On the Brink in Memphis

The sanitation workers' strike in Memphis erupted into one of this year's first race riots. Martin Luther King's murder stirred a second outbreak and a stiff curfew. The steamy city on the Mississippi still seethes in the residue of April's unlearned lessons, and the aloof attitude of Mayor Henry Loeb and other officials hardly helps. This week the Southern Christian Leadership Conference convenes defiantly in the city where its founder was murdered. The S.C.L.C. national convention could bring Memphis to flash point.

An older catalyst is the Memphis police department's traditional policy of heavy-handedness toward Negroes, which ranges from routine rudeness to blatant brutality. Since King's visit and the marches, the Commission on Civil Rights has collected more than 50 documented cases of police brutality.

Crime and Punishment. Memphis' Negroes are in a volatile mood over such recent cases as that of Larry James Mitchell Holt, 24, who crumpled the fender of his red Dodge while fleeing (at an estimated 40 m.p.h.) from a pursuing police car. The car's glass was unbroken; yet it took 180 stitches to close gashes in Holt's face and head. Holt contends that the two cops dragged him from his car and beat him. The cops maintain that Holt's injuries came in the crash, but do not explain why no blood was found on the white upholstery of his car.

Last month Robert Stewart, 21, emerged from a grocery and was challenged by two cops. "Hey, come here," commanded one, grabbing his arm. "Get yourself off this corner right now." When Stewart replied that he was there to buy canned milk, the cop spat, "Don't go getting smart." Stewart and eight witnesses claim that he was grappled into the squad car and pounded with night stick, fist and flashlight. Subsequent photos show Stewart's nose broken, eyes swollen nearly shut on a puffy face, the back of his head cratered by deep open wounds. Stewart received a probationary sentence for loitering and resisting arrest.

Deepened Frustration. Four ranking cops were dismissed in a brutality incident last year, but all have been reinstated under the administration of Mayor Loeb. Such wrist-spanking discipline deepens Negro frustration. So does the chest-thumping of Fire and Police Director Frank Holloman, who recently promised an applauding white civic club that if Memphis' Negroes revert to "lawlessness," as he put it, "we'll knock them on their ass." There was further frustration when a bid by Negroes to prevent a sales-tax rise--partly to finance a 50-man increase in the police force--was defeated. The tax hike passed 3 to 2, which is roughly the ratio of whites to Negroes in Memphis.

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