African Americans -- History; Slavery -- United States -- History
In the light of the victories of the Civil Rights Movement, whites were
bewildered by the anger which exploded from the black ghetto. They
thought of their concessions to blacks as gifts from a generous heart.
Blacks, to the contrary, viewed these concessions as the tardy surrender
of rights which should have been theirs all along. Moreover, the effects
of the civil rights victories had been largely limited to the Deep South
and almost entirely to changes in legal status. The day-to-day realities
of education, housing, employment, and social degradation had hardly been
touched. Finally, life in an urban ghetto, though lacking the humiliation
of legal segregation, had brought another harsh reality into
Afro-American life. Survival for the individual as well as for the family
came under fresh stress in urban slum situations. This had also been true
for immigrant groups from Europe. Urban slum conditions created
tremendous economic, social, and psychological strains. Ghetto life added
a new dimension of social disorganization to an already oppressed
community. The anonymity of life in large urban centers tended to remove
many of the social constraints to individual behavior. Crime and
delinquency increased. Actually, America had been deluded by the Civil
Rights Movement into thinking that genuine changes were taking place for
most Afro-Americans. Watts became a living proclamation that this was not
true.
Early in 1967, violence began to reverberate throughout the ghettoes all
across the nation. The earliest disturbances occurred at three Southern
universities. Then, violence exploded in Tampa, Florida, in June. The
following day, June 12, Cincinnati, Ohio, experienced a racial outburst.
On June 17, violence began in Atlanta, Georgia.
The worst riots of that long hot summer occurred in Newark, New Jersey,
and in Detroit, Michigan, during the month of July. Racial hostilities in
Newark had been boiling for several months. In spite of the black
majority in Newark, a predominantly white political machine still ran
City Hall. Blacks were only given token recognition. The event which
actually triggered the riot was, again, a relatively meaningless arrest.
Bystanders assumed, probably mistakenly, that the black taxi driver who
was being arrested, was also being beaten by the arresting officer. Bit
by bit, again in a crazy pattern, the fires of frustration flared
throughout the city. At almost the same time, ghetto violence began to
rock several other northern New Jersey communities: Elizabeth, Englewood,
Plainfield, and New Brunswick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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