bars and tawdry night spots patrons joined the throng. A window was smashed. Haphazard looting began. As fluid bands of rioters moved down the Central Avenue business district, stores whose proprietors were particularly disliked were singled out. A grocery store, a liquor store, a restaurant were hit. The first fire was set. Because of the dismissal of the Selective Enforcement Unit and the lack of accurate intelligence information, the police department was slow to react. Although Sheriff Malcolm Beard of Hillsborough County was in contact with the Department throughout the evening, it was not until after 11 p.m. that a request for deputies was made to him.

At 11:30 p.m., a recall order, issued earlier by the police department, began to bring officers back into the area. By this time, the streets in the vicinity of the housing project were lighted by the flames of burning buildings.

Falling power lines whipped sparks about the skirmish line of officers as they moved down the street. The popping noise of what sounded to the officers like gunshots came from the direction of the housing project.

The officers did not return the fire. Police announced from a sound car that anyone caught armed would be

shot. The firing ceased. Then, and throughout the succeeding 2 days, law enforcement officers refrained from the use of firearms. No officer or civilian suffered a gunshot wound during the riot.

Driving along the expressway, a young white couple, Mr. and Mrs. C. D., were startled by the fires. Deciding to investigate, they took the off-ramp into the midst of the riot. The car was swarmed over. Its windows were shattered. C. D. was dragged into the street.

As he emerged from a bar in which he had spent the evening, 19-year old J. C., a Negro fruit-picker from Arkansas, was as surprised by the riot as Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Rushing toward the station wagon in which the young woman was trapped, he interposed himself between her and the mob. Although rocks and beer cans smashed the windows, she was able to drive off. J. C. pushed through to where the white man lay. With the hoots and jeers of rioting youths ringing in his ears, J. C. helped him, also, to escape.

By 1 a.m., police officers and sheriff's deputies had surrounded an area several blocks square. Firemen began to extinguish the flames which, by this time, had spread to several other establishments from the three stores in which they had, originally, been set. No resistance was met. Control was soon reestablished.

Governor Claude Kirk flew to Tampa. Since the chief of police was absent, and since the Governor regarded the sheriff as his "direct arm," Sheriff Beard was placed in charge of the combined forces of the police and sheriff's departments.

For the next 12 hours, the situation remained quiet but tense. By the afternoon of Monday, June 12, the sheriff's and police forces both had been fully committed. The men were tired. There were none in

reserve.

As a precaution, the sheriff requested that a National Guard contingent be made available.

Late in the afternoon, Governor Kirk met with the residents at a school in the Central Park Village area. It was a tense meeting. Most speakers, whether white or Negro, were booed and hissed. The meeting broke up without concrete results. Nevertheless, the Governor believed it had enabled the residents to let off steam.

That evening, as National Guard troops began to supplant local forces in maintaining a perimeter and establishing roving patrols, antipoverty workers went from door to door, urging citizens to stay off the streets.

A reported attempt by Black Muslims to incite further violence failed. Although there were scattered reports of trouble from several areas of the city, and a few fires were set-largely in vacant buildingsthere were no major incidents. Several youths with a cache of Molotov cocktails were arrested. They were white.

All the next day, false reports poured into police headquarters. Everyday scenes took on menacing tones. Twenty Negro men, bared to the waist and carrying clubs, were reported to be gathering. They turned out to be construction workers.

Mayor Nuccio met with residents. At their suggestion that the man most likely to carry weight with the youngsters was Coach Jim Williams, he placed a call to Tallahassee, where Williams was attending a coaching clinic.

An impressive-looking man with graying hair, Williams arrived in Tampa almost 48 hours after the shooting of Martin Chambers. Together with another coach, he went to an eatery called The Greek Stand, behind which he found a number of youngsters fashioning an arsenal of bottles, bricks, and Molotov cocktails. As in the crowds that were once more beginning

II. CINCINNATI

On Monday, June 12, before order had been restored in Tampa, trouble erupted 940 miles away in Cincinnati.

Beginning in October 1965, assaults on middle-aged white women, several of whom were murdered, had generated an atmosphere of fear. When the "Cincinnati Strangler" was tentatively identified as a Negro,

to gather, the principal complaint was the presence of the National Guard, which, the residents asserted, gave them a feeling of being hemmed in. Williams decided to attempt to negotiate the removal of the National Guard if the people would agree to keep the peace and to disperse.

When Sheriff Beard arrived at a meeting called for the College Hill Elementary School, Robert Gilder of the NAACP was speaking to leaders of the Negro youth. Some were college students who had been unable to get summer jobs. One was a Vietnam veteran who had been turned down for a position as a swimming pool lifeguard. The youths believed that discrimination had played a part in their failure to find jobs.

The suggestion was made to Sheriff Beard that the National Guard be pulled out of the Negro areas and that these young men, as well as others, be given the opportunity to keep order. The idea, which was encouraged by James Hammond, Director of the Commission of Community Relations, made sense to the sheriff. He decided to take a chance on the Youth Patrol.

In another part of the city, West Tampa, two Negro community leaders, Dr. James O. Brookins and attorney Delano S. Stewart, were advised by acquaintances that, unless the intensive patrolling of Negro neighborhoods ceased, people planned to set fires in industrial districts that evening. Like Coach Williams, Dr. Brookins and Stewart contacted neighborhood youths and invited Sheriff Beard to a meeting. The concept of the Youth Patrol was expanded. Participants were identified first by phosphorescent arm bands and later by white hats.

During the next 24 hours, 126 youths, some of whom had participated in the riot, were recruited into the patrol. Many were high school dropouts.

On Wednesday, the inquiry into the death of Martin Chambers was concluded. With the verdict that Officer Calvert had fired the shot justifiably and in the line of duty, apprehension rose that trouble would erupt again. The leaders of the Youth Patrol were called in. The Sheriff explained the law to them and pointed out that the verdict was in conformance with the law. Despite the fact that the verdict was not to their liking, the White Hats continued to keep order.

a new element of tension was injected into relations between the races.

In December 1966, a Negro jazz musician named Posteal Laskey was arrested and charged with one of the murders. In May of 1967, he was convicted and sentenced to death. Two of the principal witnesses against Laskey were Negroes. Nevertheless, many Ne

groes felt that because of the charged atmosphere, he had not received a fair trial.

They were further aroused when, at about the same time, a white man, convicted of manslaughter in the death of his girlfriend, received a suspended sentence. Although the cases were dissimilar, there was talk in the Negro community that the difference in the sentences demonstrated a double standard of justice for white and for black.

A drive began in the Negro community to raise funds for an appeal. Laskey's cousin, Peter Frakes, began walking the streets on behalf of this appeal carrying a sandwich board declaring: "Cincinnati Guilty-Laskey Innocent." After warning him several times, police arrested Frakes on a charge of blocking pedestrian traffic.

Many Negroes viewed his arrest as evidence of police harassment, similar to the apparently selective enforcement of the city's antiloitering ordinance. Between January 1966, and June 1967, 170 of some 240 persons arrested under the ordinance were Negro.

Frakes was arrested at 12:35 a.m. on Sunday, June 11. That evening, concurrent with the commencement of a Negro Baptist convention, it was announced in one of the churches that a meeting to protest the Frakes arrest and the antiloitering ordinance would be held the following night on the grounds of a junior high school in the Avondale District.

Part of the significance of such a protest meeting lay in the context of past events. Without the city's realizing what was occurring, over the years protest through political and nonviolent channels had become increasingly difficult for Negroes. To young, militant Negroes, especially, such protest appeared to have become almost futile.

Although the city's Negro population had been rising swiftly in 1967, 135,000 out of the city's 500,000 residents were Negroes-there was only one Negro on the city council. In the 1950's with a far smaller Negro population, there had been two. Negroes attributed this to dilution of the Negro vote through abolition of the proportional representation system of electing the nine councilmen.

Although, by 1967, 40 percent of the schoolchildren were Negro, there was only one Negro on the board of education. Of more than 80 members of various city commissions, only three or four were Negro.

Under the leadership of the NAACP, picketing, to protest lack of Negro membership in building trades unions, took place at the construction site of a new city convention hall. It produced no results. When the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who had been one of the leaders of the Birmingham demonstrations of 1963, staged a protest against alleged discriminatory practices at the county hospital, he and his followers were arrested and convicted of trespassing.

Traditional Negro leaders drawn from the middle class lost influence as promises made by the city produced petty results. In the spring of 1967, a group of 14 white and 14 Negro business and community leaders, called the Committee of 28, talked about 2,000 job openings for young Negroes. Only 65 materialized. Almost one out of every eight Cincinnati Negroes was unemployed. Two of every five Negro families were living on or below the border of poverty.

A study of the West End section of the city indicated that one out of every four Negro men living there was out of work. In one public housing area, two-thirds of the fathers were missing. Of private housing occupied by Negroes, one-fourth was overcrowded, and half was deteriorated or dilapidated.

In the 90-degree temperature of Monday, June 12, as throughout the summer, Negro youngsters roamed the streets. The two swimming pools available to them could accommodate only a handful. In the Avondale section-once a prosperous white middle class community, but now the home of more than half the city's Negro population-Negro youths watched white workers going to work at white-owned stores and businesses. One youth began to count the number of delivery trucks being driven by Negroes. During the course of the afternoon, of the 52 trucks he counted, only one had a Negro driver. His sampling was remarkably accurate. According to a study conducted by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, less than 2 percent of truckdrivers in the Cincinnati area are Negro.

Late in the afternoon, the youths began to interfere with deliveries being made by white drivers. Dr. Bruce Green, president of the local NAACP chapter, was notified. Dr. Green asked his colleague, Dr. Robert Reid, the director of the Opportunities Industrialization Center, to go and try to calm the youngsters. Dr. Reid found several whom he knew, and convinced them to go with him to the Avondale Special Services Office to talk things over.

They were drawing up plans for a meeting with merchants of the Avondale area when word came of an altercation at a nearby drugstore. Several of the youths left the meeting and rushed over to the store. Dr. Reid followed them. The owner of the store was complaining to the police that earlier the youths had been interfering with his business; he declared that he wasn't going to stand for it.

Dr. Reid was attempting to mediate when a police sergeant arrived and asked the officers what was going on. One allegedly replied that they had been called in because "young nigger punks were disrupting deliveries to the stores."

A dispute arose between Dr. Reid and the sergeant as to whether the officer had said "nigger." After further discussion, the sergeant told the kids to "break it up!" Dr. Reid, together with some of the youngsters,

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 averted.

was

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.

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