The notion that Martin Luther King was seeding violent insurrection became a conservative article of faith. And in Memphis, where garbage piled up in the streets, talk of anarchy was the city"s daily bread.
The striking garbage workers were all Negro. Mayor Henry Loeb referred to them as "my Negroes." He spoke pridefully of his city"s "plantation" race relations. During one of the garbagemen"s first marches, conservative black ministers, the kind who"d been scorning Martin Luther King ever since Montgomery in 1956, were among those tearga.s.sed. Now they were ready to fight, begging Dr. King to come. He squeezed in an appearance March 18 between recruiting stops for the Poor People"s Campaign. He was discouraged, tired, despairing, facing indifference and open avowals of violence everywhere he turned: his life"s work, adding up to shambles. The thought of further riots terrified him: "They"ll treat us like they did our j.a.panese brothers and sisters in World War II. They"ll throw us into concentration camps." But the energy of this little movement in Memphis inspirited him. He decided to come to lead a ma.s.s march there ten days later, March 28. Negroes." He spoke pridefully of his city"s "plantation" race relations. During one of the garbagemen"s first marches, conservative black ministers, the kind who"d been scorning Martin Luther King ever since Montgomery in 1956, were among those tearga.s.sed. Now they were ready to fight, begging Dr. King to come. He squeezed in an appearance March 18 between recruiting stops for the Poor People"s Campaign. He was discouraged, tired, despairing, facing indifference and open avowals of violence everywhere he turned: his life"s work, adding up to shambles. The thought of further riots terrified him: "They"ll treat us like they did our j.a.panese brothers and sisters in World War II. They"ll throw us into concentration camps." But the energy of this little movement in Memphis inspirited him. He decided to come to lead a ma.s.s march there ten days later, March 28.
He was an hour late to the point of disembarkation. The crowd was restless: the rumor was that the Memphis cops had killed a high school student. Everyone knew the police were eager to keep youngsters out of the march; a gang of young militants that went by the pacific name of the Invaders had been trying to seize control of the local movement.
The march stepped off, King in the lead, arm in arm with two other ministers.
The procession snaked from Beale Street onto Main. A commotion developed. Wooden pikes that held protest signs were being used to stave in Beale Street shop windows. Street people started looting. What had been rumor became a fact: police shot a sixteen-year-old boy, claiming he"d attacked them with a knife.
What happened next was the lead story in the next day"s New York Times. New York Times. "Dr. King was whisked away from the march.... He was reportedly taken to a motel and could not be reached immediately. His office in Atlanta also declined to comment.... The destruction that broke out at various points along the march is expected to raise more questions about Dr. King"s projected crusade in Washington next week." This was all the proof some needed: the appearance of Dr. Martin Luther King brought forth riots. Or, at least, couldn"t stop them. "Dr. King was whisked away from the march.... He was reportedly taken to a motel and could not be reached immediately. His office in Atlanta also declined to comment.... The destruction that broke out at various points along the march is expected to raise more questions about Dr. King"s projected crusade in Washington next week." This was all the proof some needed: the appearance of Dr. Martin Luther King brought forth riots. Or, at least, couldn"t stop them.
He led another procession the next day. It was ringed this time by four thousand National Guardsmen. The garbagemen known locally on their rounds as "walking buzzards" marched wearing placards reading I I AM AM A MAN. A MAN. For each one, a helmeted guardsman stood planted a yard or so away, rifle pointed at the ready at his head. For each one, a helmeted guardsman stood planted a yard or so away, rifle pointed at the ready at his head.
King insisted, "We are fully determined to go to Washington. We feel it is an absolute necessity.... Riots are here. Riots are part of the ugly atmosphere. I cannot guarantee that riots will not take place this summer. I can only guarantee that our demonstration will not be violent." Senator Byrd, chair of the D.C. subcommittee, called for a court order to stop him: "If this self-seeking rabble-rouser is allowed to go through with his plans here, Washington may well be treated to the same kind of violence, destruction, looting, and bloodshed." Edward Brooke, the Negro senator, agreed: "How do you avoid a.s.sembling that many people under the inflammable conditions that exist today where one little spark-some irresponsible kid-could set it off?"
As for the president, he wondered if he was equal to history"s demands. He gave a speech to Philadelphia schoolchildren: "If our country is to survive, Lincoln said, we must realize that "there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.""
The next morning, a Sat.u.r.day, Johnson announced that the next night, he"d give a national television address on Vietnam. Nixon"s speechwriters sighed with relief: their candidate couldn"t give his his scheduled Vietnam speech Sat.u.r.day if the president was speaking on the war the very next day. scheduled Vietnam speech Sat.u.r.day if the president was speaking on the war the very next day.
Sunday morning Dr. King preached at National Cathedral: "I don"t like to predict violence, but if nothing is done between now and June to raise ghetto hope, I feel that this summer will not only be as bad but worse than last year." Then he gave a press conference to send a chill down the president"s spine: if he got no results in his Poor People"s Campaign by August, he said, Democrats "will have a real awakening in Chicago"-where they would be holding their national convention to renominate Lyndon Baines Johnson. The Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune editorialized that King claimed to be for nonviolence "while clandestinely conspiring with the most violent revolutionaries in the country." They quoted J. Edgar Hoover: King was "the most notorious liar in the country." editorialized that King claimed to be for nonviolence "while clandestinely conspiring with the most violent revolutionaries in the country." They quoted J. Edgar Hoover: King was "the most notorious liar in the country."
The president"s speech Sunday evening started gravely, befitting the weeks of grave portents: "Today I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. No other question so preoccupies our people." His thrust was conciliatory: "we are prepared to move immediately to peace through negotiations," the "first steps to de-escalate the conflict." He proposed a partial bombing halt (though hemmed around with caveats). Boys wouldn"t actually be brought home; instead, he said he was bringing in 13,500 more. There were things to please both hawks and doves, and a few things to anger both, too-if any, by the end, were paying much attention: the speech was ponderous, lugubrious, as if to slow the furious onrush of events.
On the radio, you could hear pages flap. On television, you could see him, around half an hour into the thing, glance over at something offscreen. He had looked to his wife.
He started talking, strangely, about himself: "Throughout my entire public career, I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant, and a member of my party, in that order, always and only."
He paraphrased Lincoln: "It is is true that a house divided against itself, by the spirit of faction, of party, of region, of religion and race cannot stand." true that a house divided against itself, by the spirit of faction, of party, of region, of religion and race cannot stand."
Then: "Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."
That was the bombsh.e.l.l. One thousand days ago he was changing the world: pa.s.sing federal aid to education, immigration reform, voting rights, Medicare. Now, he was announcing his retirement.
Wisconsin tramped to the polls. Reagan won 11 percent in write-ins. Then Nixon did what he always did in 1968 after a few weeks of intense campaigning: he rested, flying off to quiet, undeveloped Key Biscayne, Florida, where his friend Bebe Rebozo owned land. "That"s how I keep up the tan," he explained to Jules Witcover. The tan he had never rested enough to achieve running against John F. Kennedy.
The Democratic vote in the Badger State was the punctuation at the end of LBJ"s electoral life: 412,150 for McCarthy, 253,696 for the noncandidate LBJ, 46,507 write-ins for RFK. Antiwarriors danced in the streets. They had taken down an evil president. They were forcing him to wind down a war.
Once again, Scammon and Wattenberg later showed the numbers were not so simple. Madison, Wisconsin, the left-wing college town, had had a referendum on Election Day calling for a cease-fire in Vietnam. That got only 42 percent-thirty points less than McCarthy got. They voted, too, for McCarthy in Milwaukee-and gave their authoritarian mayor, who"d established martial law during a 1967 riot, praising his German city"s "Teutonic" discipline, 84 percent. Mayor Henry Maier"s opponent, a young civil rights activist and lawyer named David Walther, was despondent. He thought they"d run an outstanding campaign; they"d published forty position papers. Among the fed-up-niks, forty position papers were no match for Mayor Maier"s twenty-four-hour curfew.
Chicago police began carrying a new item in their kit on April 1: chemical Mace. James Farmer of CORE said cities were "stockpiling war weapons instead of antiriot weapons" and aggressively warned cops that the rioters they"d be facing this summer had been trained in "Nam-and they "will not just be throwing bottles and bricks." In Newark, Anthony Imperiale"s jungle cruisers patrolled under the influence of rumors that Negroes were planning Easter Sunday knife attacks on white women and children ("If anyone does that around here, and I catch him, I will personally send his head home without his body," Imperiale said at a rally in Nutley). Richard Rovere of the New Yorker New Yorker said he could "imagine the coming to power of an American de Gaulle, or even someone a lot more authoritarian than de Gaulle.... I can even imagine the imposition of a kind of American apartheid-at least in the North, where Negroes live in ghettos that are easily sealed off. If there should be the will to do it, it could be done, quite "legally" and "Const.i.tutionally." There are enough smart lawyers around to figure out how." said he could "imagine the coming to power of an American de Gaulle, or even someone a lot more authoritarian than de Gaulle.... I can even imagine the imposition of a kind of American apartheid-at least in the North, where Negroes live in ghettos that are easily sealed off. If there should be the will to do it, it could be done, quite "legally" and "Const.i.tutionally." There are enough smart lawyers around to figure out how."
Fortunately this was only the start of April-months before riot season was predicted to begin.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
The Sky"s the Limit.
FOR OVER A DECADE NOW, MARTIN L LUTHER K KING HAD FACED THE RISK of violent death every day of his life. The threats had now become so serious that the plane that bore him on his next trip to Memphis, a seething city rotting beneath fifty days of uncollected garbage, had to be guarded overnight. The takeoff had to be delayed an extra hour nonetheless, for one more search of the baggage compartment. More people bore a murderous hatred toward him than toward any other single American. After all, hadn"t the governor of Tennessee just said he was "training three thousand people to start riots"? But this was the same man, simultaneously, toward whom more Americans bore such a love that they"d be willing to lay down their lives for him. Here was a symbol of how divided the nation had become. of violent death every day of his life. The threats had now become so serious that the plane that bore him on his next trip to Memphis, a seething city rotting beneath fifty days of uncollected garbage, had to be guarded overnight. The takeoff had to be delayed an extra hour nonetheless, for one more search of the baggage compartment. More people bore a murderous hatred toward him than toward any other single American. After all, hadn"t the governor of Tennessee just said he was "training three thousand people to start riots"? But this was the same man, simultaneously, toward whom more Americans bore such a love that they"d be willing to lay down their lives for him. Here was a symbol of how divided the nation had become.
King spoke often of his own death, more and more frequently as 1968 advanced. He never did so more eloquently than the night of April 3, 1968. It was a rainy night, biblically rainy. (Elsewhere in Tennessee, tornadoes caused five deaths.) Memphis"s giant Masonic Temple held two thousand people waiting eagerly to hear him speak, to hear him stir them for a planned "redemption" march five days later, to hear his guidance about what to do about the city"s attempt to enjoin it. But the last time he had spoken there, fourteen thousand had heard him, so it hardly seemed worth the candle this time. He hung back at the Lorraine Motel, where black celebrities stayed when they were in Memphis, and told his a.s.sociate Ralph Abernathy to speak in his stead. But when Abernathy arrived at the hall, the disappointment of the crowd was too palpable for him to bear. These humble garbagemen were risking their lives for justice and had practically risked their lives in a calamitous thunderstorm to get to the Masonic Temple. Abernathy called Dr. King and begged him not to let them down, so King ventured forth into that awful black night and told the rapt audience of the time he had nearly been stabbed to death in 1958, and of the flight he had just taken from Atlanta to Memphis, and how the pilot had announced for the entire plane to hear that the reason for their delayed departure was a bomb threat against the most famous pa.s.senger.
"And then I got into Memphis," he said. "And some began to say the threats-or talk about the threats-that were out, what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers."
(What threats? Well, for one, a black merchant later testified that he heard a white businessman bark into a phone, "Shoot the son of a b.i.t.c.h on the balcony," and mention $5,000.) "Well, I don"t know know what will happen now. We"ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn"t matter with me now. what will happen now. We"ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn"t matter with me now.
"Because I"ve been to the mountaintop," he said, and the two thousand communicants cl.u.s.tered at the front of the cavernous hall began cheering, to the relief of King"s a.s.sociates, because the speech heretofore had not been up to his standards.
"And I don"t mind," he said, as people started rising and shouting in waves, which upon their abeyance brought a quiet reflection.
"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I"m not concerned about that now. I just want to do G.o.d"s will."
And the energy in the room began once more to crescendo, as a great preacher led his flock to transcendence.
"And he"s allowed me to go up to the mountain.
"And I"ve looked over, and I have s-e-e-e-e-e-n the promised land.
"And I may not get there with you, but I want you to know, tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land! So I"m happy tonight! I"m not worried about any any-thing! I"m not fearing any any man! Mine eyes have seen the man! Mine eyes have seen the glor glor-y of the coming of the Lord."
King stumbled, spent, into Abernathy"s embrace. This movement would make a way where there had been no way. They would march; they would win. The party repaired to the Lorraine Motel for the next day"s work of planning, negotiating, exhorting, organizing, shuttling back and forth from each other"s rooms. Here was a strange American thing: that the most distinguished Memphis hostelry for visiting Negroes-Count Basie; Martin Luther King-was a humble motel. motel. But such were the wages of segregation, and so it was that, every time King wanted to go from one room to another, the most hunted man in America had to do so traversing the rain-slicked outdoor motel catwalks. But such were the wages of segregation, and so it was that, every time King wanted to go from one room to another, the most hunted man in America had to do so traversing the rain-slicked outdoor motel catwalks.
Across the street in a flophouse next to a fire station, a two-bit drifter and petty criminal named James Earl Ray thrust his .30-"06 Remington through a bathroom window. King emerged from his room for dinner, chatted up some of his a.s.sociates, hangers-on, admirers, made the acquaintance of a member of the band that was to play for them that night. The shot rang out.
Martin Luther King had always been warning, as he put it at the Sherman House in Chicago in 1966, of "darker nights of social disruption" should his freedom movement"s nonviolent aspirations be frustrated. He was again, as in the prediction of his own death, a prophet. Some three and a half hours later, the president read a statement carried live: "We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. It is only by joining together and only by working together that we can move toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people." At a drugstore at Fourteenth and U in the Washington, D.C., ghetto, patrons heard him over the radio.
"Honky!" shouted one man.
"He"s a murderer himself," said another.
"This will mean a thousand Detroits," said a third.
Someone threw a trash can through a window. It was the opening shot of a riot that left ten people dead, including a white man pulled from a car. The flames came within two blocks of the White House, whose lawn became an armed encampment. The riots broke out in city after city, catching authorities who"d been girding their loins for summer unprepared. In New York, John Lindsay was catching a Broadway play. He rushed up to Harlem, insisting on walking the streets. Aides traveled alongside him, cringing. One reflected on his boss"s ostentatious paleness and height: "Jesus, this is just the night for someone to take a shot at him." Another, fat and jowly, realized with a start how much he resembled a Southern sheriff. Jostling broke out. The mayor was rescued by the limo of Manhattan"s Negro borough president. What followed was a riot by any normal reckoning. Lindsay insisted afterward "no serious disorders have taken place." It helped his case that he ordered Streets and Sanitation into the affected areas early enough to sell the notion to the national press. The next month, he made the cover of Life: Life: "The Lindsay Style: Cool Mayor in a Pressure Cooker." "The Lindsay Style: Cool Mayor in a Pressure Cooker."
Seventy-five ghettos went up in flames by one count, 125 by another: Baltimore, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Pittsburgh. Detroit-again. In Newark, a voice crackled over the police radio: "Can we use shotguns?"
"Knock that off! Do not not use any shotguns!" use any shotguns!"
"Some of the kids in the group have guns! They have guns!"
Rioters in Newark started 195 fires and left six hundred citizens homeless.
Violence broke out on military bases in Vietnam. Many black soldiers refused to report for duty. On the campus of Cornell University, a black student turned to another: "We can"t afford to have white friends anymore." Even in this remote, bucolic college town, fires broke out, too. A rock was thrown through the window of a newspaper office with a message wrapped around it: "You are as much to blame as anyone."
In some cities, charismatic figures kept the peace. In Boston, it was the soul singer James Brown. In Milwaukee, it was the radical priest Father Groppi, leading the biggest civil rights march in the history of the city. (The Milwaukee Journal Milwaukee Journal ran a letter to the editor headlined, "Best Day for Teaching": "This was the first day in years that I didn"t have to raise my voice to demand attention and quietness.... Only the "cream of the crop" students were in attendance. The sc.u.m: Absent-marching with James Groppi. ran a letter to the editor headlined, "Best Day for Teaching": "This was the first day in years that I didn"t have to raise my voice to demand attention and quietness.... Only the "cream of the crop" students were in attendance. The sc.u.m: Absent-marching with James Groppi. Sc.u.m Sc.u.m and and dumb dumb rhyme, don"t they?") In Indianapolis, it was Bobby Kennedy, campaigning in the ghetto for the crucial May 7 Indiana primary. Kennedy, nervous, intense, established with aides that his audience had not yet heard the news. So he broke it to them, and reflected on the l.u.s.t for revenge: "I can only say that I feel in my heart the same kind of feeling.... I had a member of my own family killed." rhyme, don"t they?") In Indianapolis, it was Bobby Kennedy, campaigning in the ghetto for the crucial May 7 Indiana primary. Kennedy, nervous, intense, established with aides that his audience had not yet heard the news. So he broke it to them, and reflected on the l.u.s.t for revenge: "I can only say that I feel in my heart the same kind of feeling.... I had a member of my own family killed."
Indianapolis did not riot, and the legend of RFK as a pol with magic powers grew.
In Oakland, the patrolling of the Black Panthers saved the city from a riot. Then a group of them drove past some police officers who were not in a mood to thank them. The pattern would repeat itself many times in the years to come: Panthers met police, and no one would ever know which gang had fired first. Two of the fleeing Panthers, Eldridge Cleaver and eighteen-year-old Bobby Hutton, were pinned down in a bas.e.m.e.nt. Dozens of police fired on the house for thirty-nine straight minutes. Cleaver announced his surrender, tossed out his shotgun, and, so they couldn"t claim a concealed weapon, walked out naked. "Li"l Bobby" was too shy to follow suit. Gagging and retching from the tear gas, dropping his arms for balance after a stumble, he was turned into a block of Swiss cheese. Left-wing writers including Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag released a statement on his martyrdom: "We find little fundamental difference between the a.s.sa.s.sin"s bullet which killed Dr. King and the police barrage which killed Bobby Hutton two days later...both were attacks aimed at destroying this nation"s black leadership." Oakland"s police chief saw things differently. His statement said, "This must be done if we are going to have peace in this city."
President Johnson declared April 9 a national day of mourning. Two hundred thousand bodies trooped through downtown Atlanta for King"s funeral. Governor Maddox called him "an enemy of our country" and holed up in his office with 160 riot-helmeted state troopers for his protection, threatening to personally raise the capitol"s flags up from half-mast.
Conservatives p.r.o.nounced that Martin Luther King, with his doctrine of civil disobedience, was responsible for his own murder. Ronald Reagan said that this was just the sort of "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they"d break." Strom Thurmond wrote his const.i.tuents, "We are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case."
Moderates found themselves newborn conservatives. In Maryland, lowly Spiro Agnew bounced back from his Rockefeller humiliation by calling one hundred black civic leaders to the State Office Building in Annapolis. He lectured them before a battery of TV cameras, his full detail of state troopers at the ready, the commander of the state National Guard standing attention in a jumpsuit and riding crop. The governor said he made little distinction between the ministers and Urban League officers before him (who had been working day and night to prevent rioting) and the "circuit-riding, Hanoi-visiting type of leader" and the "caterwauling, riot-inciting, burn-America-down type of leader."
Many stomped out in rage. To those who remained, Agnew concluded, "The fiction that Negroes lack any opportunity in this country is dispelled by the status of those of you in this room." The governor started counting telegrams: 1,250 in approval, 11 opposed.
The Oscars ceremony, delayed by two days for the funeral, was the same day as Agnew"s jeremiad. Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie and Clyde won two statues. But won two statues. But In the Heat of the Night In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture-one of not one, not two, but three Sidney Poitier hits in 1967 that cosseted white liberal audiences in the message that with enough reason and dialogue, any racial impa.s.se could be overcome. won Best Picture-one of not one, not two, but three Sidney Poitier hits in 1967 that cosseted white liberal audiences in the message that with enough reason and dialogue, any racial impa.s.se could be overcome.
The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, in an editorial the morning of the funeral, refused to acknowledge the existence of any racial impa.s.se at all. "The murder of Dr. King was a crime and the sin of an individual," it said. "The man who committed the act must come to terms with his maker." The "rest of us" were "not contributory to this particular crime." in an editorial the morning of the funeral, refused to acknowledge the existence of any racial impa.s.se at all. "The murder of Dr. King was a crime and the sin of an individual," it said. "The man who committed the act must come to terms with his maker." The "rest of us" were "not contributory to this particular crime."
"Yes, this nation and people need a day of mourning," the Trib Trib allowed. America should mourn, but not for King. They should mourn because "moral values are at the lowest level since the decadence of Rome...." allowed. America should mourn, but not for King. They should mourn because "moral values are at the lowest level since the decadence of Rome...."
"Drug addiction among the youth is so widespread that we are treated to the spectacle at great universities of faculty-student committees solemnly decreeing that this is no longer a matter for correction....
"At countless universities the doors of dormitories are open to mixed company, with no supervision.... Dress is immodest. p.o.r.nography floods the news stands and book stores. "Free Speech" movements on campuses address themselves to four-letter words.... We are knee-deep in hippies, marijuana, LSD, and other hallucinogens. We do not need any of these: we are self-doped to the point where our standards are lost....
"If you are black, so goes the contention, you are right, and you must be indulged in every wish. Why, sure, break the window and make off with the color TV set, the case of liquor, the beer, the dress, the coat, and the shoes. We won"t shoot you. That would be "police brutality."...
"If you are white, you are wrong. Feel guilty about it. a.s.sume the collective guilt of all your progenitors, even if neither you nor anyone you know is a descendant of slave owners. Yield the sidewalk to the migrants from the South who have descended on your cities. Honor their every want, because the "liberals" tell you that it is your fault they have not educated themselves, developed responsibility, trained themselves to hold jobs, or are shiftless and dependent on your taxes."
Mourn, the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune was arguing, only because Martin Luther King had won. was arguing, only because Martin Luther King had won.
That city where King had invested so much was. .h.i.t by the worst rioting of all. It was the thirteenth anniversary of the first mayoral election of the boss who ran Chicago like a feudal lord, who had promised in the summer of 1966, in order to shut King up, the "elimination of slums by December 31,1967." The slums still stood, and now the slums seemed determined to eliminate themselves.
Shortly before 4 p.m., the Chicago violence began. Mourners gathered in Garfield Park spilled over onto the main commercial drag of Madison Street and started with burning, window-smashing, looting. Daley went on TV at four twenty. The flames shooting down Madison Street were visible from downtown. "Stand up tonight and protect the city.... Let"s show the United States and the world what the citizenry of Chicago is made of.... Violencein a free society leads to anarchy.... Be proud of the grateful city...which has given opportunity to all."
Daley tried to deflate the rumor that the violence was spreading citywide. Whites clogged Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive"s outbound lanes. Five thousand cops mustered on twelve-hour shifts, three to a car, the vast majority deployed outside the riot zone, at Loop department stores, at City Hall, in office buildings in ghetto neighborhoods that were still peaceful-helping fuel the rumors that the rioting had spread citywide. A smaller number of cops were left to rein in the Wild West Side. The National Guard were unable to muster until midnight. They protected two thousand firemen logging new blazes an average of one every 144 seconds. One thousand sanitation workers were stoned and jeered as they attempted to clear away debris. Cops seethed under orders to use "minimal force."
Chicago cops were angry anyway. They had been angry for years. In 1960, after a corruption scandal, they had inherited a new police superintendent, Orlando W. Wilson, who was a college professor, one of the founders of the academic discipline of criminal justice. They saw him as an ivory-tower puritan, obsessed with showing arrests for the kind of "victimless" crimes-drinking, whoring, gambling-by which cops from time immemorial had padded their weekly pay envelopes by looking the other way. They hated his rigid new bureaucracy. And his new Internal Investigations Committee. They hated him for his policy of replacing retiring white commanders with Negroes (40 percent of new sergeants were black his first year); in one survey, two-thirds of Chicago cops called called themselves racists. These cops hated him most especially for holding them back from busting "civil rights" troublemakers. During the riots in 1966, ten thousand officers working twelve-hour patrols felt as if they were hardly allowed to arrest anyone. Sixty-four quit that July alone, thirty-seven before they were eligible for pensions. themselves racists. These cops hated him most especially for holding them back from busting "civil rights" troublemakers. During the riots in 1966, ten thousand officers working twelve-hour patrols felt as if they were hardly allowed to arrest anyone. Sixty-four quit that July alone, thirty-seven before they were eligible for pensions.
Wilson quit in 1967. His successor continued his policies. One of his first acts had been to shut down a Ku Klux Klan cell operating within the force, with its own a.r.s.enal of firearms and hand grenades. In February, special training sessions began for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. They were open to the press. Cops learned how to perform minimal-force "come alongs" and liberal-approved methods for dealing with hippies" taunts: "It is up to the officer, unless he is being physically a.s.saulted, to avoid making a personal issue of the insult, to be firm, but yet use some degree of persuasion."
At that, a cop whispered dismissively to a reporter, "If the fight starts, don"t expect it to last long. We"ll win in the first round and there won"t be a rematch."
The late L.A. police chief William Parker had called cops "the most downtrodden, oppressed, dislocated minority in America." The crime rate was going up five times faster than the population. Ramp up police tactics to match, though, and you got savaged for "police brutality." "The better we do our job, the more we are attacked," the executive director of the International a.s.sociation of Chiefs of Police, Quinn Tamm, wrote. Cops were convinced they did a h.e.l.l of a lot more than any civil rights agitators to make the ghettos livable. Ninety percent, Harvard"s Seymour Martin Lipset reported in a paper called "Why Cops Hate Liberals," believed the Supreme Court protected criminals at their expense: the Miranda Miranda decision of 1966; decision of 1966; Escobedo v. Illinois Escobedo v. Illinois (1963), affording criminals the right to counsel in the accusatory stage; (1963), affording criminals the right to counsel in the accusatory stage; Mallory v. United States Mallory v. United States (1957), which forbade lengthy interrogations before arraignment. In Chicago, two-thirds of cops thought the local papers were too critical-this in a city dominated by sheets that were practically printed in blue ("Unsung Heroes Invade Terror Ranks" went one (1957), which forbade lengthy interrogations before arraignment. In Chicago, two-thirds of cops thought the local papers were too critical-this in a city dominated by sheets that were practically printed in blue ("Unsung Heroes Invade Terror Ranks" went one Trib Trib article on the force"s ominous "Red Squad"). Cops felt like scapegoats, d.a.m.ned if they fought crime and d.a.m.ned if they didn"t-"singled out by virtually all of society"s factions," Quinn Tamm complained. article on the force"s ominous "Red Squad"). Cops felt like scapegoats, d.a.m.ned if they fought crime and d.a.m.ned if they didn"t-"singled out by virtually all of society"s factions," Quinn Tamm complained.
Now in Chicago, they were risking their a.s.ses in the war zone, over ten thousand of them by midnight, told they could fire only as a last resort, to arrest only the most "serious" lawbreakers.
But every person seemed a serious lawbreaker.
When they tried to clear routes for ambulances and fire trucks, more rioters seethed forth from the alleys. "Arresting them doesn"t seem to help because they don"t care," one cop later testified, endorsing the emotional satisfaction of a swift knock on the head. "It"s been my experience that they beat me out of court back onto the street." Stokely Carmichael had gone on the radio after the a.s.sa.s.sination: "White America has declared war on black people.... Go home and get your guns." Chicago"s West Side ghetto was in rubble, and by the time the mayor inspected the wreckage at 2:30 a.m., nine people had died.
The president accepted Governor Kerner"s representations that Chicago was in insurrection and sent out regular army troops. The Trib Trib proactively laid the blame for future carnage at Mayor Daley"s feet: he had "conceded...that the city not only underreacted at the outset of the crisis but that it did not move with sufficient speed.... The rioters here have taken advantage of the wave of sentimentality and a.s.sumed guilt that has swept the country.... We hope Mayor Daley will not fall into the same category as spineless and indecisive mayors who m.u.f.fed early riot control." The proactively laid the blame for future carnage at Mayor Daley"s feet: he had "conceded...that the city not only underreacted at the outset of the crisis but that it did not move with sufficient speed.... The rioters here have taken advantage of the wave of sentimentality and a.s.sumed guilt that has swept the country.... We hope Mayor Daley will not fall into the same category as spineless and indecisive mayors who m.u.f.fed early riot control." The Trib Trib also weighed in with a theory: that a King memorial set that day for Grant Park, across the street from the Michigan Avenue hotels that would serve as hosts for the conventioneers in August, would be the point of embarkation for a second, downtown riot, instigated by the same New Left radicals who were "working for Communist North Vietnam planning to disrupt the Democratic convention." also weighed in with a theory: that a King memorial set that day for Grant Park, across the street from the Michigan Avenue hotels that would serve as hosts for the conventioneers in August, would be the point of embarkation for a second, downtown riot, instigated by the same New Left radicals who were "working for Communist North Vietnam planning to disrupt the Democratic convention."
At that, Mayor Daley"s heart had to skip several beats. Daley had everything staked on that convention.
Mayor Richard J. Daley, a master of public finance, had built up "the City That Works" like no mayor anywhere else: great modern towers of gla.s.s and steel on every downtown block, a mighty Civic Center by Mies van der Rohe with Pablo Pica.s.so"s only example of public sculpture out front, a new South Side campus for the University of Illinois. But the city had hosted only one major party convention since Daley"s 1955 election, after hosting twenty-three of fifty-six in history, both parties" in 1952. It was a little embarra.s.sing.
He had given the Democrats" site-selection committee the hard sell: Chicago was "the greatest convention city in the world." A Chicago convention guaranteed Illinois"s twenty-six electoral votes in the general election. He even sold its "good time zone for viewing on TV." What he sold most of all was control control-including five thousand extra cops so that "no thousands will come to our city and take over our streets, our city, our convention." "If it requires seven thousand or twenty thousand more-whatever necessary-I back your statement to the hilt," council speaker Tom Keane added.
Daley promised political control, too. When Gene McCarthy came to the January DNC meeting in Chicago, the mayor"s gift to his president was to keep the Minnesotan off the speaker"s rostrum. He also promised the president, sotto voce, Kennedy-control. Daley, too, thought Bobby a p.i.s.sy little snot, which may have been the clincher: the Democrats chose Chicago. Daley was overjoyed. But now his dream convention was threatened by the specter of anarchy in the streets. He couldn"t risk further riots, whatever the fine sensibilities of his police superintendent.
At his press conference on April 15, Daley said, "I have conferred with the superintendent of police this morning and I gave him the following instructions, which I thought were his instructions the night of the fifth that were not carried out.
"I said to him very emphatically and very definitely that an order be issued by him immediately to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov c.o.c.ktail in his hand, because they"re potential murderers, and shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting."
And children? someone asked.
"You wouldn"t want to shoot them," Daley allowed, "but with Mace you could detain youngsters."
He wondered why he had to go into all this. "I a.s.sumed any superintendent would issue instructions to shoot arsonists on sight and to maim the looters, but I found out this morning this wasn"t so and therefore gave him specific instructions." He added, "If anyone doesn"t think this is a conspiracy, I can"t understand."
Attorney General Clark called Daley"s words "dangerous escalation" and, when he saw him face-to-face, said, "That"s murder, and if you"re not indicted in Cook County, we"ll indict you for civil rights violations." Other people thought Daley"s words were just what the doctor ordered. He got mail from all fifty states. It ran fifteen to one in his favor.
He was legally in the wrong (Illinois General Order 6714 prohibited such "deadly force") and backed off the next day: "There was no shoot-to-kill order. That was a fabrication." But those who needed to get the message got the message.
Police were buzzing with word of what the hippies had planned for their city in August. Some kid out of New York, Abbie Hoffman, wrote in the Village Voice, Village Voice, "We can force Johnson to bring the 82nd Airborne and 100,000 more troops to Chicago next August." The FBI told the Chicago police"s Red Squad, "The New Left wants publicity and will go to any length to get it. They want to discredit law enforcement and have demonstrated ability." "We can force Johnson to bring the 82nd Airborne and 100,000 more troops to Chicago next August." The FBI told the Chicago police"s Red Squad, "The New Left wants publicity and will go to any length to get it. They want to discredit law enforcement and have demonstrated ability."
And wouldn"t you know it, the brats had a warm-up scheduled, an April 27 "nonviolent peace march" to City Hall Plaza. The Park District announced it was their policy "to keep unpatriotic groups and race agitators" from using the plaza. Streets and Sanitation, which controlled parade permits, said it couldn"t issue one because a Loyalty Day march was already scheduled. The Public Building Commission said Civic Center Plaza-later renamed Daley Plaza-was off-limits because a corner of it was being repaired.
A lawsuit forced a compromise: a rally in Grant Park, a march on the sidewalk, dispersal after circ.u.mnavigating Civic Center Plaza. It was then that a couple of protesters ducked the construction rope. Police official James Rochford, who would be commanding the field operations for convention week, ordered the marchers to disperse.
It was as if he"d issued a signal.
Five hundred riot-helmeted cops erupted forth, billy clubs flailing. Some removed their badges and nameplates. There was no route for marchers to disperse along if they wanted to. A University of Chicago junior professor, a protest veteran of these sorts of things, told his comrades to come with coats stuffed with newspaper and Vaseline on their faces to dilute the tear-gas sting. That didn"t help with the blows. "I never saw so much blood in my life," he recalled. Chicago"s constabulary had laid down their marker: if the fight starts, don"t expect it to last long. if the fight starts, don"t expect it to last long.
At Nixon"s new headquarters in New York in the former American Bible Society building on Madison Avenue-where he had not been allowed to use the office originally prepared for him after the Secret Service found a clean rifle shot from a building across the street-they had debated what he should do about the funeral of Martin Luther King. Garment and Safire said he had to go; John Mitch.e.l.l, saying it would make Nixon look like "a prisoner of the moment," gave his judgment a patina of righteousness: "There can"t be any grandstanding." The boss, recalling how Kennedy had won a critical edge on campaign eve in 1960 by supporting King when he was in jail, recalling, too, his ongoing negotiations for the loyalty of the Pope of Southern Republicans, Strom Thurmond, ended up playing it down the middle: he traveled to Atlanta to pay his respects to the family, but when the funeral procession made its way down the street, he was nowhere to be seen.
The president beseeched the House to bring the civil rights bill to a vote "at the earliest possible moment." He signed the 1968 Civil Rights Act on April 11. The reason for its sudden pa.s.sage was not entirely altruistic: in addition to its limited open-housing provision, it made conspiring to cause a riot a federal crime. "We"ve got a civil rights act!" Nixon exclaimed when he heard the news, delighted to have a contentious issue removed from the presidential campaign.
In New York, up near Harlem, radical students at Columbia University were protesting the partic.i.p.ation of their university in defense research and its plans to build a gym that would extend the school"s footprint into the surrounding black community. SDS leader Mark Rudd commandeered the microphone at an MLK memorial service to announce, "Columbia"s administration is morally corrupt, unjust, and indulges in racist policies." Afterward, Rudd posted an open letter to the university president: "If we win, we will take control of your world, your corporation, your university and attempt to mold a world in which we and other people can live as human beings. Your power is directly threatened, since we will have to destroy that power before we take over.... And we will fight you about the type of miseducation you are trying to channel us through. We will destroy at times, even violently, in order to end your power and your system....
"Up against the wall, motherf.u.c.ker, this is a stick-up. Yours for freedom, Mark."
They called the students who opposed them "conservatives," and some of them were. But often they were simply short-haired strivers who resented the way the radicals arrogated to themselves the right to control the education their parents had worked so hard to obtain: "Staten Island versus Scarsdale," some described the standoff; "jocks versus pukes," to use the two sides" denigrations of the other. On April 23 the two sides met, the pukes for a demonstration to call their administrators "war criminals," the jocks to interpose themselves against a rumored student strike. The radicals fought through their cordon to take a dean hostage in his office in Hamilton Hall. ("Now we"ve got the Man where we want him. He can"t leave unless he gives in to some of our demands.") Then they broke into the stately administration building, Low Library, with a wooden plank. Nothing this violent had ever remotely occurred in a political protest at an American university.
Militants among Columbia"s eighty or so black students, and some Harlem Black Power activists, kicked out the white occupiers of Hamilton and demanded the building for themselves. By the time of the Columbia strike, the deference a white radical owed to a black radical was nearly infinite. Huey Newton was in jail. The story of him bleeding and limping into the hospital after shooting two policemen, then a patrolman torturing him in the treatment room until he blacked out from the pain, had taken on the status of radical liturgy, the photo of him splayed out like Che Guevara on his deathbed, the policeman hulking over him, a New Left pieta. Eldridge Cleaver built his legend into a cult-posing a picture of Huey sitting regally in a giant wicker chair, machine gun at his left hand, tribal spear at his right, that graced every radical"s dorm-room wall. Fund-raising letters signed by Hollywood celebrities spoke of him as a jailhouse messiah: "His love for people is so strong that it is impossible not to feel it when in his presence." Radicals wore pins reading FREE HUEY FREE HUEY and and THE SKY"S THE LIMIT THE SKY"S THE LIMIT and talked about scheduling the revolution for the day Huey left prison to lead them. The whites were glad to give Hamilton Hall up to brave black militants, who as a bonus provided a tactical coup in their dealings with the administration: it exaggerated their operational unity with Harlem-based radicals such as Rap Brown, who could presumably call in the hordes at the snap of his dusky fingers. and talked about scheduling the revolution for the day Huey left prison to lead them. The whites were glad to give Hamilton Hall up to brave black militants, who as a bonus provided a tactical coup in their dealings with the administration: it exaggerated their operational unity with Harlem-based radicals such as Rap Brown, who could presumably call in the hordes at the snap of his dusky fingers.
Night became day. A group of visiting radicals took over Mathematics. At Low, students ransacked files, desecrated furniture, consecrated the walls with Che and Mao and Malcolm X slogans, breached Grayson Kirk"s office and drank his sherry, smoked his cigars, kicked back at his desk, inspected his library. They found hidden away a book on masochism-a perfect index of the corrosive hypocrisy of the Establishment!
His masochism flattered their narcissism. A campus minister flattered their narcissism, too. He married a couple by candlelight in occupied Fayerweather Hall, p.r.o.nouncing them "Children of the New Age." Though in a less idealistic moment, students burned a professor"s life"s work on a bonfire at the barricades.