Torch in a Tinderbox

Before Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, much of Newark's Central Ward was a tinderbox waiting for the torch --and in the incendiary aftermath of the assassination, dozens of blazes were set by arsonists. They might have done much worse damage, except that -- in contrast with last summer -- black slum dwellers raced to help firemen, not hin der them. The major reason was that black militants such as Playwright Le-Roi Jones had reached a grudging armistice with the city's white authorities (TIME, April 26) and passed the word down to the streets: Cool it.

Last week that racial refrigeration nearly dissolved in smoke. Not far from Springfield Avenue, site of last sum mer's worst rioting, flames emptied a three-story tenement, then rapidly blew through the area. "Most of these houses are nothing more than reinforced card board," said one tenant. The worst fire in Newark's history razed 1 1/2 blocks and left more than 500 residents with out shelter.

Almost uglier than the flames were the rumors infecting the Central Ward next day and threatening to destroy the new mood of conciliation. The fire, they said, was the work of white arsonists bent on genocide rather than mere homicide. The fire department's arson squad meantime was questioning more than 50 residents in the area of the fire.

After five days, they arrested the arsonist: a 13-year-old Negro school drop out who was seen scurrying from the tenement where the flames started. He signed a two-page confession describing how he started the fire by igniting a stack of papers. When asked why he did it, he murmured: "I don't know."

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