CHICAGO POLICE CLUB WHITES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31139, 16 August 1966, Page 15

CHICAGO POLICE CLUB WHITES

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

CHICAGO, August 15.

Police swinging clubs clashed with hundreds of rioting whites in Chicago last night after three simultaneous civil rights marches into all-white neighbourhoods.

The violence came after a leader of the American Nazi Party called on the whites to form up and march into Negro areas. Police swarmed into Marquette Park—a normally quiet area where two disturbances broke out ■ earlier this summer—and knocked several persons to the ground with clubs. The park is outside the area of yesterday’s marches, and there were no Negroes in the park. More than 3000 whites stormed through the park, which the police finally emptied and denied anyone entrance. The rioting came after the three marches yesterday into

Gage Park, Bogan and Jefferson Park neighbourhoods. The marchers, demonstrating against alleged housing discrimination, were greeted with volleys of rocks and bottles. LIKE A WAR The violence described by a policeman as being the closest thing to a war he has seen—came after John Patler, a leader of the American Nazi Party, told people in the park that they should prepare for "the white revolution.” “If Negroes can march into white areas, we can march into Negro areas,” he said. Patler said that George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the party, would be in Chicago within two weeks to lead the march. Soon after Patter’s speech, rioting whites roamed through the park and hurled bottles and rocks at passing cars driven by Negroes. The mob showered a car containing a Negro family with rocks and bottles and policemen charged into the group with clubs swinging. They took the four Negro occupants to a police car for safety.

The police then fired shots into the air. They found caches of bottles hidden under trees and smashed them with rocks and blows with their guns. Squads of police formed on a slope overlooking the park, then swarmed two abreast down the hill into the melee, pushing people to the ground with the clubs as they ran. People who refused police orders to move were clubbed to the ground. The violence broke out as the police were preparing to leave the park—the same park in which Dr. Martin Luther King was knocked down with a rock 10 days ago. After the initial clashes, the police were pulled out of

the park near the Chicago lawn area in the hope that the whites would quieten. They did not, and police reinforcements then rushed in.