Killing King. Larry Hancock
to community uplift programs, such as free breakfasts, the Panthers’ ten-point platform appropriated the language of the late Malcolm X (assassinated in 1965), saying, “We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.” They asserted their constitutionally protected Second Amendment rights and urged “all Black people . . . [to] arm themselves for self-defense.”14 One-time pacifist groups such as the SNCC, who previously enjoyed close if sometimes rocky relationships with King, placed violent resistance into their charters. Rejecting the practice of civil disobedience King popularized, SNCC spokesperson Stokely Carmichael asserted, in June 1966: “The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin’ now is Black Power.”15 Carmichael clarified his position later: “When you talk about black power you talk about bringing this country to its knees any time it messes with the black man . . . any white man in this country knows about power. He knows what white power is and he ought to know what black power is.”16 H. Rap Brown, the leader of SNCC, famously asserted that “violence is as American as cherry pie.”17
Martin Luther King Jr. increasingly had to gear his prophetic mission toward calling his own community back to nonviolence. Black power, as defined by activists like Carmichael, he argued, implied something too exclusionary and too threatening. “Black supremacy or aggressive black violence is as invested with evil as white supremacy or white violence,” Rev. King asserted in October 1966. But he ultimately placed the blame for the growing stridency among his flock on a “new mood” rooted in “real, not imaginary causes.” He added:
The mood expresses angry frustration which is not limited to the few who use it to justify violence. Millions of Negroes are frustrated and angered because extravagant promises made less than a year ago are a shattered mockery today . . . In the northern ghettos, unemployment, housing discrimination and slum schools constituted a towering torture chamber to mock the Negro who tries to hope . . . Many Negroes have given up faith in the white majority because “white power” with total control has left them empty handed.18
King’s willingness to speak truth to power, and to challenge a national, rather than strictly Southern, audience, hurt his esteem among white audiences. He fell off Gallup’s list of America’s most admired people, and a poll showed his disapproval ratings among white Americans increasing from 46 percent in 1963 to 68 percent by 1966. He remained enormously popular with black Americans, but polls also began to highlight the schism among black Americans about how to best achieve social justice. Fifteen percent of black Americans told pollsters in 1966 that they would be willing to join a riot. Another poll reported that twice as many blacks said the recent riots improved their political position as said the riots undermined it.19
The factionalism and violence grew much deeper in 1967. It started that April in North Omaha, Nebraska. “Police in Omaha, Nebraska, said they could not pinpoint what started the trouble. But bottles and rocks were flying once again in the same part of town, mainly Negro, where 2 riots broke out last summer,” one Omaha newspaper reported. “An estimated 200 people took part—pelting cars, smashing windows, and looting stores.”20 The paper wondered “whether we’re facing another ‘long hot summer’ of racial violence—the 4th one in a row.” Many cities would, indeed, experience another year of social upheaval, and many more would experience it for the first time. The Congressional Quarterly composed a list of instances of civil unrest for 1967:
Nashville, Tenn., April 8–10—Several hundred Negro students from Fisk University and Tennessee A. and I. State University rioted on three nights after a Negro student at Fisk was arrested by a white policeman; at least 17 persons were injured and 94 arrested; the disturbance started a few hours after Stokely Carmichael spoke to Vanderbilt University students; two of his aides were arrested.
Cleveland, Ohio, April 16—Violence erupted in the predominantly Negro Hough area, with rock throwing, window breaking and looting.
Louisville, Ky., April 20—Police fired tear gas into a crowd of more than 1,000 whites taunting open housing demonstrators; the mob threw bricks and bottles.21
On May 8, in a public and honest moment, Dr. King told the journalist Sander Vanocur:
I must confess that that dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare. Now I’m not one to lose hope. I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future. But I’ve had to analyze many things over the last few years and I would say over the last few months.
I’ve gone through a lot of soul-searching and agonizing moments. And I’ve come to see that we have many more difficulties ahead and some of the old optimism was a little superficial and now it must be tempered with a solid realism. And I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go . . .
But King would not abandon the cause of nonviolence. He ended by telling Vanocur:
I feel that nonviolence is really the only way that we can follow, cause violence is just so self-defeating. A riot ends up creating many more problems for the Negro community than it solves. You can through violence burn down a building, but you can’t establish justice. You can murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder through violence. You can murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. And what we’re trying to get rid of is hate and injustice and all of these other things that continue the long night of man’s inhumanity to man.22
King’s deepest convictions could not contain the unrest and discord.
Jackson, Miss., May 12–14—About 1,000 Negroes at Jackson State College protested the arrest of a Negro student; the National Guard quelled the disturbance in which one Negro was killed; Willie Ricks of SNCC told the crowd: “An eye for an eye, an arm for an arm, a head for a head, and a life for a life.”
Houston, Texas, May 16–17—Hundreds of students at predominantly Negro Texas Southern University rioted after clashing with police while protesting the arrests of student demonstrators; 487 were arrested; one policeman was killed and two others were shot . . .
Boston, Mass., June 2–4—More than 1,000 persons in a predominantly Negro neighborhood rioted after a group of mothers staged a sit-in to urge reforms in welfare and contended they were beaten by police; at least 60 were injured, 90 were arrested and property damage was estimated at $1 million . . .
Tampa, Fla., June 11–13—Negroes rioted in a 60-block area after a white policeman shot and killed a Negro burglary suspect who refused to halt; 16 persons were injured and more than 100 arrested; property damage was estimated at $95,000.
Cincinnati, Ohio, June 12–18—Negroes rioted in three predominantly Negro sections, hurling Molotov cocktails, smashing store windows and looting; one person was killed, 63 were injured and 276 were arrested; property damage was estimated at $2 million; on June 15, the third night of rioting, [SNCC leader] H. Rap Brown arrived and said that the city “will be in flames until the honkie cops (National Guardsmen) get out.” In another speech that day he said that “SNCC has declared war.”
Dayton, Ohio, June 14–15—Negro youths threw rocks and smashed store windows; four persons reported injured and 23 arrested; on the night of June 14, Brown urged a crowd to “take the pressure off Cincinnati.” The same day, he had told a crowd in Dayton: “How can you be nonviolent in America, the most violent country in the world. You better shoot the man to death; that’s what he’s doing to you.”
Atlanta, Ga., June 18–21—Rioting in the predominantly Negro Dixie Hills section followed a speech by Stokely Carmichael at a rally held to protest the shooting of a Negro by a Negro policeman; Carmichael and SNCC aides were active throughout the riot; Carmichael said: “The only way these hunkies and hunky-lovers can understand is when they’re met by resistance” and he told a rally: “We need to be beating heads.” One person was killed, three were injured and at least five were arrested.23
As violent as some of these incidents were, they would be eclipsed by two of the worst urban riots in American history in the middle of July. In Newark, false rumors that a black cab driver had died in police custody sparked four days of rioting from July 12 to July 17, requiring massive intervention by local and state police as well by the National