The Taut String

In too many U.S. communities this week, whites and blacks tiptoed stiff-legged around one another, watching, waiting and a little afraid. The ugliest strand of the U.S. fabric had tightened under wartime pressure.

In New York City's Harlem, Negro capital of the U.S., a white policeman arrested a Negro woman for disorderly conduct. A Negro soldier, on leave, tried to stop him. Both went to the hospital, the policeman with a battered head, the soldier with a pistol wound in the shoulder. The story, much garbled, spread quickly through Harlem.

Bands of Negroes broke windows, looted shops, burned an automobile, beat up two amazed British seamen leaving Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. Twenty-four hours later six Negro rioters were dead, 543 rioters and police injured; a curfew was clamped on Harlem.

Through the confusion strode troubled Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, urging the crowds to go home, trying to justify the hope of decent Americans that the race problem need not be thrashed out in wartime violence. Said he, irascible but patient, with his own peculiar dignity:

"This was not a race riot. There was no conflict between groups of our citizens. What happened was the thoughtless, criminal acts of hoodlums, reckless, irresponsible people. Shame has come to our city, and sorrow. . . ."

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