preventing a serious outbreak. The police believe that establishment of the youth corps became a major factor in improving policecommunity relations.

Another meeting of area residents was called for Tuesday evening. At its conclusion, 200 protesters were met by 300 police officers. As two police officers chased several boys down the street, a cherry bomb or

IV. NEWARK

The last outburst in Atlanta occurred on Tuesday night, June 20. That same night, in Newark, N.J., a tumultuous meeting of the planning board took place. Until 4 a.m., speaker after speaker from the Negro ghetto arose to denounce the city's intent to turn over 150 acres in the heart of the central ward as a site for the State's new medical and dental college.

The growing opposition to the city administration by vocal black residents had paralyzed both the planning board and the board of education. Tension had. been rising so steadily throughout the northern New Jersey area that, in the first week of June, Col. David Kelly, head of the state police, had met with municipal police chiefs to draw up plans for state police support of city police wherever a riot developed. Nowhere was the tension greater than in Newark.

Founded in 1666, the city, part of the Greater New York City port complex, rises from the salt marshes of the Passaic River. Although in 1967 Newark's population of 400,000 still ranked it 30th among American municipalities, for the past 20 years the white middle class had been deserting the city for the suburbs.

In the late 1950's, the desertions had become a rout. Between 1960 and 1967, the city lost a net total of more than 70,000 white residents. Replacing them in vast areas of dilapidated housing where living conditions, according to a prominent member of the County Bar Association, were so bad that "people would be kinder to their pets," were Negro migrants, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. In 6 years, the city switched from

incendiary device exploded at the officers' feet. In response, several shots were fired from a group of police consisting mostly of Negro officers. The discharge from a shotgun struck in the midst of several persons sitting on the front porch of a house. A 46-year old man was killed; a 9-year old boy was critically injured.

Because of the efforts of neighborhood and antipoverty workers who circulated through the area, and the later appearance of Mayor Allen, no further violence ensued.

When H. "Rap" Brown, who had returned to the city that afternoon, went to other Negro areas in an attempt to initiate a demonstration against the shooting of the Negroes on the porch, he met with no response.

Within the next few days, a petition was drawn up by State Senator Leroy Johnson and other moderate Negro leaders demanding that Stokely Carmichael get out of the community and allow the people to handle their own affairs. It was signed by more than 1,000 persons in the Dixie Hills area.

65 percent white to 52 percent Negro and 10 percent Puerto Rican and Cuban.

The white population, nevertheless, retained political control of the city. On both the city council and the board of education, seven of nine members were white. In other key boards, the disparity was equal or greater. In the central ward, where the medical college controversy raged, the Negro constituents and their white councilman found themselves on opposite sides of almost every crucial issue.

The municipal administration lacked the ability to respond quickly enough to navigate the swiftly changing currents. Even had it had great astuteness, it would have lacked the financial resources to affect significantly the course of events.

In 1962, seven-term Congressman Hugh Addonizio had forged an Italian-Negro coalition to overthrow longtime Irish control of the city hall. A liberal in Congress, Addonizio, when he became mayor, had opened his door to all people. Negroes, who had been excluded from the previous administration, were brought into the government. The police department was integrated.

Nevertheless, progress was slow. As the Negro population increased, more and more of the politically oriented found the progress inadequate.

The Negro-Italian coalition began to develop strains over the issue of the police. The police were largely Italian, the persons they arrested were largely Negro. Community leaders agreed that, as in many police forces, there was a small minority of officers who abused

their responsibility. This gave credibility to the cries of "brutality!" voiced periodically by ghetto Negroes.

In 1965, Mayor Addonizio, acknowledging that there was "a small group of misguided individuals" in the department, declared that "it is vital to establish once and for all, in the minds of the public, that charges of alleged police brutality will be thoroughly investigated and the appropriate legal or punitive action be taken if the charges are found to be substantiated."

Pulled one way by the Negro citizens who wanted a police review board, and the other by the police, who adamantly opposed it, the mayor decided to transfer "the control and investigation of complaints of police brutality out of the hands of both the police and the public and into the hands of an agency that all can support the Federal Bureau of Investigation," and to send "a copy of any charge of police brutality *** directly to the Prosecutor's office." However, the FBI could act only if there had been a violation of a person's federal civil rights. No complaint was ever heard of again.

Nor was there much redress for other complaints. The city had no money with which to redress them.

The city had already reached its legal bonding limit, yet expenditures continued to outstrip income. Health and welfare costs, per capita, were 20 times as great as for some of the surrounding communities. Cramped by its small land area of 23.6 square miles one-third of which was taken up by Newark Airport and unusable marshland-and surrounded by independent jurisdictions, the city had nowhere to expand.

Taxable property was contracting as land, cleared for urban renewal, lay fallow year after year. Property taxes had been increased, perhaps, to the point of diminishing return. By the fall of 1967, they were to reach $661.70 on a $10,000 house-double that of suburban communities. As a result, people were refusing either to own or to renovate property in the city. Seventy-four percent of white and 87 percent of Negro families lived in rental housing. Whoever was able to move to the suburbs, moved. Many of these persons, as downtown areas were cleared and new office buildings were constructed, continued to work in the city. Among them were a large proportion of the people from whom a city normally draws its civic leaders, but who, after moving out, tended to cease involving themselves in the community's problems.

During the daytime Newark more than doubled its population--and was, therefore, forced to provide services for a large number of people who contributed nothing in property taxes. The city's per capita outlay for police, fire protection, and other municipal services continued to increase. By 1967 it was twice that

The legal tax rate is $7.76 per $100 of market value. However, because of inflation, a guideline of 85.27 percent of market value is used in assessing, reducing the true tax rate to $6.617 per $100.

of the surrounding area.

Consequently, there was less money to spend on education. Newark's per capita outlay on schools was considerably less than that of surrounding communities. Yet within the city's school system were 78,000 children, 14,000 more than 10 years earlier.

Twenty thousand pupils were on double sessions. The dropout rate was estimated to be as high as 33 percent. Of 13,600 Negroes between the ages of 16 and 19, more than 6,000 were not in school. In 1960 over half of the adult Negro population had less than an eighth grade education.

The typical ghetto cycle of high unemployment, family breakup, and crime was present in all its elements. Approximately 12 percent of Negroes were without jobs. An estimated 40 percent of Negro children lived in broken homes. Although Newark maintained proportionately the largest police force of any major city, its crime rate was among the highest in the Nation. In narcotics violations it ranked fifth nationally. Almost 80 percent of the crimes were committed within 2 miles of the core of the city, where the central ward is located. A majority of the criminals were Negro. Most of the victims, likewise, were Negro. The Mafia was reputed to control much of the organized crime.

Under such conditions a major segment of the Negro population became increasingly militant. Largely excluded from positions of traditional political power, Negroes, tutored by a handful of militant social activists who had moved into the city in the early 1960's, made use of the antipoverty program, in which poor people were guaranteed representation, as a political springboard. This led to friction between the United Community Corporation, the agency that administered the antipovery program, and the city administration.

When it became known that the secretary of the board of education intended to retire, the militants