Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

The progress from Western colonial global expansion, and the construction of American wealth and industry on the backs of enslaved Blacks and Native peoples, followed by the abrupt "emancipation" of the slaves and their exodus from the South to the Northern cities, has led us to our current divided society. Divided by economic inequities and unequal access to social resources, the nation lives in a media dream of social harmony, or did until YouTube set its bed on fire. Now, it is common knowledge that our current system of brutal racist policing and punitive over-incarceration serves the dual purpose of maintaining racial prejudice and the inequities it justifies. Brief yourself on this late-breaking development in American history here.

Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

Postby admin » Wed Jun 24, 2015 1:36 am

PART 2 OF 4

The area lacked a swimming pool. A nearby park was inaccessible because of the lack of a road. Petitions submitted to the mayor's office for the correcting of these and other conditions were acknowledged, but not acted upon.

Since only one of the 16 aldermen was a Negro, and a number of black wards were represented by white aldermen, many Negroes felt they were not being properly represented on the city government. The small number of elected Negro officials appeared to be due to a system in which aldermen are elected at large, but represent specific wards, and must reside in the wards from which they are elected. Because of the quilted pattern of black-white housing, white candidates were able to meet the residency requirements for running from predominantly Negro wards. Since, however, candidates are dependent upon the city-wide vote for election, and the city has a white majority, few Negroes had been able to attain office.

A decision was made by the Dixie Hills residents to organize committees and hold a protest meeting the next night.

The headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is located in Atlanta. Its former president, Stokely Carmichael, wearing a green Malcolm X sweatshirt, appeared, together with several companions. Approaching a police captain, Carmichael asked why there were so many police cars in the area. Informed that they were there to make sure there was no disturbance, Carmichael, clapping his hands, declared in a sing-song voice that there might have to be a riot if the police cars were not removed. When Carmichael refused to move on as requested, he was arrested.

Soon released on bail, the next morning Carmichael declared that the black people were preparing to resist "armed aggression" by the police by whatever means necessary.

Shortly thereafter in the Dixie Hills Shopping Center, which had been closed down for the day, a Negro youth, using a broom handle, began to pound on the outside bell of a burglar alarm that had been set off, apparently, by a short circuit. Police officers responded to the alarm and ordered him to stop hitting the bell. A scuffle ensued. Several bystanders intervened. One of the officers drew his service revolver and fired, superficially wounding the young man.

Tension rose. Approximately 250 persons were present at that evening's meeting. When a number of Negro leaders urged the submission of a petition of grievances through legal channels, the response was lukewarm. When Carmichael took to the podium, urging Negroes "to take to the streets and force the police department to work until they fall in their tracks," the response was tumultuous.

The press quoted him as saying: "It's not a question of law and order. We are not concerned with peace. We are concerned with the liberation of black people. We have to build a revolution."

As the people present at the meeting poured into the street, they were joined by others. The crowd soon numbered an estimated 1,000. From alleys and rooftops rocks and bottles were thrown at the nine police officers on the scene. Windows of police cars were broken. Firecrackers exploded in the darkness. Police believe they may have been fired on.

Reinforced by approximately 60 to 70 officers, the police, firing over the heads of the crowd, quickly regained control. Of the 10 persons arrested, six were 21 years of age or younger; only one was in his thirties.

The next day city equipment appeared in the area to begin work on the long-delayed playgrounds and other projects demanded by the citizens. It was announced that a Negro Youth Patrol would be established along the lines of the Tampa White Hats.

SNCC responded that volunteers for the patrol would be selling their "Black brothers out," and would be viewed as "Black Traitors," to be dealt with in the "manner we see fit." Nevertheless, during the course of the summer the 200 youths participating in the corps played an important role in preventing a serious outbreak. The police believe that establishment of the youth corps became a major factor in improving police-community relations.

Another meeting of area residents was called for Tuesday evening. At its conclusion 200 protesters were met by 300 police officers. As two police officers chased several boys down the street, a cherry bomb or incendiary device exploded at the officers' feet. In response, several shots were fired from a group of police consisting mostly of Negro officers. The discharge from a shotgun struck in the midst of several persons sitting on the front porch of a house. A 46-year old man was killed; a 9-year old boy was critically injured.

Because of the efforts of neighborhood and anti-poverty workers who circulated through the area, and the later appearance of Mayor Allen, no further violence ensued.

When H. "Rap" Brown, who had returned to the city that afternoon, went to other Negro areas in an attempt to initiate a demonstration against the shooting of the Negroes on the porch, he met with no response.

Within the next few days a petition was drawn up by State Senator Leroy Johnson and other moderate Negro leaders demanding that Stokely Carmichael get out of the community and allow the people to handle their own affairs. It was signed by more than 1,000 persons in the Dixie Hills area.

IV. NEWARK

The last outburst in Atlanta occurred on Tuesday night. June 20. That same night, in Newark, New Jersey, a tumultuous meeting of the Planning Board took place. Until 4 A.M., speaker after speaker from the Negro ghetto arose to denounce the city's intent to turn over 150 acres in the heart of the Central Ward as a site for the state's new medical and dental college.

The growing opposition to the city administration by vocal black residents had paralyzed both the Planning Board and the Board of Education. Tension had been rising so steadily throughout the northern New Jersey area that, in the first week of June, Colonel David Kelly, head of the state police, had met with municipal police chiefs to draw up plans for state police support of city police wherever a riot developed. Nowhere was the tension greater than in Newark.

Founded in 1666, the city, part of the Greater New York City port complex, rises from the salt marshes of the Passaic River. Although in 1967 Newark's population of 400,000 still ranked it thirtieth among American municipalities, for the past 20 years the white middle class had been deserting the city for the suburbs.

In the late 1950's the desertions had become a rout. Between 1960 and 1967, the city lost a net total of more than 70,000 white residents. Replacing them in vast areas of dilapidated housing where living conditions, according to a prominent member of the County Bar Association, were so bad that ''people would be kinder to their pets," were Negro migrants, Cubans and Puerto Ricans. In six years the city switched from 65 percent white to 52 percent Negro and 10 percent Puerto Rican and Cuban.

The white population, nevertheless, retained political control of the city. On both the City Council and the Board of Education seven of nine members were white. On other key boards the disparity was equal or greater. In the Central Ward, where the medical college controversy raged, the Negro constituents and their white councilman found themselves on opposite sides of almost every crucial issue.

The municipal administration lacked the ability to respond quickly enough to navigate the swiftly changing currents. Even had it had great astuteness, it would have lacked the financial resources to affect significantly the course of events.

In 1962, seven-term Congressman Hugh Addonizio had forged an Italian-Negro coalition to overthrow long-time Irish control of the City Hall. A liberal in Congress, Addonizio, when he became mayor, had opened his door to all people. Negroes, who had been excluded from the previous administration, were brought into the government. The police department was integrated.

Nevertheless, progress was slow. As the Negro population increased, more and more of the politically oriented found the progress inadequate.

The Negro-Italian coalition began to develop strains over the issue of the police. The police were largely Italian, the persons they arrested largely Negro. Community leaders agreed that, as in many police forces, there was a small minority of officers who abused their responsibility. This gave credibility to the cries of "Brutality!" voiced periodically by ghetto Negroes.

In 1965 Mayor Addonizio, acknowledged that there was "a small group of misguided individuals" in the department, declared that "it is vital to establish once and for all, in the minds of the public, that charges of alleged police brutality will be thoroughly investigated and the appropriate legal or punitive action be taken if the charges are found to be substantiated."

Pulled one way by the Negro citizens who wanted a Police Review Board, and the other by the police, who adamantly opposed it, the mayor decided to transfer "the control and investigation of complaints of police brutality out of the hands of both the police and the public and into the hands of an agency that all can support -- the Federal Bureau of Investigation;" and to send "a copy of any charge of police brutality ... directly to the Prosecutor's office." However, the FBI could act only if there had been a violation of a person's federal civil rights. No complaint was ever heard of again.

Nor was there much redress for other complaints. The city had no money with which to redress them.

The city had already reached its legal bonding limit, yet expenditures continued to outstrip income. Health and welfare costs, per capita, were 20 times as great as for some of the surrounding communities. Cramped by its small land area of 23.6 square miles -- one-third of which was taken up by Newark Airport and unusable marshland -- and surrounded by independent jurisdictions, the city had nowhere to expand.

Taxable property was contracting as land, cleared for urban renewal, lay fallow year after year. Property taxes had been increased, perhaps, to the point of diminishing return. By the fall of 1967 they were to reach $661.70 on a $10,000 -- double that of suburban communities. [4] As a result, people were refusing either to own or to renovate property in the city. Seventy-four percent of white and 87 percent of Negro families lived in rental housing. Whoever was able to move to the suburbs, moved. Many of these persons, as downtown areas were cleared and new office buildings were constructed, continued to work in the city. Among them were a large proportion of the people from whom a city normally draws its civic leaders, but who, after moving out, tended to cease involving themselves in the community's problems.

During the daytime Newark more than doubled its population -- and was, therefore, forced to provide services for a large number of people who contributed nothing in property taxes. The city's per capita outlay for police, fire protection and other municipal services continued to increase. By 1967 it was twice that of the surrounding area.

Consequently, there was less money to spend on education. Newark's per capita outlay on schools was considerably less than that of surrounding communities. Yet within the city's school system were 78,000 children, 14,000 more than 10 years earlier.

Twenty thousand pupils were on double sessions. The dropout rate was estimated to be as high as 33 percent. Of 13,600 Negroes between the ages of 16 and 19, more than 6,000 were not in school. In 1960 over half of the adult Negro population had less than an eighth grade education.

The typical ghetto cycle of high unemployment, family breakup, and crime was present in all its elements. Approximately 12 percent of Negroes were without jobs. An estimated 40 percent of Negro children lived in broken homes. Although Newark maintained proportionately the largest police force of any major city, its crime rate was among the highest in the nation. In narcotics violations it ranked fifth nationally. Almost 80 percent of the crimes were committed within two miles of the core of the city, where the Central Ward is located. A majority of the criminals were Negro. Most of the victims, likewise, were Negro. The Mafia was reputed to control much of the organized crime.

Under such conditions a major segment of the Negro population became increasingly militant. Largely excluded from positions of traditional political power, Negroes, tutored by a handful of militant social activists who had moved into the city in the early 1960's, made use of the anti-poverty program, in which poor people were guaranteed representation, as a political springboard. This led to friction between the United Community Corporation, the agency that administered the anti-poverty program, and the city administration.

When it became known that the secretary of the Board of Education intended to retire, the militants proposed for the position the city's budget director, a Negro with a master's degree in accounting. The mayor, however, had already nominated a white man. Since the white man had only a high school education, and at least 70 percent of the children in the school system were Negro, the issue of who was to obtain the secretaryship, an important and powerful position, quickly became a focal issue.

Joined with the issue of the ISO-acre medical school site, the area of which had been expanded to triple the original request -- an expansion regarded by the militants as an effort to dilute the black political power by moving out Negro residents -- the Board of Education battle resulted in a confrontation between the mayor and the militants. Both sides refused to alter their positions.

Into this impasse stepped a Washington Negro named Albert Roy Osborne. A flamboyant, 42-year-old former wig salesman who called himself Colonel Hassan Jeru-Ahmed and wore a black beret, he presided over a mythical "Blackman's Volunteer Army of Liberation." Articulate and magnetic, the self-commissioned "Colonel" proved to be a one-man show. He brought Negro residents flocking to Board of Education and Planning Board meetings. The Colonel spoke in violent terms, and backed his words with violent action. At one meeting he tore the tape from the official stenographic recorder. After he was ejected, one of his captains threw a map board across the stage and smashed a tape recorder against the wall.

It became more and more evident to the militants that, though they might not be able to prevail, they could prevent the normal transaction of business. Filibustering began. A Negro former state assemblyman held the floor for more than four hours. One meeting of the Board of Education began at 5:00 P.M. and did not adjourn until 3:23 A.M. Throughout the months of May and June speaker after speaker warned that if the mayor persisted in naming a white man as Secretary to the Board of Education, and in moving ahead with plans for the medical school site, violence would ensue. The city administration played down the threats.

On June 27th, when a new secretary to the Board of Education was to be named, the state police set up a command post in the Newark armory.

The militants, led by the local CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) chapter, disrupted and took over the Board of Education meeting. The outcome was a stalemate. The incumbent secretary decided to stay on another year. No one was satisfied.

At the beginning of July there were 24,000 unemployed Negroes within the city limits. Their ranks were swelled by an estimated 20,000 teenagers, many of whom, with school out and the summer recreation program curtailed due to a lack of funds, had no place to go.

On July 8, Newark and East Orange Police attempted to disperse a group of Black Muslims. In the melee that followed, several police officers and Muslims suffered injuries necessitating medical treatment. The resulting charges and countercharges heightened the tension between police and Negroes.

Early on the evening of July 12, a cab driver named John Smith began, according to police reports, tailgating a Newark police car. Smith was an unlikely candidate to set a riot in motion. Forty years old, a Georgian by birth, he had attended college for a year before entering the Army in 1950. In 1953 he had been honorably discharged with the rank of corporal. A chess-playing trumpet player, he had worked as a musician and a factory hand before, in 1963, becoming a cab driver.

As a cab driver, he appeared to be a hazard. Within a relatively short period of time he had eight or nine accidents. His license was revoked. When, with a woman passenger in his cab, he was stopped by the police, he was in violation of that revocation.

From the high-rise towers of the Reverend William P. Hayes Housing Project, the residents can look down on the orange-red brick facade of the Fourth Precinct Police Station and observe every movement. Shortly after 9:30 P.M., people saw Smith, who either refused or was unable to walk, being dragged out of a police car and into the front door of the station.

Within a few minutes at least two civil rights leaders received calls from a hysterical woman declaring a cab driver was being beaten by the police. When one of the persons at the station notified the cab company of Smith's arrest, cab drivers all over the city began learning of it over their cab radios.

A crowd formed on the grounds of the housing project across the narrow street from the station. As more and more people arrived, the description of the beating purportedly administered to Smith became more and more exaggerated. The descriptions were supported by other complaints of police malpractice that, over the years, had been submitted for investigation -- but had never been heard of again.

Several Negro community leaders, telephoned by a civil rights worker and informed of the deteriorating situation, rushed to the scene. By 10: 15 P.M. the atmosphere had become so potentially explosive that Kenneth Melchior, the senior police inspector on the night watch, was called. He arrived at approximately 10:30 P.M.

Met by a delegation of civil rights leaders and militants who requested the right to see and interview Smith, Inspector Melchior acceded to their request.

When the delegation was taken to Smith, Melchior agreed with their observations that, as a result of injuries Smith had suffered, he needed to be examined by a doctor. Arrangements were made to have a police car transport him to the hospital.

Both within and outside of the police station the atmosphere was electric with hostility. Carloads of police officers arriving for the 10:45 P.M. change of shifts were subjected to a gauntlet of catcalls, taunts and curses.

Joined by Oliver Lofton, administrative director of the Newark Legal Services Project, the Negro community leaders inside the station requested an interview with Inspector Melchior. As they were talking to the inspector about initiating an investigation to determine how Smith had been injured, the crowd outside became more and more unruly. Two of the Negro spokesmen went outside to attempt to pacify the people.

There was little reaction to the spokesmen's appeal that the people go home. The second of the two had just finished speaking from atop a car when several Molotov cocktails smashed against the wall of the police station.

With the call of "Fire!" most of those inside the station. police officers and civilians alike. rushed out of the front door. The Molotov cocktails had splattered to the ground; the fire was quickly extinguished.

Inspector Melchior had a squad of men form a line across the front of the station. The police officers and the Negroes on the other side of the street exchanged volleys of profanity.

Three of the Negro leaders. Timothy Still of the United Community Corporation, Robert Curvin of CORE. and Lofton. requested they be given another opportunity to disperse the crowd. Inspector Melchior agreed to let them try, and provided a bullhorn. It was apparent that the several hundred persons who had gathered in the street and on the grounds of the housing project were not going to disperse. Therefore, it was decided to attempt to channel the energies of the people into a nonviolent protest. While Lofton promised the crowd that a full investigation would be made of the Smith incident. the other Negro leaders urged those on the scene to form a line of march toward the city hall.

Some persons joined the line of march. Others milled about in the narrow street. From the dark grounds of the housing project came a barrage of rocks. Some of them fell among the crowd. Others hit persons in the line of march. Many smashed the windows of the police station. The rock throwing, it was believed, was the work of youngsters; approximately 2,500 children lived in the housing project.

Almost at the same time, an old car was set afire in a parking lot. The line of march began to disintegrate. The police, their heads protected by World War I-type helmets, sallied forth to disperse the crowd. A fire engine, arriving on the scene, was pelted with rocks. As police drove people away from the station. they scattered in all directions.

A few minutes later a nearby liquor store was broken into. Some persons. seeing a caravan of cabs appear at city hall to protest Smith's arrest. interpreted this as evidence that the disturbance had been organized, and generated rumors to that effect.

However, only a few stores were looted. Within a short period of time the disorder ran its course.

The next afternoon. Thursday, July 13, the mayor described it as an isolated incident. At a meeting with Negro leaders to discuss measures to defuse the situation, he agreed to appoint the first Negro police captain, and announced that he would set up a panel of citizens to investigate the Smith arrest. To one civil rights leader this sounded like "the playback of a record," and he walked out. Other observers reported that the mayor seemed unaware of the seriousness of the tensions.

The police were not. Unknown to the mayor, Dominick Spina, the director of police, had extended shifts from eight hours to 12, and was in the process of mobilizing half the strength of the department for that evening. The night before, Spina had arrived at the Fourth Precinct Police Station at approximately midnight, and had witnessed the latter half of the disturbance. Earlier in the evening he had held the regular weekly "open house" in his office. This was intended to give any person who wanted to talk to him an opportunity to do so. Not a single person had shown up.

As director of police, Spina had initiated many new programs: police-precinct councils, composed of the police precinct captain and business and civic leaders, who would meet once a month to discuss mutual problems; Junior Crime-fighters; a Boy Scout Explorer program for each precinct; mandatory human relations training for every officer; a Citizens' Observer Program, which permitted citizens to ride in police cars and observe activities in the stations; a Police Cadet program; and others.

Many of the programs initially had been received enthusiastically, but -- as was the case with the "open house" -- interest had fallen off. In general, the programs failed to reach the hard-core unemployed, the disaffected, the school dropouts -- of whom Spina estimates there are 10,000 in Essex County -- that constitute a major portion of the police problem.

Reports and rumors, including one that Smith had died, circulated through the Negro community. Tension continued to rise. Nowhere was the tension greater than at the Spirit House, the gathering place for Black Nationalists, Black Power advocates, and militants of every hue. Black Muslims, Orthodox Muslims, and members of the United Afro-American Association, a new and growing organization that follows, in general, the teachings of the late Malcolm X, came regularly to mingle and exchange views. Anti-white playwright LeRoi Jones held workshops. The two police-Negro clashes, coming one on top of the other, coupled with the unresolved political issues, had created a state of crisis.

On Thursday, inflammatory leaflets were circulated in the neighborhoods of the Fourth Precinct. A "Police Brutality Protest Rally" -was announced for early evening in front of the Fourth Precinct Station. Several television stations and newspapers sent news teams to interview people. Cameras were set up. A crowd gathered.

A picket line was formed to march in front of the police station. Between 7:00 and 7:30 P.M. James Threatt, Executive Director of the Newark Human Rights Commission, arrived to announce to the people the decision of the mayor to form a citizens group to investigate the Smith incident, and to elevate a Negro to the rank of captain.

The response from the loosely milling mass of people was derisive. One youngster shouted "Black Power!" Rocks were thrown at Threatt, a Negro. The barrage of missiles that followed placed the police station under siege.

After the barrage had continued for some minutes, police came out to disperse the crowd. According to witnesses, there was little restraint of language or action by either side. A number of police officers and Negroes were injured.

As on the night before, once the people had been dispersed, reports of looting began to come in. Soon the glow of the first fire was seen.

Without enough men to establish control, the police set up a perimeter around a two-mile stretch of Springfield Avenue, one of the principal business districts, where bands of youths roamed up and down smashing windows. Grocery and liquor stores, clothing and furniture stores, drug stores and cleaners, appliance stores and pawnshops were the principal targets. Periodically police officers would appear and fire their weapons over the heads of looters and rioters. Laden with stolen goods, people began returning to the housing projects.

Near midnight, activity appeared to taper off. The Mayor told reporters the city had turned the corner.

As news of the disturbance had spread, however, people had flocked into the streets. As they saw stores being broken into with impunity, many bowed to temptation and joined the looting.

Without the necessary personnel to make mass arrests, police were shooting into the air to clear stores. A Negro boy was wounded by a .22 caliber bullet said to have been fired by a white man riding in a car. Guns were reported stolen from a Sears Roebuck store. Looting, fires, and gunshots were reported from a widening area. Between 2:00 and 2:30 A.M. on Friday, July 14, the mayor decided to request Governor Richard J. Hughes to dispatch the state police, and National Guard troops. The first elements of the state police arrived with a sizeable contingent before dawn.

During the morning the governor and the mayor, together with police and National Guard officers, made a reconnaissance of the area. The police escort guarding the officials arrested looters as they went. By early afternoon the National Guard had set up 137 roadblocks, and state police and riot teams were beginning to achieve control. Command of antiriot operations was taken over by the governor, who decreed a "hard line" in putting down the riot.

As a result of technical difficulties, such as the fact that the city and state police did not operate on the same radio wavelengths, the three-way command structure -- city police, state police and National Guard -- worked poorly.

At 3:30 P.M. that afternoon, the family of Mrs. D. J. was standing near the upstairs windows of their apartment, watching looters run in and out of a furniture store on Springfield Avenue. Three carloads of police rounded the corner. As the police yelled at the looters, they began running.

The police officers opened fire. A bullet smashed the kitchen window in Mrs. D. J.'s apartment. A moment later she heard a cry from the bedroom. Her 3-year old daughter, Debbie, came running into the room. Blood was streaming down the left side of her face: the bullet had entered her eye. The child spent the next two months in the hospital. She lost the sight of her left eye and the hearing in her left ear.

Simultaneously, on the street below, Horace W. Morris, an associate director of the Washington Urban League who had been visiting relatives in Newark, was about to enter a car for the drive to Newark Airport. With him were his two brothers and his 73-year old step-father, Isaac Harrison. About 60 persons had been on the street watching the looting. As the police arrived, three of the looters cut directly in front of the group of spectators. The police fired at the looters. Bullets plowed into the spectators. Everyone began running. As Harrison, followed by the family, headed toward the apartment building in which he lived, a bullet kicked his legs out from under him. Horace Morris lifted him to his feet. Again he fell. Mr. Morris' brother, Virgil, attempted to pick the old man up. As he was doing so, he was hit in the left leg and right forearm. Mr. Morris and his other brother managed to drag the two wounded men into the vestibule of the building, jammed with 60 to 70 frightened, angry Negroes.

Bullets continued to spatter against the walls of the buildings. Finally, as the firing died down, Morris -- whose stepfather died that evening -- yelled to a sergeant that innocent people were being shot.

"Tell the black bastards to stop shooting at us," the sergeant, according to Morris, replied.

"They don't have guns; no one is shooting at you," Morris said.

"You shut up, there's a sniper on the roof," the sergeant yelled.

A short time later, at approximately 5:00 P.M., in the same vicinity a police detective was killed by a small caliber bullet. The origin of the shot could not be determined. Later during the riot a fireman was killed by a .30 caliber bullet. Snipers were blamed for the deaths of both.

At 5:30 P.M., on Beacon Street, W. F. told J. S., whose 1959 Pontiac he had taken to the station for inspection, that his front brake needed fixing. J. S., who had just returned from work, went to the car which was parked in the street, jacked up the front end, took the wheel off and got under the car.

The street was quiet. More than a dozen persons were sitting on porches, walking about, or shopping. None heard any shots. Suddenly several state troopers appeared at the corner of Springfield and Beacon. J. S. was startled by a shot clanging into the side of the garbage can next to his car. As he looked up he saw a state trooper with his rifle pointed at him. The next shot struck him in the right side.

At almost the same instant, K. G., standing on a porch, was struck in the right eye by a bullet. Both he and J. S. were critically injured.

At 8:00 P.M., Mrs. L. M. bundled her husband, her husband's brother, and her four sons into the family car to drive to a restaurant for dinner. On the return trip her husband, who was driving, panicked as he approached a National Guard roadblock. He slowed the car, then quickly swerved around. A shot rang out. When the family reached home, everyone began piling out of the car. Ten-year-old Eddie failed to move. Shot through the head, he was dead.

Although, by nightfall, most of the looting and burning had ended, reports of sniper fire increased. The fire was, according to New Jersey National Guard reports, "deliberately or otherwise inaccurate." Major General James F. Cantwell, Chief of Staff of the New Jersey National Guard, testified before an Armed Services Subcommittee of the House of Representatives that "there was too much firing initially against snipers" because of "confusion when we were finally called on for help and our thinking of it as a military action."

"As a matter of fact," Director of Police Spina told the Commission, "down in the Springfield Avenue area it was so bad that, in my opinion, Guardsmen were firing upon police and police were firing back at them . . . I really don't believe there was as much sniping as we thought ... We have since compiled statistics indicating that there were 79 specified instances of sniping."

Several problems contributed to the misconceptions regarding snipers: the lack of communications; the fact that one shot might be reported half a dozen times by half a dozen different persons as it caromed and reverberated a mile or more through the city; the fact that the National Guard troops lacked riot training. They were, said a police official, "young and very scared," and had had little contact with Negroes.

Within the Guard itself contact with Negroes had certainly been limited. Although, in 1949, out of a force of 12,529 men there had been 1,183 Negroes, following the integration of the Guard in the 1950's the number had declined until, by July of 1967, there were 303 Negroes in a force of 17,529 men.

On Saturday, July 15, Spina received a report of snipers in a housing project. When he arrived he saw approximately 100 National Guardsmen and police officers crouching behind vehicles, hiding in corners and lying on the ground around the edge of the courtyard.

Since everything appeared quiet and it was broad daylight, Spina walked directly down the middle of the street. Nothing happened. As he came to the last building of the complex, he heard a shot. All around him the troopers jumped, believing themselves to be under sniper fire. A moment later a young Guardsman ran from behind a building.

The director of police went over and asked him if he had fired the shot. The soldier said yes, he had fired to scare a man away from a window; that his orders were to keep everyone away from windows.

Spina said he told the soldier: "Do you know what you just did? You have now created a state of hysteria. Every Guardsman up and down this street and every State Policeman and every city policeman that is present thinks that somebody just fired a shot and that it is probably a sniper."

A short time later more "gunshots" were heard. Investigating, Spina came upon a Puerto Rican sitting on a wall. In reply to a question as to whether he knew "where the firing is coming from?" the man said:

"That's no firing. That's fireworks. If you look up to the fourth floor, you will see the people who are throwing down these cherry bombs."

By this time four truckloads of National Guardsmen had arrived and troopers and policemen were again crouched everywhere, looking for a sniper. The director of police remained at the scene for three hours, and the only shot fired was the one by the Guardsman.

Nevertheless, at six o'clock that evening two columns of National Guardsmen and state troopers were directing mass fire at the Hayes Housing Project in response to what they believed were snipers.

On the tenth floor, Eloise Spellman, the mother of several children, fell, a bullet through her neck.

Across the street a number of persons, standing in an apartment window, were watching the firing directed at the housing project. Suddenly several troopers whirled and began firing in the general direction of the spectators. Mrs. Hattie Gainer, a grandmother, sank to the floor.

A block away Rebecca Brown's 2-year old daughter was standing at the window. Mrs. Brown rushed to drag her to safety. As Mrs. Brown was, momentarily, framed in the window, a bullet spun into her back.

All three women died.

A number of eye witnesses, at varying times and places, reported seeing bottles thrown from upper story windows. As these would land at the feet of an officer he would turn and fire. Thereupon, other officers and Guardsmen up and down the street would join in.

In order to protect his property, B. W. W., the owner of a Chinese laundry, had placed a sign saying "Soul Brother" in his window. Between 1:00 and 1:30 A.M., on Sunday, July 16, he, his mother, wife, and brother, were watching television in the back room. The neighborhood had been quiet. Suddenly B. W. W. heard the sound of jeeps, then shots.

Going to an upstairs window he was able to look out into the street. There he observed several jeeps, from which soldiers and state troopers were firing into stores that had "Soul Brother" signs in the windows. During the course of three nights, according to dozens of eye witness reports, law enforcement officers shot into and smashed windows of businesses that contained signs indicating they were Negro owned.

At 11.00 P.M., on Sunday, July 16th, Mrs. Lucille Pugh looked out of the window to see if the streets were clear. She then asked her 11-year-old son, Michael, to take the garbage out. As he reached the street and was illuminated by a street light, a shot rang out. He died.

By Monday afternoon, July 17, state police and National Guard forces were withdrawn. That evening, a Catholic priest saw two Negro men walking down the street. They were carrying a case of soda and two bags of groceries. An unmarked car with five police officers pulled up beside them. Two white officers got out of the car. Accusing the Negro men of looting, the officers made them put the groceries on the sidewalk, then kicked the bags open, scattering their contents allover the street.

Telling the men, "Get out of here," the officers drove off. The Catholic priest went across the street to help gather up the groceries. One of the men turned to him:. "I've just been back from Vietnam two days," he said, "and this is what I get. I feel like going home and getting a rifle and shooting the cops."

Of the 250 fire alarms, many had been false, and 13 were considered by the city to have been "serious." Of the $10,251,000 damage total, four-fifths was due to stock loss. Damage to buildings and fixtures was less than $2 million.

Twenty-three persons were killed -- a white detective, a white fireman, and 21 Negroes. One was 73-year-old Isaac Harrison. Six were women. Two were children.

V. NORTHERN NEW JERSEY

Reports of looting, sniping, fire and death in Newark wove a web of tension over other Negro enclaves in northern New Jersey. Wherever Negro ghettos existed -- Elizabeth, Englewood, Jersey City, Plainfield, New Brunswick-people had friends and relatives living in Newark. Everywhere the telephone provided a direct link to the scenes of violence. The telephoned messages frequently were at variance with reports transmitted by the mass media.

As reports of the excessive use of firearms in Newark grew, so did fear and anger in the Negro ghettos. Conversely, rumors amplified by radio, television and the newspapers -- especially with regard to guerrilla bands roaming the streets -- created a sense of danger and terror within the white communities. To Mayor Patricia Q. Sheehan of New Brunswick, it seemed "almost as if there was a fever in the air," She went on to say: "Rumors were coming in from all sides on July 17th. Negroes were calling to warn of possible disturbances; whites were calling; shop owners were calling. Most of the people were concerned about a possible bloodbath."

Her opinion was: "We are talking ourselves into it."

Everywhere there was the same inequality with regard to education, job opportunities, income, and housing. Everywhere, partly because the Negro population was younger than the white, Negroes were under-represented on the local government. In six New Jersey communities [5] with sizeable Negro populations, of a total of 50 councilmen, six were Negro. In. a half-dozen school systems in which Negro children comprised as much as half of the school population, of a total of 42 members on boards of education, seven were Negro.

In each of the ghettos the Negro felt himself surrounded by an intransigent wall of whites. In four suburban cities -- Bloomfield, Harrison, Irvington, and Maplewood-forming an arc about Newark, out of a total population of more than 150,000, only 1,000 were Negroes. In the six cities surrounding Plainfield, out of a population of more than 75,000, only 1,500 were Negro.

Three northern New Jersey communities, Jersey City, Paterson, and Elizabeth, had had disorders in previous years, the first two in 1964, Elizabeth in both 1964 and 1965. In general, these seem to have developed from resentment against the police. The most serious outbreak had occurred in Jersey City after police had arrested a woman, and a rumor circulated that the woman had been beaten.

As early as May, 1967, the authorities in Jersey City and Elizabeth had started receiving warnings of trouble in the summer ahead. Following the Newark outbreak, rumors and reports, as in New Brunswick, became rampant. The police, relying on past experiences, were in no mood to take chances. In both Jersey City and Elizabeth patrols were augmented, and the departments were placed in a state of alert.

The view from Jersey City is that of the New York skyline. Except for a few imposing buildings, such as the high-rise New Jersey Medical Center, much of the city is a collection of factories and deteriorating houses, cut up by ribbons of super-highways and railroads.

As one of the principal freight terminals for New York City, Jersey City's decline has paralleled that of the railroads. As railroad lands deteriorated in value and urban renewal lands were taken off the tax rolls, assessed valuation plummeted from $464 million in 1964 to $367 million in 1967. The tax rate, according to Mayor Thomas J. Whelan, has "reached the point of diminishing returns."

Urban renewal projects, which were intended to clear slums and replace them with low-cost housing, in fact, resulted in a reduction of 2,000 housing units. On one area, designated for urban renewal six years before, no work had been done, and it remained as blighted in 1967 as it had been in 1961. Ramshackle houses deteriorated, no repairs were made, yet .people continued to inhabit them. "Planners make plans and then simply tell people what they are going to do," Negroes complained in their growing opposition to such projects.

Wooden sewers serve residents of some sections of the city. Collapsing brick sewers in other sections back up the sewage. The population clamors for better education, but the school system has reached its bonding capacity. By 1975 it is estimated that there will be a net deficit of 10 elementary schools and one high school.

Recently the mayor proposed to the Ford Foundation that it take over the operation of the entire educational system. The offer was declined.

Many whites send their children to parochial schools. Possibly as a result, white residents have been slower to move to the suburbs than in other cities.

The exodus, however, is accelerating. Within the past 10 years the Negro population has almost doubled, and now comprises an estimated 20 percent of the total. The little Negro political leadership that exists is fragmented and indecisive. The county in which Jersey City is located is run by an old-line political machine that has given Negroes little opportunity for participation.

Although the amount of schooling whites and Negroes have had is almost equal, in 1960 the median family income of whites was $1,500 more than that of Negroes.

The police department, like Newark's, one of the largest in the nation for a city of its size, has a reputation for toughness. A successful white executive recalled that in his childhood: "We were accustomed to the Special Service Division of the Police Department. If we were caught hanging around we were picked up by the police, taken near the city hospital, and beaten with a rubber hose."
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

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PART 3 OF 4

A city official, questioned about Negro representation on the 825-man police force, replied that it was 34 times greater than 20 years ago. Twenty years ago it had consisted of one man.

During the four days of the Newark riot, when Jersey City was flooded with tales of all description, Mayor Whelan announced that if there were any disturbances he would "meet force with force." The ghetto area was saturated with police officers.

On Monday and Tuesday, July 17 and 18, when crowds gathered and a few rocks were thrown, mass arrests were made. Only one store was broken into, and pilferage was limited to items such as candy and chewing gum.

One man died. He was a Negro passenger in a cab into which a Negro boy threw a Molotov cocktail.

In Elizabeth, as in Jersey City, police had beefed up their patrols, and the very presence of so many officers contributed to the rising tensions. Residents of the 12-block by 3-block ghetto, jammed between the New Jersey Turnpike and the waterfront, expressed the opinion that: "We are being punished but we haven't done anything."

"The community," another said later, "felt it was in a concentration camp."

Youths from the two high-density housing projects concentrated in the area were walking around saying: ''We're next, we might as well go."

Between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m. Monday, July 17, a window was broken in a drugstore across the street from a housing project. A businessman commented: "Down here in the port it's business as usual when one store window is broken each week. What is normal becomes abnormal at a time like this."

When the window was broken, three extra police cars were sent to the area. Shortly after 11: 00 p.m., the field supervisor dispatched three more cars and, observing the crowd gathering at the housing project, requested an additional 30 patrolmen. The department activated its emergency recall plan.

Since there are almost no recreational facilities, on any summer night scores of youths may be found congregating on the streets near the housing projects. As more and more police cars patrolled the streets, rocks and bottles were thrown at them.

Store windows were broken. Fires were set in trash cans and in the middle of the street. An expectation of impending violence gripped the crowd.

Arriving on the scene, Human Rights Commission Executive Director Hugh Barbour requested that, in order to relieve tension, the extra police be withdrawn from the immediate vicinity of the crowd. The officer in command agreed to pull back the patrols.

Workers from the anti-poverty agency and the Human Relations Commission began circulating through the area, attempting to get kids off the street. Many of the residents had relatives and friends in Newark. Based on what had happened there, they feared that, if the disturbance were not curbed, it would turn into a bloodbath.

The peacemakers were making little headway when a chicken fluttered out of the shattered window of a poultry market. One youth tried to throw gasoline on it and set it afire. As the gasoline sloshed onto the pavement, the chicken leaped. The flames merely singed its feathers. A gangling six-foot youth attempted to stomp the chicken. The bird, which had appeared dead, reacted violently. As it fluttered and darted out of his way, the youth screamed, slipped, and tumbled against a tree.

The stark comedy reduced the tension. People laughed. Soon some began to drift home.

A short time later a Molotov cocktail was thrown against the front of a tavern. Fire engines met with no opposition as they extinguished the flames before they could do much damage.

The chief of police ordered the area cleared. As the officers moved in, the persons who remained on the street scattered. Within 15 minutes the neighborhood was deserted.

Both municipal authorities and Negro leaders feared that, if the disorder followed the pattern of other disturbances, there would be an intensification of action by youths the next day. Therefore, the next evening, police patrolled the 36 square blocks with more than 100 men, some of them stationed on rooftops. Tension mounted as residents viewed the helmeted officers, armed with shotguns and rifles.

Early in the evening the mayor agreed to meet with a delegation of 13 community leaders. When they entered his office, the chief of police was already present. The mayor read him an order that, if he were faced with sniping or flagrant looting, his men were to: "Shoot to kill.... Force will be met with superior force." An officer's deviation from this order, the mayor said, would be considered dereliction of duty.

Some of the members of the delegation believed that the mayor had staged the reading of this order for their benefit, and were not pleased by his action. They proposed a "peacekeeper task force." The mayor agreed to let them try. One hundred stickers with the word "Peacekeeper" were printed.

One of those who agreed to be a peacemaker was Hesham Jaaber. Jaaber, who officiated at Malcolm X's funeral and has made two pilgrimages to Mecca, is a leader of a small sect of Orthodox Moslems. A teacher of Arabic and the Koran at the Spirit House in Newark, he is a militant who impressed the mayor with his sense of responsibility.

Although Jaaber believed that certain people were sucking the life blood out of the community -- "Count the number of taverns and bars in the Elizabeth port area and compare them with the number of recreation facilities" -- he had witnessed the carnage in Newark and believed it could serve no purpose to have a riot. Two dozen of his followers, in red fezzes, took to the streets to urge order. He himself traveled about in a car with a bullhorn.

As the peacekeepers began to make their influence felt, the police withdrew from the area. There was no further trouble.

Nevertheless, many white citizens reacted unfavorably to the fact that police had permitted Negro community leaders to aid in the dispersal of the crowd on the first night. The police were called "yellow," and accused of allowing the looting and damaging of stores.

In Englewood, a bedroom community of 28,000, astride the Palisades opposite New York, police had been expecting a riot by some of the city's 7,000 Negro residents since two weeks before Newark. As part of this expectation they had tested tear gas guns on the police firing range, situated in the middle of the Negro residential area. The wind had blown the tear gas into surrounding houses. The occupants had been enraged.

A continuing flow of rumors and anonymous tips to police of a riot in preparation had specified July 19 and July 28. However, the week following the Newark outbreak, the rumors began mentioning Friday, July 21, as the date. And it was on that day the chief of police became sufficiently concerned to alert the mayor, order mobilization of the police department, and request police assistance from Bergen County and nearby communities. The 160 officers who responded brought the total force in Englewood that evening to 220 men.

At approximately 9:00 p.m. a rock was thrown through a market in the lower class Negro area, resulting in the setting off of a burglar alarm at police headquarters. Two police cars responded. They were hit by rocks.

The tactical force of officers that had been assembled was rushed to the scene. A small number of persons, estimated in the official police report to be no more than 15 or 20, were standing in the street. When police formed a skirmish line, the loiterers, mostly youths, retreated into a large nearby park.

As the police remained in the vicinity, people, attracted by the presence of the officers, began drifting out of the park. Angry verbal exchanges took place between the residents and the police. The Negroes demanded to see the mayor.

The mayor arrived. The residents complained about the presence of so many police officers. Other grievances, many of them minor, began to be aired. According to the mayor, he became involved in a "shouting match," and departed. Shortly thereafter the police, too, left.

They returned at a report that two markets had been hit by Molotov cocktails. Arriving, they discovered firemen fighting two small fires on the outside of the markets.

The police ordered the people on the street to disperse and return to their homes. A rock knocked out a streetlight. Darkness blanketed the area. From behind hedges and other places of concealment a variety of missiles were thrown at the police. The officer in charge was cut severely when a bottle broke the windshield of a car.

A fire department lighting unit was brought to the scene to illuminate the area. Except for some desultory rock throwing the neighborhood was quiet for the rest of the night. The only other disturbance occurred when a small band of youths made a foray into the city's principal business district two blocks away. Although a few windows were broken, there was no looting. Police quickly sealed off the area.

The same pattern of disorders continued for the next three nights. A relatively large number of police, responding to the breaking of windows or the setting of a me, would come upon a small number of persons in the street. Fires repeatedly were set at or near the same two stores and a tavern. On one occasion two Negro youths threw Molotov cocktails at police officers, and the officers responded with gunfire.

Although sounds resembling gunshots were heard sporadically throughout the area, no bullets or expended shells were found. Lt. William Clark who, as the Bergen County Police Department's civil disorders expert, was on the scene, reported that teenagers, as a harassing tactic, had exploded cherry bombs and firecrackers over a widely scattered area. Another view is that there may have been shots, but that they were fired into the air.

Nevertheless, the press reported that: "Snipers set up a three-way crossfire at William and Jay Streets in the heart of the Fourth Ward Negro ghetto, and pinned down 100 policemen, four reporters and a photographer for more than an hour."

These reports were "very definitely exaggerated and overplayed," according to Deputy Chief William F. Harrington of the Englewood Police Department. What police termed a "disturbance" appeared in press reports as a "riot," and "was way out of proportion in terms of the severity of the situation."

"I feel strongly," the Chief said, "that the news media ... actually inflamed the situation day by day."

VI. PLAINFIELD

New Jersey's worst violence outside of Newark was experienced by Plainfield, a pleasant, tree-shaded city of 45,000. A "bedroom community," more than a third of whose residents work outside the city, Plainfield had had relatively few Negroes until 1950. By 1967 the Negro population had risen to an estimated 30 percent of the total. As in Englewood, there was a division between the Negro middle class, which lived in the East side "gilded ghetto," and the unskilled, unemployed and underemployed poor on the West side.

Geared to the needs of a suburban middle class, the part-time and fragmented city government had failed to realize the change in character which the city had undergone, and was unprepared to cope with the problems of a growing disadvantaged population. There was no full-time administrator or city manager. Boards, with independent jurisdiction over such areas as education, welfare and health, were appointed by the part-time mayor, whose own position was largely honorary.

Accustomed to viewing politics as a gentleman's pastime, city officials were startled and upset by the intensity with which demands issued from the ghetto. Usually such demands were met obliquely, rather than head-on.

In the summer of 1966, trouble was narrowly averted over the issue of a swimming pool for Negro youngsters. In the summer of 1967, instead of having built the pool, the city began busing the children to the county pool a half-hour's ride distant. The fare was 25 cents per person, and the children had to provide their own lunch, a considerable strain on a frequent basis for a poor family with several children.

The bus operated only on three days in mid-week. On weekends the county pool was too crowded to accommodate children from the Plainfield ghetto.

Pressure increased upon the school system to adapt itself to the changing social and ethnic backgrounds of its pupils. There were strikes and boycotts. The track system created de facto segregation within a supposedly integrated school system. Most of the youngsters from white middle-class districts were in the higher track, most from the Negro poverty areas in the lower. Relations were strained between some white teachers and Negro pupils. Two-thirds of school dropouts were estimated to be Negro.

In February 1967 the NAACP, out of a growing sense of frustration with the municipal government, tacked a list of 19 demands and complaints to the door of the city hall. Most dealt with discrimination in housing, employment and in the public schools. By summer, the city's common council had not responded. Although two of the 11 council members were Negro, both represented the East side ghetto. The poverty area was represented by two white women, one of whom had been appointed by the council after the elected representative, a Negro, had moved away.

Relations between the police and the Negro community, tenuous at best, had been further troubled the week prior to the Newark outbreak. After being handcuffed during a routine arrest in a housing project, a woman had fallen down a flight of stairs. The officer said she had slipped. Negro residents claimed he had pushed her.

When a delegation went to city hall to file a complaint, they were told by the city clerk that he was not empowered to accept it. Believing that they were being given the run-around, the delegation, angry and frustrated, departed.

On Friday evening, July 14, the same police officer was moonlighting as a private guard at a diner frequented by Negro youths. He was, reportedly, number two on the Negro community's "ten most-wanted" list of unpopular police officers.

(The list was colorblind. Although out of 82 officers on the force only five were Negro, two of the 10 on the "most-wanted" list were Negro. The two officers most respected in the Negro community were white.)

Although most of the youths at the diner were of high school age, one, in his mid-twenties, had a reputation as a bully. Sometime before 10 p.m., as a result of an argument, he hit a 16-year-old boy and split open his face. As the boy lay bleeding on the asphalt, his friends rushed to the police officer and demanded that he call an ambulance and arrest the offender. Instead, the officer walked over to the boy, looked at him, and reportedly said: "Why don't you just go home and wash up?" He refused to make an arrest.

The youngsters were incensed. They believed that, had the two participants in the incident been white, the older youth would have been arrested, the younger taken to the hospital immediately.

On the way to the housing project where most of them lived, the youths traversed four blocks of the city's business district. As they walked, they smashed three or four windows. An observer interpreted their behavior as a reaction to the incident at the diner, in effect challenging the police officer: "If you won't do anything about that, then let's see you do something about this!"

On one of the quiet city streets two young Negroes, D. H. and L. C., had been neighbors. D. H. had graduated from high school, attended Fairleigh Dickinson University and, after receiving a degree in psychology, had obtained a job as a reporter on the Plainfield Courier-News.

L. C. had dropped out of high school, become a worker in a chemical plant, and, although still in his twenties, had married and fathered seven children. A man with a strong sense of family, he liked sports and played in the local baseball league. Active in civil rights, he had, like the civil rights organizations, over the years, become more militant. For a period of time he had been a Muslim.

The outbreak of vandalism aroused concern among the police. Shortly after midnight, in an attempt to decrease tensions, D. H. and the two Negro councilmen met with the youths in the housing project. The focal point of the youths' bitterness was the attitude of the police -- until 1966 police had used the word "nigger" over the police radio and one officer had worn a Confederate belt buckle and had flown a Confederate pennant on his car. Their complaints, however, ranged over local and national issues. There was an overriding cynicism and disbelief that government would, of its own accord, make meaningful changes to improve the lot of the lower class Negro. There was an overriding belief that there were two sets of policies by the people in power, whether law enforcement officers, newspaper editors, or government officials: one for white, and one for black.

There was little confidence that the two councilmen could exercise any influence. One youth said: "You came down here last year. We were throwing stones at some passing cars and you said to us that this was not the way to do it. You got us to talk with the man. We talked to him. We talked with him, and we talked all year long. We ain't got nothing yet!"

However, on the promise that meetings would be arranged with the editor of the newspaper and with the mayor later that same day, the youths agreed to disperse.

At the first of these meetings the youths were, apparently, satisfied by the explanation that the newspaper's coverage was not deliberately discriminatory. The meeting with the mayor, however, proceeded badly. Negroes present felt that the mayor was complacent and apathetic, and that they were simply being given the usual lip service, from which nothing would develop.

The mayor, on the other hand, told Commission investigators that he recognized that, "Citizens are frustrated by the political organization of the city," because he, himself, has no real power and "each of the councilmen says that he is just one of the 11 and therefore can't do anything."

After approximately two hours, a dozen of the youths walked out, indicating an impasse and signalling the breakup of the meeting. Shortly thereafter window smashing began. A Molotov cocktail was set afire in a tree. One fire engine, in which a white and Negro fireman were sitting side by side, had a Molotov cocktail thrown at it. The white fireman was burned.

As window smashing continued, liquor stores and taverns were especially hard hit. Some of the youths believed that there was an excess concentration of bars in the Negro section, and that these were an unhealthy influence in the community.

Because the police department had mobilized its full force, the situation, although serious, never appeared to get out of hand. Officers made many arrests. The chief of the fire department told Commission investigators that it was his conclusion that "individuals making fire bombs did not know what they were doing, or they could have burned the city."

At 3 o'clock Sunday morning a heavy rain began, scattering whatever groups remained on the streets.

In the morning police made no effort to cordon off the area. As white sightseers and churchgoers drove by the housing project there was sporadic rock throwing. During the early afternoon such incidents increased.

At the housing project, a meeting was convened by L.C. to draw up a formal petition of grievances. As the youths gathered it became apparent that some of them had been drinking. A few kept drifting away from the parking lot where the meeting was being held to throw rocks at passing cars. It was decided to move the meeting to a county park several blocks away.

Between 150 and 200 persons, including almost all of the rock throwers, piled into a caravan of cars and headed for the park. At approximately 3:30 p.m. the Chief of the Union County Park Police arrived to find the group being addressed by David Sullivan, Executive Director of the Human Relations Commission. He "informed Mr. Sullivan he was in violation of our park ordinance and to disperse the group."

Sullivan and L.C. attempted to explain that they were in the process of drawing up a list of grievances, but the chief remained adamant. They could not meet in the park without a permit, and they did not have a permit.

After permitting the group 10 to 15 minutes grace, the chief decided to disperse them. "Their mood was very excitable," he reported, and "in my estimation no one could appease them so we moved them out without too much trouble. They left in a caravan of about 40 cars, horns blowing and yelling and headed south on West End Avenue to Plainfield."

Within the hour looting became widespread. Cars were overturned, a white man was snatched off a motorcycle, and the fire department stopped responding to alarms because the police were unable to provide protection. After having been on alert until midday, the Plainfield Police Department was caught unprepared. At 6 p.m. only 18 men were on the streets. Checkpoints were established at crucial intersections in an effort to isolate the area.

Officer John Gleason, together with two reserve officers, had been posted at one of the intersections, three blocks from the housing project. Gleason was a veteran officer, the son of a former lieutenant on the police department. Shortly after 8 p.m. two white youths, chased by a 22-year-old Negro, Bobby Williams, came running from the direction of the ghetto toward Gleason's post.

As he came in sight of the police officers, Williams stopped. Accounts vary of what happened next, or why Officer Gleason took the action he did. What is known is that when D. H., the newspaper reporter caught sight of him a minute or two later, Officer Gleason was two blocks from his post. Striding after Williams directly into the ghetto area, Gleason already had passed one housing project. Small groups were milling about. In D.H.'s words: "There was a kind of shock and amazement," to see the officer walking by himself so deep in the ghetto.

Suddenly there was a confrontation between Williams and Gleason. Some witnesses report Williams had a hammer in his hand. Others say he did not. When D.H., whose attention momentarily had been distracted, next saw Gleason he had drawn his gun and was firing at Williams. As Williams, critically injured, fell to the ground Gleason turned and ran back toward his post.

Negro youths chased him. Gleason stumbled, regained his balance, then had his feet knocked out from under him. A score of youths began to beat him and kick him. Some residents of the apartment house attempted to intervene, but they were brushed aside. D. H. believes that, under the circumstances and in the atmosphere that prevailed at that moment, any police officer, black or white, would have been killed.

After they had beaten Gleason to death, the youths took D.H.'s camera from him and smashed it.

Fear swept over the ghetto. Many residents -- both lawless and law-abiding -- were convinced, on the basis of what had occurred in Newark, that law enforcement officers, bent on vengeance, would come into the ghetto shooting.

People began actively to prepare to defend themselves. There was no lack of weapons. Forty-six carbines were stolen from a nearby arms manufacturing plant and passed out in the street by a young Negro, a former newspaper boy. Most of the weapons fell into the hands of youths, who began firing them wildly. A fire station was peppered with shots.

Law enforcement officers continued their cordon about the area, but made no attempt to enter it except, occasionally, to rescue someone. National Guardsmen arrived shortly after midnight. Their armored personnel carriers were used to carry troops to the fire station, which had been besieged for five hours. During this period only one fire had been reported in the city.

Reports of sniper firing, wild shooting, and general chaos continued until the early morning hours.

By daylight Monday, New Jersey state officials had begun to arrive. At a meeting in the early afternoon, it was agreed that to inject police into the ghetto would be to risk bloodshed; that, instead, law enforcement personnel should continue to retain their cordon.

All during the day various meetings took place between government officials and Negro representatives. Police were anxious to recover the carbines that had been stolen from the arms plant. Negroes wanted assurances against retaliation. In the afternoon, L.C., an official of the Human Relations Commission, and others drove through the area urging people to be calm and to refrain from violence.

At 8 p.m., the New Jersey attorney general, human relations director, and commander of the state police, accompanied by the mayor, went to the housing project and spoke to several hundred Negroes. Some members of the crowd were hostile. Others were anxious to establish a dialogue. There were demands that officials give concrete evidence that they were prepared to deal with Negro grievances. Again, the meeting was inconclusive. The officials returned to City Hall.

At 9:15 p.m., L.C. rushed in claiming that -- as a result of the failure to resolve any of the outstanding problems, and reports that people who had been arrested by the police were being beaten -- violence was about to explode anew. The key demand of the militant faction was that those who had been arrested during the riot should be released. State officials decided to arrange for the release on bail of 12 arrestees charged with minor violations. L.C., in turn, agreed to try to induce return of the stolen carbines by Wednesday noon.

As state officials were scanning the list of arrestees to determine which of them should be released, a message was brought to Colonel Kelly of the state police that general firing had broken out around the perimeter.

The report testified to the tension: an investigation disclosed that one shot of unexplained origin had been heard. In response, security forces had shot out street lights, thus initiating the "general firing."

At 4:00 o'clock Tuesday morning, a dozen prisoners Were released from jail. Plainfield police officers considered this a "sellout."

When, by noon on Wednesday, the stolen carbines had not been returned, the governor decided to authorize a mass search. At 2:00 p.m., a convoy of state police and National Guard troops prepared to enter the area. In order to direct the search as to likely locations, a handful of Plainfield police officers were spotted throughout the 28 vehicles of the convoy.

As the convoy prepared to depart, the state community relations director, believing himself to be carrying out the decision of the governor Dot to permit Plainfield officers to participate in the search, ordered their removal from the vehicles. The basis for his order was that their participation might ignite a clash between them and the Negro citizens.

As the search for carbines in the community progressed, tension increased rapidly. According to witnesses and newspaper reports, some men in the search force left apartments in shambles.

The search was called off an hour and a half after it was begun. No stolen weapons were discovered. For the Plainfield police, the removal of the officers from the convoy had been a humiliating experience. A half hour after the conclusion of the search, in a meeting charged with emotion, the entire department threatened to resign unless the state community relations director left the city. He bowed to the demand.

On Friday, seven days after the first outbreak, the city began returning to normal.

VII. NEW BRUNSWICK

Although New Brunswick has about the same population as Plainfield, New Brunswick is a county seat and center of commerce, with an influx of people during the day. No clearly defined Negro ghetto exists. Substantial proportions of the population are Puerto Rican, foreign-born, and Negro.

All during the weekend, while violence sputtered, flared, subsided, then flared again in Plainfield, less than 10 miles away, there were rumors that "New Brunswick was really going to blow." Dissatisfaction in the Negro community revolved around several issues: the closing of a local teenage coffee house by the police department, the lack of a swimming pool and other recreation facilities, and the release of a white couple on very low bond after they had been arrested for allegedly shooting at three Negro teenagers. As elsewhere, there was a feeling that the law was not being applied equally to whites and Negroes.

By Monday, according to Mayor Patricia Sheehan, the town was "haunted by what had happened in Newark and Plainfield." James E. Amos, the associate director of the anti-poverty program in Middlesex County, said there was a "tenseness in the air" that "got thicker and thicker."

Staff members of the anti-poverty agency met with the mayor and city commissioners to discuss what steps might be taken to reduce the tension. The mayor, who had been elected on a reform platform two months previously, appointed a Negro police officer, Lieutenant John Brokaw, as community liaison officer. He was authorized to report directly to the mayor.

Negro officers in the department went into the streets in plain clothes to fight rumors and act as counter-rioters. Uniformed police officers were counseled to act with restraint to avoid the possibility of a police action setting off violence. The radio station decided on its own initiative to play down rumors and news of any disturbance.

The anti-poverty agency set up a task force of workers to go into all of the communities; white, Puerto Rican, and Negro, to report information and to try to cool the situation.

The chief of police met with the chiefs of surrounding communities to discuss cooperation in case a disorder broke out.

The streets remained quiet until past 9 p.m. Then scattered reports of windows being broken began to be received by police. At 10:30 p.m. Amos noticed 100 youngsters marching in a column of twos down the street. A tall Negro minister stepped from the office of the anti-poverty agency and placed himself in the street in order to head them off.

"Brothers! Stop! Let me talk to you!" he called out.

The marchers brushed past him. A small boy, about 13 years old, looked up at the minister:

"Black power, baby!" he said.

The New Brunswick police were reinforced by 100 officers from surrounding communities. Roadblocks were set up on all principal thoroughfares into the city.

Wild rumors swept the city: reports of armed Negro and white gangs, shootings, fires, beatings, and deaths.

In fact, what was occurring was more in the nature of random vandalism. The damage, caused mostly by teenagers, was relatively minor. According to Mayor Sheehan, it was "like Halloween -- a gigantic night of mischief."

Tuesday morning the mayor imposed a curfew, and recorded a tape, played periodically over the city's radio station, appealing for order. Most of the persons who had been picked up the previous night were released on their own recognizance or on low bail.

The anti-poverty agency, whose summer program had not been funded until a few days previously, began hiring youngsters as recreational aides. So many teenagers applied that it was decided to cut each stipend in half and hire twice as many as planned.

When the youngsters indicated a desire to see the mayor, she and the city commissioners agreed to meet with them. Although initially hostile, the 35 teenagers who made up the group "poured out their souls to the mayor." The mayor and the city commissioners agreed to the drawing up of a statement by the Negro youths attacking discrimination, inferior educational and employment opportunities, police harassment, and poor housing.

Four of the young people began broadcasting over the radio station, urging their "soul brothers and sisters" to "cool it, because you will only get hurt and the mayor has talked with us and is going to do something for us." Other youths circulated through the streets with the same message.

Despite these measures, a confrontation between the police and a crowd that gathered near a public housing project occurred that evening. The crowd was angry at the massive show of force by police in riot dress. "If you don't get the cops out of here," one man warned, "we are all going to get our guns." Asked to return to their homes, people replied: "We will go home when you get the police out of the area."

Requested by several city commissioners to pull back the uniformed police, the Chief at first refused. He was then told it was a direct order from the mayor. The police were withdrawn.

A short time later, elements of the crowd -- an older and rougher one than the night before -- appeared in front of the police station. The participants wanted to see the mayor.

Mayor Sheehan went out onto the steps of the station. Using a bullhorn, she talked to the people and asked that she be given an opportunity to correct conditions. The crowd was boisterous. Some persons challenged the mayor. But, finally, the opinion, "She's new! Give her a chance!" prevailed.

A demand was issued by people in the crowd that all persons arrested the previous night be released. Told that this already had been done, the people were suspicious. They asked to be allowed to inspect the jail cells.

It was agreed to permit representatives of the people to look in the cells to satisfy themselves that everyone had been released.

The crowd dispersed. The New Brunswick riot had failed to materialize.

VIII. DETROIT

On Saturday evening, July 22, the Detroit Police Department raided five "blind pigs." The blind pigs had had their origin in prohibition days, and survived as private social clubs. Often, they were after-hours drinking and gambling spots.

The fifth blind pig on the raid list, the United Community and Civic League at the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount, had been raided twice before. Once 10 persons had been picked up; another time, 28. A Detroit Vice Squad officer had tried but failed to get in shortly after 10 o'clock Saturday night. He succeeded, on his second attempt, at 3 :45 Sunday morning.

The Tactical Mobile Unit, the Police Department's Crowd Control Squad, had been dismissed at 3:00 A.M. Since Sunday morning traditionally is the least troublesome time for police in Detroit -- and all over the country -- only 193 officers were patrolling the streets. Of these, 44 were in the 10th Precinct where the blind pig was located.

Police expected to find two dozen patrons in the blind pig. That night, however, it was the scene of a party for several servicemen, two of whom were back from Vietnam. Instead of two dozen patrons, police found 82. Some voiced resentment at the police intrusion.

An hour went by before all 82 could be transported from the scene. The weather was humid and warm- -- he temperature that day was to rise to 86 -- and despite the late hour, many people were still on the street. In short order, a crowd of about 200 gathered.

In November of 1965, George Edwards, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Commissioner of the Detroit Police Department from 1961 to 1963, had written in the Michigan Law Review:

It is clear that in 1965 no one will make excuses for any city's inability to foresee the possibility of racial trouble.... Although local police forces generally regard themselves as public servants with the responsibility of maintaining law and order, they tend to minimize this attitude when they are patrolling areas that are heavily populated with Negro citizens. There, they tend to view each person on the streets as a potential criminal or enemy, and all too often that attitude is reciprocated. Indeed, hostility between the Negro communities in our large cities and the police departments, is the major problem in law enforcement in this decade. It has been a major cause of all recent race riots.

At the time of Detroit's 1943 race riot, Judge Edwards told Commission investigators, there was "open warfare between the Detroit Negroes and the Detroit Police Department." As late as 1961, he had thought that "Detroit was the leading candidate in the United States for a race riot."

There was a long history of conflict between the police department and citizens. During the labor battles of the 1930's, union members had come to view the Detroit Police Department as a strike-breaking force. The 1943 riot, in which 34 persons died, was the bloodiest in the United States in a span of two decades.

Judge Edwards and his successor, Commissioner Ray Girardin, attempted to restructure the image of the department. A Citizens Complaint Bureau was set up to facilitate the filing of complaints by citizens against officers. In practice, however, this Bureau appeared to work little better than less enlightened and more cumbersome procedures in other cities.

On 12th Street, with its high incidence of vice and crime, the issue of police brutality was a recurrent theme. A month earlier the killing of a prostitute had been determined by police investigators to be the work of a pimp. According to rumors m the community the crime had been committed by a Vice Squad officer.

At about the same time, the killing of Danny Thomas, a 27-year old Negro Army veteran, by a gang of white youths, had inflamed the community. The city's major newspapers played down the story in hope that the murder would not become a cause for increased tensions. The intent backfired. A banner story in the Michigan Chronicle, the city's Negro newspaper, began: "As James Meredith marched again Sunday to prove a Negro could walk in Mississippi without fear, a young woman who saw her husband killed by a white gang, shouting: "Niggers keep out of Rouge Park," lost her baby.

"Relatives were upset that the full story of the murder was Dot being told, apparently in an effort to prevent the incident from sparking a riot."

Some Negroes believed that the daily newspapers' treatment of the story was further evidence of the double standard: playing up crimes by Negroes, playing down crimes committed against Negroes.

Although police arrested one suspect for murder, Negroes questioned why the entire gang was not held. What, they asked, would have been the result if a white man had been killed by a gang of Negroes? What if Negroes had made the kind of advances toward a white woman that the white men were rumored to have made toward Mrs. Thomas?

The Thomas family lived only four or five blocks from the raided blind pig. A few minutes after 5:00 A.M., just after the last of those arrested had been hauled away. an empty bottle smashed into the rear window of a police car. A litter basket was thrown through the window of a store. Rumors circulated of excess force used by the police during the raid. A youth, whom police nicknamed "Mr. Greensleeves" because of the color of his shirt, was shouting: "We're going to have a riot!" and exhorting the crowd to vandalism.

At 5 :20 A.M. Commissioner Girardin was notified. He immediately called Mayor Jerome Cavanagh. Seventeen officers from other areas were ordered into the 10th Precinct. By 6:00 A.M. police strength had grown to 369 men. Of these, however, only 43 were committed to the immediate riot area. By that time the number of persons on 12th Street was growing into the thousands and widespread window-smashing and looting had begun.

On either side of 12th Street were neat, middle-class districts. Along 12th Street itself, however, crowded apartment houses created a density of more than 21,000 persons per square mile, almost double the city average.

The movement of people when the slums of "Black Bottom" had been cleared for urban renewal had changed 12th Street from an integrated community into an almost totally black one, in which only a number of merchants remained white. Only 18 percent of the residents were homeowners. Twenty-five percent of the housing was considered so substandard as to require clearance. Another 19 percent had major deficiencies.

The crime rate was almost double that of the city as a whole. A Detroit police officer told Commission investigators that prostitution was so widespread that officers made arrests only when soliciting became blatant. The proportion of broken families was more than twice that in the rest of the city.

By 7:50 A.M., when a 17-man police commando unit attempted to make the first sweep, an estimated 3,000 persons were on 12th Street. They offered no resistance. As the sweep moved down the street, they gave way to one side, and then flowed back behind it.

A shoe store manager said he waited vainly for police for two hours as the store was being looted. At 8: 25 A.M. someone in the crowd yelled "The cops are coming!" The first flames of the riot billowed from the store. Firemen who responded were not harassed. The flames were extinguished.

By mid-morning, 1,122 men -- approximately a fourth of the police department -- had reported for duty. Of these, 540 were in or near the six-block riot area. One hundred and eight officers were attempting to establish a cordon. There was, however, no interference with looters, and police were refraining from the use of force.

Commissioner Girardin said: "If we had started shooting in there .... not one of our policemen would have come out alive. I am convinced it would have turned into a race riot in the conventional sense."

According to witnesses, police at some roadblocks made little effort to stop people from going in and out of the area. Bantering took place between police officers and the populace, some still in pajamas. To some observers, there seemed at this point to be an atmosphere of apathy. On the one hand, the police failed to interfere with the looting. On the other, a number of older, more stable residents, who had seen the street deteriorate from a prosperous commercial thoroughfare to one ridden by vice, remained aloof.

Because officials feared that the 12th Street disturbance might be a diversion, many officers were sent to guard key installations in other sections of the city. Belle Isle, the recreation area in the Detroit River that had been the scene of the 1943 riot, was sealed off.

In an effort to avoid attracting people to the scene, some broadcasters cooperated by not reporting the riot, and an effort was made to downplay the extent of the disorder. The facade of "business as usual" necessitated the detailing of numerous police officers to protect the 50,000 spectators that were expected at that afternoon's New York Yankees-Detroit Tigers baseball game.

Early in the morning a task force of community workers went into the area to dispel rumors and act as counter-rioters. Such a task force had been singularly successful at the time of the incident in the Kercheval district in the summer of 1966, when scores of people had gathered at the site of an arrest. Kercheval, however, has a more stable population, fewer stores, less population density, and the city's most effective police-community relations program.

The 12th Street area, on the other hand, had been determined, in a 1966 survey conducted by Dr. Ernest Harburg of the Psychology Department of the University of Michigan, to be a community of high stress and tension. An overwhelming majority of the residents indicated dissatisfaction with their environment.

Of those interviewed, 93 percent said they wanted to move out of the neighborhood; 73 percent felt that the streets were not safe; 91 percent believed that a person was likely to be robbed or beaten at night; 58 percent knew of a fight within the last 12 months in which a weapon had been employed; 32 percent stated that they themselves owned a weapon; 57 percent were worried about fires.

A significant proportion believed municipal services to be inferior: 36 percent were dissatisfied with the schools; 43 percent with the city's contribution to the neighborhood; 77 percent with the recreational facilities; 78 percent believed police did not respond promptly when they were summoned for help.

United States Representative John Conyers, Jr., a Negro, was notified about the disturbance at his home, a few blocks from 12th Street, at 8:30 A.M. Together with other community leaders, including Hubert G. Locke, a Negro and assistant to the commissioner of police, he began to drive around the area. In the side streets he asked people: to stay in their homes. On 12th Street, he asked them to disperse. It was, by his own account, a futile task.

Numerous eyewitnesses interviewed by Commission investigators tell of the carefree mood with which people ran in and out of stores, looting and laughing, and joking with the police officers. Stores with "Soul Brothers" signs appeared no more immune than others. Looters paid no attention to residents who shouted at them and called their actions senseless. An epidemic of excitement had swept over the persons on the street.

Congressman Conyers noticed a woman with a baby in her arms; she was raging, cursing "Whitey" for no apparent reason.

Shortly before noon Congressman Conyers climbed atop a car in the middle of 12th Street to address the people. As he began to speak he was confronted by a man in his fifties whom he had once, as a lawyer, represented in court. The man had been active in civil rights. He believed himself to have been persecuted as a result, and it was Conyers' opinion that he may have been wrongfully jailed. Extremely bitter, the man was inciting the crowd and challenging Conyers: "Why are you defending the cops and the establishment? You're just as bad as they are!"

A police officer in the riot area told Commission investigators that neither he nor his fellow officers were instructed as to what they were supposed to be doing. Witnesses tell of officers standing behind saw-horses as an area was being looted -- and still standing there much later, when the mob had moved elsewhere. A squad from the commando unit, wearing helmets with face-covering visors and carrying bayonet-tipped carbines, blockaded a street several blocks from the scene of the riot. Their appearance drew residents into the street. Some began to harangue them and to question why they were in an area where there was no trouble. Representative Conyers convinced the police department to remove the commandos.

By that time a rumor was threading through the crowd that a man had been bayoneted by the police. Influenced by such stories, the crowd became belligerent. At approximately I: 00 P.M. stonings accelerated. Numerous officers reported injuries from rocks, bottles, and other objects thrown at them. Smoke billowed upward from four fires, the first since the one at the shoe store early in the morning. When firemen answered the alarms, they became the target for rocks and bottles.

At 2:00 P.M. Mayor Cavanagh met with community and political leaders at police headquarters. Until then there had been hope that, as the people blew off steam, the riot would dissipate. Now the opinion was nearly unanimous that additional forces would be needed.

A request was made for state police aid. By 3:00 P.M. 360 officers were assembling at the armory. At that moment looting was spreading from the 12th Street area to other main thoroughfares.

There was no lack of the disaffected to help spread it. Although not yet as hard-pressed as Newark, Detroit was, like Newark, losing population. Its prosperous middle-class whites were moving to the suburbs and being replaced by unskilled Negro migrants. Between 1960 and 1967 the Negro population rose from just under 30 percent to an estimated 40 percent of the total.

In a decade the school system had gained 50,000 to 60,000 children. Fifty-one percent of the elementary school classes were overcrowded. Simply to achieve the statewide average, the system needed 1,650 more teachers and 1,000 additional classrooms. The combined cost would be $63 million.
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

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PART 4 OF 4

Of 300,000 school children, 171,000, or 57 percent, were Negro. According to the Detroit Superintendent of Schools, 25 different school districts surrounding the city spent up to $500 more per pupil per year than Detroit. In the inner city schools, more than half the pupils who entered high school became dropouts.

The strong union structure had created excellent conditions for most working men, but had left others, such as civil service and government workers, comparatively disadvantaged and dissatisfied. In June the "Blue Flu" had struck the city as police officers, forbidden to strike, had staged a sick-out. In September, the teachers were to go on strike. The starting wages for a plumber's helper were almost equal to the salary of a police officer or teacher.

Some unions, traditionally closed to Negroes, zealously guarded training opportunities. In January of 1967 the school system notified six apprenticeship trades it would not open any new apprenticeship classes unless a large number of Negroes were included. By fall, some of the programs were still closed.

High school diplomas from inner city schools were regarded by personnel directors as less than valid. In July, unemployment was at a five-year peak. In the 12th Street area it was estimated to be between 12 and 15 percent for Negro men and 30 percent or higher for those under 25.

The more education a Negro had, the greater the disparity between his income and that of a white with the same level of education. The income of whites and Negroes with a seventh grade education was about equal. The median income of whites with a high school diploma was $1,600 more per year than that of Negroes. White college graduates made $2,600 more. In fact, so far as income was concerned, it made very little difference to a Negro man whether he had attended school for 8 years or for 12. In the fall of 1967, a study conducted at one inner city high school, Northwestern, showed that, although 50 percent of the dropouts had found work, 90 percent of the 1967 graduating class was unemployed.

Mayor Cavanagh had appointed many Negroes to key positions in his administration, but in elective offices the Negro population was still under-represented. Of nine councilmen, one was a Negro. Of seven school board members, two were Negroes.

Although federal programs had brought nearly $360 million to the city between 1962 and 1967, the money appeared to have had little impact at the grassroots. Urban renewal, for which $38 million had been allocated, was opposed by many residents of the poverty area.

Because of its financial straits, the city was unable to produce on promises to correct such conditions as poor garbage collection and bad street lighting, which brought constant complaints from Negro residents.

On 12th Street Carl Perry, the Negro proprietor of a drug store and photography studio, was dispensing ice cream, sodas, and candy to the youngsters streaming in and out of his store. For safekeeping he had brought the photography equipment from his studio, in the next block, to the drug store. The youths milling about repeatedly assured him that, although the market next door had been ransacked, his place of business was in no danger.

In mid-afternoon the market was set afire. Soon after, the drug store went up in flames.

State Representative James Del Rio, a Negro, was camping out in front of a building he owned when two small boys, neither more than 10 years old, approached. One prepared to throw a brick through a window. Del Rio stopped him: "That building belongs to me," he said.

"I'm glad you told me, baby, because I was just about to bust you in!" the youngster replied.

Some evidence that criminal elements were organizing spontaneously to take advantage of the riot began to manifest itself. A number of cars were noted to be returning again and again, their occupants methodically looting stores. Months later, goods stolen during the riot were still being peddled.

A spirit of carefree nihilism was taking hold. To riot and to destroy appeared more and more to become ends in themselves. Late Sunday afternoon it appeared to one observer that the young people were "dancing amidst the flames."

A Negro plainclothes officer was standing at an intersection when a man threw a Molotov cocktail into a business establishment at the comer. In the heat of the afternoon, fanned by the 20 to 25 m.p.h. winds of both Sunday and Monday, the fire reached the home next door within minutes. As residents uselessly sprayed the flames with garden hoses, the fire jumped from roof to roof of adjacent two and three-story buildings. Within the hour the entire block was in flames. The ninth house in the burning row belonged to the arsonist who had thrown the Molotov cocktail.

In some areas residents organized rifle squads to protect firefighters. Elsewhere, especially as the wind-whipped flames began to overwhelm the Detroit Fire Department and more and more residences burned, the firemen were subjected to curses and rock-throwing.

Because of a lack of funds, on a per capita basis the department is one of the smallest in the nation. In comparison to Newark, where approximately 1,000 firemen patrol an area of 16 square miles with a population of 400,000, Detroit's 1,700 firemen must cover a city of 140 square miles with a population of 1.6 million. Because the department had no mutual aid agreement with surrounding communities, it could not quickly call in reinforcements from outlying areas, and it was almost 9:00 P.M. before the first arrived. At one point, out of a total of 92 pieces of Detroit fire fighting equipment and 56 brought in from surrounding communities, only four engine companies were available to guard areas of the city outside of the riot perimeter.

As the afternoon progressed the fire department's radio carried repeated messages of apprehension and orders of caution:

There is no police protection here at all; there isn't a policeman in the area.... If you have any trouble at all, pull out! ... We're being stoned at the scene. It's going good. We need help! ... Protect yourselves! Proceed away from the scene.... Engine 42 over at Linwood and Gladstone. They are throwing bottles at us so we are getting out of the area. . . . All companies without police protection -- all companies without police protection -- orders are to withdraw, do not try to put out the fires. I repeat -- all companies without police protection orders are to withdraw, do not try to put out the fires!

It was 4:30 P.M. when the firemen, some of them exhausted by the heat, abandoned an area of approximately 100 square blocks on either side of 12th Street to await protection from police and National Guardsmen.

During the course of the riot firemen were to withdraw 283 times.

Fire Chief Charles J. Quinlan estimated that at least two-thirds of the buildings were destroyed by spreading fires rather 'than fires set at the scene. Of the 683 structures involved, approximately one-third were residential, and in few, if any, of these was the fire set originally.

Governor George Romney flew over the area between 8: 30 and 9:00 P.M. "It looked like the city bad been bombed on the west- side and there was an area two-and-a-balf miles by three-and-a-half miles with major fires, with entire blocks in flames," he told the Commission.

In the midst of chaos there Went some unexpected individual responses.

Twenty-four-year-old E.G., a Negro born in Savannah, Georgia, had come to Detroit in 1965 to attend Wayne State University. Rebellion had been building in him for a long time because,

You just had to bow down to the white man. . . . When the insurance man would come by he would always call out to my mother by her first name and we were expected to smile and greet him happily.... Man, I know he would never have thought of me or my father going to his house and calling his wife by her first name. Then I once saw a white man slapping a young pregnant Negro woman on the street with such force that she just spun around and fell. I'll never forget that.

When a friend called to tell him about the riot on 12th Street, E. G. went there expecting "a true revolt," but was disappointed as soon as he saw the looting begin: "I wanted to see the people really rise up in revolt. When 1 saw the first person coming out of the store with things in his arms, 1 really got sick to my stomach and wanted to go home. Rebellion against the white suppressors is one thing, but one measly pair of shoes or some food completely ruins the whole concept."

E. G. was standing in a crowd, watching firemen work, when Fire Chief Alvin Wall called out for help from the spectators. E. G. responded. His reasoning was: "No matter what color someone is, whether they are green or pink or blue, I'd help them if they were in trouble. That's all there is to it."

He worked with the firemen for four days, the only Negro in an all-white crew. Elsewhere, at scattered locations, a half dozen other Negro youths pitched in to help the firemen.

At 4:20 P.M. Mayor Cavanagh requested that the National Guard be brought into Detroit. Although a major portion of the Guard was in its summer encampment 200 miles away, several hundred troops were conducting their regular weekend drill in the city. That circumstance obviated many problems. The first troops were on the streets by 7:00 P.M.

At 7:45 P.M. the mayor issued a proclamation instituting a 9:00 P.M. to 5:00 A.M. curfew. At 9:07 P.M. the first sniper fire was reported. Following his aerial survey of the city, Governor Romney, at or shortly before midnight, proclaimed that "a state of public emergency exists" in the cities of Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck.

At 4:45 P.M. a 68-year-old white shoe repairman, George Messerlian, had seen looters carrying clothes from a cleaning establishment next to his shop. Armed with a saber, he had rushed into the street, Bailing away at the looters. One Negro youth was nicked on the shoulder. Another, who had not been on the scene, inquired as to what had happened. After he had been told, he allegedly replied: "I'll get the old man for you!"

Going up to Messerlian, who had fallen or been knocked to the ground, the youth began to beat him with a club. Two other Negro youths dragged the attacker away from the old man. It was too late. Messerlian died four days later in the hospital.

At 9:15 P.M. a 16-year-old Negro boy, superficially wounded while looting, became the first reported gunshot victim.

At midnight Sharon George, a 23-year-old white woman, together with her two brothers, was a passenger in a car being driven by her husband. After having dropped off two Negro friends, they were returning home on one of Detroit's main avenues when they were slowed by a milling throng in the street. A shot fired from close range struck the car. The bullet splintered in Mrs. George's body. She died less than two hours later.

An hour before midnight a 45-year-old white man, Walter Grzanka together with three white companions, went into the street. Shortly thereafter a market was broken into. Inside the show window a Negro. man began filling bags with groceries and handing them to confederates outside the store. Grzanka twice went over to the store, accepted bags, and placed them down beside his companions across the street. On the third occasion he entered the market. When he emerged, the market owner, driving by in his car, shot and killed him.

In Grzanka's pockets police found seven cigars, four packages of pipe tobacco, and nine pairs of shoelaces.

Before dawn four other looters were shot, one of them accidentally while struggling with a police officer. A Negro youth and a National Guardsman were injured by gunshots of undetermined origin. A private guard shot himself while pulling his revolver from his pocket. In the basement of the 13th Precinct Police Station a cue ball, thrown by an unknown assailant, cracked against the head of a sergeant.

At about midnight three white youths, armed with a shotgun, had gone to the roof of their apartment building, located in an all-white block, in order, they said, to protect the building from fire. At 2:45 A.M. a patrol car, carrying police officers and National Guardsmen, received a report of "snipers on the roof." As the patrol car arrived, the manager of the building went to the roof to tell the youths they had better come down.

The law enforcement personnel surrounded the building, some going to the front, others to rear. As the manager, together with the three youths, descended the fire escape in the rear, a National Guardsman, believing he heard shots from the front, fired. His shot killed 23-year-old Clifton Pryor.

Early in the morning a young white fireman and a 49-year-old Negro homeowner were killed by fallen power lines.

By 2:00 A. M. Monday, Detroit police had been augmented by 800 State Police officers and 1,200 National Guardsmen. An additional 8,000 Guardsmen were on the way. Nevertheless, Governor Romney and Mayor Cavanagh decided to ask for federal assistance. At 2: 15 A.M. the mayor called Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and was referred to Attorney General Ramsey Clark. A short time thereafter telephone contact was established between Governor Romney and the attorney general. [6]

There is some difference of opinion about what occurred next. According to the attorney general's office, the governor was advised of the seriousness of the request and told that the applicable federal statute required that, before federal troops could be brought into the city, he would have to state that the situation had deteriorated to the point that local and state forces could no longer maintain law and order. According to the governor, he was under the impression that he was being asked to declare that a "state of insurrection" existed in the city.

The governor was unwilling to make such a declaration, contending that, if he did, insurance policies would not cover the loss incurred as a result of the riot. He and the mayor decided to re-evaluate the need for federal troops.

Contact between Detroit and Washington was maintained throughout the early morning hours. At 9: 00 A.M., as the disorder still showed no sign of abating, the governor and the mayor decided to make a renewed request for federal troops.

Shortly before noon the President of the United States authorized the sending of a task force of paratroopers to Selfridge Air Force Base, near the city. A few minutes past 3:00 P.M., Lt. General John L. Throckmorton, commander of Task Force Detroit, met Cyrus Vance, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, at the air base. Approximately an hour later the first federal troops arrived at the air base.

Mter meeting with state and municipal officials, Mr. Vance, General Throckmorton, Governor Romney, and Mayor Cavanagh, made a tour of the city, which lasted until 7:15 P.M. During this tour Mr. Vance and General Throckmorton independently came to the conclusion that -- since they had seen no looting or sniping, since the fires appeared to be coming under control, and since a substantial number of National Guardsmen had not yet been committed -- injection of federal troops would be premature.

As the riot alternately waxed and waned, one area of the ghetto remained insulated. On the northeast side the residents of some 150 square blocks inhabited by 21,000 persons had, in 1966, banded together in the Positive Neighborhood Action Committee (PNAC). With professional help from the Institute of Urban Dynamics, they had organized block clubs and made plans for the improvement of the neighborhood. In order to meet the need for recreational facilities, which the city was not providing, they had raised $3,000 to purchase empty lots for playgrounds. Although opposed to urban renewal, they had agreed to co-sponsor with the Archdiocese of Detroit a housing project to be controlled jointly by the archdiocese and PNAC.

When the riot broke out, the residents, through the block clubs, were able to organize quickly. Youngsters, agreeing to stay in the neighborhood, participated in detouring traffic. While many persons reportedly sympathized with the idea of a rebellion against the "system," only two small fires were set -- one in an empty building.

During the daylight hours Monday, nine more persons were killed by gunshots elsewhere in the city, and many others were seriously or critically injured. Twenty-three-year old Nathaniel Edmonds, a Negro, was sitting in his back yard when a young white man stopped his car, got out, and began an argument with him. A few minutes later, declaring that he was "going to paint his picture on him with a shotgun," the white man allegedly shotgunned Edmonds to death.

Mrs. Nannie Pack and Mrs. Mattie Thomas were sitting on the porch of Mrs. Pack's house when police began chasing looters from a nearby market. During the chase officers fired three shots from their shotguns. The discharge from one of these accidentally struck the two women. Both were still in the hospital weeks later.

Included among those critically injured when they were accidentally trapped in the line of fire were an 8-year-old Negro girl and a 14-year-old white boy.

As darkness settled Monday, the number of incidents re-reported to police began to rise again. Although many turned out to be false, several involved injuries to police officers, National Guardsmen, and civilians by gunshots of undetermined origin.

Watching the upward trend of reported incidents, Mr. Vance and General Throckmorton became convinced Federal troops should be used, and President Johnson was so advised. At 11:20 P.M. the President signed a proclamation federalizing the Michigan National Guard and authorizing the use of the paratroopers.

At this time there were nearly 5,000 Guardsmen in the city, but fatigue, lack of training, and the haste with which they had had to be deployed reduced their effectiveness. Some of the Guardsmen traveled 200 miles and then were on duty for 30 hours straight. Some had never received riot training and were given on-the-spot instructions on mob control -- pnly to discover that there were no mobs, and that the situation they faced on the darkened streets was one for which they were unprepared.

Commanders committed men as they became available, often in small groups. In the resulting confusion, some units were lost in the city. Two Guardsmen assigned to an intersection on Monday were discovered still there on Friday.

Lessons learned by the California National Guard two years earlier in Watts regarding the danger of overreaction and the necessity of great restraint in using weapons had not, apparently, been passed on to the Michigan National Guard. The young troopers could not be expected to know what a danger they were creating by the lack of fire discipline, not only to the civilian population but to themselves.

A Detroit newspaper reporter who spent a night riding in a command jeep told a Commission investigator of machine guns being fired accidentally, street lights being shot out by rifle fire, and buildings being placed under siege on the sketchiest reports of sniping. Troopers would fire, and immediately from the distance there would be answering fire, sometimes consisting of tracer bullets.

In one instance, the newsman related, a report was received on the jeep radio that an Army-bus was pinned down by sniper fire at an intersection. National Guardsmen and police, arriving from various directions, jumped out and began asking each other: "Where's the sniper fire coming from?" As one Guardsman pointed to a building, everyone rushed about, taking cover. A soldier, alighting from a jeep, accidentally pulled the trigger on his rifle. As the shot reverberated through the darkness an officer yelled: "What's going on?" "I don't know," came the answer. "Sniper, I guess."

Without any clear authorization or direction someone opened fire upon the suspected building. A tank rolled up and sprayed the building with .50 caliber tracer bullets. Law enforcement officers rushed into the surrounded building and discovered it empty. "They must be firing one shot and running," was the verdict.

The reporter interviewed the men who had gotten off the bus and were crouched around it. When he asked them about the sniping incident he was told that someone had heard a shot. He asked "Did the bullet hit the bus?" The answer was: ''Well, we don't know."

Bracketing the hour of midnight Monday, heavy firing, injuring many persons and killing several, occurred in the southeastern sector, which was to be taken over by the paratroopers at 4:00 A.M. Tuesday, and which was, at this time, considered to be the most active riot area in the city.

Employed as a private guard, 55-year-old Julius L. Dorsey, a Negro, was standing in front of a market when accosted by two Negro men and a woman. They demanded he permit them to loot the market. He ignored their demands. They began to berate him. He asked a neighbor to call the police. As the argument grew more heated, Dorsey fired three shots from his pistol into the air.

The police radio reported: "Looters, they have rifles." A patrol car driven by a police officer and carrying three National Guardsmen arrived. As the looters fled, the law enforcement personnel opened fire. When the firing ceased, one person lay dead.

He was Julius L. Dorsey.

In two areas -- one consisting of a triangle formed by Mack, Gratiot, and E. Grand Boulevard, the other surrounding Southeastern High School -- firing began shortly after 10:00 P.M. and continued for several hours.

In the first of the areas, a 22-year-old Negro complained that he had been shot at by snipers. Later, a half dozen civilians and one National Guardsman were wounded by shots of undetermined origin.

Henry Denson, a passenger in a car, was shot and killed when the vehicle's driver, either by accident or intent, failed to heed a warning to halt at a National Guard roadblock.

Similar incidents occurred in the vicinity of Southeastern High School, one of the National Guard staging areas. As early as 10:20 P.M. the area was reported to be under sniper fire. Around midnight there were two incidents, the sequence of which remains in doubt.

Shortly before midnight Ronald Powell, who lived three blocks east of the high school and whose wife was, momentarily, expecting a baby, asked the four friends with whom he had been spending the evening to take him home. He, together with Edward Blackshear, Charles Glover, and John Leroy climbed into Charles Dunson's station wagon for the short drive. Some of the five may have been drinking, but none was intoxicated.

To the north of the high school they were halted at a National Guard roadblock, and told they would have to detour around the school and a fire station at Mack and St. Jean Streets because of the firing that had been occurring. Following orders, they took a circuitous route and approached Powell's home from the south.

On Lycaste Street, between Charlevoix and Goethe, they saw a jeep sitting at the curb. Believing it to be another roadblock, they slowed down. Simultaneously a shot rang out. A National Guardsman fell, hit in the ankle.

Other National Guardsmen at the scene thought the shot had come from the station wagon. Shot after shot was directed against the vehicle, at least 17 of them finding their mark. All five occupants were injured, John Leroy fatally.

At approximately the same time firemen, police, and National Guardsmen at the comer of Mack and St. Jean Streets, two and' one-half blocks away, again came under fire from what they believed were rooftop snipers to the southeast, the direction of Charlevoix and Lycaste. The police and Guardsmen responded with a hail of fire.

When the shooting ceased, Carl Smith, a young firefighter, lay dead. An autopsy determined that the shot had been fired at street level, and, according to police, probably had come from the southeast.

At 4:00 A.M. when paratroopers, under the command of Co!. A. R. Bolling, arrived at the high school, the area was so dark and still that the colonel thought, at first, that he had come to the wrong place. Investigating, he discovered National Guard troops, claiming they were pinned down by sniper fire, crouched behind the walls of the darkened building.

The colonel immediately ordered all the lights in the building turned on and his troops to show themselves as conspicuously as possible. In the apartment house across the street nearly every window had been shot out, and the walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. The colonel went into the building and began talking to the residents, many of whom had spent the night huddled on the floor. He reassured them no more shots would be fired.

According to Lt. Gen. Throckmorton and Colonel Bolling, the city, at this time, was saturated with fear. The National Guardsmen were afraid, the residents were afraid, and the police were afraid. Numerous persons, the majority of them Negroes, were being injured by gunshots of undetermined origin. The general and his staff felt that the major task of the troops was to reduce the fear and restore an air of normalcy.

In order to accomplish this, every effort was made to establish contact and rapport between the troops and the residents. Troopers -- 20 percent of whom were Negro -- began helping to clean up the streets, collect garbage, and trace persons who had disappeared in the confusion. Residents in the neighborhoods responded with soup and sandwiches for the troops. In areas where the National Guard tried to establish rapport with the citizens, there was a similar response.

Within hours after the arrival of the paratroops the area occupied by them was the quietest in the city, bearing out General Throckmorton's view that the key to quelling a disorder is to saturate an area with "calm, determined, and hardened professional soldiers." Loaded weapons, he believes, are unnecessary. Troopers had strict orders not to fire unless they could see the specific person at whom they were aiming. Mass fire was forbidden.

During five days in the city, 2,700 Army troops expended only 201 rounds of ammunition, almost all during the first few hours, after which even stricter fire discipline was enforced. (In contrast, New Jersey National Guardsmen and State police expended 13,326 rounds of ammunition in three days in Newark.) Hundreds of reports of sniper fire -- most of them false -- continued to pour into police headquarters; the Army logged only 10. No paratrooper was injured by a gunshot. Only one person was hit by a shot fired by a trooper. He was a young Negro who was killed when he ran into the line of fire as a trooper, aiding police in a raid on an apartment, aimed at a person believed to be a sniper.

General Throckmorton ordered the weapons of all military personnel unloaded, but either the order failed to reach many National Guardsmen, or else it was disobeyed.

Even as the general was requesting the city to relight the streets, Guardsmen continued shooting out the lights, and there are reports of dozens of shots being fired to dispatch one light. At one such location, as Guardsmen were shooting out the street lights, a radio newscaster reported himself to be pinned down by "sniper fire."

On the same day that the general was attempting to restore normalcy by ordering street barricades taken down, Guardsmen on one street were not only, in broad daylight, ordering people off the street, but off their porches and away from the windows. Two persons who failed to respond to the order quickly enough were shot, one of them fatally.

The general himself reported an incident of a Guardsman "firing across the bow" of an automobile that was approaching a roadblock.

As in Los Angeles two years earlier, roadblocks that were ill-lighted and ill-defined -- often consisting of no more than a trash barrel or similar object with Guardsmen standing nearby -- proved a continuous hazard to motorists. At one such roadblock, National Guard Sergeant Larry Post, standing in the street, was caught in a sudden cross fire as his fellow Guardsmen opened up on a vehicle. He was the only soldier killed in the riot.

With persons of every description arming themselves, and guns being fired accidentally or on the vaguest pretext all over the city, it became more and more impossible to tell who was shooting at whom. Some firemen began carrying guns. One accidentally shot and wounded a fellow fireman. Another injured himself.

The chaos of a riot, and the difficulties faced by police officers, are demonstrated by an incident that occurred at 2:00 A.M. Tuesday.

A unit of 12 officers received a call to guard firemen from snipers. When they arrived at the comer of Vicksburg and Linwood in the 12th Street area, the intersection was well-lighted by the flames completely enveloping one building. Sniper fire was directed at the officers from an alley to the north, and gun flashes were observed in two buildings.

As the officers advanced on the two buildings, Patrolman Johnie [sic] Hamilton fired several rounds from his machinegun. Thereupon, the officers were suddenly subjected to fire from a new direction, the east. Hamilton, struck by four bullets, fell, critically injured, in the intersection. As two officers ran to his aid, they too were hit.

By this time other units of the Detroit Police Department, state police, and National Guard had arrived on the scene, and the area was covered with a hail of gunfire.

In the confusion the snipers who had initiated the shooting escaped.

At 9: 15 P.M. Tuesday, July 25, 38-year-old Jack Sydnor, a Negro, came home drunk. Taking out his pistol, he fired one shot into an alley. A few minutes later the police arrived. As his common-law wife took refuge in a closet, Sydnor waited, gun in hand, while the police forced open the door. Patrolman Roger Poike, the first to enter, was shot by Sydnor. Although critically injured, the officer managed to get off six shots in return. Police within the building and on the street then poured a hail of fire into the apartment. When the shooting ceased, Sydnor's body, riddled by the gunfire, was found lying on the ground outside a window.

Nearby, a state police officer and a Negro youth were struck and seriously injured by stray bullets. As in other cases where the origin of the shots was not immediately determinable, police reported them as "shot by sniper."

Reports of "heavy sniper fire" poured into police headquarters from the two blocks surrounding the apartment house where the battle with Jack Sydnor had taken place. National Guard troops with two tanks were dispatched to help flush out the snipers.

Shots continued to be heard throughout the neighborhood. At approximately midnight -- there are discrepancies as to the precise time -- a machine gunner on a tank, startled by several shots, asked the assistant gunner where the shots were coming from. The assistant gunner pointed toward a flash in the window of an apartment house from which there had been earlier reports of sniping.

The machine gunner opened fire. As the slugs ripped through the window and walls of the apartment, they nearly severed the arm of 21-year-old Valerie Hood. Her 4-year-old niece, Tonya Blanding, toppled dead, a .50 caliber bullet hole in her chest.

A few seconds earlier, 19-year-old Bill Hood, standing in the window, had lighted a cigarette.

Down the street, a bystander was critically injured by a stray bullet. Simultaneously, the John C. Lodge Freeway, two blocks away, was reported to be under sniper fire. Tanks and National Guard troops were sent to investigate. At the Harlan House Motel, ten blocks from where Tonya Blanding had died a short time earlier, Mrs. Helen Hall, a 51-year-old white businesswoman, opened the drapes of the fourth floor hall window. Calling out to other guests, she exclaimed: "Look at the tanks!"

She died seconds later as bullets began to slam into the building. As the firing ceased, a 19-year-old Marine Pfc., carrying a Springfield rifle, burst into the building. When, accidentally, he pushed the rifle barrel through a window, the firing commenced anew. A police investigation showed that the Marine, who had just decided to "help out" the law enforcement personnel, was not involved in the death of Mrs. Hall.

R. R., a white 27-year-old coin dealer, was the owner of an expensive, three-story house on "L" Street, an integrated middle class neighborhood. In May of 1966, he and his wife and child had moved to New York and had rented the house to two young men. After several months he had begun to have problems with his tenants. On one occasion he reported to his attorney that he had been threatened by them.

In March of 1967, R. R. instituted eviction proceedings. These were still pending when the riot broke out. Concerned about the house, R. R. decided to fly to Detroit. When he arrived at the house, on Wednesday, July 26, he discovered the tenants were not at home.

He then called his attorney, who advised him to take physical possession of the house and, for legal purposes, to take witnesses along.

Together with his 17-year-old brother and another white youth, R. R. went to the house, entered, and began changing the locks on the doors. For protection they brought a .22 caliber rifle, which R. R.'s brother took into the cellar and fired into a pillow in order to test it.

Shortly after 8:00 P.M., R. R. called his attorney to advise him that the tenants had returned, and he had refused to admit them. Thereupon, R. R. alleged, the tenants had threatened to obtain the help of the National Guard. The attorney relates that he was not particularly concerned. He told R. R. that if the National Guard did appear he should have the officer in charge call him (the attorney).

At approximately the same time the National Guard claims it received information to the effect that several men had evicted the legal occupants of the house, and intended to start sniping after dark.

A National Guard column was dispatched to the scene. Shortly after 9:00 P.M., in the half-light of dusk, the column of approximately 30 men surrounded the house. A tank took position on a lawn across the street. The captain commanding the column placed in front of the house an explosive device similar to a firecracker. After setting this off in order to draw the attention of the occupants to the presence of the column, he called for them to come out of the house. No attempt was made to verify the truth or falsehood of the allegations regarding snipers.

When the captain received no reply from the house, he began counting to 10. As he was counting, he said, he heard a shot, the origin of which he could not determine. A few seconds later he heard another shot and saw a "fire streak" coming from an upstairs window. He thereupon gave the order to fire.

According to the three young men, they were on the second floor of the house and completely bewildered by the barrage of fire that was unleashed against it. As hundreds of bullets crashed through the first and second-story windows and ricocheted off the walls, they dashed to the third floor. Protected by a large chimney, they huddled in a closet until, during a lull in the firing, they were able to wave an item of clothing out of the window as a sign of surrender. They were arrested as snipers.

The firing from rifles and machine guns had been so intense that in a period of a few minutes it inflicted an estimated $10,000 worth of damage. One of a pair of stone columns was shot nearly in half.

Jailed at the 10th Precinct Station sometime Wednesday night R. R. and his two companions were taken from their cell to an "alley court," police slang for an unlawful attempt to make prisoners confess. A police officer, who has resigned from the force, allegedly administered such a severe beating to R. R. that the bruises still were visible two weeks later.

R. R.'s 17-year-old brother had his skull cracked open, and was thrown back into the cell. He was taken to a hospital only when other arrestees complained that he was bleeding to death.

At the preliminary hearing 12 days later the prosecution presented only one witness, the National Guard captain who had given the order to fire. The police officer who had signed the original complaint was not asked to take the stand. The charges against all three of the young men were dismissed.

Nevertheless, the morning after the original incident, a major metropolitan newspaper in another section of the country composed the following banner story from wire service reports:

DETROIT, July 27 (Thursday) -- Two National Guard tanks ripped a sniper's haven with machine guns Wednesday night and flushed out three shaggy-haired white youths. Snipers attacked a guard command post and Detroit's racial riot set a modern record for bloodshed. The death toll soared to 36, topping the Watts bloodbath of 1966 in which 35 died and making Detroit's insurrection the most deadly racial riot in modem U.S. history....

In the attack on the sniper's nest, the Guardsmen poured hundreds of rounds of .50 caliber machine gun fire into the home, which authorities said housed arms and ammunition used by West Side sniper squads.

Guardsmen recovered guns and ammunition. A reporter with the troopers said the house, a neat brick home in a neighborhood of $20,000 to $50,000 homes, was torn apart by the machine gun and rifle fire.

Sniper fire crackled from the home as the Guard unit approached. It was one of the first verified reports of sniping by whites....

A pile of loot taken from riot-ruined stores was recovered from the sniper's haven, located ten blocks from the heart of the 200- square block riot zone.

Guardsmen said the house had been identified as a storehouse of arms and ammunition for snipers. Its arsenal was regarded as an indication that the sniping -- or at least some of it -- was organized.

As hundreds of arrestees were brought into the 10th Precinct Station, officers took it upon themselves to carry on investigations and to attempt to extract confessions. Dozens of charges of police brutality emanated from the station as prisoners were brought in uninjured, but later had to be taken to the hospital.

In the absence of the precinct commander, who had transferred his headquarters to the riot command post at a nearby hospital, discipline vanished. Prisoners who requested that they be permitted to notify someone of their arrest were almost invariably told that: "The telephones are out of order." Congressman Conyers and State Representative Del Rio, who went to the station hoping to coordinate with the police the establishing of a community patrol, were so upset by what they saw that they changed their minds and gave up on the project.

A young woman, brought into the station, was told to strip. After she had done so, and while an officer took pictures with a Polaroid camera, another officer came up to her and began fondling her. The negative of one of the pictures, fished out of a waste basket, subsequently was turned over to the mayor's office.

Citing the sniper danger, officers throughout the department had taken off their bright metal badges. They also had taped over the license plates and the numbers of the police cars. Identification of individual officers became virtually impossible.

On a number of occasions officers fired at fleeing looters, then made little attempt to determine whether their shots had hit anyone. Later some of the persons were discovered dead or injured in the street.

In one such case police and National Guardsmen were interrogating a youth suspected of arson when, according to officers, he attempted to escape. As he vaulted over the hood of an automobile, an officer fired his shotgun. The youth disappeared on the other side of the car. Without making an investigation, the officers and Guardsmen returned to their car and drove off.

When nearby residents called police, another squad car arrived to pick up the body. Despite the fact that an autopsy disclosed the youth had been killed by five shotgun pellets, only a cursory investigation was made, and the death was attributed to "sniper fire." No police officer at the scene during the shooting filed a report.

Not until a Detroit newspaper editor presented to the police the statements of several witnesses claiming that the youth had been shot by police after he had been told to run did the department launch an investigation. Not until three weeks after the shooting did an officer come forward to identify himself as the one who had fired the fatal shot.

Citing conflicts in the testimony of the score of witnesses, the Detroit Prosecutor's office declined to press charges.

Prosecution is proceeding in the case of three youths in whose shotgun deaths law enforcement personnel were implicated following a report that snipers were firing from the Algiers Motel. In fact, there is little evidence that anyone fired from inside the building. Two witnesses say that they had seen a man, standing outside of the motel, fire two shots from a rifle. The interrogation of other persons revealed that law enforcement personnel then shot out one or more street lights. Police patrols responded to the shots. An attack was launched on the motel.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that this incident occurred at roughly the same time that the National Guard was directing fire at the apartment house in which Tonya Blanding was killed. The apartment house was only six blocks distant from and in a direct line with the motel.

The killings occurred when officers began on-the-spot questioning of the occupants of the motel in an effort to discover weapons used in the "sniping." Several of those questioned reportedly were beaten. One was a Negro ex-paratrooper who bad only recently been honorably discharged, and had gone to Detroit to look for a job.

Although by late Tuesday looting and fire-bombing had virtually ceased, between 7: 00 and 11: 00 P.M. that night there were 444 reports of incidents. Most were reports of sniper fire.

During the daylight hours of July 26th, there were 534 such reports. Between 8:30 and 11:00 P.M. there were 255. As they proliferated, the pressure on law enforcement officers to uncover the snipers became intense. Homes were broken into. Searches were made on the flimsiest of tips. A Detroit newspaper headline aptly proclaimed: "Everyone's Suspect in No Man's Land."

Before the arrest of a young woman IBM operator in the city assessor's office brought attention to the situation on Friday, July 28th, any person with a gun in his home was liable to be picked up as a suspect.

Of the 27 persons charged with sniping, 22 had charges against them dismissed at preliminary hearings, and the charges against two others were dismissed later. One pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered gun and was given a suspended sentence. Trials of two are pending.

In all, more than 7,200 persons were arrested. Almost 3,000 of these were picked up on the second day of the riot, and by midnight Monday 4,000 were incarcerated in makeshift jails. Some were kept as long as 30 hours on buses. Others spent days in an underground garage without toilet facilities. An uncounted number were people who had merely been unfortunate enough to be on the wrong street at the wrong time. Included were members of the press whose attempts to show their credentials had been ignored. Released later, they were chided for not having exhibited their identification at the time of their arrests.

The booking system proved incapable of adequately handling the large number of arrestees. People became lost for days in the maze of different detention facilities. Until the later stages, bail was set deliberately high, often at $10,000 or more. When it became apparent that this policy was unrealistic and unworkable, the Prosecutor's office began releasing on low bail or on their own recognizance hundreds of those who had been picked up. Nevertheless, this fact was not publicized for fear of antagonizing those who had demanded a high-bail policy.

Of the 43 persons who were killed during the riot, 33 were Negro and 10 were white. Seventeen were looters, of whom two were white. Fifteen citizens (of whom four were white), one white National Guardsman, one white fireman, and one Negro private guard died as the result of gunshot wounds. Most of these deaths appear to have been accidental, but criminal homicide is suspected in some.

Two persons, including one fireman, died as a result of fallen power lines. Two were burned to death. One was a drunken gunman; one an arson suspect. One white man was killed by a rioter. One police officer was felled by a shotgun blast when his gun, in the hands of another officer, accidentally discharged during a scuffle with a looter.

Action by police officers accounted for 20 and. very likely. 21 of the deaths. Action by the National Guard for seven, and. very likely, nine. Action by the Army for one. Two deaths were the result of action by store owners. Four persons died accidentally. Rioters were responsible for two, and perhaps three of the deaths; a private guard for one. A white man is suspected of murdering a Negro youth. The perpetrator of one of the killings in the Algiers Motel remains unknown.

Damage estimates, originally set as high as $500 million, were quickly scaled down. The city assessor's office placed the loss -- excluding business stock, private furnishings, and the buildings of churches and charitable institutions -- at approximately $22 million. Insurance payments, according to the State Insurance Bureau, will come to about $32 million, representing an estimated 65 to 75 percent of the total loss.

By Thursday, July 27, most riot activity had ended. The paratroopers were removed from the city on Saturday. On Tuesday, August 1, the curfew was lifted and the National Guard moved out.

METHODOLOGY

Construction of the Profiles of Disorder began with surveys by field teams in 23 cities. From an analysis of the documents compiled and field interviews, 10 of the 23, a fair cross section of the cities, were chosen for intensive further investigation.

A special investigating group was dispatched to each city under study to conduct in-depth interviews of persons previously questioned, and others that had come to our attention as a result of the analysis. Additional documents were obtained. In the process of acquisition, analysis, and distillation of information, the special investigating group made several trips to each city. In the meantime, the regular field teams continued to conduct their surveys and report additional information.

The approximately 1200 persons interviewed represent a cross section of officials, observers, and participants involved in the riot process: from mayors, police chiefs, and army officers to Black Power advocates and rioters. Experts in diverse fields, such as taxation, fire fighting, and psychology, were consulted. Testimony presented to the Commission in closed hearings was incorporated.

Many official documents were used in compiling chronologies and corroborating statements made by witnesses. These included but were not limited to police department and other law enforcement agencies' after-action reports, logs, incident reports, injury reports, and reports of homicide investigations; after-action reports of U.S. Army and National Guard units; FBI reports; fire department logs and reports; and reports from Prosecutors' offices and other investigating agencies.

About 1500 pages of depositions were taken from 90 witnesses to substantiate each of the principal items in the Profiles.

Since some information was supplied to the Commission on a confidential basis, a fully annotated, footnoted copy of the Profiles cannot be made public at this time, but will be deposited in the Archives of the United States.

_______________

Notes:

1. A description of the methods used to verify the statements of fact contained in the profiles is set forth in a note at page 1- 163.

2. Throughout the report, in the presentation of statistics Negro is used interchangeably with non-white. Wherever available, current data are used. Where no updating has been possible, figures are those of the 1960 census. Sources are the U.S. Bureau of the Census and other government agencies, and, in a few instances, special studies.

3. A block Is considered to have been "busted" when one Negro family has been sold a home in a previously all-white area.

4. The legal tax rate is $7.76 per $100 of market value. However, because of inflation, a guideline of 85.27 percent of market value is used in assessing, reducing the true tax rate to $6.617 per $100.

5. Jersey City, Elizabeth, Englewood, Plainfield, Paterson, New Brunswick.

6. A little over two hours earlier, at 11:55 P.M. Mayor Cavanagh had informed the U.S. Attorney General that a "dangerous situation existed In the city." Details are set forth in the Final Report of Cyrus R. Vance covering the Detroit Riots, released on September 12, 1967.
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

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Part 1 of 5

Chapter 2: Patterns of Disorder [i]

INTRODUCTION

The President asked the Commission to answer several specific questions about the nature of riots:

• The kinds of communities where they occurred;
• The characteristics -- including age, education, and job history -- of those who rioted and those who did not;
• The ways in which groups of lawful citizens can be encouraged to help cool the situation;
• The relative impact of various depressed conditions in the ghetto which stimulated people to riot;
• The impact of federal and other programs on those conditions;
• The effect on rioting of police-community relationships;
• The parts of the community which suffered the most as a result of the disorders.

The profiles in the foregoing chapter portray the nature and extent of 10 of the disorders which took place during the summer of 1967. This chapter seeks in these events and in the others which we surveyed a set of common elements -- to aid in understanding what happened and in answering the President's questions.

This chapter also considers certain popular conceptions about riots. Disorders are often discussed as if there were a single type. The "typical" riot of recent years is sometimes seen as a massive uprising against white people, involving widespread burning, looting, and sniping, either by all Negroes or by an uneducated, Southern-born Negro underclass of habitual criminals or "riffraff." An agitator at a protest demonstration. the coverage of events by the news media, or an isolated ''triggering'' or "precipitating" incident is often identified as the primary spark of violence. A uniform set of stages is sometimes posited, with a succession of confrontations and withdrawals by two cohesive groups, the police on one side and a riotous mob on the other. Often it is assumed that there was no effort within the Negro community to reduce the violence. Sometimes the only remedy prescribed is application of the largest possible police or control force, as early as possible.

What we have found does not validate these conceptions. We have been unable to identify constant patterns in all aspects of civil disorders. We have found that they are unusual, irregular, complex and, in the present state of knowledge, unpredictable social processes. Like most human events, they do not unfold in orderly sequences.

Moreover, we have examined the 1967 disorders within a few months after their occurrence and under pressing time limitations. While we have collected information of considerable immediacy, analysis will undoubtedly improve with the passage and perspective of time and with the further accumulation and refinement of data. To facilitate further analysis we have appended much of our data to this report.

We have categorized the information now available about the 1967 disorders as follows.

• The pattern of violence over the nation: severity, location, timing, and numbers of people involved;
• The riot process in a sample of 24 disorders we have surveyed: [ii] prior events, the development of violence, the various control efforts on the part of officials and the community, and the relationship between violence and control efforts;
• The riot participants: a comparison of rioters with those who sought to limit the disorder and those who remained uninvolved;
• The setting in which the disorders occurred: social and economic conditions, local governmental structure, the scale of federal programs, and the grievance network in the Negro community;
• The aftermath of disorder: the ways in which communities responded after order was restored in the streets.

Based upon information derived from our surveys, we offer the following generalizations:

1. No civil disorder was "typical" in all respects. Viewed in a national framework, the disorders of 1967 varied greatly in terms of violence and damage: while a relatively small number were major under our criteria and a somewhat larger number were serious, most of the disorders would have received little or no national attention as "riots" had the nation not been sensitized by the more serious outbreaks.

2. While the civil disorders of 1967 were racial in character, they were not interracial. The 1967 disorders, as well as earlier disorders of the recent period, involved action within Negro neighborhoods against symbols of white American society -- authority and property -- rather than against white persons.

3. Despite extremist rhetoric, there was no attempt to subvert the social order of the United States. Instead, most of those who attacked white authority and property seemed to be demanding fuller participation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the vast majority of American citizens.

4. Disorder did not typically erupt without preexisting causes, as a result of a single "triggering" or "precipitating" incident. Instead, it developed out of an increasingly disturbed social atmosphere, in which typically a series of tension-heightening incidents over a period of weeks or months became linked in the minds of many in the Negro community with a shared network of underlying grievances.

5. There was, typically, a complex relationship between the series of incidents and the underlying grievances. For example, grievances about allegedly abusive police practices, unemployment and underemployment, housing and other conditions in the ghetto, were often aggravated in the minds of many Negroes by incidents involving the police, or the inaction of municipal authorities on Negro complaints about police action, unemployment, inadequate housing or other conditions. When grievance-related incidents recurred and rising tensions were not satisfactorily resolved, a cumulative process took place in which prior incidents were readily recalled and grievances reinforced. At some point in the mounting tension, a further incident- -- n itself often routine or even trivial -- became the breaking point, and tension spilled into violence.

6. Many grievances in the Negro community result from the discrimination, prejudice and powerlessness which Negroes often experience. They also result from the severely disadvantaged social and economic conditions of many Negros as compared with those of whites in the same city and, more particularly, in the predominantly white suburbs.

7. Characteristically, the typical rioter was not a hoodlum, habitual criminal, or riffraff; nor was he a recent migrant, a member of an uneducated underclass, or a person lacking broad social and political concerns. Instead, he was a teenager or young adult, a lifelong resident of the city in which he rioted, a high-school drop-out -- but somewhat better educated than his Negro neighbor -- and almost invariably underemployed or employed in a menial job. He was proud of his race, extremely hostile to both whites and middle-class Negroes and, though informed about politics, highly distrustful of the political system and of political leaders.

8. Numerous Negro counter-rioters walked the streets urging rioters to "cool it." The typical counter-rioter resembled in many respects the majority of Negroes, who neither rioted nor took action against the rioters, that is, the non-involved. But certain differences are crucial: the counter-rioter as better educated and had higher income than either the rioter or the noninvolved.

9. Negotiations between Negroes and white officials occurred during virtually all the disorders surveyed. The negotiations often involved young, militant Negroes as well as older, established leaders. Despite a setting of chaos and disorder, negotiations in many cases involved discussion of underlying grievances as well as the handling of the disorder by control authorities.

10. The chain we have identified -- discrimination, prejudice, disadvantaged conditions, intense and pervasive grievances, a series of tension-heightening incidents, all culminating in the eruption of disorder at the hands of youthful, politically-aware activists -- must be understood as describing the central trend in the disorders, not as an explanation of all aspects of the riots or of all rioters. Some rioters, for example, may have shared neither the conditions nor the grievances of their Negro neighbors; some may have coolly and deliberately exploited the chaos created by others; some may have been drawn into the melee merely because they identified with, or wished to emulate, others. Nor do we intend to suggest that the majority of the rioters, who shared the adverse conditions and grievances, necessarily articulated in their own minds the connection between that background and their actions.

11. The background of disorder in the riot cities was typically characterized by severely disadvantaged conditions for Negroes, especially as compared with those for whites; a local government often unresponsive to these conditions; federal programs which had not yet reached a significantly large proportion of those in need; and the resulting reservoir of pervasive and deep grievance and frustration in the ghetto.

12. In the immediate aftermath of disorder, the status quo of daily life before the disorder generally was quickly restored. Yet, despite some notable public and private efforts, little basic change took place in the conditions underlying the disorder. In some cases, the result was increased distrust between blacks and whites, diminished interracial communication, and growth of Negro and white extremist groups.

I. THE PATTERN OF VIOLENCE AND DAMAGE

Levels of Violence and Damage


Because definitions of "civil disorder" vary widely, between 51 and 217 disorders were recorded by various agencies as having occurred during the first nine months of 1967. From these sources we have developed a list of 164 disorders which occurred during that period. [1] We have ranked them in three categories of violence and damage utilizing such criteria as the degree and duration of violence, the number of active participants, and the level of law enforcement response:

Major Disorders -- Eight disorders, 5 percent of the total, were major. These were characterized generally by a combination of the following factors: (1) many fires, intensive looting, and reports of sniping; (2) violence lasting more than two days; (3) sizeable crowds; and (4) use of National Guard or federal forces [2] as well as other control forces.

Serious disorders -- Thirty-three disorders, 20 percent of the total, were serious but not major. These were characterized generally by: (1) isolated looting, some fires, and some rock throwing; (2) violence lasting between one and two days; (3) only one sizeable crowd or many small groups; and (4) use of state police [3] though generally not National Guard or federal forces.

Minor disorders -- One hundred and twenty-three disorders, 75 percent of the total, were minor. These would not have been classified as "riots" or received wide press attention without national conditioning to a "riot climate." They were characterized generally by: (1) a few fires and broken windows; (2) violence lasting generally less than one day; (3) participation by only small numbers of people; and (4) use, in most cases, only of local police or police from a neighboring community. [4]

The 164 disorders which we have categorized occurred in 128 cities. Twenty-five (20 percent) of the cities had two or more disturbances. New York had five separate disorders, Chicago had four, six cities had three and 17 cities had two. [5] Two cities which experienced a major disorder -- Cincinnati and Tampa -- had subsequent disorders; Cincinnati had two more. However, in these two cities the later disorders were less serious than the earlier ones. In only two cities were later disorders more severe.

Three conclusions emerge from the data:

• The significance of the 1967 disorders cannot be minimized. The level of disorder was major or serious, in terms of our criteria, on 41 occasions in 39 cities.
• The level of disorder, however, has been exaggerated. Three-fourths of the disorders were relatively minor and would not have been regarded as nationally-newsworthy "riots" in prior years.
• The fact that a city had experienced disorder earlier in 1967 did not immunize it from further violence.

Time -- In 1967, disorders occurred with increasing frequency as summer approached and tapered off as it waned. More than 60 percent of the 164 disorders occurred in July alone.

Disorders by Month [7] and Level

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Space -- The violence was not limited to any one section of the country.

Disorders by Month [8] and Level

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When timing and location are considered together, other relationships appear. Ninety-eight disorders can be grouped into 23 clusters, which consist of two or more disturbances occurring within two weeks and within a few hundred miles of each other.

"Clustering" was particularly striking for two sets of cities. The first, centered on Newark, consisted of disorders in 14 New Jersey cities. The second, centered on Detroit, consisted of disturbances in seven cities in Michigan and one in Ohio. [9]

Size of Community -- The violence was not limited to large cities. Seven of the eight major disorders occurred in communities with populations of 250,000 or more. But 37 (23 percent) of the disorders reviewed occurred in communities with populations of 50,000 or less; and 67 disorders (41 percent) occurred in communities with populations of 100,000 or less, including nine (about 22 percent) of the 41 serious or major disturbances.

Disorders by Level and City Population [10]

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Death, Injury and Damage

In its study of 75 disturbances in 67 cities, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations reported 83 deaths and 1,897 injuries. [12 ]Deaths occurred in 12 of these disturbances. More than 80 percent of the deaths and more than half the injuries occurred in Newark and Detroit. In more than 60 percent of the disturbances, no deaths and no more than 10 injuries were reported. [13]

Substantial damage to property also tended to be concentrated in a relatively small number of cities. Of the disorders which the Commission surveyed, significant damage resulted in Detroit ($40-45 million), Newark ($10.2 million), and Cincinnati (more than $1 million). In each of nine cities, damage was estimated at less than $100,000. [14]

Fire caused extensive damage in Detroit and Cincinnati, two of the three cities which suffered the greatest destruction of property. [15] Newark had relatively little loss from fire but extensive inventory loss from looting and damage to stock. [16]

Damage estimates made at the time of the Newark and Detroit disorders were later greatly reduced. Early estimates in Newark ranged from $15 to $25 million; a month later the estimate was revised to $10.2 million. In Detroit, newspaper damage estimates at first ranged from $200 million to $500 million, the highest recent estimate is $45 million. [17]

What we have said should not obscure three important factors. First, the dollar cost of the disorder should be increased by the extraordinary administrative expenses of municipal, state and Federal governments. [18 ]Second, deaths and injuries are not the sole measures of the cost of civil disorders in human terms. For example, the cost of dislocation of people -- though clearly not quantifiable in dollars and cents -- was a significant factor in Detroit, the one case in which many residences were destroyed. [19] Other human costs -- fear, distrust, and alienation -- were incurred in every disorder. Third, even a relatively low level of violence and damage in absolute terms may seriously disrupt a small or medium-sized community.

Victims of Violence

Of the 83 persons who died in the 75 disorders studied by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, about 10 percent were public officials, primarily law officers and firemen. Among the injured, public officials made up 38 percent. [20] The overwhelming majority of the civilians killed and injured were Negroes.

Retail businesses suffered a much larger proportion of the damage during the disorders than public institutions, industrial properties, or private residences. In Newark, 1,029 establishments, affecting some 4,492 employers and employees, suffered damage to buildings or loss of inventory or both. Those which suffered the greatest loss through looting, in descending order of loss, were liquor, clothing, and furniture stores.

White-owned businesses are widely believed to have been damaged much more frequently than those owned by Negroes. In at least nine of the cities studied, the damage seems to have been, at least in part, the result of deliberate attacks on white-owned businesses characterized in the Negro community as unfair or disrespectful toward Negroes. [21]

Not all the listed damage was purposeful or was caused by rioters. Some was a by-product of violence. In certain instances police and fire department control efforts caused damage. The New Jersey commission on civil disorders has found that in Newark, retributive action was taken against Negro-owned property by control forces. [22] Some damage was accidental. In Detroit some fire damage, especially to residences, may have been caused primarily by a heavy wind.

Public institutions generally were not targets of serious attacks, [23] but police and fire equipment was damaged in at least 15 of the 23 cities. [24]

Of the cities surveyed, significant damage to residences occurred only in Detroit. In at least nine of the 22 other cities there was minor damage to residences, often resulting from fires in adjacent businesses. [25]

II. THE RIOT PROCESS

The Commission has found no "typical" disorder in 1967 in terms of intensity of violence and extensiveness of damage. To determine whether, as is sometimes suggested, there was a typical "riot process," we examined 24 disorders which occurred during 1967 in 20 cities and three university settings. [26] We have concentrated on four aspects of that process:

• The accumulating reservoir of grievances in the Negro community;
• "Precipitating" incidents and their relationship to the reservoir of grievances;
• The development of violence after its initial outbreak;
• The control effort, including official force, negotiation, and persuasion.

We found a common social process operating in all 24 disorders in certain critical respects. These events developed similarly, over a period of time and out of an accumulation of grievances and increasing tension in the Negro community. Almost invariably, they exploded in ways related to the local community and its particular problems and conflicts. But once violence erupted, there began a complex interaction of many elements -- rioters, official control forces, counter-rioters -- in which the differences between various disorders were more pronounced than the similarities.

The Reservoir of Grievances in the Negro Community

Our examination of the background of the surveyed disorders revealed a typical pattern of deeply-held grievances which were widely shared by many members of the Negro community. [27] The specific content of the expressed grievances varied somewhat from city to city. But in general, grievances among Negroes in all the cities related to prejudice, discrimination, severely disadvantaged living conditions and a general sense of frustration about their inability to change those conditions.

Specific events or incidents exemplified and reinforced the shared sense of grievance. News of such incidents spread quickly throughout the community and added to the reservoir. Grievances about police practices, unemployment and underemployment, housing and other objective conditions in the ghetto were aggravated in the minds of many Negroes by the inaction of municipal authorities.

Out of this reservoir of grievance and frustration, the riot process began in the cities which we surveyed.

Precipitating Incidents

In virtually every case a single "triggering" or "precipitating" incident can be identified as having immediately preceded -- within a few hours and in generally the same location -- the outbreak of disorder. [28] But this incident was usually relatively minor, even trivial, by itself substantially disproportionate to the scale of violence that followed. Often it was an incident of a type which had occurred frequently in the same community in the past without provoking violence.

We found that violence was generated by an increasingly disturbed social atmosphere, in which typically not one, but a series of incidents occurred over a period of weeks or months prior to the outbreak. of disorders. [29] Most cities had three or more such incidents; Houston had 10 over a five-month period. These earlier or prior incidents were linked in the minds of many Negroes to the pre-existing reservoir of underlying grievances. With each such incident, frustration and tension grew until at some point a final incident, often similar to the incidents preceding it, occurred and was followed almost immediately by violence.

As we see it, the prior incidents and the reservoir of underlying grievances contributed to a cumulative process of mounting tension that spilled over into violence when the final incident occurred. In this sense the entire chain -- the grievances, the series of prior tension-heightening incidents, and the final incident -- was the "precipitant" of disorder.

This chain describes the central trend in the disorders we surveyed, and not necessarily all aspects of the riots or of all rioters. For example, incidents have not always increased tension; and tension has not always resulted in violence. We conclude only that both processes did occur in the disorders we examined.

Similarly, we do not suggest that all rioters shared the conditions or the grievances of their Negro neighbors: some may deliberately have exploited the chaos created out of the frustration of others; some may have been drawn into the melee merely because they identified with, or wished to emulate, others. Some who shared the adverse conditions and grievances did not riot.

We found that the majority of the rioters did share the adverse conditions and grievances. Although they did not necessarily articulate in their own minds the connection between that background and their actions.

Newark and Detroit presented typical sequences of prior incidents, a build-up of tensions, a final incident, and the outbreak. of violence:

NEWARK

Prior Incidents


1965: A Newark policeman shot and killed an 18-year-old Negro boy. After the policeman had stated that he had fallen and his gun had discharged accidentally, he later claimed that the youth had assaulted another officer and was shot as he fled. At a hearing it was decided that the patrolman had not used excessive force. The patrolman remained on duty, and his occasional assignment to Negro areas was a continuing source of irritation in the Negro community:

April, 1967: Approximately 15 Negroes were arrested while picketing a grocery store which they claimed sold bad meat and used unfair credit practices.

Late May, early June: Negro leaders had for several months voiced strong opposition to a proposed medical-dental center to be built on 150 acres of land in the predominantly Negro Central Ward. The dispute centered mainly around the lack of relocation provisions for those who would be displaced by the medical center. The issue became extremely volatile in late May when public "blight hearings" were held regarding the land to be condemned: The hearings became a public forum in which many residents spoke against the proposed center. The city did not change its plan.

Late May, June: The mayor recommended appointment of a white city councilman who had no more than a high school education to the position of secretary to the board of education. Reportedly, there was widespread support from both whites and Negroes for a Negro candidate who held a master's degree and was considered more qualified. The mayor did not change his recommendation. Ultimately, the original secretary retained his position and neither candidate was appointed.

July 8: Several Newark policemen, allegedly including the patrolman involved in the 1965 killing, entered East Orange to assist the East Orange police during an altercation with a group of Negro men.

Final Incident

July 12, approximately 9:30 p.m.: A Negro cab driver was injured during or after a traffic arrest in the heart of the Central Ward. Word spread quickly, and a crowd gathered in front of the Fourth Precinct station-house across the street from a large public housing project.

Initial Violence

Same day, approximately 11:30 p.m.: The crowd continued to grow until it reached 300 to 500 people. One or two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the station-house. Shortly after midnight the police dispersed the crowd, and window-breaking and looting began a few minutes later. By about 1:00 a.m., the peak level of violence for the first night was reached.

DETROIT

Prior Incidents


August 1966: A crowd formed during a routine arrest of several Negro youths in the Kercheval section of the city. Tensions were high for several hours, but no serious violence occurred.

June 1967: A Negro prostitute was shot to death on her front steps. Rumors in the Negro community attributed the killing to a vice squad officer. A police investigation later reportedly unearthed leads to a disgruntled pimp. No arrests were made.

June 26: A young Negro man on a picnic was shot to death while reportedly trying to protect his pregnant wife from assault by seven white youths. The wife witnessed the slaying and miscarried shortly thereafter. Of the white youths, only one was charged. The others were released.

Final Incident

July 23, approximately 3:45 a.m.: Police raided a "blind pig," a type of night club in the Negro area which served drinks after hours. Eighty persons were in the club -- more than the police had anticipated -- attending a party for several servicemen, two of whom had recently returned from Vietnam. A crowd of about 200 persons gathered as the police escorted the patrons into the police wagons.

Initial Violence

Approximately 5:00 a.m.: As the last police cars drove away from the "blind pig," the crowd began to throw rocks. By 8:00 a.m., looting had become widespread. Violence continued to increase throughout the day, and by evening reached a peak level for the first day.

In the 24 disorders surveyed, the events identified as tension-heightening incidents, whether prior or final, involved issues which generally paralleled the grievances we found in these cities. [30] The incidents identified were of the following types:

Some 40 percent of the prior incidents involved allegedly abusive or discriminatory police actions. [31] Most of the police incidents began routinely and involved a response to, at most, a few persons rather than a large group. [32]

A typical incident occurred in Bridgeton, New Jersey five days before the disturbance when two police officers went to the home of a young Negro man to investigate a nonsupport complaint. A fight ensued when the officers attempted to take the man to the police station, and the Negro was critically injured and partially paralyzed. A Negro minister representing the injured man's family asked for suspension of the two officers involved pending investigation. This procedure had been followed previously when three policemen were accused of collusion in the robbery of a white-owned store. The Negro's request was not granted.

Police actions were also identified as the final incident preceding 12 of the 24 disturbances. [33] Again, in all but two cases, the police action which became the final incident began routinely. [34]

The final incident in Grand Rapids occurred when police attempted to apprehend a Negro driving an allegedly stolen car. A crowd of 30 to 40 Negro spectators gathered. The suspect had one arm in a cast, and some of the younger Negroes in the crowd intervened because they thought the police were handling him too roughly.

PROTEST ACTIVITIES

Approximately 22 percent of the prior incidents involved Negro demonstrations, rallies, and protest meetings. [35] Only five involved appearances by nationally-known Negro militants. [36]

Protest rallies and meetings were also identified as the final incident preceding five disturbances. Nationally-known Negro militants spoke at two of these meetings; in the other three only local leaders were involved. [37] A prior incident involving alleged police brutality was the principal subject of each of these three rallies. [38] Inaction of municipal authorities was the topic for two other meetings. [39]

WHITE RACIST ACTIVITIES

About 17 percent of the prior incidents involved activities by whites intended to discredit or intimidate Negroes, or violence by whites against Negroes. [40] These included some 15 cross-burnings in Bridgeton, the harassment of Negro college students by white teenagers in Jackson, Mississippi, and, in Detroit, the slaying of a Negro by a group of white youths. No final incidents were classifiable as racist activity.

PREVIOUS DISORDERS IN THE SAME CITY

In this category were approximately 16 percent of the prior incidents, including seven previous disorders, the handling of which had produced a continuing sense of grievance. [41] There were other incidents, usually of minor violence, which occurred prior to seven disorders [42] and were seen by the Negro community as precursors of the subsequent disturbance. Typically, in Plainfield the night before the July disorder, a Negro youth was injured in an altercation between white and Negro teenagers. Tensions rose as a result. No final incidents were identified in this category.

DISORDERS IN OTHER CITIES

Local media coverage and rumors generated by disorders in other cities were specifically identified as prior incidents in four cases. [43] In Grand Rapids and Phoenix, the Detroit riot was commonly identified, and in Bridgeton and Plainfield, the Newark riot had a similar effect. The major disorders in Detroit and Newark appeared, however, to be important factors in all the disorders which followed them.

Media coverage and rumors generated by the major riots in nearby Newark and Plainfield were the only identifiable final incidents preceding five nearby disorders. [44] In these cases there was a substantial mobilization of police and extensive patrolling of the ghetto area in anticipation of violence.

OFFICIAL CITY ACTIONS

Approximately 14 percent of the prior incidents were identified as action, or in some cases, inaction of city officials other than police or the judiciary. [45] Typically, in Cincinnati two months prior to the disturbance, approximately 200 representatives (mostly Negroes) of the inner-city community councils sought to appear before the city council to request summer recreation funds. The council permitted only one person from the group to speak, and then only briefly, on the ground that the group had not followed the proper procedure for placing the issue on the agenda.

No final incidents were identified in this category.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Eight of the prior incidents involved cases of allegedly discriminatory administration of justice. [46] Typical was a case in Houston a month and a half before the disorder. Three civil rights advocates were arrested for leading a protest and for their participation in organizing a boycott of classes at the predominantly Negro Texas Southern University. Bond was set at $25,000 each. The court refused for several days to reduce bond, even though TSU officials dropped the charges they had originally pressed.

There were no final incidents identified involving the administration of justice.

In a unique case, New Haven, the shooting of a Puerto Rican by a white man was identified as the final incident before violence. [47]

Finally, we have noted a marked relationship between prior and final incidents within each city. In most of the cities surveyed, the final incident was of the same type as one or more of the prior incidents. For example, police actions were identified as both the final incident and one or more prior incidents preceding seven disturbances. [48] Rallies or meetings to protest police actions involved in a prior incident were identified as the final incident preceding three additional disturbances. [49] The cumulative reinforcement of grievances and heightening of tensions found in all instances were particularly evident in these cases.

The Development of Violence

Once the series of precipitating incidents culminated in violence, the riot process followed no uniform pattern in the 24 disorders surveyed. [50] However, some similarities emerge.

The final incident before the outbreak of disorder, and the initial violence itself, generally occurred at a time and place in which it was normal for many people to be on the streets. In most of the 24 disorders, groups generally estimated at 50 or more persons were on the street at the time and place of the first outbreak. [51]

In all 24 disturbances, including the three university-related disorders, the initial disturbance area consisted of streets with relatively high concentrations of pedestrian and automobile traffic at the time. In all but two cases -- Detroit and Milwaukee -- violence started between 7:00 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., when the largest numbers of pedestrians could be expected. Ten of the 24 disorders erupted on Friday night, Saturday or Sunday. [52]

In most instances, the temperature during the day on which violence first erupted was quite high. [53] This contributed to the size of the crowds on the street, particularly in areas of congested housing.

Major violence occurred in all 24 disorders during the evening and night hours, between 6: 00 p.m. and 6: 00 a.m., and in most cases between 9: 00 p.m. and 3: 00 a.m. [54] In only a few disorders, including Detroit and Newark, did substantial violence occur or continue during the daytime. [55] Generally, the night-day cycles continued in daily succession through the early period of the disorder. [56]

At the beginning of disorder, violence generally flared almost immediately after the final precipitating incident. [57] It then escalated quickly to its peak level, in the case of one-night disorders, and to the first night peak in the case of continuing disorders. [58] In Detroit and Newark, the first outbreaks began within two hours and reached severe, although not the highest, levels within three hours.

In almost all of the subsequent night-day cycles, the change from relative order to a state of disorder by a number of people typically occurred extremely rapidly -- within one or two hours at the most. [59]

Nineteen of the surveyed disorders lasted more than one night. [60] In 10 of these, violence peaked on the first night, and the level of activity on subsequent nights was the same or less. [61] In the other nine disorders, however, the peak was reached on a subsequent night. [62]

Disorder generally began with less serious violence against property, such as rock and bottle throwing and window breaking. [63] These were usually the materials and the targets closest to hand at the place of the initial outbreak.

Once store windows were broken, looting usually followed. [64] Whether fires were set only after looting occurred is unclear. Reported instances of fire-bombing and Molotov cocktails in the 24 disorders appeared to occur as frequently during one cycle of violence as during another in disorders which continued through more than one cycle. [65] However, fires seemed to break out more frequently during the middle cycles of riots lasting several days. [66] Gunfire and sniping were also reported more frequently during the middle cycles. [67]

The Control Effort

What type of community response is most effective once disorder erupts is clearly a critically important question. Chapter 12, "Control of Disorder," and the Supplement on Control of Disorder to this report consider this question at length. We consider in this section the variety of control responses, official and unofficial, which were utilized in the 24 surveyed disorders, including:

• Use or threatened use of local official force;
• Use or threatened use of supplemental official force from other jurisdictions;
• Negotiations between officials and representatives from the Negro community;
• On-the-street persuasion by "counter-rioters."

Disorders are sometimes discussed as if they consisted of a succession of confrontations and withdrawals by two cohesive groups, the police or other control force on one side and a riotous mob on the other. Often it is assumed that there was no effort within the Negro community to reduce the violence. Sometimes the only remedy prescribed is mobilization of the largest possible police or control force, as early as possible.

None of these views are accurate. We found that:

• A variety of different control forces employed a variety of tactics, often at the same time, and often in a confused situation;
• Substantial non-force control efforts, such as negotiations and on-the-street persuasion by "counter-rioters," were usually under way, often simultaneously with forcible control efforts; counter-rioter activity often was carried on by Negro residents of the disturbance area, sometimes with and often without official recognition;
• No single tactic appeared to be effective in containing or reducing violence in all situations.

LOCAL OFFICIAL FORCE

In 20 of the 24 disorders, the primary effort to restore order at the beginning of violence was made entirely by local police. [68] In 10 cases no additional outside force was called for after the initial response. [69] In only a few cases was the initial control force faced with crowds too large to control. [70]

The police approach to the initial outbreak of disorder in the surveyed cities was generally cautious. [71] Three, types of response were employed. One was dispersal (clearing the area, either by arrests or by scattering crowds), used in 10 cases. [72] Another was reconnaissance (observing and evaluating developments), used in eight cases. [73] In half of these instances, they soon withdrew from the disturbance area, generally because they believed they were unable to cope with the disorder. [74] The third was containment (preventing movement in or out of a cordoned or barricaded area), used in six cases. [75]

No uniform result from utilization of any of the three control approaches is apparent. In at least half of the 24 cases it can reasonably be said that the approach taken by the police did not prevent the continuation of violence. [76] To the extent that their effectiveness is measurable, the conclusion appears to hold for subsequent police control responses as well. [77] There is also evidence, in some instances, of over-response in subsequent cycles of violence. [78]

The various tactical responses we have described are not mutually exclusive, and in many instances combinations were employed. The most common were attempts at dispersal in the disturbance area and a simultaneous cordon or barricade at the routes leading from the disturbance area to the central commercial area of the city, either to contain the disturbance or to prevent persons outside the area from entering it, or both. [79]

In 11 disorders a curfew was imposed at some time, either as the major dispersal technique or in combination with other techniques. [80]

In only four disorders was tear gas used at any point as a dispersal technique. [81]

Only Newark and New Haven used a combination of all three means of control, cordon, curfew and tear gas. [82]

SUPPLEMENTAL OFFICIAL FORCE

The addition of outside force from other jurisdictions was also not invariably successful.

In nine disturbances -- involving a wide variation in the intensity of violence -- additional control forces were brought in after there had been serious violence which local police had been unable to handle alone. [83] In every case further violence occurred, often more than once and often of equal or greater intensity than before. [84]

The result was the same where extra forces were mobilized prior to serious violence. In four cities where this was done, [85] violence nonetheless occurred, in most cases more than once, [86] and often of equal or greater intensity than in the original outbreak. [87]

In the remaining group of seven cities no outside control forces were called, [88] because the level and duration of violence were lower. Outbreaks in these cities nevertheless followed the same random pattern as in the cities which did use outside forces. [89]

NEGOTIATION

In 21 of the 24 disturbances surveyed, discussion or negotiation occurred during the disturbances. These took the form of relatively formal meetings between government officials and Negroes during which grievances and issues were discussed and means were sought to restore order. [90]

Such meetings were usually held either immediately before or soon after the outbreak of violence. [91] Meetings often continued beyond the first or second day of the disorder and, in a few instances, through the entire period of the disorder. [92]

The Negro participants in these meetings usually were established leaders in the Negro community, such as city councilmen or members of human relations commissions, ministers, or officers of civil rights or other community organizations. [93] However, Negro youths were participants in over one-third of these meetings. [94] In a few disorders both the youths and the adult Negro leaders participated, [95] sometimes without the participation of local officials. [96]

Employees of community action agencies occasionally participated, either as intermediaries or as participants. In some cases they provided the meeting place. [97]

Discussions usually included issues generated by the disorder itself, such as the treatment of arrestees by the police. [98] In 12 cases, prior ghetto grievances, such as unemployment and inadequate recreational facilities, were included as subjects. [99] Often both disorder-related and prior grievances were discussed [100] with the focus generally shifting from the former to the latter as the disorder continued.

How effective these meetings were is, as in the case of forcible response, impossible to gauge. Again, much depends on who participated, timing, and what other responses were being made at the same time.

COUNTER-RIOTERS

In all but six of the 24 disorders, Negro private citizens were active on the streets attempting to restore order primarily by means of persuasion. [101] In a Detroit survey of riot area residents over the age of 15, some 14 percent stated that they had been active as counter-rioters. [102]

Counter-rioters sometimes had some form of official recognition from either the mayor or a human relations council. [103] Police reaction in these cases varied from total opposition to close cooperation. [104] In most such cases some degree of official authorization was given before the activity of the counter-rioters began, [105] and in a smaller number of cases, their activity was not explicitly authorized but merely condoned by the authorities. [106]

Distinctive insignia were worn by the officially recognized counter-rioters in at least a few cities. [107] In Dayton and Tampa, the white helmets issued to the counter-rioters have made the name "White Hats" synonymous with counter-rioters. Public attention has centered on the officially-recognized counter-rioters. However, counter-rioters are known to have acted independently, without official recognition, in a number of cities. [108]

Counter-rioters generally included young men, ministers, community action agency and other anti-poverty workers and well-known ghetto residents. [109]

Their usual technique was to walk through the disturbance area urging people to "cool it," although they often took other positive action as well, such as distributing food. [110]

How effective the counter-rioters were is, again, difficult to estimate. Authorities in several cities indicated that they believed they were helpful.

III. THE RIOT PARTICIPATION

It is sometimes assumed that the rioters were criminal types, overactive social deviants, or riffraff -- recent migrants, members of an uneducated underclass -- alienated from responsible Negroes, and without broad social or political concerns. It is often implied that there was no effort within the Negro community to attempt to reduce the violence.

Determining who participated in a civil disorder is difficult. We have obtained data on participation from four different sources. [111]

• Eyewitness accounts, from more than 1,200 interviews in our staff reconnaissance survey of 20 cities;
• Interview surveys based on probability samples of riot area residents in the two major riot cities -- Detroit and Newark -- designed to elicit anonymous self-identification of participants as rioters, counter-rioters or non-involved;
• Arrest records from 22 cities;
• A special study of arrestees in Detroit

Only partial information is available on the total numbers of participants. In the Detroit survey, approximately 11 [112] percent of the sampled residents over the age of 15 in the two disturbance areas admittedly participated in rioting; another 20 to 25 percent admitted to having been bystanders but claimed that they had not participated; approximately 16 percent claimed they had engaged in counter-riot activity; and the largest proportion (48 to 53 percent) claimed they were at home or elsewhere and did not participate. However, a large proportion of the Negro community apparently believed that more was gained than lost through rioting, according to the Newark and Detroit surveys. [2]

Greater precision is possible in describing the characteristics of those who participated. We have combined the data from the four sources to construct a profile of the typical rioter and to compare him with the counter-rioter and the noninvolved.

The Profile of a Rioter

The typical rioter in the summer of 1967 was a Negro, unmarried male between the ages of 15 and 24 in many ways very different from the stereotypes. He was not a migrant. He was born in the state and was a life-long resident of the city in which the riot took place. Economically his position was about the same as his Negro neighbors who did not actively participate in the riot.

Although he had not, usually, graduated from high school, he was somewhat better educated than the average inner-city Negro, having at least attended high school for a time.

Nevertheless, he was more likely to be working in a menial or low status job as an unskilled laborer. If he was employed, he was not working full time and his employment was frequently interrupted by periods of unemployment.

He feels strongly that he deserves a better job and that he is barred from achieving it, not because of lack of training, ability, or ambition, but because of discrimination by employers.

He rejects the white bigot's stereotype of the Negro as ignorant and shiftless. He takes great pride in his race and believes that in some respects Negroes are superior to whites. He is extremely hostile to whites, but his hostility is more apt to be a product of social and economic class than of race; he is almost equally hostile toward middle-class Negroes.

He is substantially better informed about politics than Negroes who were not involved in the riots.. He is more likely to be actively engaged in civil rights efforts, but is extremely distrustful of the political system and of political leaders.

The Profile of the Counter-Rioter

The typical counter-rioter, who risked injury and arrest to walk the streets urging rioters to "cool it," was an active supporter of existing social institutions. He was, for example, far more likely than either the rioter or the noninvolved to feel that this country is worth defending in a major war. His actions and his attitudes reflected his substantially greater stake in the social system; he was considerably better educated and more affluent than either the rioter or the noninvolved. He was somewhat more likely than the rioter, but less likely than the noninvolved, to have been a migrant. In all other respects he was identical to the noninvolved. [113]
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

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Part 2 of 5

Characteristics of Participants

Race -- Eighty-three percent of the arrestees were Negroes; 15 percent were whites. [114] Our interview in 20 cities indicate that almost all rioters were Negroes.

Age -- The survey data from Detroit, the arrest records, and our interviews in 20 cities, all indicate that the rioters were late teenagers or young adults. [115] In the Detroit survey, 61.3 percent of the self-reported rioters were between the ages of 15 and 24, and 86.3 percent were between 15 and 35. The arrest data indicate that 52.5 percent of the arrestees were between 15 and 24, and 80.8 percent were between 15 and 35.

Of the noninvolved, by contrast, only 22.6 percent in the Detroit survey were between 15 and 24, and 38.3 percent were between 15 and 35.

Sex -- In the Detroit survey 61.4 percent of the self-reported rioters were male. Arrestees, however, were almost all male -- 89.3 percent. [116] Our interviews in 20 cities indicate that the majority of rioters were male. The large difference in proportion between the Detroit survey data and the arrest figures probably reflects either selectivity in the arrest process or less dramatic, less provocative riot behavior by women.

Family Structure -- Three sources of available information -- the Newark survey, the Detroit arrest study, and arrest records from four cities-indicate a tendency for rioters to be single. The Newark survey indicates that rioters were single -- 56.2 percent -- more often than the noninvolved -- 49.6 percent.

The Newark survey also indicates that rioters were more likely to have been divorced or separated -- 14.2 percent -- than the noninvolved -- 6.4 percent. However, the arrest records from four cities indicate that only a very small percentage of the arrestees fall in this category.

In regard to the structure of the family in which he was raised, the self-reported rioter, according to the Newark survey, was not significantly different from many of his Negro neighbors who did not actively participate in the riot. Twenty-five and five tenths percent of the self-reported rioters and 23.0 percent of the noninvolved were brought up in homes without a male head of household. [118]

Region of Upbringing -- Both survey data [119] and arrest records [120] demonstrate unequivocally that those brought up in the region in which the riot occurred are much more likely to have participated in the riots. The percentage of rioters brought up in the North is almost identical for the Detroit survey -- 74.4 percent -- and the Newark survey -- 74.0 percent. By contrast, of the noninvolved, 36.0 percent in Detroit and 52.4 percent in Newark were brought up in the North. [121]

Data available from five cities on the birthplace of arrestees indicate that 63 percent of the arrestees were born in the region in which the disorder occurred. Although birthplace is not necessarily identical with place of upbringing, the data are sufficiently similar to provide strong support for the conclusion.

Of the self-reported counter-rioters, however, 47.5 percent were born in the North, according to the Detroit survey, a figure which places them between self-reported rioters and the noninvolved. It appears from the data on Northern riots that a significant consequence of growing up in the South was a tendency toward noninvolvement in a riot situation, while involvement in a riot, either in support of or against existing social institutions, was more common among those born in the North.

Residence -- Rioters are not only more likely than the noninvolved to have been born in the North, but they are also more likely to have been long-term residents of the city in which the disturbance took place. [122] The Detroit survey data indicate that 59.4 percent of the rioters, but only 34.6 percent of the non involved, were born in Detroit. The comparable figures in the Newark survey are 53.5 percent and 22.5 percent.

Outsiders who temporarily entered the city during the riot might have left before the surveys were conducted and therefore may be underestimated in the survey data. However, the arrest data, [123] which is contemporaneous with the riot, suggest that few outsiders were involved: 90 percent of those arrested resided in the riot city. Seven percent lived in the same state. Only 1 percent was from outside the state. Our interviews in 20 cities also corroborate these conclusions.

Income -- In the Detroit arid Newark survey data, income level alone does not seem to correlate with self-reported riot participation. [124] The figures from the two cities are not directly comparable since respondents were asked for individual income in Detroit, and family income in Newark. More Detroit rioters (38.6 percent) had annual incomes under $5,000 per year than the noninvolved (30.3 percent), but even this small difference disappears when the factor of age is taken into account.

In the Newark data, in which the age distributions of the rioters and the noninvolved are more similar, there is almost no difference between the rioters, 32.6 percent of whom had annual incomes under $5,000, and the noninvolved, 29.4 percent of whom had annual incomes under $5,000.

The similarity in income distribution should not, however, lead to the conclusion that more affluent Negroes are as likely to riot as poor Negroes. Both surveys were conducted in disturbance areas in which incomes are considerably lower than in the city as a whole and the surrounding metropolitan area. [125] Nevertheless, the data show that rioters are not necessarily the poorest of the poor.

While incomes does not distinguish rioters from those who were not involved, it does distinguish counter-rioters from rioters and the noninvolved. Less than 9 percent of both those who rioted and those not involved earn more than $10,000 annually. Yet almost 20 percent of the counter-rioters earned this amount or more. In fact, there were no male self-reported counter-rioters in the Detroit survey who earned less than $5,000 annually. In the Newark sample there were seven respondents who owned their own homes; none of them participated in the riot. While extreme poverty does not necessarily move a man to riot, relative affluence seems at least to inhibit him from attacking the existing social order and may motivate him to take considerable risks to protect it.

Education -- Level of schooling is strongly related to participation. Those with some high school education were more likely to riot than those who had only finished grade school. [126] In the Detroit survey 93 percent of the self-reported rioters had gone beyond grade school, compared with 72.1 percent of the noninvolved. In the Newark survey the comparable figures are 98.1 percent and 85.7 percent. The majority of self-reported rioters are not, however, high school graduates.

The counter-rioters were clearly the best educated of the three groups. Approximately twice as many counter-rioters had attended college as had the noninvolved, and half again as many counter-rioters had attended college as rioters. Considered along with the information on income, this suggests that counter-rioters are probably well on their way into the middle class.

Education and income are the only factors which distinguish the counter-rioter from the noninvolved. Apparently, high levels of education and income not only prevent rioting but are more likely to lead to active, responsible opposition to rioting.

Employment -- The Detroit and Newark surveys, the arrest records from four cities, and the Detroit arrest study all indicate that there are no substantial differences in unemployment between the rioters and the noninvolved. [127]

Unemployment levels among both groups were extremely high. In the Detroit survey, 29.6 percent of the self-reported rioters were unemployed; in the Newark survey, 29.7 percent; in the four-city arrest data, 33.2 percent; and in the Detroit arrest study, 21.8 percent. The unemployment rates for the noninvolved in the Detroit and Newark surveys were 31.5 and 19.0 percent.

Self-reported rioters were more likely to be only intermittently employed, however, than the noninvolved. Respondents in Newark were asked whether they had been unemployed for as long as a month or more during the last year. [128] Sixty-one percent of the self-reported rioters, but only 43.4 percent of the noninvolved, answered, "Yes."

Despite generally higher levels of education, rioters are more likely than the noninvolved to be employed in unskilled jobs. [129] In the Newark survey, 50.0 percent of the self-reported rioters, but only 39.6 percent of the noninvolved, had unskilled jobs.

Attitudes About Employment -- The Newark survey data indicate that self-reported rioters were more likely to feel dissatisfied with their present jobs than were the noninvolved. [130]

Only 29.3 percent of the rioters, compared with 44.4 percent of the noninvolved, thought their present jobs to be appropriate for them in responsibility and pay. Of the self-reported rioters, 67.6 percent, compared with 56.1 percent of the noninvolved, felt that it was impossible to obtain the kind of job they wanted. [131] Of the self-reported rioters, 69 percent, as compared with 50.0 percent of the noninvolved, felt that racial discrimination was the major obstacle to their finding better employment. [132] Despite this feeling, surprising numbers of rioters, (76.9 percent) responded that "getting what you want out of life is a matter of ability, not being in the right place at the right time." [133]

Racial Attitudes -- The Detroit and Newark surveys indicate that rioters have strong feelings of racial pride, if not racial superiority. [134] In the Detroit survey, 48.6 percent of the self-reported rioters said that they felt Negroes were more dependable than whites. Only 22.4 percent of the noninvolved stated this. In Newark, the comparable figures were 45.0 and 27.8 percent. The Newark survey data indicate that rioters want to be called "black" rather than "Negro" or "colored" and are somewhat more likely than the noninvolved to feel that all Negroes should study African history and languages. [135]

To what extent this racial pride antedated the riot and to what extent it was produced by the riot is impossible to determine from the survey data. Certainly the riot experience seems to have been associated with increased pride in the minds of many of the participants. This was vividly illustrated by the statement of a Detroit rioter:

Interviewer: You said you were feeling good when you followed the crowd?

Respondent: I was feeling proud, man, at the fact that I was a Negro. I felt like I was a first class citizen. I didn't feel ashamed of my race because of what they did.

Similar feelings were expressed by an 18-year-old Detroit girl who reported that she had been a looter:

Interviewer: What is the Negro then if he's not American? Respondent: A Negro, he's considered a slave to the white folks. But half of them know that they're slaves and feel that they can't do nothing about it because they're just going along with it. But most of them they seem to get it in their heads now how the white folks treat them and how they've been treating them and how they've been slaves for the white folks....

Along with increased racial pride there appears to be intense hostility toward whites. [136] Self-reported rioters in both the Detroit and Newark surveys were more likely to feel that civil rights groups with white and Negro leaders would do better without the whites. In Detroit, 36.1 percent of the self-reported rioters thought that this statement was true, while only 21.1 percent of the noninvolved thought so. In the Newark survey, 51.4 percent of the self-reported rioters agreed; 33.1 percent of the noninvolved shared this opinion.

Self-reported rioters in Newark were also more likely to agree with the statement, "Sometimes I hate white people." Of the self-reported rioters, 72.4 percent agreed; of the noninvolved, 50.0 percent agreed.

The intensity of the self-reported rioters' racial feelings may suggest that the recent riots represented traditional interracial hostilities. Two sources of data suggest that this interpretation is probably incorrect.

First, the Newark survey data indicate that rioters were almost as hostile to middle-class Negroes as they were to whites.137 Seventy-one and four-tenths percent of the self-reported rioters, but only 59.5 percent of the noninvolved, agreed with the statement, "Negroes who make a lot of money like to think they are better than other Negroes." Perhaps even more significant, particularly in light of the rioters' strong feelings of racial pride, is that 50.5 percent of the self-reported rioters agreed that "Negroes who make a lot of money are just as bad as white people." Only 35.2 percent of the noninvolved shared this opinion.

Second, the arrest data show that the great majority of those arrested during the disorders were generally charged with a crime relating to looting or curfew violations. [138] Only 2.4 percent of the arrests were for assault and 0.1 percent were for homicide, but 31.3 percent of the arrests were for breaking and entering -- crimes directed against white property rather than against individual whites.

Political Attitudes and Involvement -- Respondents in the Newark survey were asked about relatively simple items of political information, such as the race of prominent local and national political figures. In general, the self-reported rioters were much better informed than the noninvolved. [139] For example, self-reported rioters were more likely to know that one of the 1966 Newark mayoral candidates was a Negro. Of the rioters, 77.1 percent -- but only 61.6 percent of the non involved -- identified him correctly. The overall scores on a series of similar questions also reflect the self-reported rioters' higher levels of information.

Self-reported rioters were also more likely to be involved in activities associated with Negro rights. [140] At the most basic level of political participation, they were more likely than the noninvolved to talk frequently about Negro rights. In the Newark survey, 53.8 percent of the self-reported rioters, but only 34.9 percent of the noninvolved, said that they talked about Negro rights nearly every day.

The self-reported rioters also were more likely to have attended a meeting or participated in civil rights activity. Of the rioters, 39.3 percent -- but only 25.7 percent of the noninvolved -- reported that they had engaged in such activity.

In the Newark survey, respondents were asked how much they thought they could trust the local government. [141] Only 4.8 percent of the self-reported rioters, compared with 13.7 percent of the noninvolved, said that they felt they could trust it most of the time; 44.2 percent of the self-reported rioters and 33.9 percent of the noninvolved reported that they could almost never trust the government.

In the Detroit survey, self-reported rioters were much more likely to attribute the riot to anger about politicians and police than were the noninvolved. [142] Of the self-reported rioters, 43.2 percent -- but only 19.6 percent of the noninvolved -- said anger at politicians had a great deal to do with causing the riot. Of the self-reported rioters, 70.5 percent, compared with 48.8 percent of the noninvolved, believed that anger at the police had a great deal to do with causing the riot.

Perhaps the most revealing and disturbing measure of the rioters' anger at the social and political system was their response to a question asking whether they thought "the country was worth fighting for in the event of a major world war." [143] Of the self-reported rioters, 39.4 percent in Detroit and 52.8 percent in Newark shared the view that it was not. By contrast, 15.5 percent of the noninvolved in Detroit and 27.8 percent of the noninvolved in Newark shared this sentiment. Almost none of the self-reported counter-rioters in Detroit -- 3.3 percent -- agreed with the self-reported rioters.

Some comments of interviewees are worthy of note:

Not worth fighting for -- if Negroes had an equal chance it would be worth fighting for.

Not worth fighting for -- I am not a true citizen so why should I?

Not worth fighting for -- because my husband came back from Vietnam and nothing had changed.


IV. THE BACKGROUND OF DISORDER

In response to the President's questions to the Commission about the riot environment, we have gathered information on the pre-riot conditions in 20 of the cities surveyed. [144] We have sought to analyze the backgrounds of the disorders in terms of four basic groupings of information:

• The social and economic conditions as described in the 1960 census. with particular reference to the area of each city in which the disturbance took place;
• Local governmental structure and its organizational capacity to respond to the needs of the people, particularly those living in the most depressed conditions;
• The extent to which federal programs assisted in meeting these needs; and
• The nature of the grievances in the ghetto community.

It is sometimes said that conditions for Negroes in the riot cities have improved over the years and are not materially different from conditions for whites; that local government now seeks to accommodate the demands of Negroes and has created many mechanisms for redressing legitimate complaints; that federal programs now enable most Negroes who so desire, to live comfortably through welfare, housing, employment or anti-poverty assistance; and that grievances are harbored only by a few malcontents and agitators.

Our findings are to the contrary. In the riot cities we surveyed, we found that Negroes are severely disadvantaged, especially as compared with whites; that local government is often unresponsive to this fact; that federal programs have not yet reached a significantly large proportion of those in need; and that the result is a reservoir of unredressed grievances and frustration in the ghetto. [145]

The Pattern of Disadvantage

Social and economic conditions in the riot cities [146] constituted a clear pattern of severe disadvantage for Negroes as compared with whites, whether the Negroes lived in the disturbance area or outside it. [147] When ghetto conditions are compared with those for whites in the suburbs, the relative disadvantage for Negroes is even greater.

In all the cities surveyed, the Negro population increased between 1950 and 1960 at a median rate of 75 percent. [148]

Meanwhile, the white population decreased in more than half the cities -- including six which experienced the most severe disturbances in 1967. The increase in nonwhite population in four of these cities was so great that their total population increased despite the decrease in white population.149 These changes were attributable in large part to heavy immigration of Negroes from rural poverty areas and movement of whites from the central cities to the suburbs.
In all the cities surveyed:

• The percentage of Negro population in the disturbance area exceeded the percentage of Negro population in the entire city. In some cases it is twice, and in nine instances triple, the city-wide percentage. [150]
• The Negro population was invariably younger than the white population. [151]
• Negroes had completed fewer years of education and proportionately fewer had attended high school than whites. [152]
• A larger percentage of Negroes than whites were in the labor force. [153]
• Yet they were twice as likely to be unemployed as whites. [154]
• In cities where they had greater opportunities to work at skilled or semi-skilled jobs, proportionately more Negro men tended to be working, or looking for work, than white men. Conversely, the proportion of men working, or looking for work, tended to be lower among Negroes than whites in cities that offered the least opportunities to do skilled or semi-skilled labor. [155]
• Among the employed, Negroes were more than three times as likely to be in unskilled and service jobs than whites. [156]
• Negroes earned less than whites in all the surveyed cities, averaging barely 70 percent of white income, and were more than twice as likely to be living in poverty. [157]
• A smaller proportion of Negro children than white children under 18 were living with both parents. [158]
• However, family "responsibility" was strongly related to opportunity. In cities where the proportion of Negro men in better-than- menial jobs was higher, median Negro family income was higher, and the proportion of children under 18 living with both parents was also higher. Both family income and family structure showed greater weakness in cities where job opportunities were more restricted to unskilled jobs. [159]
• Fewer Negroes than whites owned their own homes. Among non-home owners, Negroes paid the same rents, yet they paid a higher share of their incomes for rent than did whites. Although housing cost Negroes relatively more, their housing was three times as likely to be overcrowded and substandard as dwellings occupied by whites. [160]

Local Governmental Structure

From our survey of the structure of local government in the riot cities it appears that:

• All major forms of local government were represented.
• In a substantial minority of instances, a combination of at-large election of legislators and a "weak-mayor" system resulted in fragmentation of political responsibility and accountability.
• The proportion of Negroes in government was substantially smaller than the Negro proportion of population.
• Almost all the cities had a formal grievance machinery, but typically it was regarded by most Negroes interviewed as ineffective, and generally ignored.

All major forms of municipal government were represented in the 20 cities examined. [161] Fourteen had a mayor-city council form of government, five had a council-city manager form, and one bad a commission form. [162]

The division of power between the legislative and executive branches varied widely from city to city. Of the mayor-council cities, eight could be characterized as "strong mayor/weak city council" systems in the sense that the mayor had broad appointive and veto powers. [163] Five could be characterized as "weak mayor/strong council" forms, where the city council bad broad appointive and veto powers. [164] In one city, Milwaukee, such powers appeared to be evenly balanced. [165]

In 17 of the 20 cities, mayors were elected directly. [166] Mayors were part-time in eight cities. [167] Almost all the cities had a principal executive, either a mayor or a city manager, who earned a substantial annual salary. [168] Terms of office for mayors ranged from two to four years. [169]

Fragmentation of political responsibility and accountability was discernible in eight cities, where all legislators were elected at large and therefore represented no particular legislative ward or district. [170] Six of these cities also had either a city manager or a "weak-mayor" form of government. In these cases, there was heavy reliance upon the city council as the principal elected policy-making authority. This combination of factors appeared to produce even less identification by citizens with any particular elected official than in the 12 cities which elected all legislators from wards or districts [171] or used a combination of election by districts and at large. [172]

The proportion of Negroes in the governments of the 20 cities was substantially smaller than the median proportion of Negro population -- 16 percent. Ten percent of the legislators in the surveyed cities were Negroes. [173] Only in New Brunswick and Phoenix was the proportion of legislators who were Negroes as great as the percentage of the total population that was nonwhite. Six cities had no Negro legislators. [174] Only three cities had more than one Negro legislator: Newark and Plainfield had two, and New Haven had five. None of the twenty cities had or had ever had a Negro mayor or city manager. In only four cities did Negroes hold other important policy-making positions or serve as heads of other municipal departments. [175] In seven cities Negro representatives had been elected to the state legislature. [176]

In 17 of the cities, however, Negroes were serving on boards of education. [177] In all 17 cities which had human relations councils or similar organizations, Negroes were represented on the boards of such organizations.

One of the most surprising findings is that in 17 of the 20 surveyed riot cities, some formal grievance machinery existed prior to the 1967 disorders -- a municipal human relations council or similar organization authorized to receive citizen complaints about racial or other discrimination by public and private agencies. [178] Existence of these formal channels, however, did not necessarily achieve their tension-relieving purpose. They were seldom regarded as effective by Negroes who were interviewed. The councils generally consisted of prominent citizens, including one or more Negroes, serving part time and with little or no salary.

With only one exception, the councils were wholly advisory and mediatory, with power to conciliate and make recommendations but not to subpoena witnesses or enforce compliance. [179] While most of the councils had full-time paid staff, they were generally organized only as loosely-affiliated departments of the city government. [180] The number of complaints filed with the councils was low considering both the size of the Negro populations and the levels of grievance which the disorders manifested. Only five councils received more than 100 complaints a year. [181] In almost all cases, complaints against private parties were mediated informally by these councils. But complaints against governmental agencies usually were referred for investigation to the agencies against whom the complaints were directed. For example, complaints of police misconduct were accepted by most councils and then referred directly to the police for investigation.

In only two cities did human relations councils attempt to investigate complaints against the police. In neither case did they succeed in completing the investigation. [182]

Where there were special channels for complaints against the police, the result appears to have been similar. In several of the cities police-community relations units had been established within the police department, in most instances within two years prior to the disorder. [183] However, complaints about police misconduct generally were forwarded to the police investigative unit, complaint bureau or police chief for investigation.

In all the cities which had a police-community relations unit, during the year preceding the disorder complaints against policemen had been filed with or forwarded to the police department. [184] In at least two of these cities the police department stated that the complaints had been investigated and disciplinary action taken in several cases. [185] Whether or not these departments in fact did take action on the complaints, the results were never disclosed either to the public or to complainants. The grievances on which the complaints were based often appeared to remain alive in the Negro community.

Federal Programs

What was the pattern of governmental effort to relieve ghetto conditions and respond to needs in the cities which experienced disorders in 1967?

We have not attempted a comprehensive answer to this large and complex question. We have instead surveyed only the key federal anti-poverty programs in Detroit, Newark and New Haven -- cities which received substantial federal funds and also suffered severe disorders.

Of the large number of federal programs to aid cities, we have concentrated on five types, which relate to the most serious conditions and which involve sizeable amounts of federal assistance. We have sought to evaluate these amounts against the proportion of persons reached. [186]

We conclude that:

• While these three cities received substantial amounts of federal funds in 1967 for manpower, education, housing, welfare and community action programs, the number of persons assisted by those programs in almost all cases constituted only a fraction of those in need.
• In at least 11 of the 15 programs examined (five programs in each of the three cities), the number of people assisted in 1967 was less than half of those in need.
• In one of the 15 programs the percentage rose as high as 72 percent.
• The median was 33 percent.

Manpower -- our study included all major manpower and employment programs financed in the three cities by the federal government, including basic and remedial education, skill training, on-the-job training, job counseling, and placement. [187]

A 1966 Department of Labor study of 10 slum areas, as well as our own survey of 20 disorder areas, indicate that underemployment is an even more serious problem for ghetto residents than unemployment. However, our measurement of need for manpower programs is based on unemployment figures alone because underemployment data are not available for the three cities surveyed. The Department of Labor estimates that underemployment rates in major central city ghettos are a multiple of the unemployment rate.

In Detroit in the first three quarters of 1967, federal funds, obligated in the amount of $19.6 million, provided job training opportunities for less than one-half of the unemployed.

During the first nine months of 1967, the labor force in Detroit totalled 650,000 persons, of whom 200,000 were Negroes. The average unemployment rate for that period w. 2.7 percent for whites and 9.6 percent for Negroes. The total average number unemployed during that period was 31,350. of whom 19,200 (61 percent) were Negroes.

During the same period, there were 22 manpower programs (excluding MDTA institutional programs) in various stages of operation in Detroit. Twenty of the programs provided for 13,979 trainees. [188]

In Newark, in the first half of 1967, $2.6 million of federal funds provided job training opportunities for less than 20 percent of the unemployed. [189] And in New Haven, during the first three quarters of 1967, federal funds in the amount of $2.1 million provided job training opportunities for less than one-third of the unemployed. [190]

Education -- For purposes of comparing funding to needs, we have limited our examination to two major federal education programs for the disadvantaged: the Title I program under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) and the Adult Basic Education program. Title I provides assistance to schools having concentrations of educationally disadvantaged children, defined as children from families having annual incomes of less than $3,000 or supported by the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC). Title I supports remedial reading, career guidance for potential dropouts, reduced pupil-teacher ratios, special teacher training, educational television and other teaching equipment, and specialized staff for social work, guidance and counseling, psychiatry and medicine. The Adult Basic Education program is designed to teach functionally illiterate adults to read.

In order to measure the total federal contributions to state and local educational expenditures, we have also included such other federal programs as Head Start, for disadvantaged preschool children; the larger institutional Manpower Development and Training Programs; the Teacher Corps; library material and supplementary education projects under Titles II and III of ESEA; and vocational education programs.

In Detroit, during the 1967-68 school year, $11.2 million of ESEA Title I funds assist only 31 percent of the eligible students. Adult Basic Education reaches slightly more than 2 percent of the eligible beneficiaries. Federal contributions to the Detroit public school system add about 10 percent to state and local expenditures. [191]

In Newark, during the 1967-68 school year, $4 million of ESEA Title I funds assist about 72 percent of the eligible students. The number of persons reached by the Adult Basic Education program is only approximately 6 percent of the number of functionally illiterate adults. Federal ,contributions to the Newark public school system add about 11 percent to state and local expenditures. [192]

In New Haven, during the 1967-68 school year, ESEA Title I funds in the amount of $992,000 assist only 40 percent of the eligible students in the middle and senior high schools. Although all eligible beneficiaries in 14 target elementary schools are aided, none of the eligible beneficiaries in 19 nontarget elementary schools are reached. Adult Basic Education reaches less than 4 percent of eligible beneficiaries. Federal contributions to the New Haven public school system add about 7 percent to state and local expenditures. [193]

Housing -- The major federal programs we have examined which are, at least in part, designed to affect the supply of low-income housing, include urban renewal, low rent public housing, housing for the elderly and handicapped, rent supplements, and FHA below market interest rate mortgage insurance (BMIR).

To measure the extent of need for low-income housing we have used the number of substandard and over-crowded units. [194] In measuring the size of housing programs, we have included expenditures for years prior to 1967 because they affected the low-income housing supply available in 1967.

In Detroit, a maximum of 758 low-income housing units have been assisted through these programs since 1956. This amounts to 2 percent of the substandard units and 1.7 percent of the overcrowded units. [195] Yet, since 1960, approximately 8,000 low income units have been demolished for urban renewal.

Similarly, in Newark, since 1959, a maximum of 3,760 low-income housing units have been assisted through the programs considered. This amounts to 16 percent of the substandard units and 23 percent of the overcrowded units. [196] During the same period, more than 12,000 families, mostly low-income, have been displaced by such public uses as urban renewal, public housing and highways.

In New Haven, since 1952, a maximum of 951 low-income housing units have been assisted through the programs considered. This amounts to 14 percent of the substandard units and 20 percent of the overcrowded units. [197] Yet since 1956, approximately 6,500 housing units, mostly low-income, have been demolished for highway construction and urban renewal.

Welfare -- We have considered four federally-assisted programs which provide monetary benefits to low-income persons: Old Age Assistance, Aid to the Blind, Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). [198]

In Detroit, the number of persons reached with $48.2 million of federal funds through the four welfare programs during fiscal year 1967 was approximately 19 percent of the number of poor persons. [199] In Newark, the number of persons reached with $15 million was approximately 54 percent. [200] In New Haven, the number reached with $3.9 million was approximately 40 percent. [201]

Community Action Programs -- We have considered such community action programs as neighborhood service centers, consumer education, family counseling, low-cost credit services, small business development, legal services, programs for the aged, summer programs, home economics counseling, and cultural programs. [202]

In Detroit, the number of persons reached by $12.6 million of community action funds in 1967 was only about 30 percent of the number of poor persons. Federal funding of these programs averaged approximately $35 for each poor person. [203] In Newark, the number of persons reached by $1.9 million was about 44 percent. Federal funding of these programs averaged approximately $21 for each poor person. [204] In New Haven, the number reached by $2.3 million was approximately 42 percent. Federal funding averaged approximately $72 for each poor person. [205]

Grievances

To measure the present attitudes of people in the riot cities as precisely as possible, we are sponsoring two attitude surveys among Negroes and whites in 15 cities and four suburban areas, including four of the 20 cities studied for this chapter. These surveys are to be reported later.

In the interim we have attempted to draw some tentative conclusions based upon our own investigations and the more than 1200 interviews which we conducted relatively soon after the disorders. [206]

In almost all the cities surveyed, we found the same major grievance topics among Negro communities -- although they varied in importance from city to city. The deepest grievances can be ranked into the following three levels of relative intensity:

First Level of Intensity

1. Police practices

2. Unemployment and underemployment

3. Inadequate housing

Second Level of Intensity

4. Inadequate education [207]

5. Poor recreation facilities and programs [208]

6. Ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms

Third Level of Intensity

7. Disrespectful white attitudes

8. Discriminatory administration of justice

9. Inadequacy of federal programs

10. Inadequacy of municipal services [209]

11. Discriminatory consumer and credit practices [210]

12. Inadequate welfare programs

Our conclusions for the 20 cities have been generally confirmed by a special interview survey in Detroit sponsored by the Detroit Urban League. [211]

Police practices were, in some form, a significant grievance in virtually all cities and were often one of the most serious complaints. [212] Included in this category were complaints about physical or verbal abuse of Negro citizens by police officers, the lack of adequate channels for complaints against police, discriminatory police employment and promotion practices, a general lack of respect for Negroes by police officers, and the failure of police departments to provide adequate protection for Negroes.

Unemployment and underemployment were found to be grievances in all 20 cities and also frequently appeared to be one of the most serious complaints. [213] These were expressed in terms of joblessness or inadequate jobs and discriminatory practices by labor unions, local and state governments, state employment services and private employment agencies.

Housing grievances were found in almost all of the cities studied and appeared to be one of the most serious complaints in a majority of them. [214] These included inadequate enforcement of building and safety codes, discrimination in sales and rentals, and overcrowding.

The educational system was a source of grievance in almost all the 20 cities and appeared to be one of the most serious complaints in half of them. [215] These grievances centered on the prevalence of de facto segregation, the poor quality of instruction and facilities, deficiencies in the curriculum in the public schools (particularly because no Negro history was taught), inadequate representation of Negroes on school boards, and the absence or inadequacy of vocational training.

Grievances concerning municipal recreation programs were found in a large majority of the 20 cities and appeared to be one of the most serious complaints in almost half. [216] Inadequate recreational facilities in the ghetto and the lack of organized programs were common complaints.

The political structure was a source of grievance in almost all of the cities and was one of the most serious complaints in several. [217] There were significant grievances concerning the lack of adequate representation of Negroes in the political structure, the failure of local political structures to respond to legitimate complaints and the absence of obscurity of official grievance channels.

Hostile or racist attitudes of whites toward Negroes appeared to be one of the most serious complaints in several cities. [218]

In three-quarters of the cities there were significant grievances growing out of beliefs that the courts administer justice on a double, discriminatory standard, and that a presumption of guilt attaches whenever a policeman testifies against a Negro. [219]

Significant grievances concerning federal programs were expressed in a large majority of the 20 cities, but appeared to be one of the most serious complaints in only one. [220] Criticism of the federal anti-poverty programs focused on insufficient participation by the poor, lack of continuity, and inadequate funding. Other significant grievances involved urban renewal, insufficient community participation in planning and decision-making, and inadequate employment programs.

Services provided by municipal governments -- sanitation and garbage removal, health and hospital facilities, and paving and lighting of streets -- were sources of complaint in approximately half of the cities, but appeared to be one of the most serious grievances in only one. [221]

Grievances concerning unfair commercial practices affecting Negro consumers were found in approximately half of the cities, but appeared to be one of the most serious complaints in only two. [222] Beliefs were expressed that Negroes are sold inferior quality goods (particularly meats and produce) at higher prices and are subjected to excessive interest rates and fraudulent commercial practices.

Grievances relating to the welfare system were expressed in more than half of the 20 cities, but were not among the most serious complaints in any of the cities. There were complaints related to the inadequacy of welfare payments, "unfair regulations," such as the "man in the house" rule, which governs welfare eligibility, and the sometimes hostile and contemptuous attitude of welfare workers. The Commission's recommendations for reform of the welfare system are based on the necessity of attacking the cycle of poverty and dependency in the ghetto.

CHART 1: PERVASIVENESS OF GRIEVANCES. Grievances Found and Number of Cities Where Mentioned as Significant

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V. THE AFTERMATH OF DISORDER

"We will all do our best for a peaceful future together."

"Next time we'll really get the so and so's."

"It won't happen again."

"Nothing much changed here -- one way or the other."


We have sought to determine whether any of these expressions accurately characterizes events in the immediate aftermath of the 20 surveyed disorders. We are conducting continuing studies of the post-disorder climate in a number of cities. [223] But we have sought to make a preliminary judgment at this point. To do so, we considered:

• Changes in Negro and white organizations;
• Official and civic responses to the social and economic conditions and grievances underlying the disorders;
• Police efforts to increase capacity to control future outbreaks;
• Efforts to repair physical damage.

From our surveys of the events of the immediate aftermath, we conclude that:

• The most common reaction was characterized by the last of the quoted expressions -- "nothing much changed";
• The status quo of daily life before the disorder was quickly restored;
• Despite some notable public and private efforts, particularly regarding employment opportunities, little basic change took place in the conditions underlying the disorder;
• In some cities disorder recurred within the same summer; [224] In several cities, the principal official response was to train and equip the police and auxiliary law enforcement agencies with more sophisticated weapons;
• In several cities, Negro communities sought to develop greater unity to negotiate with the larger community and to initiate self-help efforts in the ghetto;
• In several cities, there has been increased distrust between blacks and whites, less interracial communication, and growth of white segregationist or black separatist groups.

Often several of these developments occurred simultaneously within a city.

Detroit provides a notable example of the complexity of post-disorder events. Shortly after the riot, many efforts to ameliorate the grievances of ghetto residents and improve interracial communication were announced and begun by public and private organizations. The success of these efforts and their reception by the Negro community were mixed. More recently, militant separatist organizations of both races appear to be growing in influence.

Some of the most significant of the post-riot developments were:

Official and Other Community Actions

The New Detroit Committee (NDC), organized under the c0- sponsorship of the Mayor of Detroit and the Governor of Michigan, originally had a membership ranging from top industrialists to leading black militant spokesmen. NDC was envisioned as the central planning body for Detroit's rejuvenation.

However, it had an early setback last fall when the state legislature rejected its proposals for a statewide fair housing ordinance and for more state aid for Detroit's schools.

In January, 1968 NDC's broad interracial base was seriously weakened when black militant members resigned in a dispute over the conditions set for a proposed NDC-supported grant of $100,000 to a black militant organization.

To deal with the employment problem, the Ford Motor Company and other major employers in Detroit promised several thousand additional jobs to Detroit's hard-core unemployed. At least 55,000 persons were hired by some 17 firms. Ford, for example, established two employment offices in the ghetto. Reports vary on the results of these programs.

Steps taken to improve education after the riot include the appointment of Negroes to seven out of eighteen supervisory positions in the Detroit school system. Before the summer of 1967 none of these positions was held by a Negro. Michigan Bell Telephone Company announced that it would "adopt" one of Detroit's public high schools and initiate special programs in it.

Detroit's school board failed to obtain increased aid from the state legislature and announced plans to bring a novel suit against the state to force higher per capita aid to ghetto schools.

There are signs of increased hostility toward Negroes in the white community. One white extremist organization reportedly proposes that whites arm themselves for the holocaust it prophesies. A movement to recall the mayor has gained strength since the riot, and its leader has also pressed to have the fair housing ordinance passed by the Detroit Common Council put to a referendum.

The police and other law enforcement agencies in Detroit are making extensive plans to cope with any future disorder. The mayor has proposed to the Common Council the purchase of some $2 million worth of police riot equipment, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and Stoner rifles (a weapon which fires a particularly destructive type of bullet).

Negro Community Action

A broadly-based Negro organization, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee (CCAC), was formed after the riot by a leading local militant and originally included both militant and moderate members. It stresses self-determination for the black community. For example, it is developing plans for Negro-owned cooperatives and reportedly has demanded Negro participation in planning new construction in the ghetto. CCAC lost some of its moderate members because it has taken increasingly militant positions, and a rival, more moderate Negro organization, the Detroit Council of Organizations, has been formed.

Post-Riot Incidents and Prospects for the Future

There appears to be a growing division between the black and white communities as well as within the black community itself. Some pawnshops and gun stores have been robbed of firearms, and gun sales reportedly have tripled since the riot. In late 1967 there was a rent strike, reports of some fire bombings, and a new junior high school was seriously damaged by its predominantly Negro student body.

Many Negroes interviewed rejected the theory that the 1967 riot immunized Detroit against further disorders. Some believed that a new disturbance may well be highly organized and therefore much more serious.

Changes in Negro and White Organizations

In half the cities surveyed, new organizations concerned with race relations were established or old ones revitalized. No clear trend is apparent.

In a few cities the only apparent changes have been the increased influence of Negro militant separatist or white segregationist groups. [225]

In a few cities the organizations identified tended to follow more moderate and integrationist policies. [226] A youthful Negro who emerged as a leader during the riot in Plainfield started a new organization which, though militant, is cooperating with and influencing the established, more moderate Negro leadership in the city.

And in a few cities, organizations of white segregationists, Negro militants and moderate integrationists all emerged following the disturbances. In Newark, as in Detroit, both black and white extremist organizations have been active, as well as a prominent integrationist post-riot organization, the Committee of Concern. The committee was formed immediately after the riot and includes leading white businessmen, educators and Negro leaders. At the same time, leading black militants reportedly gained support among Negro moderates. And a white extremist group achieved prominence -- but not success -- in attempting to persuade the city council to authorize the purchase of police dogs. [227]

Official and Civic Response

Actions to ameliorate Negro grievances in the 20 cities surveyed were limited and sporadic. With few exceptions, these actions cannot be said to have contributed significantly to reducing the level of tension.

POLICE-COMMUNITY RELATIONS

In eight of the cities surveyed municipal administrations took some action to strengthen police-community relations. [228] In Atlanta, immediately after the riot, residents of the disturbance area requested that all regular police patrols be withdrawn because of hostility caused during the riot, when a resident was killed allegedly by policemen. The request was granted, and for a time the only officers in the area were police-community relations personnel. In Cincinnati, however, a proposal to increase the size of the police-community relations unit and to station the new officers in precinct stations has received little support.

EMPLOYMENT

Public and private organizations, often including business and industry, made efforts to improve employment opportunities in nine of the cities. [229]

In Tucson, a joint effort by public agencies and private industry produced 125 private and 75 city jobs. Since most of the city jobs ended with with the summer, some companies sought to provide permanent employment for some of those who had been hired by the city.

HOUSING

In nine cities surveyed, municipal administrations increased their housing programs. [230] In Cambridge. the Community Relations Commission supported the application of a local church to obtain federal funds for low and moderate income housing. The Commission also tried to interest local and national builders in constructing additional low-cost housing.

The Dayton city government initiated a program of concentrated housing code enforcement in the ghetto. The housing authority also adopted a policy of dispersing public housing sites and, at the request of Negroes, declared a moratorium on any new public housing in the predominantly Negro West Dayton area.

But in Newark, municipal and state authorities continued to pursue a medical center project originally designed to occupy up to 150 acres in the almost all-Negro Central Ward. The project, bitterly opposed by Negroes before the riot, would have required massive relocation of Negroes and was a source of great tension in the Negro community. However, with the persistent efforts of federal officials (HUD and HEW), an accommodation appears to have been reached on the issue recently, with reduction of the site to approximately 58 acres.

Private organizations attempted to improve the quality of ghetto housing in at least three of the cities surveyed. A Catholic charity in New Jersey announced a plan to build or rehabilitate 100 homes in each of five cities, including three of the cities surveyed (Elizabeth, Jersey City and Newark) and to sell the homes to low-income residents. The plan received substantial business backing. [231]

EDUCATION

In five of the cities surveyed, local governments have taken positive steps to alleviate grievances relating to education. [232] In Rockford, residents approved a bond referendum to increase teacher salaries, build schools and meet other needs. A portion of this money will be used, with matching state and federal funds, to construct a vocational and technical center for secondary schools in the Rockford area.

In two cities, private companies made substantial contributions to local school systems. The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey donated to the Elizabeth school board a building valued at $500,000 for use as an administrative center and for additional classrooms. [233]

However, in four of the cities surveyed, there were increased grievances concerning education. [234] In Cincinnati recent elections resulted in the election of two new board of education members who belonged to a taxpayers' group which had twice in 1966 successfully opposed a school bond referendum. Also, racial incidents in the Cincinnati schools increased dramatically in number and severity during the school year.

RECREATION

In four cities, programs have been initiated to increase recreational facilities in ghetto communities. [235] A month and a half after the New Brunswick disturbances, local businessmen donated five portable swimming pools to the city. A boat which the city will use as a recreation center was also donated and towed to the city by private companies.
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

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Part 3 of 5

NEGRO REPRESENTATION

The elections of Negro mayors in Cleveland -- which experienced the Hough riot in 1966 -- and Gary have been widely interpreted as significant gains in Negro representation and participation in municipal political structures. In five of the six surveyed cities which have had municipal elections since the 1967 disturbances, however, there has been no change in Negro representation in city hall or in the municipal governing body. [236] In New Haven, the one city where there was change, the result was decreased Negro representation on the board of aldermen from five out of 35 to three out of 30.

Changes toward greater Negro representation occurred in three other cities in which Negroes were selected as president of the city council and as members of a local civil service commission, a housing authority and a board of adjustments. [237]

GRIEVANCE MACHINERY

There was a positive change in governmental grievance channels or procedures in two cities. [238] But in one case, an effort to continue use of counter-rioters as a communications channel was abandoned. [239]

FEDERAL PROGRAMS

There are at least ten examples, in eight cities, of federal programs being improved or new federal programs being instituted [240]; in two cities disputes have arisen in connection with federally-assisted programs. [241]

MUNICIPAL SERVICES

Four cities have tried to improve municipal services in disturbance areas. [242] In Dayton, the city began a program of additional garbage collection and alley cleaning in the disturbance area. In Atlanta, on the day after the disturbance ended, the city began replacing street lights, repaving streets and collecting garbage frequently in the disturbance area. However, the improved services were reportedly discontinued after a month and a half.

OTHER PROGRAMS

In one city, a consumer education program was begun. [243] In none of the 20 cities surveyed were steps taken to improve welfare programs. In two of the surveyed cities, plans were developed to establish new businesses in disturbance areas. [244]

Capacity to Control Future Disorders

Five of the surveyed cities planned to improve police control capability in the event of disorder. [245] Four cities developed plans for using counter-rioters, [246] but in one case the plans were later abandoned. [247] In Detroit, plans were made to improve the administration of justice in the event of future disorder by identifying usable detention facilities and assigning experienced clerks to process arrestees.

Repair of Physical Damage

Significant numbers of businessmen in the riot areas have reopened in several cities where damage was substantial. In Detroit, none of the businesses totally destroyed in the riot have been rebuilt, but many which suffered only minor damage have reopened. In Newark, 83 percent of the damaged businesses have reopened, according to official estimates. [248] In Detroit, the only city surveyed which suffered substantial damage to residences, there has been no significant residential rebuilding.

In two cities, Negro organizations insisted on an active role in decisions about rehabilitation of the disturbance area. [249]

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

In many of these footnotes where a series of disorders is mentioned we have indicated the number of disturbances which have been classified as "major," "serious" or "minor" in the section on "Levels of Violence and Damage" in Chapter 2-1 supra.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-I

1. Five sources for our compilation were: Department of Justice, Criminal Division; Federal Bureau of Investigation;. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, Brandeis University; and Congressional Quarterly, September 8, 1967.

2. Buffalo, N. Y.

Cincinnati, Ohio (June)
Detroit, Mich.
Milwaukee, Wis.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Newark, N.J.
Plainfield, N.J.
Tampa, Fla. (June)

3. Albany, N.Y.

Atlanta, Ga. (June)
Birmingham, Ala.
Boston, Mass.
Cairo, Ill.
Cambridge, Md. (July)
Cincinnati, Ohio (July 3-5)
Dayton, Ohio (June)
Flint, Mich.
Fresno, Calif.
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Houston, Texas (May)
Jackson, Miss.
Montclair, N.J.
Nashville, Tenn.
New Haven, Conn.
New York, N.Y. (Bronx and E. Harlem)
Omaha, Nebr.
Paterson, N.J.
Phoenix, Ariz.
Pontiac, Mich.
Portland, Ore.
Riviera Beach, Fla.
Rochester, N.Y. (July)
Saginaw, Mich.
San Francisco, Calif. (May 14-15, July)
Syracuse, N.Y.
Toledo, Ohio
Waterloo, Iowa
Wichita, Kan. (August)
Wilmington, Del.

4. Alton, Ill.

Asbury Park, N.J.
Atlanta, Ga. (July)
Aurora, Ill.
Benton Harbor, Mich.
Bridgeport, Conn.
Bridgeton, N.J.
Cambridge, Md. (June)
Chicago, Ill. (4 disorders)
Cincinnati, Ohio (July 27)
Clearwater, Fla.
Cleveland, Ohio (2 disorders)
Columbus, Ohio
Dayton, Ohio (September)
Deerfield Beech, Fla. (2 disorders)
Denver, Colo. (2 disorders)
Des Moines, Iowa (2 disorders)
Durham, N.C.
East Orange, N.J. (2 disorders)
E. Palo Alto, Calif.
East St. Louis, Ill. (2 disorders)
Elgin, Ill. (2 disorders)
Elizabeth, N.J.
Englewood, N.J.
Erie, Penn. (2 disorders)
Greensboro, N.C.
Hamilton, Ohio
Hammond, La.
Hartford, Conn. (3 disorders)
Houston, Texas (July, August)
Irvington, N.J.
Jackson, Mich.
Jamesburg, N.J.
Jersey City, N.J.
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Kansas City, Mo.
Lackawanna, N.Y.
Lakeland, Fla.
Lansing, Mich.
Lima, Ohio
Long Beach, Calif.
Lorain, Ohio
Los Angeles, Calif.
Louisville, Ky.
Marin City, Calif.
Massillon, Ohio
Maywood, Ill. (2 disorders)
Middletown, Ohio
Mt. Clemens, Mich.
Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
Muskegon, Mich.
New Britain, Conn.
New Brunswick, N.J.
Newburgh, N.Y.
New Castle, Penn.
New London, Conn.
New Rochelle, N.Y.
New York, N.Y. (Fifth Avenue and 2 Brooklyn disorders)
Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Nyack, N.Y. (2 disorders)
Oakland, Calif.
Orange, N.J.
Pasadena, Calif.
Passaic, N.J.
Peekskill, N.Y.
Peoria, Ill.
Philadelphia, Penn. (3 disorders)
Pittsburgh, Penn.
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Prattville, Ala.
Providence, R.I.
Rahway, N.J.
Rochester, N.Y. (May 31-June 1)
Rockford, Ill. (2 disorders)
Sacramento, Calif.
St. Louis, Mo.
St. Paul, Minn.
St. Petersburg, Fla.
San Bernardino, Calif.
San Diego, Calif.
Sandusky, Ohio
San Francisco, Calif. (May 21)
Seaford, Del.
Seattle, Wash.
South Bend, Ind.
Springfield, Ohio
Spring Valley, N.Y.
Tampa, Fla. (July)
Texarkana, Ark.
Tucson, Ariz.
Vallejo, Calif. (2 disorders)
Wadesboro, N.C.
Washington, D.C.
Waterbury, Conn.;
Waukegan, Ill.
West Palm Beach, Fla.
Wichita, Kansas (May and July)
Wyandanch, N.Y.
Youngstown, Ohio
Ypsilanti, Mich.

5. Three:

Cincinnati
Hartford
Houston
Philadelphia
San Francisco
Wichita
Two:
Atlanta
Cambridge
Cleveland
Dayton
Deerfield Beach
Denver
Des Moines
East Orange
East St. Louis
Elgin
Erie
Maywood
Nyack
Rochester
Rockford
Tampa
Vallejo

6. Cleveland and Rochester.

7. Disorders were counted in the month in which they began. Thus the Omaha disorder, for example, which began on March 31 and ended on April 2, was counted in the March total.

January: Chicago
March: Omaha
April: Cleveland, Louisville, Massillon and Nashville.
May: Two in Chicago, Houston, Jackson (Miss.) Philadelphia, Rochester, San Diego, two in San Francisco, Vallejo and Wichita.
June: Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Cambridge, Cincinnati, Clearwater, Dayton, Lansing, Los Angeles, Maywood, Middletown, Niagara Falls, Philadelphia, Prattville, St. Petersburg and Tampa.

July:

Albany
Alton
Asbury Park
Atlanta
Benton Harbor
Birmingham
Bridgeport
Bridgeton
Cairo
Cambridge
Chicago
Cincinnati (2)
Cleveland
Deerfield Beach
Denver
Des Moines (2)
Detroit
Durham
E. Orange (2)
E. Palo Alto
E. St. Louis
Elgin
Englewood
Erie (2)
Flint
Fresno
Greensboro
Grand Rapids
Hamilton
Hartford
Houston
Irvington
Jersey City
Kalamazoo
Kansas City
Lackawanna
Lakeland
Lima
Long Beach
Lorain
Marin City
Maywood
Milwaukee
Minneapolis
Montclair
Mt. Clemens
Mt. Vernon
Muskegon
Newark
New Britain
New Brunswick
Newburgh
New Castle
New Rochelle
New York (4)
Nyack
Oakland
Orange
Pasadena
Pasaaic
Paterson
Peekskill
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Plainfield
Pontiac
Portland
Poughkeepsie
Providence
Rahway
Riviera Beach
Rochester
Rockford (2)
Sacramento
Saginaw
St. Paul
San Bernardino
San Francisco
Seaford
Seattle
South Bend
Springfield
Tampa
Toledo
Tucson
Wadesboro
Waterbury
Waterloo
Waukegan
W. Palm Beach
Wichita
Wilmington
Youngstown
Ypsilanti

August:

Denver
Elgin
Hammond
Houston
Jackson (Mich.)
Jamesburg
New Haven
Peoria
Pittsburgh
St. Louis
Sandusky
Spring Valley
Syracuse
Vallejo
Washington
Wichita
Wyandanch
September:
Aurora
Columbus
Dayton
Deerfield Beach
East St. Louis
Hartford (2)
New London
New York
Nyack
Texarkana

8. East:

Albany
Asbury Park
Boston
Bridgeport
Bridgeton
Buffalo
E. Orange (2)
Elizabeth
Englewood
Erie (2)
Hartford (3)
New Haven
Irvington
Jamesburg
Jersey City
Lackawanna
Montclair
Mt. Vernon
Newark
New Britain
New Brunswick
Newburg
New Castle
New London
New Rochelle
New York (5)
Niagara Falls
Nyack (2)
Orange
Passaic
Paterson
Peekskill
Philadelphia (3)
Pittsburgh
Plainfield
Poughkeepsie
Providence
Rahway
Rochester (2)
Seaford
Spring Valley
Syracuse
Waterbury
Wilmington
Wyandanch

Midwest:

Alton
Aurora
Benton Harbor
Cairo
Chicago (4)
Cleveland (2)
Cincinnati (3)
Columbus
Dayton (2)
Dee Moines (2)
Detroit
E. St. Louis (2)
Elgin (2)
Flint
Grand Rapids
Hamilton
Jackson (Mich.)
Kalamazoo
Kansas City
Lansing
Lima
Lorain
Massillon
Maywood (2)
Middletown
Milwaukee
Minneapolis
Mt. Clemens
Muskegon
Omaha
Peoria
Pontiac
Rockford (2)
Saginaw
St. Louis
St. Paul
Sandusky
South Bend
Springfield
Toledo
Waterloo
Waukegan
Wichita (3)
Youngstown
Ypsilanti
South and Border States:
Atlanta (2)
Birmingham
Cambridge (2)
Clearwater
Deerfield Beach (2)
Durham
Greensboro
Hammond
Houston (3)
Jackson (Miss.)
Lakeland
Louisville
Nashville
Prattville
Riviera Beach
St. Petersburg
Tampa (2)
Texarkana
Wadesboro
W. Palm Beach
Washington

West:

Denver (2)
E. Palo Alto
Fresno
Long Beach
Los Angeles
Marin City
Oakland
Pasadena
Phoenix
Portland
Sacramento
San Bernardino
San Diego
San Francisco (3)
Seattle
Tucson
Vallejo (2)

9. Newark: Plainfield, Paterson, Orange, Irvington. E. Orange, Rahway, Montclair, Elizabeth, Asbury Park, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Nyack, Bridgeton and Englewood.

Detroit: Kalamazoo, Pontiac, Toledo, Flint, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Saginaw and Mt. Clemens.

The causal relationship between the Detroit and Newark riots and the disorders in their respective clusters is considered under Precipitating Incidents in Part II of this chapter.

The other 21 clusters, arranged by the month in which each cluster began, were:

April: Cleveland, Massillon
Nashville, Louisville

May: San Francisco, Vallejo

June: Cincinnati, Dayton, Middletown
Buffalo, Niagara Falls
Clearwater, Tampa, St. Petersburg

July: Tampa, Deerfield Beach, Lakeland, Riviera Beach, W. Palm Beach
Greensboro, Durham, Wadesboro
Bronx, E. Harlem, New York 5th Avenue, Mt. Vernon, Brooklyn, Peekskill, Lackawanna, Newburgh Passaic, Poughkeepsie, New Rochelle, New Britain, Bridgeport, Waterbury
Rochester, Albany
Philadelphia, Wilmington
Des Moines, Waterloo, Des Moines
Minneapolis, St. Paul
Youngstown, Lima, Cleveland
Lorain, Springfield, Cincinnati, Hamilton, Sandusky
Waukegan, Chicago, South Bend, Elgin, Rockford, Peoria
Tucson, Phoenix
Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland
E. Palo Alto, Long Beach, San Bernardino, Pasadena

August: New Haven, New London, Hartford

September: Dayton, Columbus


10. This table is based upon the estimated 1967 population of the 128 cities except for New York and Hartford, for which 1966 estimates were used, and 15 cities for which 1960 census figures were used (Deerfield Beach, East Orange, Englewood, Irvington, Lackawanna, Maywood, Montclair, Orange, Prattville, Rahway, Riviera Beach, Seaford, Spring Valley, Wadesboro and Waterloo).

11. Figures were unavailable for four communities (East Palo Alto, Jamesburg, Marin City and Wyandanch).

12. See Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders, 90th Cong., 1st Seds., Part I, insert facing p. 14.

More recent date indicate that there were 23 riot-related deaths in Newark rather than 25 as reported by the Subcommittee. There are similar variations for some cities with regard to the number injured. In addition, Atlanta, in which there were one death and at least nine injuries, was not included in the Subcommittee's list. Finally, two of the disturbances included in the Subcommittee's figures are not in our list of 164 disorders (Hattiesburg, Miss. -- no deaths, five injuries; Montgomery, Ala. -- no deaths, no injuries).

13. In 12 (16 percent) of the disturbances studied by the Permanent Subcommittee there were deaths. Sixty-eight (82 percent) of the deaths and 1,049 (56 percent) of the injuries occurred in two (3 percent) of the disturbances.

According to figures of the Permanent Subcommittee, Detroit experienced 43 deaths and 324 injuries; Newark experienced 25 deaths and 725 injuries.

In six (8 percent) of the disturbances, there were one to four deaths and 11 to 65 injuries reported:

City / Deaths / Injuries

Cincinnati (6/12-18) / 1 / 63
Jackson / 1 / 43
Milwaukee / 4 / 44*
New York (7/23-25) / 2 / 45
New York (i/4-8) / 1 / 58
Plainfield / 1 / 55

* This figure represents only injuries to "Law Officers." No figure was reported for injuries to civilians.


Image

In four (5 percent) of the disturbances, there were one to two deaths and one to ten injuries reported:

City / Deaths / Injuries

Erie (7/18-20) / 1/ 6
Houston (5/16-17) / 1 / 6
Pontiac / 2 / 2
Rochester / 1 / 9


In 46 (61 percent of the disturbances, there were injuries but no deaths reported. In 15 (20 Percent) of the disturbances, there were no deaths and 11 to 60 injuries:

City / Injuries

Birmingham / 11
Boston / 60
Buffalo / 15
Grand Rapids / 26
Hartford / 18
Nashville / 17
New York (7/24-8/3) / 11
New York (7/29-31) / 58
Providence / 45
Sacramento / 16
San Francisco (5/14-15) / 33
San Francisco (7/26-31) / 16
Tampa / 16
Wichita / 23
Wilmington / 13


In 31 (41 percent) of the disturbances, there were no deaths and from one to ten injuries:

City / Injuries

Cambridge / 2
Cincinnati (7/3-4) / 1
Cincinnati (7/27-28) / 3
Englewood / 9
Erie (7/31-8/3) / 6
Fresno 2
Greensboro / 2
Hamilton / 1
Hattiesburg / 5
Kalamazoo / 6
Long Beach / 6
Massillon / 5
Minneapolis / 5
Mt. Vernon / 10
New Britain / 5
New Haven / 3
Passaic / 4
Peoria / 4
Phoenix / 8
Portland / 1
Poughkeepsie / 5
Rockford / 4
Saginaw / 10
San Bernardino / 2
South Bend / 5 [*]
Syracuse / 7
Toledo / 6
Tucson / 8
Waterbury / 3
Waterloo / 3
West Palm Beach / 1

* This figure represents only injuries to "Law Officers." No figure was reported for injuries to civilians.


In 17 (23 percent) of the disturbances, there were no injuries and no deaths reported:

Albany
Chicago
Dayton (6/14-15)
Elgin
Flint
Houston (8/15-17)
Kansas City
Lima
Louisville
Montgomery
Mt. Clemens
Omaha
Paterson
Peekskill
Riviera Beach
Washington
Wyandanch

14. Atlanta
Bridgeton
EIizabeth
Jersey City
New Brunswick
Paterson
Phoenix
Rockford
Tucson

15. The Detroit Fire Department has listed 682 riot-connected building fires. Of these, 412 buildings were completely demolished. The Cincinnati Fire Department has estimated over $1 million in damage from riot-connected fires during the June disturbance.

16. Of 250 fires during a six-day period, only 13 were considered serious by Newark authorities. In no case did a fire spread from its original source to other areas.

More than $8 million of the loss in Newark was attributed to loss of inventory due to looting and damage to stock. Of the 889 business establishments damaged, 25 (3 percent) were demolished and 136 (15 percent) were heavily damaged. Damage to glass, fixtures and buildings was estimated at $1,976,140.

17. On August 15, 1967, it was reported that the State Insurance Commission estimated the property loss at $144 million and that the Detroit Fire Department's estimate was closer to $200 million, only $84 million of which was insured. A December, 1967, estimate by the State Insurance Commission was between $40 million and $45 million. The Insurance Commission indicated that almost $33 million will be covered by insurance.

18. The City of Detroit incurred over $5 million in extraordinary expenses, more than $3 million of which was for personnel costs. In Cincinnati, a disorder of one week cost three city departments more than $300,000 in extraordinary expenditures, principally for overtime for police and firemen.

19. In Detroit at least 274 families were displaced by the destruction of their homes.

20. Seventy-four (89 percent) of the persons reported killed were civilians. The person killed in Atlanta was also a civilian. Of the 1,897 persons reported injured, 1,185 (62 percent) were civilians and 712 (38 percent) were law officers.

21. Cincinnati
Dayton
Englewood
Newark
New Brunswick
New Haven
Paterson
Plainfield
Tampa

22. The Governor's Select Commission on Civil Disorder of the State of New Jersey has found that police forces purposely damaged Negro-owned stores during the Newark riot. The Commission said:

The damage caused within a few hours early Sunday morning, July 16, to a large number of stores marked with "Soul" signs to depict non-white ownership and located in a limited area reflects a pattern of police action for which there is no possible justification. Testimony strongly suggests that State Police elements were mainly responsible with some participation by National Guardsmen.

Governor's Select Commission on Civil Disorder, State of New Jersey, Report for Action, February 1968, p. 304.

23. In at least three of the cities (Detroit, Newark and Plainfield) there was damage to police and/or fire stations. In Cambridge, a public elementary school building was burned. In two of the university settings, school buildings were damaged. There was extensive damage to two dormitories at Texas Southern University in Houston. The bulk of this damage was allegedly caused by police gunfire and subsequent searches of the buildings. At privately-owned Fisk University in Nashville, a plate glass door was broken. It is unclear whether this was done by police or students.

24. Atlanta
Cincinnati
Dayton
Detroit
Elizabeth
Englewood
Grand Rapids
Houston
Jackson
New Haven
Newark
Phoenix
Plainfield
Rockford
Tucson

25. Cambridge
Elizabeth
Englewood
Nashville
New Haven
Newark
Rockford
Tampa
Tucson

Other types of property damage included private cars, buses, and delivery trucks in at least 11 of the 23 cities studied.

Cambridge
Cincinnati
Dayton
Grand Rapids
Jersey City
Nashville
Newark
Phoenix
Plainfield
Tampa
Tucson
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

Postby admin » Mon May 02, 2016 9:19 am

Part 4 of 5

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-II

26. The 20 cities were Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cambridge, Cincinnati (the June disorder), Dayton (the June and September disorders), Detroit, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Milwaukee, New Brunswick, Newark, New Haven, Paterson, Phoenix, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson.

The three university settings were Houston, Texas (Texas Southern University). Jackson, Mississippi (Jackson State College) and Nashville, Tennessee (Fisk University and Tennessee A. & I. State College).

See Statement on Methodology. Appendix, for a description of our survey procedures.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-II

Reservoir of Grievances in the Negro Community  

27. See Part IV, THE BACKGROUND OF DISORDER, infra; and Part III, THE RIOT PARTICIPANT, infra.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-II -- PRECIPITATING INCIDENTS

28. A final incident was identifiable preceding all 24 surveyed disorders except Rockford. See Section II, "The Development of Violence," infra, for the time and place of each final incident and the outbreak of violence.

29. In our surveys at least 88 prior incidents were identified by Negro interviewees as having been widely known and remembered at the time of the outbreak of violence, as having been a source or exemplification of grievances, and as having contributed to the disorders. The number of such prior precipitating incidents in a given city cannot be stated with certainty. Different sources recalled different events or stressed different aspects of a single event. However, we have been able to identify multiple incidents in moat of the cities surveyed. Such incidents were reported in all except two cities (Elizabeth and Tucson; both minor).

At least 10 prior incidents were identified in Houston (serious); seven in Bridgeton (minor); six in Atlanta. Milwaukee and Nashville (one major, two serious); five in Cincinnati, Newark and Plainfield (all major); four in Cambridge and the June and September Dayton disorders (two serious, one minor); three in Detroit, Jersey City New Haven and Phoenix (one major, two serious and one minor); two in Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jackson, New Brunswick, Paterson, Rockford and Tampa (one major, three serious and three minor). Twenty-eight prior incidents occurred within a week preceding violence, nine occurred one month to one week prior, 36 occurred six months to one month prior, eleven occurred one year to six months prior to the violence. One year was used as an arbitrary time limit for counting incidents, except when the incident was identified as particularly significant to the disorder in that city. Four such incidents were identified: In Newark (the 1965 shooting of a Negro by police), in Jersey City (a disturbance in 1964), in Englewood (a 1962 disturbance), and in Cambridge (racial tensions necessitating the presence of National Guardsmen from 1963 to 1965).

30. See the section on "Grievances" in Part IV infra.

31. Such actions were identified as prior incidents in 35 cases preceding 18 disturbances (Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cincinnati, the June and September Dayton disturbances, Detroit, Englewood, Houston, Jersey City, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Brunswick, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Plainfield, Rockford and Tampa; six major, six serious and six minor).

The percentages used for the frequency of the occurrence of type of incidents total more than 100 percent since a few incidents fell into more than one category.

32. Thirty-two incidents preceding all 18 disorders fit this pattern. Responses to a larger group constituted four incidents, all involving groups of demonstrators (Cincinnati, Nashville, and twice in Houston; one major and two serious).

33. Bridgeton, Cambridge, Detroit. Grand Rapids, Houston, Jackson, Milwaukee, Nashville, Newark, Phoenix, Tampa and Tucson (four major, six serious and two minor).

34. Cambridge and Houston (both serious). The incident in Cambridge occurred when police fired at a group of Negroes leaving a protest meeting, and in Houston when they arrested a Negro trying to address a group of demonstrators.

35. This was the case in 15 instances preceding nine disorders (Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cambridge, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Haven, Newark and Phoenix; two major and six serious).

36. This occurred in five cases preceding four disorders (Cambridge, the June Dayton disturbance, Houston and Nashville; all serious).

37. Atlanta and the June Dayton disturbance (both serious) featured nationally-known militants. Cincinnati, the September Dayton disturbance and Plainfield (two major and one minor) involved only local leaders.

38. Atlanta, Cincinnati and the September Dayton disturbance (one major, one serious and one minor).

39. The June Dayton and Plainfield disturbances (both serious).

40. This occurred in 15 cases preceding nine disturbances (Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cambridge, the June Dayton disorder, Detroit, Jackson, Milwaukee, Nashville and Tampa; three major, five serious, one minor).

41. Atlanta the June and September Dayton disturbance, Detroit, Englewood, Jersey City and Paterson (one major, three serious and three minor). The previous disorder counted in Detroit was the "Kercheval incident" in August of 1966 mentioned in the text of this section, and not the 1943 Detroit riot. In Dayton, the June 1967 disorder was counted as a prior incident in relation to the September disorder; four major, six serious and three minor).

42. Atlanta, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Houston, Jersey City, Milwaukee and Plainfield (three major, three serious and one minor).

43. Four such cases preceded four disorders (Bridgeton, Grand Rapids, Phoenix and Plainfield; one major, two serious and one minor).

44. Elizabeth, Englewood, Jersey City, New Brunswick and Paterson (one serious, four minor).

See Part I of this Chapter for a discussion of the patterns of the disorders in terms of timing and geographic distribution. The impact of communications media on the propagation of disorders is discussed in Chapter 15.

45. This was the case in nine or more instances preceding six disturbances (Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Jackson, Milwaukee, Newark and Plainfield; four major, one serious and one minor). The initial refusal to fund or the cancellation of funding by officials responsible for federally-financed antipoverty programs was included in this category. There were three cases preceding three disturbances (the June Dayton disorder, New Haven and Phoenix; all serious).

46. This was the case in eight instances preceding eight disorders (Cambridge, Cincinnati, the September Dayton disorder, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, New Brunswick, and Paterson; three major, three serious and two minor).

47. This incident was not included in the category of racist activities, since the shooting apparently was not motivated entirely by the victim's ethnic origin.

48. Bridgeton, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, Newark and Tampa (four major, two serious and one minor).

49. Atlanta, Cincinnati and the September Dayton disturbance (one major and two serious).

Meetings to protest actions involved in prior incidents on the part of city officials other than the police were identified as the final incident preceding two disorders (the June Dayton disturbance and Plainfield; one major and one serious).

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-II

Development of Violence


50. This is readily apparent from the charts annexed to this Report, which portray graphically the varying levels of violence during the period of each of the 24 disorders.

51. All except Bridgeton, Cambridge, Elizabeth, Jersey City, New Brunswick and New Haven (two serious and four minor disturbances). In eight of the 18 cases the estimated size of the groups ranged from 50 to 100 (the September Dayton disorder, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Houston, Jackson, Paterson, Phoenix and Plainfield; two major, five serious and one minor); in six cases from 100 to 200 (Cincinnati, the June Dayton disorder, Englewood, Nashville, Rockford and Tucson; one major, two serious and three minor): and in six cases from 200 to 1,000 (Atlanta, Houston, Jackson, Milwaukee, Newark and Tampa; three major and three serious).

52. Detroit, Englewood, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Haven, Paterson, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson (four major, three serious and three minor). Seven disorders began on Monday (Atlanta, Cambridge, Cincinnati, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Jersey City and New Brunswick; one major, three serious and three minor). Three began on Tuesday (the September Dayton disturbance, Houston and Phoenix: two serious and one minor), three on Wednesday (the June Dayton disturbance, Jackson and Newark; one major and two serious) and one Thursday (Bridgeton; minor).

53. Eighteen disorders for which temperature information was available occurred at the end of a day in which the temperature had reached a high of at least 79 degrees. In nine cases the temperature had reached 90 degrees or more during the day (Atlanta, Cambridge, Cincinnati, the June Dayton disturbance, Newark, Paterson, Phoenix, Tampa and Tucson; three major, five serious and one minor) in eight cases the temperature had been in the 80's (Detroit, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, New Brunswick, New Haven and Rockford: one major, two serious and five minor), and in one city the high temperature was 79 degrees (Milwaukee; a major disturbance).

54. See the annexed charts of levels of violence.

55. Ibid. Of New Haven's six cycles of violence, one occurred during early daylight hours and one began and reached its peak during the afternoon. In Plainfield (major) substantial violence began during one afternoon and continued, through a midnight peak, into the following day and evening. In Grand Rapids (serious) two cycles of violence occurred within one 24- hour period, one continuing into daylight hours and the other beginning in the afternoon.

56. In three disorders this was the pattern (Atlanta, Cambridge and Englewood; two serious and one minor). 1n a few cases these cycles were separated by one or more 24-hour periods in which little or no violence occurred, even during the first days of the disorder. Also see the charts annexed to this chapter.

57. Violence erupted within less than 30 minutes after the occurrence of the final incident in 11 disorders (Atlanta, Cincinnati, the June and September Dayton disturbances, Grand Rapids, Houston, Jackson, Milwaukee, Plainfield, Tampa and Tucson; four major, five serious and two minor).

In seven other disorders the violence erupted less than two hours after the occurrence of a final incident (Bridgeton, Cambridge, Detroit, Nashville, New Haven, Newark and Phoenix; two major, four serious and one minor). The time span between the final incident and the beginning of violence is not easily established for the disturbances in the five New Jersey cities in which the final incidents were reports of disorders in neighboring cities (Elizabeth, Englewood, New Brunswick, Jersey City and Paterson: one serious and four minor).

58. Violence in 11 disorders reached a peak for the first night, and in some cases an overall peak, in less than one hour after the initial outbreak (Atlanta, Bridgeton, the June and September Dayton disorders, Englewood, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Haven, Newark" Plainfield and Rockford; three major, five serious and three minor). In tour other disorders violence reached a first night peak in less than two hours (Jersey City, New Brunswick, Paterson and Tampa; one major, one serious and two minor), and in eight disorders violence reached a first night peak in less than five hours (Cambridge, Cincinnati, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Houston, Jackson, Phoenix and Tucson; one major, five serious and two minor). In one disturbance (Detroit: major), violence continued to escalate over a period of 12 to 15 hours after the initial outbreak.

59. See the annexed charts of levels of violence.

60. Ibid. All except the June and September Dayton disturbances, Elizabeth, Houston and New Brunswick (two serious and three minor).

61. Bridgeton, Cambridge, Cincinnati, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Milwaukee, Nashville, Tampa and Tucson (two major, five serious and three minor).

62. Atlanta, Detroit, Jackson, Newark, New Haven, Paterson, Plainfield and Rockford (three major, five serious and one minor). See the section on "The Control Effort," infra, for a further discussion of violence levels.

63. Of 34 reported occasions of rock and bottle-throwing, 26 occurred in the first two cycles of violence. Of 31 reported occasions of window-breaking, 24 occurred in the first two cycles.

64. Of 30 reported occasions of looting, 20 occurred in the first two cycles and 28 in the first three cycles.

65. Of 24 reported occasions of fire bombs and Molotov cocktails, 12 occurred in the first two cycles and 12 in the second two.

66. Of 26 reported occasion of fires, 18 occurred in the second and third cycles, and eight in the first and last.

67. Of 18 reported occasions, 13 occurred in the second and third cycles.

68. In only four instances did local police request and receive assistance in the initial response from an outside force (Bridgeton, Cambridge, Englewood and New Brunswick; one serious and three minor). In the case of Cambridge, the outside forces consisted of National Guardsmen, State police, and the county sheriff and constable. In the other three cases, they consisted of the police of neighboring towns or county or both.

69. In ten of the 24 disorders, this was the case (Atlanta, both Dayton disorders, Elizabeth, Houston, Jersey City, Nashville, Paterson, Phoenix and Tucson; six serious and four minor).

70. In a majority of cases for which we have such information, in 12 out of 22, the initial control force was either larger than the crowd on the street or no fewer than a ratio of one policeman to every five persons on the street (Bridgeton, Cambridge, both Dayton disorde18, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Paterson, Phoenix and Rockford; five serious and seven minor).

In one of these instances almost the entire police force of 900 men was moved in before a single rioter appeared on the streets (Jersey City: minor). In the remaining ten cases the ratio varied: from one policeman to every six persons on the street (New Haven; serious), to one policeman to 300 people on the street (Tampa; major). The median ratio In these ten cases was one policeman to 25 parsons on the street (Cincinnati Detroit, Houston, Jackson, Nashville, Newark, Plainfield, and Tucson; four major, three serious and one minor).

71. In at least one case, the police rushed at the crowd with nightsticks (Newark; major). In only one case was a shot fired by the police during the initial response, and in that case it was a single shot (Cambridge; serious).

72. Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Milwaukee, New Brunswick, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Rockford and Tucson (two major, three serious and five minor).

In at least five of these cases, arrests were made (Englewood, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Paterson, and Tucson; one serious and four minor).

73. Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Detroit, Elizabeth, Houston, Phoenix and Tampa (three major, three serious and two minor).

74. Detroit, Houston, Phoenix and Tampa; two major and two serious.

75. Cambridge, both Dayton disturbances, Jackson, Nashville and Plainfield (one major, four serious and one minor).

76. See annexed charts of levels of violence. In at least 13 instances the initial control response appeared to fail, in this sense. The three control approaches, dispersal, reconnaissance containment were almost equally represented in this group: six of these were cases of dispersal (Englewood, Grand Rapids Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark and Tucson; two major; two serious and two minor); four cases of containment (Cambridge, both Dayton disorders and Jackson; three serious and one minor); and three were cases of reconnaissance (Detroit, Houston and Tampa: two major and one serious).

77. If violence continued, or resumed after a pause, the second control response by local police (and, in the instances we have noted, by the outside forces which by then had arrived) again was one of the three categories of dispersal, reconnaissance and containment. However, at this stage, dispersal was used in a slightly larger number of cases than at the stage of the initial response: twelve cases, two more than in the initial response (Atlanta, Bridgeton Cambridge, Cincinnati, Detroit, Englewood, Milwaukee, Newark, New Brunswick, New Haven, Paterson and Rockford: four major, four serious and four minor). Containment was also now used in a slightly larger number of cases than at the earlier stage: nine cases, one more than before (both Dayton disturbances, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Nashville, Phoenix, Plainfield, Tampa and Tucson: two major, five serious and two minor). Reconnaissance, the most passive tactic and therefore understandably less tenable in the face of continued violence, was abandoned by half the forces which had used it initially but surprisingly was still employed by half: three forces (Cincinnati and Detroit, which turned to dispersal, and Tampa, which turned to containment; three major) abandoned reconnaissance for one of the other tactics, but reconnaissance was still used by three (Cambridge, Elizabeth, and Houston; two serious end one minor).

78. See footnote 22 to the section on "Levels of Violence and Damage" in Part I of this chapter. See also the Profiles on Newark and Detroit in Chapter 1.

79. This combination occurred in at least seven cases, two during the initial response (Englewood and Plainfield; one major and one minor) and five during a subsequent response (Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Nashville and New Haven; two major and three serious).

80. Atlanta, Detroit, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Milwaukee, Newark, New Brunswick, New Haven, Phoenix and Plainfield (four major, five serious and two minor).

81. Cambridge, Nashville, Newark and New Haven (one major and three serious).

82. One major and one serious.

83. Cincinnati, Detroit, Jackson, New Haven, Newark, Plainfield, Phoenix, Rockford and Tampa (five major, three minor and one serious). In four of these nine disturbances (Detroit, Jackson, and, arguably, Phoenix and Rockford; one major, two serious and one minor) the entry of extra forces occurred after the first outbreak of violence. In four cities (Cincinnati, Newark, Plainfield, and Tampa; all major) extra forces were brought in after two outbreaks of violence. In one city (New Haven; serious) extra forces were brought in after three outbreaks of violence. See the annexed charts of levels of violence, and type and duration of law enforcement mobilization.

84. In all but two of these cities (Plainfield and, arguably, Rockford; one major and one minor) violence recurred thereafter on two occasions. In three cases, (Cincinnati, Tampa and Phoenix; two major and one serious) the subsequent violence was at lower levels than before the extra forces' arrival But in the majority of cases (Detroit, Jackson, New Haven, Newark, Plainfield and Rockford; three major, two serious and one minor) the intensity of violence recurring after the arrival of extra forces was equal to or greater than that of the earlier violence.

85. Bridgeton, Cambridge, Englewood and New Brunswick (one serious and three minor).

86. In one city (Englewood; minor) four outbreaks followed; in four cities (Bridgeton, Cambridge, Grand Rapids, and Jersey City; two serious and two minor) two outbreaks followed; and in one city (New Brunswick; minor) a single outbreak followed.

87. In three of the six cities (Bridgeton, Englewood and Grand Rapids; one serious and two minor) the level of violence in one or more successive outbreaks was the same as or higher than that in the first outbreak of disorder. In three of these cities (Cambridge, Jersey City and New Brunswick; one serious and two minor) the later outbreak or outbreaks was of lower intensity than the first or there was no further outbreak of violence.

88. Atlanta, both Dayton disorders, Elizabeth, Houston, Nashville, Paterson and Tucson; five serious and three minor.

89. Two of these cities (Paterson and Tucson; one serious and one minor), had four outbreak.; one (Atlanta; serious) had three outbreaks; two (Elizabeth and Nashville; one serious and one minor), had two outbreaks; and three (both Dayton disorders and Houston; two serious and one minor), had one outbreak. Of the four cities which had multiple outbreak., three (Atlanta, Paterson and Tucson; two serious and one minor), had subsequent outbreaks of violence at the same or a higher level of violence than the first outbreak.

90. There is evidence of a total of at least 68 such meetings in 21 of the 24 disturbances studied: only in three disorders (Cambridge, Milwaukee and Rockford; one major, one serious and one minor) is there no evidence of such meetings. The annexed charts include, on a horizontal line near the top, a depiction of such meetings through the period of disorder in the 21 cases.

91. In 17 of the 21 disturbances (excepting only Atlanta, Jackson, Jersey City and Paterson; three serious and one minor) the first meetings occurred either immediately before the disorder erupted or during the first or second day of disorders.

In only three of the 17 cases (Cincinnati, the Dayton September disturbance and New Brunswick; one major and two minor) did such meetings occur before the outbreak of violence.

92. Of the 16 disorders which had a duration of more than two days, the meetings also continued beyond that point in nine cases (Cincinnati the Dayton June disturbance, Detroit, Englewood, Grand Rapids, New Haven, Newark, Plainfield and Tampa; five major, three serious and one minor). In five of these nine cases (the Dayton June disturbance, Detroit, Englewood, Grand Rapids and Tampa; two major, two serious and one minor), the meetings also continued through the final two days of the disorders.

93. Of the 21 disturbances in which such meetings occurred established Negro leaders participated in meetings in 18 (all except Englewood, Jackson, and Phoenix; two serious and one minor).

94. Eight out of 21. In three cases (Englewood, Jackson and Phoenix; two serious and one minor), youths were the sole Negro participants in meetings with government officials.

96. Cincinnati, Nashville, New Brunswick, Plainfield and Tampa (three major, one serious and one minor). Of these five cases, the two elements of the Negro Community attended meetings together in two disorders (Cincinnati and Plainfield; one major, one serious) and in the remaining three disorders they attended such meeting separately.

96. This was the case in five disorders (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Houston, Plainfield and Phoenix; two major and three serious). In one of the five disorders (Phoenix; serious) the only meeting which established Negro leadership participated was one with Negro youths. In the remaining four cases, established Negro leadership also met with government officials. In three of the five disorders, Negro youths also met with government officials (all except Atlanta and Houston; both serious).

97. This occurred in nine of the 21 disturbances in which such meetings took place (Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cincinnati, the Dayton June disturbance, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Newark, New Brunswick and New Haven; one major, five serious and three minor). Also involved were representatives of local human relations commissions (Bridgeton, Cincinnati, both Dayton disturbances, Elizabeth, Nashville, New Haven, Newark, Plainfield, Tampa and Tucson; four major, three serious and four minor); state community relations agencies (Jersey City, Newark, Plainfield and Tampa; three major and one minor) and federal agencies. In four cities (Cincinnati, Detroit, Jersey City and Newark; three major and one minor) officials of the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice were participants in meetings.

98. Meetings during 19 of the 21 disorders followed this pattern (all accept Houston and Tucson; one serious and one minor). In 13 cases the grievance related to the handling of the precipitating incident by the Police (Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Jersey City, Nashville, Newark, New Brunswick, New Haven, Paterson, Plainfield and Phoenix; three major, six serious and four minor).

99. Meetings during 12 of the 21 disorders followed this pattern (all except Atlanta Bridgeton, the Dayton September disturbance, Detroit, Eliza Nashville, Newark, New Haven and Paterson; two major, four serious three minor).

In seven cases the pre-existing grievances related to unemployment and underemployment (Cincinnati, the Dayton June disturbance, Englewood, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Phoenix and Tucson; one major, two serious and four minor). In six cases they related to inadequate recreation facilities (the Dayton June disturbance, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Plainfield, Tampa and Tucson; two major, one serious and three minor).

100. This was the case in 10 of the 21 disorders in which meetings were held. In most of these cases (8 of 10), the earlier meetings or early stages of meetings focussed on disorder-related grievances and the later meetings, or stages of meetings, focussed on pre-existing grievances (Cincinnati, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Houston, Jackson, Jersey City, Phoenix and Tampa; two major, four serious and two minor). In only two cases (New Brunswick and Plainfield; one major and one minor), was the order of subjects reversed.

101. The only disorders in which counter-rioters were not active were Bridgeton, Cambridge, the Dayton September disorder, Englewood, Milwaukee and Rockford (one major, one serious and four minor).

102. For a discussion of this study and the characteristics of those who so identified themselves, as compared with rioters, see Part III, THE RIOT PARTICIPANT infra.

103. Cincinnati, the Dayton June disorder, Detroit, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Houston, Nashville, Newark, New Brunswick, New Haven, Paterson, Plainfield, Phoenix, Tampa and Tucson (five major, seven serious and three minor).

104. For example, in Cincinnati the police opposed official recognition of counterrioters, whereas in Detroit and Dayton there was close cooperation between police and counter-rioters.

105. Nine of 15 (Cincinnati, the Dayton June disorder, Detroit, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, New Brunswick, Newark, Phoenix and Tampa; four major, three serious and two minor).

106. Houston, Nashville, New Haven, Paterson, Plainfield and Tucson (one major, four serious and one minor).

107. In Elizabeth and Newark the counter-rioters wore arm bands (one major and one minor).

108. Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Jackson, Jersey City and Newark (three major, three serious and one minor).

109. Examples are: employees of city agencies (Detroit and Cincinnati; two major); ministers (Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa; one major and two serious); college students (Grand Rapids, Newark, Jackson and Nashville; one major and three serious; civil rights leaders (Atlanta and Cincinnati; one major and one serious; young Negro militants (Phoenix, Jersey City and New Haven; two serious and one minor); poverty workers (Atlanta, Phoenix and Cincinnati; one major and two serious) and admitted former riot participants (Tampa; major).

110. Newark (major). In Paterson (serious) they held a block dance: in Phoenix (serious), they promised to make attempts to find jobs for rioters; in Jackson (serious) they kept nonstudents out of college dormitories; and in Atlanta (serious), they attempted to organize a Youth Corps Patrol, similar to Dayton's "White Hats." Counter-rioters used physical force to restrain rioters in two cities (Tampa and Nashville; one major and one serious). In neither case was the use of force officially authorized.

111. All four sources are subject to limitations, and we have therefore used each as a reliability check on the others. Eyewitness accounts are subject to retrospective distortion. Data on arrestees also involve built-in biases. The fact of arrest alone, without subsequent trial and conviction does not constitute evidence or the crime charged, and there has not been sufficient time for many of the 1967 riot arrestees to be brought to trial. Many of the most active rioters may have escaped arrest, while many of the uninvolved, or even counter-rioters, may have been arrested in the confusion. Finally, questions about riot activity in interview surveys may elicit overstatements of participation by some interviewees and under-statements by others.

We are conducting a continuing study of arrest records in a number of cities which experienced disorders in 1967 and in some earlier years as well. So far we have studied the records of 13,788 persons arrested during disturbances in 22 cities in 1967. The unpublished study of arrestees in Detroit, which was sponsored by the Department of Labor, Manpower Administration, involved interviews with 496 arrestees.

The Detroit and Newark surveys furnish the moat comprehensive information on mass participation.

The Detroit survey data represent a reanalysis by Dr. Nathan S. Caplan and Jeffery M. Paige, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, of data collected during the two weeks following the disorder, in a study sponsored by the Detroit Urban League. The Newark study was conducted for the Commission by Dr. Caplan and Mr. Paige, approximately six months after the disorder.

The Detroit analysis is baaed on 393 interviews with Negroes aged 15 and over. The Newark data are based on 233 interviews with Negro males between the ages of 15 and 35. In both surveys, the sampling area was determined by identifying the 1960 census tracts in which violence and damage occurred. Newspaper accounts were used to identify the location of riot damage, fires and looting. In Detroit, the sample was drawn from two riot areas, the West Side and the East side, including the following census tracts: nine through 22, 26-28, 36-43, 115-123 and 152-188 (West Side); 759-778 and 789-793 (East Side). The Newark sample was drawn from an inner-city area consisting of census tracts 12, 29-33, 38-40, 58-67 and 81-82.

A probability sample was drawn for both cities so that the probability of inclusion for any household in Detroit was approximately 1/5Oth and Newark 1/44th. Blocks were selected at random from within the specified census tracts and constituted the primary sampling unit for each study. In Detroit, lists of all dwellings in the selected blocks were prepared from a city directory. Every fifteenth address was identified and assigned to an interviewer. In Newark, segments of approximately 10 dwelling units were constructed by field enumeration of blocks selected at random and assigned to interviewers. Both studies used techniques described by Leslie Kish in Survey Sampling, New York, Wiley, 1965, Chapter 9.

Each interviewer in Detroit was instructed to conduct interviews only at those dwelling unite on his assignment sheet. Within households only Negroes were to be interviewed, and the interviewer was instructed to list all members of the household and then select every other one for interviewing. The interviewer was required to return twice if there was no answer to the initial call or if the respondent to be interviewed was not at home. This procedure yielded 437 interviews for 50 blocks, or 8.7 interviews per block.

In order to enlarge the sample of those who were likely to identify themselves as rioters, interviewers in Newark were told to interview only Negro males between the ages 15 and 35. They were instructed to interview all eligible respondents in each household. They were also required to return three times if there was no answer or if an eligible respondent was not at home. A total of 233 interviews were completed in 24 blocks, or 9.7 interviews per block.

In Detroit, 67.0 percent of all eligible respondents were interviewed; in Newark, 66.0 percent. While these response rates do not compare favorably with the usual 80-85 percent response rate in white, middle-class samples, they are comparable to the rates in other ghetto area studies. A Negro response rate of 71.0 percent was reported in another study in approximately the same area of Newark. See Chernik, J., Indik, B., and Sternlieb, G., "Newark-New Jersey: Population and Labor Force," Spring 1967, Institute of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers -- The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

In both surveys, questions were designed to permit comparisons of the characteristics and attitudes of those who (a) admitted active participation in rioting, referred to as "self-reported rioters:" (b) those who said they had sought to stop the rioting, the "counter-rioters:" and (c) those who claimed not to have been involved, the "noninvolved." These classifications were based on the answers to two questions, one direct and one indirect. The indirect question asked how active the respondent had been during the riot, without specifying in particular what he bad been doing. The second question, which appeared later in the questionnaire, asked whether the respondent had participated in various activities, such as trying to stop the riot, calling the fire department, or picking up goods and taking them home. Respondents were classified as "rioters" if they answered either that they were "active" or admitted one or more specific anti-social activities. They were classified as "counter-rioters" if they said that they were engaged in some pro-social activity whether or not they said they were "active." If they said that they had stayed home and also claimed not to have been "active," they were classified as "noninvolved." In the Detroit survey the analysis is based only on the answers of those 393 respondents who were willing to answer at least one of these classificatory questions. In the Newark survey the entire sample of 233 was used, and those who refused to answer either of the classificatory questions were included in the "noninvolved."

112. In Detroit, 11.2 percent (44) of the 393 respondents identified themselves as rioters, 15.8 percent (62) as counter-rioters, and the majority, 73 percent (287), as noninvolved. Bystanders included approximately 5 percent who admitted to having gone into the riot area but claimed not to have participated; and another 15 to 20 percent who claimed to have watched from the front steps or sidewalk in front of their homes. For purposes of analysis all of the 393 respondents other than the self-reported rioters and counterrioters were treated as the "noninvolved." In the Newark survey, where the sample was restricted to Negro males between the ages of 15 and 35, 45.4 percent identified themselves as rioters, and 54.6 percent as noninvolved. About 5 percent of the respondents identified themselves as counter-rioters, but were included as noninvolved because the number of persons was so small. The proportion of respondents who admitted active participation does not necessarily indicate the levels of support for rioting among inner-city Negroes. In Detroit, 23.3 percent of those interviewed felt that more was to be gained than lost through rioting. In Newark 47.0 percent agreed that more was to be gained and 77.1 percent said that they were generally sympathetic to the rioters.

113. In the more detailed discussion which follows, only those characteristics of the counter-rioter which differed from those of the noninvolved are highlighted.

114. Of 13,012 arrestees in 22 cities (Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit. Elizabeth Englewood, Grand Rapids, Houston, Jackson, Jersey City, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Brunswick, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Phoenix:, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; six major, nine serious and seven minor) 10,792 (82.9 percent) were Negroes, 1967 (15.1 percent) were whites, 78 (.6 percent) were Puerto Ricans and 37 (.3 percent) were of other races. The ethnic origin of 138 arrestees (1.1 percent) was unknown.

A study of 348 arrestees in Grand Rapids (serious) divided the disorder in that city into two time segments of 4 hours and 36 hours. During the first 4 hours of the disorder, 95 percent were Negroes. The proportion of Negro arrestees declined to 66 percent during the remaining 48 hours of the disorder. See "Anatomy of a Riot," United Community Services, Research Department, Grand Rapids and Kent County, Michigan, 1967.

115. Age Distribution

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The Grand Rapids data indicate that during the first 4 hours of the disorder 82 percent of the arrestees were under 25 years of age. During the remaining 48 hours, the proportion of arrestees under 25 years of ace declined to 58 percent. See "Anatomy of a Riot," op cit.

*Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Jackson, Jersey City, New Brunswick, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson (five major five serious and six minor)

** R -Rioters

NI -Noninvolved

A -Arrestees

*** The symbol "p" represents the probability that a difference this great is a product of chance. The symbol ">" means greater than. The symbol "<" means less than.

116. Sex Distribution

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The Grand Rapids data indicate that during the first 4 hours of the disorders, 45 of the 46 persons arrested (98 percent) were males. During the remaining 48 hours of the disorder female arrestees increased, comprising 10 percent of a total of 274 adults.

* Atlanta Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Houston, Jackson, Jersey City, Nashville, New Brunswick, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Phoenix, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson (five major, nine serious, and seven minor)

117. Marital Status

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118. Family Structure in Newark Survey

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119. Region of Upbringing

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120. Of 266 arrestees in five cities (Atlanta, New Brunswick, Plainfield, Tampa and Tucson; two major, one serious and two minor), 106 (40 percent) were born in the state in which the disorder occurred, 98 (37 percent) were born in the South (but not in the state in which the disorder occurred in the cases of Atlanta and Tampa; one major and one serious) and 23 (8 percent) went born elsewhere. The state of birth of 39 persons (15 percent) was undetermined. For purposes of the sample, the South was defined as Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Caroline, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

121. The discrepancy between the percentages of the non-involved brought up in the North in Newark and Detroit (two major) is not significant since the Detroit sample includes more older people than the Newark sample. This di1ference does not affect the validity of the figures for youthful rioters.

122. Place of Birth

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123. Of 3,395 arrestees in 15 cities (Atlanta Bridgeton Dayton, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Jersey City, New Brunswick, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson: three major, seven serious and five minor) 3,054 (90 percent) resided in the city in which the disorder occurred, 228 (7 percent) resided in the state in which the disorder occurred, and 48 (1 percent) resided elsewhere. The residence of 65 persons (2 percent) was undetermined.

124. Income Level

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125. See the section on "The Pattern of Disadvantage" in Part IV of this chapter.

126. Educational Level

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127. Employment Status

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128. Underemployment in Newark Survey

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129. Occupation Level in Newark Survey

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130. Job Aspiration in Newark Survey

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131. Perceived Job Opportunity in Newark Survey

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132. Perceived Obstacles to Employment in Newark Survey

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133. Ability and Success in Detroit Survey

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134. Racial Consciousness

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135. Black Conscious in Newark Survey

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136. Anti-White Attitudes

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137. Hostility Toward Middle-Class Negroes in Newark Survey

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138. Half the arrestees were charged with one or more of three offenses: breaking and entering, trespassing, or curfew violation.

Of 13,112 offenses charged against 12,457 persons in 19 cities (Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Jersey City, Milwaukee, New Brunswick, Newark, Paterson, Phoenix, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa, and Tucson; six major, six major, six serious and seven minor), 4,108 (31 percent) were charges of breaking and entering or trespassing and 2,506 (19 percent) were charges of curfew violation. The breakdown of charges by categories was:

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139. Political Information in Newark Survey

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140. Political Involvement in Newark Survey

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141. Trust of the Government in Newark Survey

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142. Political Grievances in Detroit Survey

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143. Perception of Country as Not Worth Fighting For

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FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2 IV

The Pattern of Disadvantage


144. For purposes of this section the three university-related riots, in Houston, Jackson and Nashville, have not been included.

145. See the discussion of Grievances in relation to the riot process in Part II of this chapter.

146. Our discussion relies heavily upon 1960 census data, which are always the most complete and usually the most recent data available. Nevertheless, 1960 statistics are outdated for describing American urban life in 1967 and consequently, we used more recent data wherever possible.

We have examined, for most purposes in this section, 20 of the 23 surveyed riot cities. Three cities (Houston, Jackson and Nashville; three serious) were excluded because their disturbances were more directly campus- related than city-related.

In each of 17 cities, we have compared conditions in the riot area with conditions elsewhere in (1) the city as a whole, and (2) the metropolitan area of which the city is a part, including the suburban areas. In addition, we have sought to determine whether racial differences affect these comparisons. To do this, we have identified census tracts in which violence and damage occurred. This is limited to 17 cities because identification of the disturbance area for purposes of analysis was not possible for three cities (Bridgeton, Cambridge and New Brunswick; one serious and two minor). 1'bey are not divided into census tracts.

We recognize that participants in the disorders did not necessarily live in the area of disorder. However, we have attempted to learn whether the disturbance areas have characteristics which set them apart from the cities and metropolitan areas in which the disturbance areas are situated.

The disturbance areas were primarily commercial areas in a part of the city having a high concentration of Negro residents. These were usually characterized by a number of retail or wholesale shops, often with residences above the shops and with residential areas immediately adjacent to the commercial streets. In two cities (Atlanta and Tucson; one serious and one minor) the disturbance area was primarily residential.

147. After studying 20 cities, The Department of Labor reached the same conclusion: "Negroes living in non-poverty areas were not much better off than those in poverty areas; among whites, the differences were very sharp." (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Special Labor Force Report No. 75, "Poverty Areas of Our Major Cities," October, 1966, p. 1105.)

148. The Bureau of the Census categorizes citizens as white and nonwhite. Since 92 percent of the nonwhites in the United States are Negroes we have used the terms "Negro" and "nonwhites" interchangeably throughout this section. The numbers compared in the section are medians for the 17 cities.

149. In eight cities, white population also increased in that period, however, it did so at a much lower rate. Only Englewood (minor) showed no change in white population during that period.

150. In 13 of 17 cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Milwaukee, Newark, Paterson, Phoenix, Tucson, Rockford and Tampa; five major, five serious and three minor), including seven of the cities which experienced the most severe violence, the percentage of Negro population in the disturbance area was more than twice the percentage of Negro population in the entire city; in nine of the cities, the percentage of Negro population in the disturbance area was more than triple the citywide percentage.

151. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities: The percentage of Negro population 24 years of age or younger in all 17 cities exceeded the percentage of whites in that age group. The percentage of Negro population 65 years of age or older in all 17 cities except two (Phoenix and Tucson; one serious and one minor) was less than one-half the percentage of whites in that age group.

Comparing Negroes in the disturbance areas and Negroes in the cities: The percentage of Negro population 24 years of age or younger living in the disturbance area in approximately half the cities (Cincinnati, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Newark, Phoenix, Plainfield and Tucson; three major, two serious and three minor) exceeded the city-wide percentage. The percentages were equal only in Tampa (major).

The differences we have seen are even greater when the age distribution among Negroes in the disturbance areas 18 compared with the age distribution among whites in the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSA's).

Median Age Distribution (%)

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152. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities: The number of median years of school completed by Negroes was less than the median number for whites in all 17 cities. In 13 of 17 cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; four major, five serious and four minor) there was a difference of at least one year.

The percentage of Negro population over 25 years of age having eight years or less of education in all 17 cities was greater than the percentage of white population.

Comparing Negroes in the disturbance areas and Negroes in the cities: The median years of school completed by Negroes in the disturbance area in more than half of the 17 cities (Dayton, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Newark, Phoenix, Plainfield, Rockford and Tucson; two major, three serious and four minor) was lower than the median rate of education for Negroes in the entire city. In three of the 17 cities (Jersey City, Milwaukee and Tampa;. two major and one minor) the median years completed by Negroes in the disturbance area and by Negroes in the city were equal. In the remaining five cities the median rate was slightly higher (less than a year's difference) for Negroes in the disturbance area. The difference between the median number of years completed was one-tenth of a year for the 17 cities. The percentage of Negro population in the disturbance area over 25 years of age having eight years or lees education was slightly greater than the city-wide percentage in 11 of the 17 cities (Dayton, Elizabeth, Englewood Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Newark, Phoenix, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; four major, three serious and four minor). The differences we have seen are even greater when comparing the level of education of Negroes in the disturbance areas with that of whites in the SMSA's:

Median Education

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153. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities: The percentage of Negro males in the labor force in nine of 17 cities (Elizabeth, Englewood, Jersey City, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Rockford and Tampa: three major, two serious and four minor) exceeded the percentage of white males. The proportion of Negro and white males employed or seeking employment was equal in Grand Rapids (serious).

The percentage of Negro females exceeded the percentage of white females in the labor force in all 17 cities.

Comparing Negroes in the disturbance area and Negroes in the cities: The percentage of Negro males in the disturbance area in the labor force. in all except seven cities (Dayton, Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Newark, Plainfield and Tucson: two major, two serious and three minor), exceeded the percentage of Negro males in the entire city in the labor force.

The percentage of Negro females in the labor force in the disturbance area, in all except ten cities (Atlanta, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Paterson, Phoenix and Plainfield; two major, five serious and three minor) was larger than the percentage of Negro females in the entire city in the labor force.

The differences in the percentages of Negroes and whites in the labor force again can be seen to be small by comparing Negroes in the disturbance area with whites in the SMSA:

Median Labor Force Participation Rates (%)

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More recent and complete data indicate that unemployment and under- employment of Negroes are even more serious than the 1960 census revealed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported ("Poverty Areas of Our Major Cities," op. cit.) in late 1966 that one out of every six Negro males was not reported in the 1960 census. B.L.S. surveyed ten slum areas of eight cities and obtained data for five other cities. Two of these cities, Detroit and Phoenix (one major and one serious) were among the cities we surveyed. The Bureau found, in the slum areas surveyed, that:

The unemployment rate was approximately three times the nationwide rate of 3.7 percent;

Six and nine-tenths percent of those listed as employed were working only part time although they were trying to find full-time work; the comparable figure for the nation as a whole was 2.3 percent;

Twenty-one percent of those working full time were earning less than $60 a week; the comparable figure for the nation as a whole was 15.4 percent;

In another study The Department of Labor found that 33.9 percent of the labor force were subemployed and 70 percent of the subemployed population was Negro. U.S.-Department of Labor, "A Sharper Look at Unemployment in U.S. Cities and Slums," p. 6.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics included in its definition of subemployment (i) those unemployed in the sense that they are actively looking for work and unable to find it; (ii) those working only part time when they are trying to get full-time work; (iii) those heads of households under 65 who earn less than $60 per week working full time and those individuals under 66 who are not heads of households and earn less than $56 per week in a fulltime job; (iv) half the number of "non-participants" (not in the labor force) in the male 20-64 age group; and (v) a conservative and carefully considered estimate of the male undercount group.

154. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities: The percentage of Negro male unemployment in all 20 cities was higher than the unemployment rate for white males. In 13 of the 20 cities (Bridgeton, Cambridge, Cincinnati, Detroit, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, New Brunswick, New Haven, Paterson, Phoenix, Plainfield and Rockford; four major, five serious and four minor) the rate of unemployment for Negroes was more than twice the rate for whites.

The unemployment rate for Negro females more than the rate for white females in all of the 20 cities except Plainfield (major).

Comparing Negroes in the disturbance areas and Negroes in the cities: The unemployment rate for Negro males in the disturbance area was slightly more than the Negro citywide rate in 11 of 17cities and slightly less in the remaining six (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Englewood, New Haven and Paterson; two major, three serious and one minor).

The disturbance area unemployment rate for Negro-females equalled or exceeded the citywide rate in seven of 17 cities (Cincinnati, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; four major, two serious and one minor).

The differences are even greater when the unemployment rate among Negroes in the disturbance areas is compared with the unemployment rate among whites in the SMSA's:

Median Unemployment Rate (%)

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155. Labor Force Participation Increases as Better Job Opportunities Appear.

156. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities: The percentage of Negro male unskilled and service workers in ten of 17 cities (Atlanta Cincinnati, Dayton, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Phoenix, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; three major, four serious and three minor) was at least three times the rate of whites.

The percentage of Negro female unskilled and service workers in seven of 17 cities (Cincinnati, Detroit, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, New Haven and Rockford; two major, three serious and two minor) was at least twice the percentage of whites.

Comparing Negroes in the disturbance areas and Negroes in the cities: The percentage of Negro male unskilled and service workers in the disturbance areas in 11 of the 17 cities (Dayton, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Newark, Paterson, Phoenix, Tucson, Plainfield, Rockford and Tampa; three major, four serious and four minor) slightly exceeded the percentage in the cities as a whole. The difference between the median of percentages in the disturbance areas and the median of percentages in the cities was 4.5 percent.

The percentage of Negro female unskilled and service workers in the disturbance areas in eight of the 17 cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, New Haven, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; four major, two serious and two minor) was slightly smaller than the percentage of Negro female unskilled and service workers in the cities. The difference in 17 city medians was 3.6 percent.

The differences are even greater when comparing the percentage of Negro unskilled and service workers in the disturbance areas with whites in the SMSA's:

Unskilled and Service Workers Median (%)

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157. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities in 1960: The median income of Negroes in 17 cities was 69.5 percent of the median income of whites. The 1966 nationwide median income earned by Negroes was 58 percent of the median income earned by whites. ("Social and Economic Conditions of Negroes in the United States," Joint Report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the Census, October, 1967, p. 15, Bureau of Labor Statistics Report No. 332.)

The percentage of Negroes and whites in poverty (having an annual income under $3,000) in 14 of the 17 cities was twice the percentage of whites in poverty. In the other three cities (Englewood, Newark and Paterson; one major, one serious and one minor) the percentage was at least one and one-half the percentage of whites.

Comparing Negroes in the disturbance areas and Negroes in the cities: The percentage of the families below the poverty line was slightly higher in the disturbance areas in almost two-thirds or 17 cities (Dayton, Elizabeth, Englewood Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Phoenix, Plainfield, Tampa and Tucson; four major, four serious and three minor). The differences are even greater when the income levels of Negroes in the disturbance areas are compared with the income levels of whites in the SMSA's:

Median Income

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158. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities: The percentage of Negro children under 18 living with both parents in all 17 cities was lees than the percentage of white children that age similarly situated.

Comparing Negroes in the disturbance areas and Negroes in the cities: The percentage of Negro children under 18 living with both parents in the disturbance area was greater than the city-wide percentage in seven of the 17 cities (Atlanta, Dayton, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Rockford and Tucson: two major, three serious and two minor).

The differences are even greater when comparing the family status of Negroes in the disturbance areas and of whites in the SMSA's:

Family Status

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159. Family Stability Improves as Family Income Rises

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160. Comparing Negroes and whites in the cities: The percentage of Negro owner-occupied units in all 17 cities was lower than that of whites. In ten of the cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Paterson and Tampa; five major, three serious and two minor) the proportion of white home ownership was at least one and one-half that of Negroes. In five of the ten cities (Cincinnati, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark and Paterson; three major and two serious) the percentage of white home ownership was twice that of Negroes.

Although Negroes paid the same or slightly lower rents than did whites among non-home owners in 15 of the 17 cities (all except New Haven and Paterson: two serious), they paid a higher proportion of income for rent than whites. Median rent as a proportion of median income in 11 of 13 cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Milwaukee, Newark, Paterson, Plainfield and Tampa; six major, four serious and one minor) was higher for Negroes than for whites. Negroes paid the same proportion as whites in Phoenix (serious) and a smaller proportion than whites in Englewood (minor).

The percentage of overcrowded Negro-occupied homes (homes with more than 1.01 persons per room) in all of the 17 cities except Tucson (minor) was twice the percentage of overcrowded white-occupied homes. In nine of those cities (Elizabeth, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, New Haven, Paterson, Plainfield, Rockford and Tampa; three major, three serious and three minor) the percentage of overcrowded Negro-occupied homes was three times the percentage of white homes.

The percentage of homes occupied by whites which were sound and had adequate plumbing facilities was one and one-half times the proportion of Negro-occupied homes which met those criteria, in ten of 17 cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Phoenix and Tucson; three major, four serious and three minor). Comparing Negro housing in the disturbance area and in the entire city: The percentage of Negro owner-occupied units in the disturbance area exceeded the Negro city-wide percentage in six of 17 cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Jersey City, New Haven, Paterson and Tucson; one major, three serious and two minor). The city-wide median for 17 cities was 3.8 percentage points higher than the median for the disturbance area.

Negroes in the disturbance area paid more for rent than Negroes paid citywide in eight of 13 cities (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Paterson and Plainfield; three major, four serious and one minor). In Milwaukee (major) they paid the same. In four cities they paid less (Englewood, Newark, Phoenix and Tampa; two major, one serious and one minor).

The proportion of income paid for rent by Negroes living in the disturbance area slightly exceeded the city-wide proportion paid by Negroes in eight of 13 cities (Cincinnati, Dayton, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Newark, Plainfield and Tampa; four major, one serious and three minor). The proportions were equal in Detroit (major). The difference in medians was three-tenths of one percent.

The percentage of overcrowded homes in which Negroes lived in the disturbance area was slightly greater than the percentage of overcrowded homes in which Negroes lived city-wide in eight of the 17 cities (Cincinnati, Elizabeth Englewood, Grand Rapids, Plainfield, Newark, Tampa and Tucson; four major, one serious and three minor). The median 17-city difference was 1.1 percentage points.

The percentage of sound homes in the entire city was slightly greater than in the disturbance area in ten of the cities (Dayton, Englewood, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Plainfield, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; four major, three serious and three minor). The difference in medians was .7 percentage point.

The differences are even greater when comparing the housing conditions of Negroes in the disturbance areas and of whites in the SMSA's:

Rent

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FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-IV

Local Governmental Structure


161. For purposes of this section we have not included the three university communities.

162. Source: The Municipal Year Book 1967, The International City Managers' Association (Chicago 1967).

163. Detroit, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Newark, New Haven, Paterson, Rockford and Tampa (three major, two serious and three minor). In the case of Paterson, virtually no powers were left to the aldermen.

164. Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cambridge, Englewood and Plainfield (one major, two serious and two minor).

185. In the five cities having a council-city manager system, the city manager was appointed by the council, and the mayor's powers were limited (Cincinnati, Dayton, Grand Rapids, Phoenix and Tucson; one major, three serious and one minor).

In the one city having a commission form of government (New Brunswick; minor), the major was selected by the commission from its own membership and traditionally was the commissioner who received the largest popular vote. The mayor shared executive power with the other commissioners.

166. In three they were elected by the legislative bodies from their own membership (Cincinnati, Dayton and New Brunswick; one major, one serious; and one minor).

167. Bridgeton, Cambridge, Dayton, Englewood, Grand Rapids, New Brunswick, Plainfield and Tucson (one major, three serious and four minor). The part-time mayors had a variety of other occupations: in Bridgeton, the mayor was a clothing store clerk; in Cambridge, a plumbing contractor; in Dayton, a real estate investor; in Englewood, a businessman who worked in New York; in Grand Rapids, a part-owner of a restaurant supply business; in New Brunswick, a housewife; in Plainfield, a lawyer; and in Tucson, a pharmacist.

168. In 15 of the 20 cities, the principal executive, either the mayor or the city manager, earned an annual salary ranging from $15,000 to $35,000 (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Milwaukee, Newark, New Haven, Paterson, Phoenix, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; five major, six serious and four minor). The other five cities studied had no city manager and a part-time mayor whose annual salary was less than $2,000 in four cases and $5,500 in one case (Bridgeton, Cambridge, Englewood, New Brunswick and Plainfield; one major, one serious and three minor). In all five cities having a council-city manager system, the appointed city manager's salary was significantly higher than the salary of the elected mayor (Cincinnati, Dayton, Grand Rapids, Phoenix and Tucson; one major, three serious and one minor).

169. Thirteen mayors bad terms of four years (Atlanta, Cambridge, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Jersey City, Milwaukee, Newark, New Brunswick, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson; four major, four serious and five minor). Two had terms of three years (Bridgeton and Paterson; one serious and one minor), and five had terms of two years (Cincinnati, Englewood, New Haven, Phoenix and Plainfield; two major, two serious and one minor). There appeared to be no pattern as to the length of time a mayor had been in office prior to the disturbance.

In four of the 20 cities the mayor bad been in office for less than two years (Grand Rapids, New Brunswick, Paterson and Tampa; one major, two serious and one minor). In three cities the mayor had been in office for seven years or more (Milwaukee, New Haven and Rockford; one major, one serious and one minor). In the remaining cities, the mayor's tenure had ranged from two to seven years.

In two cities (Paterson and New Brunswick; one serious and one minor), the mayors had been in office for six months and two months respectively. In both cases the mayor appealed to people in the disturbance area to give the new administration a chance to solve the city's problems, and these appeals appeared to have had an effect in dampening the disorders.

170. Atlanta, Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit. New Brunswick, Phoenix and Tampa (three major, three serious and two minor).

171. Cambridge, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, New Haven, Paterson, Rockford and Tucson (one major, four serious and two minor).

172. Elizabeth, Englewood, Jersey City, Newark and Plainfield (two major and three minor).

173. Of a total of 207 legislators in the 20 cities, 20 (or 10 percent) were Negroes.

174. Bridgeton, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Rockford, Tampa and Tucson (one major, one serious and four minor).

175. In Newark the budget director and the director of health and welfare were Negroes; in Cincinnati, the city solicitor was a Negro; in Jersey City, the director of health and welfare was a Negro; and in Detroit, an aide to the mayor was a Negro.

176. Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Englewood, Newark and Phoenix (three major, three serious and one minor).

177. All except Milwaukee, Tampa and Tucson (two major and one minor). Of the 205 board of education members in those cities. 24 (or 11 percent) were Negro.

178. Excepting Englewood, New Brunswick and Paterson (one serious and two minor). In some instances it was called a "community relations commission" or "human rights commission."

179. Only the Equal Opportunities Commission in New Haven (serious) had the power to subpoena witnesses and enforce compliance with its decisions.

180. Thirteen councils had full-time, paid staff of two or more responsible to the council itself (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Newark, New Haven, Phoenix, Plainfield, Tampa and Tucson; six major, five serious and two minor). In four cities, the councils had no paid staff (Bridgeton, Cambridge, Jersey City and Rockford; one serious and three minor).

Three of the four councils having no paid staff had been relatively inactive in the year prior to the 1967 summer disturbances. Cambridge (serious) held no meetings. and Jersey City (minor) had held one at which they decided their services were not needed during the summer. The council in Rockford (minor), which had not met for over a year, was in the process of being reorganized.

181. Of the 13 councils from which such information was available, five councils reported receiving more than 100 complaints annually (Atlanta, serious, 700 to 800; Detroit, major, 116; Elizabeth, minor, approximately 200; Newark, major, approximately 750; Plainfield, major, approximately 200). Three councils reported receiving 50 to 100 complaints (Cincinnati, major, approximately 50; New Haven, serious, approximately 60; Phoenix, serious, approximately 75). Five councils reported receiving less than 50 (Dayton, serious, 45; Grand Rapids, serious. approximately 25; Milwaukee, major, approximately 40; Tampa, major, 46; and Tucson, minor, 10).

The majority of the complaints from the 12 councils which reported this type of information were in the areas of housing discrimination building and housing code enforcement, and discrimination in employment and promotion practices.

182. Two years ago in Rockford the 18-member human relations commission was asked to investigate an alleged incident of police brutality but, after a preliminary meeting to discuss the matter, held no further meetings. In the late spring of 1967, the Commission was reorganized with a number of new members.

In Plainfield, city agencies opposed an attempt by the Human Relations Commission to conduct its own investigation of complaints of police brutality prior to the 1967 disorder.

183. Cincinnati, Detroit, Elizabeth, Englewood, Newark, New Haven, Paterson, Phoenix and Tucson (three major, three serious and three minor). Only those in Detroit, New Haven and Tucson had been in existence more than two years prior to the disorder.

Four police departments (Paterson, Detroit, Rockford and New Haven; one major, two serious and one minor) had specialized complaint bureaus within the department, and in two cities (Paterson and Detroit) these bureaus had investigative authority.

In Milwaukee there was a Police and Fire Commission consisting of five members. Until recently only property owners were authorized by law to file complaints with the Commission. The law has since been amended to permit any registered voter to file complaints, but few complaints have been filed.

184. Eight of the nine, Englewood (minor) excepted.

185. Detroit and Newark (both major).

186. We have not attempted to analyze the often substantial social and economic programs of other levels of government.

Of necessity we have also restricted ourselves to only the most general quantitative comparisons, within each of the three cities, of the size of the selected federal programs, the number of people in need of them, and the number of people in any way reached by them. We have not attempted the far more difficult task of evaluating the efficiency of the programs or the quality of assistance provided to recipients or its impact on their lives. Qualitative evaluation is the responsibility of many other agencies of the Federal government and beyond our own mandate. Our evaluation necessarily assumes that all those reached are reached effectively. If the factor of effectiveness were taken into account, the magnitude of the still unmet needs might be even greater than our estimates.

As in "The Pattern of Disadvantage," supra, we have used 1960 Census data as the basis for most of our observations as to need. We are keenly aware of difficulties involved in comparing 1967 programs with 1960 needs and have used more recent data wherever available. In most instances the needs were even greater in 1967 than in 1960.

Various federal programs account for their expenditures in different ways and for different periods of time. We have generally used figures for fiscal year 1967, ending June 30, 1967, or calendar year 1967, as available in each case. We are cognizant also of the difficulties involved in considering only expenditures for 1967 as a measure of Federal efforts to deal with ghetto problems. Much was done in earlier years by these programs and more is being done now. We have generally chosen a single year's funding only as a measure of the level of Federal effort during the most recent period. The choice of a recent year for measuring Federal expenditures created a further problem, however. The amount of funds authorized or obligated for a particular program is usually higher than the actual disbursements for that program in a given time period, but data on disbursements is usually available only some time after the period has ended. With the exception of housing and welfare, we have relied upon the higher obligation figures.

187. Institutional training programs administered through local school boards under the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) have been included instead with education programs.

188. Two of the programs had no fixed number of trainee positions. The following table further describes these programs.

Detroit *

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Federal Funds Obligated

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189. Need -- In the spring of 1967 the labor force in Newark numbered 155,770 persons, of whom 90,358 were nonwhite. The unemployment rate during that period was 5.9 percent for whites, 11.5 percent for Negroes, and 13.4 percent for others (principally Spanish-speaking persons). A Rutgers University study in the spring of 1967 identified 3,859 unemployed whites, 8,932 unemployed Negroes, and 1,700 other unemployed nonwhites.

Programs -- During the first two quarters of 1967, 12 job training programs in Newark were supported by $2,681,853 of Federal funds. These programs provided for 2,840 trainees.

Newark* Federal Funds Obligated

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190. Need -- The Connecticut State Employment Service estimates there were approximately 145,000 to 150,000 nonagrarian workers in the labor force In New Haven and 12 surrounding towns during the first three quarters of 1967. The unemployment rate for the same period averaged approximately 3.5 percent.

Programs -- During the first three quarters of 1967 there were 14 manpower programs In New Haven in various stages of operation. These provided $2,150,828 of Federal funds for 1,574 trainees. The number of trainees was not available for one program.

New Haven * Federal Funds Obligated

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191. Need -- There are more than 295,000 students in the Detroit public schools, of whom 43 percent are white and 56 percent Negro. Nearly 60 percent (about 175,000) are educationally disadvantaged within the definition of Title I. Thirty percent of the white students and 84.5 percent of the Negro students are in this group. There are approximately 180,000 functionally illiterate adults in Detroit.

The Detroit school board recently stated that it may cost twice as much to educate a ghetto child as it costs to educate a suburban child and produce the same educational result. The Superintendent of Detroit schools has estimated that, to educate inner-city children, as much as $500 or $600 per pupil is needed in addition to the present average state and local expenditure of $565 per pupil.

Programs -- Detroit schools are scheduled to receive about $11 million during the 1967-68 school year under ESEA Title I. Of the estimated 175,000 low-income students, only about 55,000 are direct beneficiaries of Title I programs. Thus, while the $11 million represents $200 per student for the 55,000 direct recipients, 120,000 (or 69 percent) other educationally disadvantaged students are not participating in the programs.

The Adult Basic Education program is scheduled to receive $244,766 during the 1967-68 school year to serve about 3,900 adults.

Federal funding for public school students from kindergarten through high school for the 1967-68 school year will total $14,514,447. For a student population of 295,0001 these funds add an average of about $49 per student to the state and local expenditures of approximately $565 per student.

Detroit * Federal Funds Obligated For 1967-1968 School Year

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192. Need -- There are approximately 76,000 students in the Newark schools of whom 21 percent are whites and 79 percent are Negroes, Puerto Ricans and others. Approximately 33,000 (44 percent) of these students are from low-income families. In 1960 there were approximately 66,000 functionally illiterate adults in Newark.

Programs -- Newark schools are scheduled to receive about $4 million during the 1967-68 school year under ESEA Title I. Of the estimated 33,000 educationally disadvantaged students, only about 24,000 (or 72 percent) are direct beneficiaries of the Title I programs. Thus, while $166 per student is spent for programs for the direct recipients, 9,000 educationally disadvantaged students are not receiving the benefits of the programs.

The Adult Basic Education program is scheduled to receive $169,000 during the 1967-68 school year to serve approximately 3,000 students at a cost of about $56 per person.

Federal funding for public school students from kindergarten through high school in Newark during the 1967-68 school year will total $4,564,098. For a student population of 75,000, these funds add an average of approximately $60 per student to the state and local expenditures of about $565.

Newark * Federal Funds Obligated for 1967-1968 School Year

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193. Need -- There are more than 21,000 students in the New Haven public schools, of whom 47.9 percent are whites and 52.1 percent are Negroes, Puerto Ricans and others. In the middle and senior high schools an estimated 2,500 students are educationally disadvantaged. Of 33 elementary schools, 14 are designated as inner city or target schools for funds under ESEA Title I, and seven others reportedly could have been so designated. More than 50 percent of all elementary students (6,637 of 13,050) are in the 14 target schools. Twenty-two percent of the white students and more than 73 percent of the nonwhite students are in the target schools. There are an estimated 20,000 functionally illiterate adults in New Haven.

Programs -- New Haven schools are scheduled to receive nearly $1 million in the 1967-68 school year under ESEA Title I. Of the 2,500 low-income students in middle and senior high schools, approximately 1,000 are beneficiaries of the programs. Because of the comprehensive nature of the Title I programs in New Haven, all 6,637 students in the 14 target elementary schools are recipients of the programs although not all are educationally disadvantaged. The number of educationally disadvantaged students who do not receive benefits from the programs because they attend the 19 non-target elementary schools is unknown.

The Adult Basic Education program is scheduled to receive $23,000 during the 1967-68 school year to serve almost 700 persons.

Federal funding for public school students from kindergarten through high school for tile 1967-68 school year will total $1,090,260. For a student population of 21,000, these funds add an average of nearly $52 per student to the local and state expenditures of approximately $697 per student.

New Haven * Federal Funds Obligated For 1967-1968 School Year

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194. We have considered as substandard, in accordance with the definition of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, all units which were characterized by the census as dilapidated or as lacking one or more plumbing facilities. U. S. Bureau of Census, Measuring the Quality of Housing, An Appraisal of Census Statistics and Methods, Working Paper #25. Washington, D. C., 1967. We have treated as overcrowded all units identified by the census as having more than 1.01 persons per room, in accordance with the definition recently used by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Social and Economic Conditions of Negroes in the United States, October, 1967, p. 57. Since many units are included in both categories, it is not possible to establish a total level of need by adding the numbers of units in the two categories, and we have therefore applied the two standards separately.

195. Need -- In 1960 there were 553,198 housing units in Detroit. Of these, 36,810 were substandard and 45,126 were overcrowded.

Programs -- Federal funds in the amount of $78,656,000 were expended through September, 1967 for housing completed under the first three programs examined. An additional $41,000 were expended through December, 1967 under the Rent Supplements program. BMIR mortgagee in the amount of $4,173,000 were insured by FHA through September, 1967. In the 1957-67 period, although no new public housing was constructed, 25 housing units were added as a result of FHA foreclosures. During this period, 346 units were constructed for the elderly and handicapped; families in 62 units were assisted through rent supplements; and mortgagee on 325 units were insured under the BMIR program.

Detroit * Cumulative Through September 30, 1967 Except for Rent Supplements, Which Are Described As Of December 31, 1967

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196. Need -- In 1960 there were 134,872 housing units in Newark. Of these, 23,743 were substandard and 16,600 were overcrowded.

Programs -- Federal funds in the amount of $101,177,000 were expended through September, 1967 for housing completed under the first three programs examined. An additional $22,000 were expended through December, 1967 under the Rent Supplements program. BMIR mortgages in the amount of $20,308,000 were insured by FHA through September, 1967. Newark has 10,766 public housing units, of which 20 percent (2,174) were constructed after 1959. Since 1959, 299 units have been constructed for the elderly and handicapped; families in 50 units have been assisted through rent supplements; and mortgages on 1,228 units have been insured under the BMIR program.

Newark * Cumulative Through September 30, 1967 Except for Rent Supplements, Which Are Described As of December 31, 1967

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197. Need In 1960 there were 51,471 housing units in New Haven. Of these, 6,667 are substandard and 4,278 were overcrowded.

Programs -- Federal funds in the amount of $60,393,000 were expended through September 1967 for housing completed under the first four programs examined. BMIR mortgages in the amount of $6,045,000 were insured by FHA through September, 1967. Of the 2,074 public housing units in New Haven only 469 were constructed after 1952. Mortgages on 482 units have insured under the BMIR program.

New Haven * Cumulative through September 30, 1967 Except for Rent Supplements Which Are Described As Of December 31, 1967

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* Sources: The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the New Haven Redevelopment Agency.

**Middle and moderate income units are included in the totals, particularly in the cases of the BMIR and elderly and handicapped programs.

***Dashes indicate that the column is not applicable or the program was not in existence in time period indicated by the column heading.

198. We have not included Medical Assistance to the Aged, because it is not limited to low-income persona.

199. Need -- Of the 1,670,144 residents of Detroit in 1960, 361,348, or 21.6 percent of the city's population, including 204,820 nonwhites and 156,528 whites, were members of families with annual incomes of less than $3,000.

Programs -- The estimated Federal contribution toward the four programs totalled $28,169,997. An estimated 69,310 poor persons received assistance. The average annual income of an AFDC family of four in Detroit was $1,752. By contrast, a "city worker's family budget for a moderate living standard" for a family of four in Detroit is $8,981 per year, according to the Department of Labor.

200. Need -- of the 405,220 residents of Newark in 1960, 89,949, or 22.2 percent of the city's population including 48,098 nonwhites and 41,851 whites, were members of families with annual income of less than $3,000.

Program -- The estimated Federal contribution toward the four programs totalled $14,964,647. An estimated 48,319 poor Persons received assistance. The average annual income of an AFDC family of four was $2,759. By contrast, the "city worker's family budget for a moderate living standard" for a family of four in Northern New Jersey is $10,195, according to the Department of Labor.

201. Need -- Of the 152,048 residents of New Haven in 1960, 31,254, or 20.6 percent of the city's population, including 9,021 nonwhites and 22,233 whites, were members of families with annual incomes of less than $3,000.

Programs -- The estimated Federal contribution toward the four programs totalled $3,889,487. An estimated 12,663 poor persons received assistance.

202. Data as to funding and persons reached have been obtained from Community Action Agencies (CAA's) in the three cities surveyed. Manpower and employment programs, such as Neighborhood Youth Corps, and Head Start programs have been included in other sections.

203. Need -- As indicated in the section on Welfare, in 1960 there were 361,348 people in Detroit who were members of families with annual incomes of less than $3,000.

Programs -- During fiscal year 1967, federal funds made available for community action programs, excepting manpower and Head Start, totalled $12,576,923. During that period the CAA estimates that these programs reached approximately 110,000 low-income persons.

Detroit * Fiscal Year 1967

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Wayne County & Detroit * Fiscal Year 1967 Wayne County

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Essex County & Newark * Calendar Year 1967 Essex County

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204. Need -- As indicated in the section on Welfare, in 1960 there were 89,949 people in Newark who were members of families with annual incomes of less than $3,000.

Programs -- During fiscal year 1967, Federal funds made available for community action programs, excepting manpower and Head Start, totalled $1,901,130. During that period the CAA estimates that these programs reached approximately 39,796 low-income persons.

Newark * Fiscal Year 1967

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205. Need -- As indicated in the section on Welfare, in 1960 there were 31,254 people in New Haven who were members of families with annual incomes of less than $3,000.

Programs -- Federal funds made available for community action programs, excepting manpower and Head Start, during fiscal year 1967, totalled $2,251,042. During that period the CAA estimates that these reached 13,000 low-income persons.

New Haven * Fiscal Year 1967

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FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-IV

GRIEVANCES


206. Using this material we bought to identify and assign weights to the four types of grievances which appeared to have the greatest significance to the Negro community in each city. We made judgments with regard to the severity of particular grievances and assigned a rank to the four most serious. These judgments were based on the frequency with which a particular grievance was mentioned, the relative intensity with which it was discussed, references to incidents exemplifying the grievance, and estimates of severity obtained from the interviewees themselves. Each priority ranking was weighted by points (4 points for the first priority, 3 for second, 2 for third and 1 for fourth). The points for each grievance for all cities were added to create an inner-city ranking. Whenever two grievances were judged to be equally serious for a particular city, the points for the two rankings involved were divided equally (e.g., in case two were judged equally suitable for the first priority, the total points for first and second were divided and each received 3-1/2 points).

Annexed are two sets of charts: Chart I shows the pervasiveness of types or grievances in 12 general categories, each of which is subdivided into several specific categories. Chart II shows only the general categories and indicates the number of times that grievances in each were ranked first, second, third, or fourth in terms of relative severity.

207. Education and recreation were ranked equally; municipal services and consumer and credit practices were also ranked equally.

208. Ibid.

209. Ibid.

210. Ibid.

211. In this survey 437 Negroes form the Detroit disturbance area were asked which of 23 grievances bad a "great deal," "something" or "nothing" to do with the riot. The grievances which received the most responses of "a great deal" were: (1) police brutality, (2) overcrowded living conditions, (3) poor housing, (4) lack of jobs, (5) poverty, and (6) anger with business people. Interviewees who identified themselves as participants in the riot were singled out for special analysis and chose the same six causes but in a slightly different order. Overcrowded living conditions was first instead of police brutality.

212. We found significant grievances concerning police practices in each of 19 cities. Grievances concerning police practices were ranked first in eight cities, second in four cities, third in none, and fourth in two cities. Although such grievances were present in five other cities, they were not ranked in the first four orders of intensity.

213. Grievances in the employment area were ranked first in three cities, second in seven cities, third in four cities, and fourth in three cities. In only three cities was such a grievance present but not ranked among the highest four levels of intensity.

214. Grievances in the housing area were found in 18 cities and were ranked first in five cities, second in two cities, third in five cities, and fourth in two cities. In four cities where housing was a grievance, it was not ranked in the first four levels of intensity.

215. Educational grievances were found in 17 cities and were ranked first in two cities, second in two cities, third in two cities, and fourth in three cities. In eight cities where such a grievance was present, it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

216. Grievances relating to recreation were found in 15 cities and were ranked first in three cities, second in one city, third in four cities, and fourth in none. In seven cities where such a grievance was present, it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

217. Grievances relating to the political structure were found in 16 cities and were ranked first m two cities, second in one city, third in one city, and fourth in one city. In 11 cities where such a grievance was present, it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

218. Grievances relating to white attitudes were found in 15 cities and were ranked first in no city, second in one city, third in one city, and fourth in two cities. In 11 cities where such a grievance was present, it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

219. Grievances relating to the administration of justice were found in 15 cities and were ranked first in no city, second in none, third in two cities, and fourth in one city. In 12 cities where such a grievance was present, it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

220. Grievances relating to federal programs were found in 16 cities and were ranked first in no city, second in one city, third in none, and fourth in none. In 15 cities where such a grievance was present, it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

221. Grievances relating to municipal services were found in 11 cities and were ranked first in no city, second m none, third in one city, and fourth in none. In 10 cities where such a grievance was present, it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

222. Grievances relating to unfair commercial practices were found in 11 cities and were ranked first in no city, second in none, third in none and fourth in two cities. In nine cities where such a grievance was present. it was not ranked in the first four levels of priority.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 2-V

228. We surveyed these cities shortly after the disturbances. Consequently, we are not in a position to assess more current events there. As noted elsewhere in this Report. the Commission is sponsoring two surveys which will measure the impact of the disorders on the attitudes of whites and Negroes. The surveys are being conducted in 15 cities and four suburban areas, including four of the 20 cities surveyed for this Report. The results of these surveys will be published separately and will provide a more complete treatment of the post-disorder situation.

224. We have noted earlier that no immunization took effect for the 25 cities which experienced two or more disorders in 1967. See "Levels of Violence and Damage" in Part I, supra. Six of the 20 cities we surveyed had more than one disorder (Atlanta (2) Cambridge (2), Cincinnati (3), Dayton (2), Rockford (2), and Tampa (2)). Houston bad three disorders in 1967. However, the three cities which had campus-related disorders in our sample of 23 have not been included in our examination for the purpose of this section.

225. Bridgeton, Cincinnati, Tucson (one major and two minor). In Bridgeton, a white segregationist organization had become more active. In Cincinnati and Tucson, new black organizations tended to follow militant separatist policies.

226. In Atlanta, two new groups were formed, one composed largely of white ministers and lay members, and the other of black youths. Reportedly, the latter group is dedicated to the maintenance of law and order and the prevention of riots.

In Elizabeth, as a result of its leader's anti-riot activities during the disturbance, a relatively moderate religious sect, the Orthodox Moslems, appears to nave gained stature in the Negro community.

227. In New Haven, at least two black militant organizations emerged after the riot and they seemed to have gained support from members of the moderate Negro community. In addition, an integrated group was formed several months after the riot to protect alleged police harassment and repression of the militant Negro leaders.

In Milwaukee, the NAACP Youth Commandoes, a militant but nonseparatist group, appeared to have grown in influence in the Negro community after the riot. Also, a coalition of moderate Negro leaders was formed to develop economic and social programs.

228. Atlanta, Milwaukee, New Haven, Newark, Paterson, Plainfield, Rockford and Tucson (three major, three serious, and two minor).

In New Haven, the Police Department opened a store-front office in the disturbance area where citizens could make complaints or seek assistance. The office was also designed to serve as a "cooling-off" center to avoid the need for a trip to the central stationhouse in minor matters such as domestic quarrels.

In Milwaukee, the police department established a police-community relations division.

In Newark, the Negro captain, whose promotion was announced during the riot, has been appointed commanding officer of the fourth precinct in which the disorders of the summer started.

In Paterson, the program for the police community relations unit has been expanded to include a police-community relations board consisting of seven policemen and nine civilians. The civilians include representatives from the Negro community.

In Rockford, the mayor's commission on human relations planned a workshop on police-community relations to be conducted by experts from city, county, state and federal agencies. Each member of the Rockford police force was to be required to take 12 hours of instruction.

In Tucson, the police department planned to sponsor an institute of police-community relations, including seminars on the nature of prejudice and on the attitudes of Negroes, Mexican-Americans and Indians toward the police.

In Plainfield, the police department began actively recruiting Negro officers. The department also republished its complaint procedures.

229. Cambridge Cincinnati, Detroit, Grand Rapids, New Brunswick, Paterson, Phoenix, Tampa and Tucson (three major, four serious and two minor). In Cambridge and Tampa the local community relations commissions increased their efforts to induce employers to hire more Negroes. Tampa's commission employed a full-time job developer and established a job training program.

In Grand Rapids, a coalition of public and private organizations began a crash employment program to find 1,000 jobs in three months.

In New Brunswick, the business community sought to raise $75,000 for job training; $25,000 of this amount was contributed by one local pharmaceutical company.

In Phoenix, the anti-poverty program initiated a project to train 2,500 heads of households in ghetto areas.

After the Tampa disturbance, the local anti-poverty agency and area Industries sponsored an on-the-job training program and the Tampa Merchants Association established a job training course.

230. Cambridge, Cincinnati, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Milwaukee, Plainfield, Tampa and Rockford (five major, two serious and two minor).

In Cincinnati, the urban renewal agency established a complaint office in the ghetto. The office, which was open three days a week, was closed after 38 days of operation. The city manager said the experiment was abandoned because citizens had failed to use it.

In Elizabeth, the city council approved the local housing authority's request to submit an application to the federal government for 400 low-income apartment units. The mayor also appointed a Negro to the local redevelopment agency.

In Milwaukee, the city council passed an open housing ordinance. However, Negro leaders denounced the ordinance on the ground that it merely restates the provisions of state law, which reportedly exclude 66 percent of the housing in Milwaukee from coverage. The lone Negro council member voted against the ordinance as "mere tokenism."

In Plainfield, a Negro was appointed to a five-year term as a member of the housing authority.

In Tampa, a block club staged a march on the Tampa housing authority's offices to publicize complaints against the authority, such as billing public housing residents for grass-cutting where there is no grass. The authority promised to consider the charges seriously.

In Rockford, the county housing authority is constructing a 75-unit housing development for the elderly in a Negro slum. The project was planned before the disturbance but construction began afterward. A community development corporation was also initiated before the disorder to encourage community self-help programs for home improvement, and local businesses contributed "seed money" to guarantee improvement loans. The city annexed the pilot project block in order to provide municipal services and planned to annex additional blocks as the program expands.

231. Newark is the headquarters office for two of the life insurance companies in the consortium of 350 which pledged to set aside $1 billion to finance ghetto housing under FHA insurance.

232. Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Plainfield and Rockford (two major, one serious and two minor).

The Dayton board of education issued a policy statement that it would attempt to decrease de facto segregation in city schools.

Elizabeth's board of education instituted a program of free adult basic education.

The Plainfield board of education formalized its practice of permitting parents to have a third person present when talking to school officials. It also hired its first full-time Negro counsellor.

233. In Detroit, as aforementioned, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company plans to "adopt" one of the city's high schools and provide funds for special programs.

234. Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dayton and Tampa (two major and two serious). In Atlanta, despite united resistance by local Negro leaders, the administration continued to build "portable" classrooms for use at predominantly black schools, maintained double sessions only in Negro schools, and refused to reconsider its "freedom of choice" desegregation procedures. In Dayton and Tampa, bond issues for school construction were defeated. The Tampa referendum was opposed by local Negroes because most of the money was to be used in all-white, suburban schools.

Also in Tampa, the interscholastic athletic conference to which Tampa's white schools belong refused to admit the city's predominantly Negro schools to membership and made it impossible for the county schools to form a separate conference in which the Negro schools could participate in the highest class of competition.

235. Atlanta, Elizabeth, New Brunswick and Tampa (one major, one serious and two minor).

In Atlanta, immediately after the disturbance, work began on a playground for which area residents had been petitioning for two years.

In Elizabeth, shortly after the disturbance, the recreation department moved a playground closer to a poor Negro neighborhood.

In Tampa, a former local high school coach, popular among Negro youths, was hired as a director of youth services for the neighborhood service centers of the county anti-poverty program.

236. Cincinnati, Englewood, Phoenix, Tampa and Tucson (two major, one serious and two minor).

237. President of city council in Englewood, member of civil service commission in Tucson and members of housing authority and board of adjustments in Plainfield (one major and two minor).

In elections for state office, the situation was mixed. A Negro candidate for state assemblyman from Newark was elected, but two incumbent Negro legislators from Newark were defeated. The incumbent Negro assemblyman whose district included Englewood was defeated by the candidate who had been mayor of that city during the disorder.

238. Cambridge and New Brunswick (one serious and one minor).

In Cambridge, the Governor of Maryland appointed a community relations committee immediately after the disturbance.

In New Brunswick, the mayor established an "open door" policy to facilitate the airing of grievances directly with her. A human relations commission, planned prior to the disturbance, was established, and several Negroes were appointed as commissioners.

239. In Tampa, some of the counter rioters known as "White Hats" were hired by the city's commission on community relations to improve communication with ghetto youths. The program was recently terminated upon the indictment of several White Hats on felony charges not connected with the disorder.

240. Atlanta, Dayton, Detroit, Elizabeth, Englewood, New Haven, Newark and Tampa (three major, three serious and two minor).

In xix of the cities surveyed (Atlanta, Dayton, Detroit, New Haven, Newark and Tampa) Model Cities applications have been approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In Elizabeth and Tampa, new legal services programs, funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, were instituted.

A YMHA building, valued at $50,000, near Elizabeth's disturbance area was donated for use by the local community action agency as a community center.

The county community action agency opened an office in Englewood.

241. Tampa and Milwaukee (two major).

The nomination to the board of the county community action agency of the former commander of the Milwaukee police precinct which includes much of the ghetto area was resented by Negro residents. The nomination was never voted on as the nominee moved from the city before a vote was taken.

In Tampa, a highly-publicized controversy arose because a Negro neighborhood worker was hired by a local anti-poverty agency. The discharged employee filed charges of racial discrimination in the hiring and job placement practices of the county anti-poverty program.

242. Atlanta, Dayton, Elizabeth and New Brunswick (two serious and two minor).

Elizabeth opened a "little city hall" in the disturbance area.

In New Brunswick, the administration rented an armory for use as a neighborhood center.

243. In Elizabeth, the county legal services agency announced plans for one-day consumer clinics in various low-income neighborhoods for training and counselling on complaints about credit and other consumer practices.

244. Cincinnati and Detroit (two major).

In Detroit, as stated, CCAC began developing proposals for new businesses in the riot area, including a Negro-owned cooperative food market and a number of other cooperative business ventures.

In Cincinnati, newspapers reported that two Negroes who had long sought financing for a new business center in the disturbance area had succeeded since the disturbance.

245. Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Newark and Tampa (four major and one serious).

In Atlanta, the police and fire departments announced the formulation of a confidential coordinated plan to cope with any future disturbance.

In Cincinnati, voters approved a bond issue to establish a countrywide police communications center and command post for normal conditions as well as riot conditions. The new city budget included $500,000 for 50 additional policemen.

In Newark, the city council appropriated $200,000 for the purchase of armored cars, riot guns, helmets and other riot control equipment.

In Tampa city and county law enforcement departments prepared a detailed "After-action Report" describing the city s disorder and how it was controlled. The report recommended purchase of riot control equipment and suggested tactical improvements.

246. Dayton, Elizabeth, Paterson and Tampa (one major, two serious and one minor).

In Dayton, the organizers of the White Hats stated that the group would be used again if another riot occurred. The organizers also stated that they expected city officials to cooperate with them again as they had during the June disorder.

In Elizabeth, there was evidence that city officials planned to ask Negro Community leaders to assist in future peace keeping as they did during the disorder.

In Paterson, the community action agency gave a leadership course for Negro teenagers in the hope that the youths will act as counter-rioters should the need arise.

247. In Tampa, as indicated above, the White Hats program, which had been continued after the disorder, ended with the indictment of several youths on non-riot-connected charges.

248. In Cincinnati, according to unofficial estimates, about 50 percent of the businesses damaged during that city's riot bad reopened by mid-December, 1967.

In Dayton, where the total estimated property damage from the June disorder was relatively small, most of the storefronts damaged on the West Dayton business area were repaired.

249. Detroit and Plainfield (two major).

In Plainfield, two Negro organizations demanded that any new building be undertaken only after consultation with representatives of the Negro community.

In Detroit, CCAC insisted that no rebuilding be started until Negro citizens of the area decided how they want their neighborhoods redeveloped.

_______________  

Notes:

i. Notes appear at end of chapter.

ii. See the statement on Methodology in the Appendix for a description of our survey procedures.
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

Postby admin » Mon May 02, 2016 10:05 am

Chapter 3: Organized Activity The President directed the Commission to investigate "to what extent, if any, there has been planning or organization in any of the riots."

The President further directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to provide investigative information and assistance to the Commission and authorized the Commission to request from any other executive department or agency any information and assistance which the Commission deemed necessary to carry out its functions.

The Commission obtained documents, numbering in the thousands, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, the Post Office Department, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The Commission established a special investigating staff supplementing the Commission's field teams and related staff that made the general examination of the riots in 23 cities. The special investigating staff examined the data supplied by the field team, by the several federal agencies, and by congressional investigating units, and maintained continuous liaison with these organizations throughout its investigation.

In addition to examining and evaluating intelligence and information from federal sources, the special investigating staff gathered information from local and state law enforcement agencies and officials. It also conducted its own field investigations in 15 cities with special emphasis on five that had experienced major disorders in 1967 -- Cincinnati, Newark, Detroit, Milwaukee, and New Haven. Special staff investigators employed by the Commission interviewed over 400 persons. including police officials, black militants, and ghetto residents.

The Commission studied the role of foreign and domestic organizations, and individuals, dedicated to the incitement or encouragement of violence. It considered the organizational affiliations of those who called for violence, their contacts, sources of financial support, travel schedules and, so far as possible, their effect on audiences.

The Commission considered the incidents that had triggered the disorders and the patterns of damage during disorders, particularly in Newark and Detroit. The Commission analyzed the extent of sniper activity and the use of fire bombs.

The Commission collected and investigated hundreds of rumors relating to possible organized activity. These included reports of arms caches, sniper gangs, guerrilla training camps, selection of targets for destruction, movement of armed individuals from one riot area to another, and pre-riot planning.

On the basis of all the information collected the Commission concludes that the urban disorders of the summer of 1967 were not caused by, nor were they the consequence of, any organized plan or "conspiracy." Specifically, the Commission has found no evidence that all or any of the disorders or the incidents that led to them were planned or directed by any organization or group, international, national or local.

Militant organizations, local and national, and individual agitators, who repeatedly forecast and called for violence, were active in the spring and summer of 1967. We believe that they deliberately sought to encourage violence, and that they did have an effect in creating an atmosphere that contributed to the outbreak of disorder.

We recognize that the continuation of disorders and the polarization of the races would provide fertile ground for organized exploitation in the future.

Since the disorders, intensive investigations have been conducted not only by this Commission but also by local police departments, grand juries, city and state committees, federal departments and agencies, and congressional committees. None thus far has identified any organized groups as having initiated any riots during the summer of 1967. The Commission appointed by Governor Richard J. Hughes to examine the disorders in New Jersey was unable to find evidence supporting a conclusion that there was a conspiracy or plan to organize the Newark or Plainfield riots.

Investigations are continuing at all levels of government, including committees of Congress. These investigations relate not only to the disorders of 1967 but also to the actions of groups and individuals, particularly in schools and colleges, during this last fall and winter. The Commission has cooperated in these investigations. They should continue.
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Re: Report of the National Advisory (Kerner Report 1967)

Postby admin » Mon May 02, 2016 10:09 am

PART 2: WHY DID IT HAPPEN?

Chapter 4: The Basic Causes

We have seen what happened. Why did it happen?


In addressing this question we shift our focus from the local to the national scene, from the particular events of the summer of 1967 to the factors within the society at large which have brought about the sudden violent mood of so many urban Negroes.

The record before this Commission reveals that the causes of recent racial disorders are imbedded in a massive tangle of issues and circumstances -- social, economic, political, and psychological -- which arise out of the historical pattern of Negro-white relations in America.

These factors are both complex and interacting; they vary significantly in their effect from city to city and from year to year; and the consequences of one disorder, generating new grievances and new demands, become the causes of the next. It is this which creates the "thicket of tension, conflicting evidence and extreme opinions" cited by the President.

Despite these complexities, certain fundamental matters are clear. Of these, the most fundamental is the racial attitude and behavior of white Americans toward black Americans. Race prejudice has shaped our history decisively in the past; it now threatens to do so again. White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II. At the base of this mixture are three of the most bitter fruits of white racial attitudes:

Pervasive discrimination and segregation. The first is surely the continuing exclusion of great numbers of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress through discrimination in employment and education, and their enforced confinement in segregated housing and schools. The corrosive and degrading effects of this condition and the attitudes that underlie it are the source of the deepest bitterness and at the center of the problem of racial disorder.

Black migration and white exodus. The second is the massive and growing concentration of impoverished Negroes in our major cities resulting from Negro migration from the rural South, rapid population growth and the continuing movement of the white middle-class to the suburbs. The consequence is a greatly increased burden on the already depleted resources of cities, creating a growing crisis of deteriorating facilities and services and unmet human needs.

Black ghettos. Third, in the teeming racial ghettos, segregation and poverty have intersected to destroy opportunity and hope and to enforce failure. The ghettos too often mean men and women without jobs, families without men, and schools where children are processed instead of educated, until they return to the street -- to crime, to narcotics, to dependency on welfare, and to bitterness and resentment against society in general and white society in particular.

These three forces have converged on the inner city in recent years and on the people who inhabit it. At the same time, most whites and many Negroes outside the ghetto have prospered to a degree unparalleled in the history of civilization. Through television -- the universal appliance in the ghetto -- and the other media of mass communications, this affluence has been endlessly flaunted before the eyes of the Negro poor and the jobless ghetto youth.

As Americans, most Negro citizens carry within themselves two basic aspirations of our society. They seek to share in both the material resources of our system and its intangible benefits -- dignity, respect and acceptance. Outside the ghetto many have succeeded in achieving a decent standard of life, and in developing the inner resources which give life meaning and direction. Within the ghetto, however, it is rare that either aspiration is achieved.

Yet these facts alone-fundamental as they are -- cannot be said to have caused the disorders. Other and more immediate factors help explain why these events happened now. Recently, three powerful ingredients have begun to catalyze the mixture.

Frustrated hopes. The expectations aroused by the great judicial and legislative victories of the civil rights movement have led to frustration, hostility and cynicism in the face of the persistent gap between promise and fulfillment. The dramatic struggle for equal rights in the South has sensitized Northern Negroes to the economic inequalities reflected in the deprivations of ghetto life.

Legitimation of violence. A climate that tends toward the approval and encouragement of violence as a form of protest has been created by white terrorism directed against nonviolent protest, including instances of abuse and even murder of some civil rights workers in the South; by the open defiance of law and federal authority by state and local officials resisting desegregation; and by some protest groups engaging in civil disobedience who turn their backs on nonviolence, go beyond the Constitutionally protected rights of petition and free assembly, and resort to violence to attempt to compel alteration of laws and policies with which they disagree. This condition has been reinforced by a general erosion of respect for authority in American society and reduced effectiveness of social standards and community restraints on violence and crime. This in turn has largely resulted from rapid urbanization and the dramatic reduction in the average age of the total population.

Powerlessness. Finally, many Negroes have come to believe that they are being exploited politically and economically by the white "power structure." Negroes, like people in poverty everywhere, in fact lack the channels of communication, influence and appeal that traditionally have been available to ethnic minorities within the city and which enabled them -- unburdened by color -- to scale the walls of the white ghettos in an earlier era. The frustrations of powerlessness have led some to the conviction that there is no effective alternative to violence as a means of expression and redress, as a way of "moving the system." More generally, the result is alienation and hostility toward the institutions of law and government and the white society which controls them. This is reflected in the reach toward racial consciousness and solidarity reflected in the slogan "Black Power."

These facts have combined to inspire a new mood among Negroes, particularly among the young. Self-esteem and enhanced racial pride are replacing apathy and submission to "the system." Moreover, Negro youth, who make up over half of the ghetto population, share the growing sense of alienation felt by many white youth in our country. Thus, their role in recent civil disorders reflects not only a shared sense of deprivation and victimization by white society but also the rising incidence of disruptive conduct by a segment of American youth throughout the society.

Incitement and encouragement of violence. These conditions have created a volatile mixture of attitudes and beliefs which needs only a spark to ignite mass violence. Strident appeals to violence, first heard from white racists, were echoed and reinforced last summer in the inflammatory rhetoric of black racists and militants. Throughout the year, extremists crisscrossed the country preaching a doctrine of black power and violence. Their rhetoric was widely reported in the mass media; it was echoed by local "militants" and organizations; it became the ugly background noise of the violent summer.

We cannot measure with any precision the influence of these organizations and individuals in the ghetto, but we think it clear that the intolerable and unconscionable encouragement of violence heightened tensions, created a mood of acceptance and an expectation of violence, and thus contributed to the eruption of the disorders last summer.

The Police. It is the convergence of all these factors that makes the role of the police so difficult and so significant. Almost invariably the incident that ignites disorder arises from police action. Harlem, Watts, Newark and Detroit -- all the major outbursts of recent years -- were precipitated by routine arrests of Negroes for minor offenses by white police.

But the police are not merely the spark. In discharge of their obligation to maintain order and insure public safety in the disruptive conditions of ghetto life, they are inevitably involved in sharper and more frequent conflicts with ghetto residents than with the residents of other areas. Thus, to many Negroes police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes.. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread perception among Negroes of the existence of police brutality and corruption, and of a "double standard" of justice and protection--one for Negroes and one for whites.

* * *

To this point, we have attempted only to identify the prime components of the "explosive mixture." In the chapters that follow we seek to analyze them in the perspective of history. Their meaning, however, is already clear:

In the summer of 1967, we have seen in our cities a chain reaction of racial violence. If we are heedless, we shall none of us escape the consequences.
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