Deep Racial Division In America

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 5

Deep Racial Division In America

(From PETER MICHELMORE, in New York) Along with many other cliches of America’s turbulent decade of the 1960 s “the long hot summer” is fading from the language.

The phrase conjured up mental images, only too real in life, of blood and broken glass, angry black faces, helmeted police with fixed bayonets, ghettos on fire. It was a terrible period in American history when the Negroes, jammed in their millions in the big cityslums, cried out in rage and frustration at their prolonged exclusion from the mainstream of American economic and social life. Encouraged by laws demanding integration and full and equal rights for blacks, passed by the American Congress and developed by the Supreme Court, Negroes had rallied in the early .sixties behind the non-violent demonstrations led by the great Negro civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King. At a tremendous gathering of black people in Washington in the summer of 1963, Dr King had given his “I have a dream” speech in which he restated the Negro desire for a society where people “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

. But surging Negro hopes were soured when three young civil rights workers—two white and one black—were murdered in Mississippi that same summer, and then the Mississippi delegation of black and white Democrats to the party convention was turned away in favour of the old-guard white racist delegation. In the eyes of the Negroes the racial barriers in America were as high as ever and the era of the long hot summers began, first in Harlem in 1964 and then in consecutive years right through the nation. “Burn, baby, burn,” was the shout from the ghettos and in response came the pillage and arson that levelled entire city blocks in the slums of Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, Newark and a dozen other cities. So fierce were the confrontations between police and National Guardsmen and the people at the ghettos that it was potential racial war. In Detroit in 1967, 43 people were killed, hundreds were injured, and damage to the citv was estimated at $22 million.

In April of 1968 came the assassination of Dr King, the one man who would not compromise his stand against violence. The full fury and pain of the American blacks was vented then in country-wide riots that left a toll of 43 dead and 3500 injured. Nobody could predict it then, but this was the last

of the large-scale urban rioting.

Hundreds of serious racial incidents occurred in the summers of 1968 and 1969, including a furious gun battle between armed Negroes and police in Cleveland that cost 11 lives, so it is really not until now—approaching the close of the 1970 summer—that commentators can say with any confidence that the black revolution has taken a new turn.

It is becoming clear that the riots acted as a cohesive force in the ghettos, that the Negroes came to realise that white Americans would not be shocked out of their racial discrimination (as they saw it), and that the way to strength was to unite and build, among themselves and for themselves, not to destroy. Dr Charles Thomas, a black psychologist who works in the Watts Ghetto of Los Angeles, put it this way: “The riots started all of us to thinking. Symbolically they established manhood for the blacks. It was a beginning, for many, of an acceptance of our blackness.” “Black Colony” This growing sense of community in the ghettos has produced communityorganised parks, stores, factories, banks, cultural events." Black organisations are finding good jobs for youth, pushing hard for new

studies in black history at universities, running effective anti - poverty programmes, urging voter registration so that black citizens will have more and more representatives in local and Federal Government.

Sterling Tucker, director of Field Services for the National Urban League, explains that “we are organising around our strongest bond, our blackness, and although this will disturb some whites, it will get black people together.” Even moderate Negroes are now talking about a “black colony” within the white American nation. The new cliche, of course, is “black is beautiful,” and Tom Johnson, a Negro reporter for the “New York Times” says it is not taken lightly in the ghettos because “the phrase, the concept, the strength of the new conversion freed many a Negro not only from the straightening comb and the bleaching cream but also from the psychologically disabling concept that ‘white is always right’.”

Thus, in America today, the cry for integration is fading and there is a growing alienation of the races, which has prompted one Negro observer to point out that militancy on both black and white sides will become more pronounced and that we may all look back on the “long hot summers” as “the good old days.” Sniping At Police This would seem a gross exaggeration, yet these past two summers there have been scores of incidents of sniping at policemen in Negro neighbourhoods, and several incidents where white gangs have attacked Negro youths. The Black Panthers have armed themselves for war with police intruders into the ghettos and there have been murderous shootouts between the two.

As part of the new black pride, young Negroes no longer passively accept being pushed around by white policemen, and, sometimes, to show their manhood, they manufacture incidents for a chance to face a policeman with gun in hand. Guerrilla warfare is the fear now rather than destructive rioting and even the “major” racial confrontations recently have had this element, as well as the “Whitey go home” message.

There was an illustration in the tragic incidents at the Massachusetts town of New Bedford in July. The town is caught in an economic squeeze and there has been stiff competition between white and blacks for available jobs. Against this background of tension a police patrol rather foolishly stopped a Negro who was driving a car with a defective headlight and arrested him on charges of disorderly conduct. Nights Of Violence Other blacks accused the police of mistreating the man

and, in reprisal, gangs of black youths roamed the streets, stoning cars and buildings and setting fire bombs.

The violence continued for several nights and reached its peak when a carload of white youths screamed through the ghetto area and pumped off shotgun blasts into a group of black youngsters, killing a 17-year-old boy and wounding three others.

When police arrested the white youths and charged them with murder, the New Bedford Negro leaders told the “brothers” to cool it. The other notable riots of this current summer occurred in Miami, Florida, and Asbury Park, New Jersey. One spark for the Miami trouble was the dispute between a white grocery store owner and black customers, who angrily charged the grocer with selling them rancid meat at prime prices. Police stepped into the dispute and—now predictably—militant black youths sought revenge with sporadic sniper fire and home-made petrol bombs.

Three violent nights later, black and white leaders of the city decided to withdraw all police patrols from the Negro area to see what would happen.

Suddenly, magically, there was complete and continuing calm.

Al Featherstone, chief of the local black Afro militant movement, later held a told-you-sp Press conference: “The young black dudes out on the street aren’t going to sit around and take it like the older ones,” he said. “As long as the police make a show of force on the streets, the brothers are going to react.” Retaliation Asbury Park, a popular seaside resort town, again demonstrated the hair-trigger temper of the militant blacks. While there is serious unemployment among black people in Asbury Park, the tourist hotels and restaurants continued to hire white university students. The pent-up resentments exploded in fist fights at a local Negro dance, fierce retaliation when the police arrived, and in rapid succession came the familiar rockthrowihg and fire-bombing. Ten stores were burnt down and looted, including a large department store, which had recently changed hands with a white man outbidding a black man at auction.

When peace was restored due largely to black citizen patrols, the town Mayor, Mr Joseph Mattice, noted that most of the damage had occurred in the ghetto and commented briskly: “We’ve been very fortunate. Our business area hasn’t been affected at all.”

Mattice later regretted his words because the Negroes organised a retaliatory boycott of merchants in the main shopping area. The Mayor had patently identified two Asbury Parks —one white and one black —and this is symptomatic of the deep racial division in the entire United States.