NEGRO RIOTS CONTINUE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31341, 11 April 1967, Page 17

NEGRO RIOTS CONTINUE

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

NASHVILLE (Tennessee), April 10. Gangs of Negro youths fought a 20-minute gun battle with police, threw bottles and stones and attacked cars as rioting broke out last night in Nashville for the second time in 24 hours.

A Negro college student was shot in the neck as racial violence spread across a 30-block section of the city. His condition is not known.

Two fires in the business district were believed to have been caused by Molotov cocktails, and a grocery shop was looted dining the new outbreak of rioting.

The police said that about 150 bullets whined through the campus of the Tennessee State University last night as gangs of youths invaded the area. Other Negroes roamed through the city streets firing guns, hurling bottles and stones and attacking cars. At least 40 people were arrested and hospitals reported that 15 people had been injured by flying missiles. Like Phantoms

A force of riot police crouched behind squad cars and a stone wall as an estimated 300 students darted like phantoms between trees, bushes and buildings, firing weapons and throwing bricks and stones at the university campus. The police shot back, but Assistant Chief Donald Barton insisted that they aimed their guns high into the air. Mr Barton said that about 150 shots were fired as the students laid siege to the

police positions for 20 minutes. The battle ended, he said, when police withdrew shortly after debating whether to move huge spotlights onto the Tennessee A. and L campus, where the trouble had spread from the ' predominantly Negro Fisk University and Meharry College. The trouble broke out suddenly when a mob of students gathered at Tennessee A. and 1., state university located about one mile from Fisk and Meharry, where rioting broke out earlier in the day. Car Stoning The two campuses were tense on Sunday and the first trouble—small bands of Negroes stoning cars—came

shortly after sunset Marauders roamed the

streets but the Fisk football team patrolled that college’s campus and kept most trouble away. The police fought hit-and-run battles with the small groups of trouble-makers until the big crowd appeared at Tennessee A. and L The “black power” champion, Mr Stokely Carmichael, was not in the area during the riots, after telling Fisk University students last week to “take over the city.” The bricks and stones first started flying in protest against the arrest of a Negro student at a cafe disturbance. Some 400 policemen were poured into the area last night, threw tear gas canisters into crowds of students and fired bursts from riot guns. They also leapt into small groups of students with their dubs flailing.