Battle of Roosevelt Road

THE RACES

Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement's most eloquent apostle of nonviolence, and Floyd McKissick, an impassioned advocate of "Black power," linked arms last week at a Chicago rally to preach comity within the Negro movement. Both leaders agreed that the Negro could best achieve his social and economic goals by peaceable means. "Our power," declared King, "does not reside in Molotov cocktails, rifles, knives and bricks." And yet, as in Harlem in 1964 and in Watts last year, the hatred and frustration of the Negro slum dweller erupted in an insensate wave of violence that filled Chicago's near West Side streets with the wordless roar of the mob and the cries of victims wounded by the very weapons that King had deprecated.

"Why?" The riots exploded in a dreary slum around Roosevelt Road, southwest of The Loop, where residents--as in other neighborhoods--opened fire hydrants in a vain attempt to mitigate a day of 95DEG heat and 70% humidity. The police, as usual, came around to close the hydrants--only to be defied at one point by a young Negro man, who set the flow going again.

The cops tried to grab him. He called to friends for help. The mob was born. Within the hour, roving bands, composed largely of youngsters, were looting stores, setting fires, and heaving bricks and bottles at the blue-helmeted police who were sent in to restore order.

Next day the riots had subsided --partly because police allowed the hydrants to gush until 5 p.m. before closing them. Then a Negro girl doused a cop with a pail of water, and the slum ignited once more. That night and the next, the level of violence increased by almost geometric progression, spread ing west and south to cover an area eight miles square. Negroes stopped automobiles driven by whites and beat the occupants. Small gangs pillaged scores of shops. They hurled fire bombs, rocks and chunks of masonry at the firemen who responded to the alarms. As Molotov cocktails burst in one drugstore window, a Negro woman emerged, weep ing. "Why would they do this to their own people?" she asked. "The world's gone mad."

Nights of the Gun. From rock and bomb the rioters turned to guns. Snipers shot at police and firemen, wounding half a dozen. At the intersection of Lake and Wood Streets, 100 policemen armed with rifles traded shots with a dozen assailants in and around an apart ment project for an hour. Like guerrillas, most of the gunmen disappeared into the night after being surrounded.

Surprisingly, there were only two gunshot deaths: a 14-year-old Negro girl, who had been watching the rioting, and a 28-year-old Negro man, found in an alley; at least 83 other civilians were wounded and 403 arrested by week's end.

The police response to the mob was often feckless but occasionally ferocious. As the disorders spread, Superintendent Orlando Wilson built his force from 200 men the first night to 900 the third. The mobs generally retained the initiative as police dashed confusedly back and forth over the battleground to meet each new challenge. At times, the cops displayed admirable coolness in the face of vile curses and the bruising missiles of street warfare; at others, they matched the rioters in reckless violence with club and gun. Once, after losing a sniper in the dark, a squad of infuriated cops turned on some Negro bystanders, caught one unarmed boy of about twelve and beat him. Negro officers on the whole seemed rougher than their white colleagues. Typical was one Negro patrolman, who felled a rioter and then struck him savagely on the head with his nightstick. Bleeding profusely, the man screamed: "Brother, brother, I'll kill you, brother!"

"Shoot to Kill." While King and other clergymen, Negro and white, roamed the streets pleading in vain with the rioters to disperse, a police chaplain, the Rev. Robert Holderby, told angry police at one point: "You're here to enforce the law, not to inflame." One white minister working with King was swept aside by police. "You're only making these people angrier the way you're acting," he remonstrated. "I don't care," the patrolman answered. "Move out, do you hear? You, too!"

After the third night, Democratic Mayor Daley, who had dismissed Tues day's violence as a "juvenile incident," requested mobilization of the National Guard. On Friday, 4,000 men of the 33rd Infantry Division, armed with bayoneted rifles, machine guns and tear gas, took up positions in and around the riot zone. Major General Francis Kane sent 1,600 of his troopers through the Roosevelt Road area in a show of force. "If anyone shoots at my men," he warned, "my orders are to shoot back -- shoot to kill." The rioting ran down to a few isolated outbursts.

Promised Pools. Daley, a usually adept if routine machine politician, has consistently fumbled his dealings with the Negro population that makes up nearly one-third of his constituency. He is also resentful because King has made Chicago his primary base and target in the North. The day before the riots started, the two men conferred about housing, job opportunities, police brutality and other issues. They got nowhere. Daley later charged that workers on King's staff were in large measure responsible for the violence. (Subsequently he withdrew the accusation.) At week's end the mayor belatedly announced that he would appoint a citizens committee to scrutinize police procedures, especially in the force's dealings with minorities. He also promised to use federal funds for additional swimming pools and playground facilities for the Negroes. And Daley ordered the immediate installation of sprinklers on hydrants -- as New York City has done -- so that they can legally cool kids and tempers on hot days in the slums.

Neither riots nor sprinklers, however, would do anything to alleviate the Negroes' basic economic and social wants. Massive outbursts, such as Chicago witnessed last week, can only, in King's words, "intensify the fears of the white majority while relieving their guilt."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.