I grew up in Chicago and was exposed to racism from the beginning of my life. My family was racist but would claim otherwise. Mom and Dad were FDR democrats after all. I have lived in the South since 1973 and did a few stints before that. Racism in the South is different than that in the Northern cities. Take my hometown, Chicago, for example:
Chicago developed a reputation as a cauldron of specifically “racial” conflict and violence largely in the twentieth century. The determination of many whites to deny African Americans equal opportunities in employment, housing, and political representation has frequently resulted in sustained violent clashes, particularly during periods of economic crisis or postwar tension.
My first experience witnessing a "riot" was in Cicero:
The aftermath of World War II saw a revival of white attacks on black mobility, mostly on the city's South and Southwest Sides, but also in the western industrial suburb of Cicero. Aspiring African American professionals seeking to obtain improved housing beyond the increasingly overcrowded South Side ghetto, whether in private residences or in the new public housing developments constructed by the Chicago Housing Authority, were frequently greeted by attempted arsons, bombings, and angry white mobs often numbering into the thousands. The 1951 Cicero riot, in particular, lasting several nights and involving roughly two to five thousand white protesters, attracted worldwide condemnation. By the end of the 1950s, with black residential presence somewhat more firmly established, the battleground in many South Side neighborhoods shifted to clashes over black attempts to gain unimpeded access to neighborhood parks and beaches.
I hope you noticed the difference. It was the whites who were rioting in Cicero.
My first faculty job was at SUNY at Buffalo NY. That was in the period from 1965 to 1968 and a lot happened there during that time. Read on below if you are interested.
The riot was Buffalo riot of 1967
The Buffalo riot of 1967 references the race riots that occurred on the East Side of Buffalo, New York, from June 26 to July 1, 1967. On the afternoon of June 27, 1967, small groups of African American teenagers cruised the neighborhood of William Street and Jefferson Avenue breaking car and store windows. By night nearly 200 riot-protected police were summoned and a battle ensued.
Many African Americans, three policemen and one fire fighter were injured. Although the riot dispersed that night, it began again the next afternoon with fires set, cars over-turned, and stores looted whether or not they had "soul brother" written on them. This time 400 police were summoned. Forty blacks were injured, nearly half from bullet wounds.
The riots virtually shut down the city. During the night of June 28, over 40 people were hurt, 14 with gunshot wounds. On June 30, Jackie Robinson, then serving as Governor Nelson Rockefeller's Special Assistant for Urban Affairs, met with Mayor Frank Sedita about the riots. It was the first move by the Governor to intervene in the violence.
On November 10, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King visited Buffalo and in a speech titled "The Future of Integration" at Kleinhans Music Hall before about 2,500 persons sponsored by the Graduate Student Association at the University at Buffalo proclaimed: "We are moving toward the day when we will judge a man by his character and ability instead of by the color of his skin.
There was concern that this should not happen again and attempts were made to understand how to prevent riots. One of these was the
Kerner Commission:
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member commission established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations for the future.
Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the commission on July 28, 1967, while rioting was still underway in Detroit, Michigan. Mounting civil unrest since 1965 had spawned riots in the black neighborhoods of major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles (Watts riots of 1965), Chicago (Division Street Riots of 1966), and Newark (1967 Newark riots). In his remarks upon signing the order establishing the Commission, Johnson asked for answers to three basic questions about the riots: "What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?"
Clearly they did not figure out how to keep these things from happening. I think we all know why.
I'd like to focus now on my involvement in the Buffalo situation. I was one of many leaders of anti-war/civil rights organizations in Buffalo and ours was a large umbrella group spanning the political spectrum on the left.
There were at least two major components to the riots. The most obvious was the underlying social and economic pressures that the white community always allows to build up as we well know. The second addresses some deep issues about riots. There is a dynamic to them and there is also an aftermath.
An obvious question we on the left asked was do they ever justify themselves when you look at the aftermath. The answer seemed clearly to be no. Then who did gain from them? In a not to hidden way the racists did.
If that was true then how did communities get sucked into self destructive behavior? There were many answers to this, some pretty conspiratorial. Rather than get sidetracked by the various hypotheses we sat with people in the communities involved and asked them to tell us how the dynamic got started and how it spread. We learned a lot. There are "hot spots" that often just need a spark to set things in motion. Yet people are not stupid. They will not risk the consequences of rioting out of foolishness. Something has to convince them to act.
That is where we put our energies for prevention. We worked with community people to establish a "Rumor Control Center" that people could contact for solid information. It took a lot of time and energy but I think it had some positive consequences. The key was that we were facilitators not patronizers. We listened more than we talked and we supported members of the community who were willing to take leadership and organize the Center.
I don't know what Buffalo is like today. Watching Furguson and now Baltimore I have flashbacks and wonder who, if anyone, worked with the community in those places. It seems that more needs to be done for the conditions that spur riots are worse than ever now. If people are ready to act they need not do so self destructively. It just makes the racists happier.