"The Second Sacking of Washington": Martin Luther King Riots (April 5, 1968)

4/5/08 | Self

[The King of Elflands Daughter]

I remember looking from our yard in Maryland and seeing the western sky reflecting the red of the flames. My father told me that they were burning Washington. I was three.

—tkoed

[chris_bdba]

I was 7 yo and remember seeing it all unfold on TV. My Dad was always very good and making me watch things that he thought I should remember later on. I just remembering being very glad that I lived in a small city in Ohio! That was probably the night I decided that liberals were crazy without knowing exactly then who they were.

[BIGLOOK]

No where near DC at the time, I was at DLI in Monterey but we were all confined to base. There were riots in neighboring Seaside that threatened to spread. Soldiers from Ft Ord were called out to reinforce the MPs at DLI and NPGS.

During this time I called back home to NY and was told that parts of Poughkeepsie were ablaze down by the river (and the train station). Don't know if this was an exaggeration but family members all gathered, armed, to protect the home and neighborhood of my uncle who lived in Poughkeepsie.

A couple months later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in LA.

[Jack Black]

The Detroit Riots of 2007 were the worst in the USA in that era, at least until the Rodney King riots, I think.

Victims of the 1967 Detroit Riot At the conclusion of five days of rioting, 43 people were dead and 1189 injured. As in Newark, the majority of riot fatalities (79%) were black, shot by police and National Guardsmen for alleged looting, sniping, and curfew violations.

[Jack Black]

Of course Detroit had riots before 1967, like those of 1943. This is Wikipedias version of events.

The 1943 Detroit Race Riot was a race riot which occurred during World War II. The racial tension in Detroit during WWII increased as migration of blacks from the Southern United States to the industrial cities of the Manufacturing Belt accelerated.

The riot began on June 20, 1943, on Belle Isle (one of Detroit's largest parks) when roughly one hundred thousand Detroiters gathered to enjoy the hot Sunday afternoon. Hostile confrontations between young blacks and whites broke out throughout the day, and fights erupted on the bridge connecting Belle Isle to Southeast Detroit.

Rumors of race war roused whites and blacks, who both took to the streets near Belle Isle and in the downtown area and attacked passersby, streetcars, and property. Blacks in Paradise Valley (“Black Bottom”) looted white-owned shops; whites overturned and burned cars of black drivers on Woodward Avenue. The Detroit police, however, sympathized with the white rioters and were brutal to the blacks: 17 blacks were shot to death by the police, but no whites.

The riot came to an end once Mayor Edward Jeffries Jr. and Governor Harry Kelly asked President Roosevelt for help. In response, federal troops in armored cars and jeeps with automatic weapons drove down Woodward Avenue. The appearance of the troops with their overwhelming firepower succeeded in dispersing the mobs. Over the course of three days, 34 people were killed, of whom 25 were black. 675 suffered serious injuries, and 1,893 were arrested.

[Jack Black]

Tulsa, 1921 was bad too:

A hysterical white girl related that a nineteen-year-old colored boy attempted to assault her in the public elevator of a public office building of a thriving town of 100,000 in open daylight. Without pausing to find out whether or not the story was true, without bothering with the slight detail of investigating the character of the woman who made the outcry (as a matter of fact, she was of exceedingly doubtful reputation), a mob of 100-per-cent Americans set forth on a wild rampage that cost the lives of fifty white men; of between 150 and 200 colored men, women and children; the destruction by fire of $1,500,000 worth of property; the looting of many homes; and everlasting damage to the reputation of the city of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma. -- Walter F. White, "The Eruption of Tulsa," The Nation, June 29, 1921

[purpleraine]

Neighborhood Watch Group of the year award!

[Jack Black]

Still, you have to hand it to Detroit. I don't think you can find an earlier race riot in America than the 1833 one in Detroit:

Thornton Blackburn and his wife Ruth (or Lucie) were escaped slaves from Louisville, Kentucky. They had been settled in Detroit, Michigan, for two years when, in 1833, Kentucky slave hunters located, re-captured, and arrested the couple. The Blackburns were jailed but allowed visitors, which provided the opportunity for Ruth to exchange her clothes - and her incarceration - with Mrs. George French; Ruth was then spirited across the Detroit River to Canada, and safety.

Thornton’s escape was more difficult as he was heavily guarded, bound and shackled. The day before Thornton was to be returned to Kentucky, Detroit's African American community rose up in protest. A crowd of some 400 men stormed the jail to free him. During the commotion that ensued, two individuals called Sleepy Polly and Daddy Walker helped Thornton escape to Canada. The commotion turned into a two day riot during which the local sheriff was killed. It was the first race riot in Detroit, resulting in the first ever Riot Commission formed in the U.S. Further, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Major General Sir John Colborne, refused extradition back to the United States, noting that a person could not steal himself.

The couple went non to live in Toronto and found the city's first (horse drawn) taxi service!

[patton]

Do you remember the VA Govorner ordering the NG to hold the bridges in Arlington?

I think I do, but I was a six-yo kid at the time.

And which VA city had riots? Alexandria?

Nothing in Falls Church, as far as I know.

Just a lot of very scared people.

[Jack Black]

BTW: This book excerpt claims that Detroit 1943 was the last "classic" race riot where groups lined up by race and attacked each other. The focus of these riots was personally hurting people of another race. In contrast the riots from 1967 onward have been more focused on looting and destruction of property starting in black ghettos and radiating outward.

Of course even the modern type riots still feature outbreaks of 'old-school' style, as famously in the Rodney King riots when Damon Football Williams smashed Reginald Denny repeatedly with a brick.

[Grampa Dave]

The riots of the 60’s and 70’s made life very interesting for us, didn’t they.