Race Riot Erupts In Atlanta

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31162, 12 September 1966, Page 13

Race Riot Erupts In Atlanta

/.V Z Press Association—Copyright) ATLANTA, September 10. A white couple drove up to a group of Negroes on a street corner tonight and shot two of them without a word, starting a bloody riot in a 10-block area.

One of the youths, Hubert Vorner, aged 16, was dead on arrival at a hospital.

A white policeman was shot and wounded in the melee.

Negro witnesses said a car carrying a white man and a blonde girl drove up to a group of four youths and stopped. The woman looked out the passenger window, jerked her head back, and her companion reached across and began firing a pistol out the window. Other witnesses said the car stopped twice more in front of Negroes and the driver aimed the pistol at them, but did not shoot. Negroes streamed into the streets around Georgia Baptist Hospital and began hurling bricks, bottles and rocks. More than 100 police, armed with riot guns, rifles and submachine-guns moved in and sealed off a 10-block area.

Bricks and bottles continued to crash into store windows. A white man and a woman driving through the area were the target of a barrage. They were unharmed. Negroes refused to move off the streets. When word came that Vorner was dead, the Negroes shouted at police: “If you want a Vietnam here, you’ve got one. What are you gonna do about it? Nothing?"

A police captain, J. T. Marler, said: “1 assure you we are going to do everything possible to catch these people.” “Yeah, and he will get two years,” a Negro retorted. About 50 Negroes milled •round the street comer

.where Vomer was shot, [watching a Negro policeman 'wash the blood off the street. “Why are you taking it out on us?” they screamed at police. As the Negroes became more and more angry, offiicers carrying rifles were ordered to withdraw from) the area. Police arrested several) people, including Mr Hosea: Williams, a top aide of the: civil rights leader. Dr. Martin [ Luther King. Mr Williams is the political: action director of Dr. King's i Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Acid Burns Meanwhile in Chicago, six people were injured and the leader of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, was arrested. The trouble came when more than 100 American Nazis marched through a Negro neighbourhood. Wearing shirts emblazoned [ with a large swastika and the': words “white power,” the Nazi marchers sparked bottle and stone-throwing outbreaks. Three people were burnt by | acid thrown in a bottle, one youth was clubbed by a policeman and two girls were hurt when a bottle was hurled through the window of their car. I About 200 police escorted

the marchers through the Negrcr neighbourhood. Negroes greeted the marchers with shouts of “Nazi, go home.” Rockwell was charged that at a rally on August 21 he solicited funds in a public place and made a speech in a public park without permission. After the march, six Nazi followers picketed Chicago’s central police headquarters, where Rockwell was held, carrying signs reading “Free Rockwell." While Rockwell’s followers, most of them adolescents, marched, two other racial demonstrations were in progress in the Chicago area. Whites and Negroes from the north side marched to City Hall carrying effigies of the*Mayor (Mr Richard Daley) and a policeman, Sam Joseph, the city’s most decorated police officer. ■ In north suburban Waukegan, scene of race riots last month, 250 Negroes also marched on City Hall under heavy police protection.