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• LetterPublished letter lected fo r pub by stamped, limited to co With Sunday Morning Editian Published by THE EVENINGSTARNEWSPAPERCO., Washington, D.C. SAMUEL H. KAUFFMANN, Chairman of the Board CROSBY N. BOYD, President SIR: NEWBOLD NOYES, Editor sive surr schools, ··BENJAMIN M. McKELWAY, Editorial Chairman- A-12 every ; evenm THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1966

L il had t• dI'UD' of r- Rioting In Atlanta The most surprising thing about the riot in Atlanta is that it should have happened there. For Atlanta, by general · agreement, has been a model for southern cities in its race relations. Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. has walked the last mile in search of racial peace. He had almost solid Negro support when elected. He was one of the few southerners t o t estify in support of the 1964 clvtl rights bill. He has added Negroes t o the police force. Atlanta's schools and city facillties are totally integrated. Many Negroes are employed by business establishments and the city has sent eight Negroes to the state legislature. All of this count ed for nothing, h owever, when a suspected Negro car thief was wounded while t rying to escape from arresting police officers. When some 500 or more Negroes took to the streets the mayor climbed on top of an automobile and tried t o reason with t hem. He was shouted down . Taunts of "white devil" and "black power" greeted h im. Finally the mob surged around the car and the mayor was jarred loose frolll. his perch and fell to the street. No, this didn't happen 1n a Birm- Ingham or a Selma. It happened in Atlanta. Little wonder that the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., who lives in Atlanta, was heard to ask: "What do they want? The mayor came down. He tried to speak to them and they wouldn't listen. What do they wapt?" It was a good question, but hard to answer. For most of the members of the mob may not have known themselves what they wanted-unless it was an excuse to throw rocks and rant about police brutality. The mayor says the riot was deliberately caused by some of Stokely Carmichael's SNCC henchmen, and he may be right. For the mob began shouting "kill the white cops" a fter SNCC representatives, according to the police, spread t he false word that the suspected car thief "h ad been shot while handcuffed and that he was murdered." Wh atever may h ave been t he case with the riot ers, it seems clear that what the SNCC people want ts trouble, trouble, t rouble. And that Is what t hey are going t o get, though n ot in the form they want, if this .sort of madness keeps up. r•. .,g se pli hJ r, ~------. w,. -~-UP s �