U.S. Cities ‘Pretty Quiet’

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31654, 15 April 1968, Page 9

U.S. Cities ‘Pretty Quiet ’

(HZ. Press Assn —Copyrights NEW YORK, April 14. The authorities worked today to maintain calm in 100 United States cities wracked by violence, after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.

There were scattered incidents of arson and sniper fire in Kansas City but signs of peace increased in some of the nation's most troubled cities.

Curfews were eased and Federal troops withdrawn from Washington, Chicago, and Baltimore, three of the hardest hit cities.

In Kansas City, where six persons were killed on Tuesday and Wednesday, more than 3000 National Guardsmen and police remained on duty.

“It’s pretty quiet,” the police information officer, Mr James Risinger, said last night “We have three persons under arrest and investigation for sniping in the East Side Negro district but that is about all.”

Rioting after Dr King’s murder claimed at least 39 lives. The estimate of damage, put at 545 million by the American Insurance Association, is expected to climb.

One result of the disturbances has been a reduction in the usual Easter flow of visitors from Canada to American cities. Transport officials in Ottawa said the most noticeable decline was in travel to New York and Boston. As the big cities begin to

relax the question being asked is: Which direction will the Negro masses take now? Dr King's deputy, Dr Ralph Abernathy, now the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Mrs King spent the week after the assassination strenuously reminding America of Dr King’s commitment to non-violent progress. Mr Roy Wilkins, leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured Peoples, wrote in yesterday’s “New York Post” that Negroes “must act to bring about their own deliverance, without violence and without hate." Mr Wilkins said that Negro extremists were “muscling in

on the act, calling for the killing of those of their race who differ from them.” Stokely Carmichael, a leading Black Power extremist, was still renewing calls for armed rebellion at the end of the week. The film star, Marlon

Brando, told a rally at the California funeral of a leader of the militant Black Panther sect: “You’ve been listening to white people for 400 years. They said they were going to do something. They have done nothing as far as I am concerned.” _