Riots and Rebellion in America |The 1960s

1 Riots and Rebellion in America | The 1960s

Riots and Rebellion in America The 1960s

Playwright LeRoi Jones arrested in Newark for possessing two

loaded pistols – mid-July 1967


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“The Revolution of Rising Expectations”

Things seemed to be getting just as confusing at home as well. Despite quite visible progress in getting a cultural shift moving in America that would finally make way for Blacks to come into full and equal participation in American society – it was never fast enough for young Blacks that now began to

voice their deep hostility to the White society around them. And that hostility began to take the form

of attacks on White businesses in their neighborhoods, even pillaging and burning them in demonstration of the outrage that was growing in their hearts against White injustice.

Idealistic or Liberal Whites could not understand this strange response of the Blacks to White efforts at

reform. They probably had never heard of "the revolution of rising expectations." They did not understand that people long compliant to oppressive authority do not just automatically rise up to

throw off their chains just because the oppression is great. Marx thought this is how the noble human spirit would automatically and inevitably produce the great revolution that would one day usher in the

class-less, state-less, totally egalitarian, totally voluntary society (voluntary with respect to a person’s willingness to work hard for the common good). As oppression worsened people would begin to move

automatically to move toward revolution, even violent revolution. A nice, humanistic idea.

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But things just do not work out that way. People actually are quite able to accommodate themselves

to their chains. This is not a very noble picture of human nature. But it is an accurate picture. Action moving people to change things does not happen until the people begin to have reason to begin to

believe that change is possible. They will not throw off the way they have learned to live with

oppression – until they are fairly confident that change, that some kind of release from the oppression, is possible. And once they see the system bending or cracking, then they begin to become more bold

in their push for change. As the oppressing system begins to back down then they become irate and indignant at the injustice of the way things were. Once they finally see that things are moving in their

favor then they become bold – defiant, even heroic in that defiance. But not until then. But this is how “the revolution of rising expectations” actually works.

Thus the more that the White society began to accommodate Black interests, those interests began to

gather momentum, until they became truly a storm of passion. It was not because just at that point that oppression was just starting to get severe, but because at that point the severity of it seemed to

be lightening. Then all the impatience at the slowness of the momentum began to set in. Then the anger mounted, then the violence picked up. This was the phenomenon the Whites were observing –

rising Black militancy in response to the White’s honest interest in seeing an improvement in the Black

situation.

Liberal Idealism and White guilt

But the Whites had no idea of why the more they tried to improve things, the more indignant and

resentful the Blacks became. It was just human nature. But American Idealists had (and still have) very little accurate insight into human nature. They had made man into a rational, loving man-God.

But this man-God was behaving neither rationally nor lovingly in the American streets as the 1960s

rolled along.

The White effort to make sense of their Idealistic universe gradually took the form of either a rising

self-hatred and the deep need to apologize for their ancestors having left such a horrible legacy of

racism (the typical response of the Boomers) – or a rising bitterness about Blacks’ inability to maintain a decent sense of law and order among themselves (the typical response of the Vets). Political lines

were beginning to be drawn up as the situation in America worsened. Inner cities began to burn to the refrain of "Burn Baby, Burn" and police sirens answering back in refrain as 'Black Power' advocates

were carted off to jail, either as self-sacrificing heroes or mere criminals, depending on which side of the ideological divide you found yourself on.


Malcolm X, 1925-1965. Bob Adelman

Jennings and Brewster, p. 404


Malcolm X UPI

Athearn [Vol. 16] p. E585

Blacks demonstrate their new freedoms by torching the world around them

(what exactly was the logic in this behavior?)


Rioting and arson in Watts - 1965 (less than a week after the passing of the Voting Rights Act)

Co Rentmeester / LIFE LIFE, p. 296


Black looters in the Watts section of Los Angeles – August 1965 Joe Flowers - Black Star

The Vietnam Experience: A Nation Divided, p. 65


Detroit – 1965: Black summertime rioting and pillaging. Dennis Brack/Black Star

Jennings and Brewster, p. 403


Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; President Lyndon Johnson in background

(the breakdown of social order was not at all what either of them expected or wanted the civil rights movement to develop into)

By Yoichi Okamoto, Washington, DC, March 18, 1966 Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, National Archives


Blacks lining up for the vote in rural Peachtree, Alabama – May 3, 1966 Corbis / Bettman-UPI

LIFE, p. 252

For many young Blacks, 1967 was yet another summer for looting and burning

(giving rise to the new mantra: "Burn baby, burn")


Looters in Newark's riots – mid-July 1967 UPI

Grauer, NBC News Picture Book of 1968, p. 57


National Guardsmen and police arresting looters in Newark's riots – mid-July 1967

UPI Grauer, NBC News Picture Book of 1968, p. 52


A boy wounded in the Newark riots - 1967

(26 died) Bud Lee / LIFE

LIFE, p. 303


Playwright LeRoi Jones arrested in Newark for possessing two loaded pistols – mid-July 1967



The arrest of a Black cab driver in Newark, NJ, set off a rampage by Blacks. Firebombs

and looting degenerated into sniper shooting. A curfew was imposed on the city, which

slowly restored order. But 11 people had been killed, 600 wounded or injured and whole

sections of the city were completely gutted by fire.

When several days later a pre-scheduled National Unity Conference was held in the city, the language was one not of unity but of declared war. Black-power advocate H. Rap

Brown urged the gathering to "wage guerrilla war on the white man." Los Angeles Black

Nationalist Ron Karenga stated "Everybody knows Whitey's a devil. The question is what to do about it." Moderate Black leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Roy

Wilkins , Whitney Young, Jr. avoided the conference.

In late July, violence broke out in Detroit. Learning from Newark, Detroit mayor Cavanagh immediately called in the National Guardsmen. But seven thousand

Guardsmen, complete with tanks and armored cars, could not restore order. Governor George Romney (who was understood to be a potential Republican candidate for the

Presidential election in 1968) contacted President Johnson for assistance. Johnson held back until Romney confessed before the public that he had lost control of the situation.

Then Johnson sent in US paratroopers to retake the city house-by-house, block-by-block -- similar to a Vietnam military action. When a week later the troops had brought Detroit

back to order, 33 people had been killed and over a thousand injured.


Blacks rioting in Detroit – July 1967 The Detroit News

Athearn [Vol. 16] p. 1411


Black district in Detroit set afire – July1967 Declan Haun, Life Magazine, 1967 Time Warner, Inc.

Peck and Deyle, p. 698.


One of the many burned-out sections of Detroit – late-July 1967 UPI



A burned out Black middle class section of Detroit - 1967

(43 people died) Declan Haun / LIFE


National Guardsmen in Detroit – July 23, 1967 Corbis-Bettmann

Evans, p. 547


A National Guardsman standing watch in Detroit as firemen battle blazes set by rioters – late-July 1967



Meanwhile the violence spread to New York City where a 28,000-man police with

experience in riot control restored order to East Harlem after three nights of violence.

Two people were killed.

H. Rap Brown had in the meantime moved on to Cambridge, MD, and following a Black-power rally there, the town was subjected to looting and arson. Brown was arrested for

inciting a riot. As he was led away by FBI agents, Brown challenged: "We'll burn the country down."


H. Rap Brown arrested for inciting the Cambridge, MD riot – late-July 1967 UPI



Black Panthers in a defiant mood Hap Stewart/Bethel

Time - 75 Years, p. 92-93 Athearn [Vol. 16] p. 1399


SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael at a University of Texas gathering, denouncing US imperialism

Wide World Grauer, NBC News Picture Book of 1968, p. 56

The White community began to divide over the Civil Rights issue -- some Whites

demanding a strict clamp-down on Black defiance, others urging reforms to meet Black

complaints. Johnson appointed a study commission to investigate the root causes of the

violence. What it announced in its preliminary report in late February of 1968 was a

situation of high expectations among the Blacks for social reform -- met with little

practical chance that such improvements would actually come about. This is what was

producing the mood of angry despair among poor Blacks. The inner cities abandoned by


White flight to the suburbs left Blacks who had migrated to the northern cities with no

jobs and a rapidly deteriorating urban infrastructure. Educational levels were very low --

with poor schools able to provide no remedies. It quickly became the assumption within

Johnson's 'Great Society' government that huge amounts of governmental money were

going to have to be poured into the inner-cities where Blacks had congregated to correct

these problems of jobs, schooling and housing.

In the meantime everyone looked on wondering what the summer of 1968 would hold for America in terms of race relations.

[Grauer, NBC News Picture Book of 1968, pp. 53-55]

Although this problem did not present itself in as dramatic a form as other events of the

times, nonetheless a huge financial problem was brewing, one that threatened the health

of the government and the nation. By 1967 the amount of government spending involved

in both Johnson’s Great Society and his heavy military investment in Vietnam was way

outpacing the government’s income from all of its tax sources. A huge deficit or

government debt began to build up as a result. In that year a Commission on Budget

Concepts studied the problem and concluded that a proposed 1968 national budget was

going to entail a (what was then huge) deficit of anywhere from $2 to $8 billion in size.

Creating the ‘unified’ budget.’ Using the justification of ‘rationalizing’ the entire national or ‘federal’ government budgeting process – including the Social Security budget, which at that time was largely self-running and not considered part of the national budget

(or 'off-budget') – the Commission recommended integrating the Social Security budget with the regular operating budget of the federal government. At that time the Social

Security program, originally focused on retirement or pension benefits of Americans but in

1965 adding also Medicare (health insurance for the elderly) and Medicaid (health care for the poor, shared as a joint expense with the States), was running a huge surplus – taking

in each year in the form of Social Security tax revenue more than it was spending for its various programs. By combining the deficit-running federal budget with the surplus-

running Social Security budget, the government’s budget deficit run up by Johnson’s programs could be recast as now greatly ‘reduced,’ or even be shown as running a

‘surplus.’

Thus in January 1968 Johnson introduced the new unified budget. Even with the inclusion of the Social Security surplus with the regular federal budget Johnson admitted that the

new unified budget would still be running up a $8 billion deficit (the government’s expenditures were turning out to be vastly greater than anticipated in 1967). But the

figure was a lot lower than it would have been without adding in the Social Security

surplus.