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i - THOUGHTS AFTER A RIOT So We Are a City of La.w and Order? By REESE CLEGHORN ON TUESDAY, trouble came to Summerhill, near the Atlanta Stadium. Police shot a man in an arrest. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commi~tee then s e i z e d the oppor tunity to whip tempers and frustrations to an explosive point. In the danger-filled hours that followed, hundreds of Negroes gathered and many attacked the police with ~tones, sticks and bottles. Our riot, even so, was limited . The next day, property damage was seen to be light. As dangerous as the situation had been, only a small number of about 3..(l..QQO people who live in slum conditions close to the stadium had been involved.

,.No one who had bothered to look into Atlanta slum conditions was surprised much by the event or the location.

Summerhill and the adjacent neighborhood 0£ Mechanicsville long since had been pinpointed as among our W.Qr,S.t..,slums. The Community Council of the Atlanta Area told us last FebruaD' how bad conditions are there. (And how much has been done since then?) ::, . - no one has insisted that it be done. When we have bond issues for urban renewal, the amounts proposed and approved are pittances in comparison with the need. What happens in the meantime in such an ar ea-Summer hill, Mechanicsville, Vine City or Plunkettown? What happens is that the city simply does not do ITs job. Why is the housing code not fully enforced? How c an it be done, some officials ask in r eply, wn en houses already are too dilapidated to be r ehabilitated, or why should it be done when an area already has been proposed for urban r enewal and perhaps alr eady has been zoned for future industrial use? So it goes.

WE ARE HEARING a lot about the lfil!.:... After a riot, everybody talks about law and order . Those believed fo have provoked crowds into violent action are hustled off to jail, charged with inciting to riot , put under bonds totaling thousands of dollars each. The prosecution of anyone really guilty of inciting alreadywretched people into eating tear gas and otherwise increasing their wretchedness, knowing that this kind of demagoguery puts murder in the air, is absolutely right. Yet it is interesting to compare what is happenin!! on

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that front with what happens regularly to the w·1ite"MUCH of the housing . .. around the stadium is beyond r e ~ and the interviewers could find very few c a s ~ collar landlords who fatten themselves on the misery of the shun dwellers'.'"": of even minimal m aintenance," the report saM. "As i£ in How many major slum landlords of th kind who make a deliberate harmony with housing conditions, the streets commonly have br oken pavement and holes ; many are not paved habit of defying the law. and refusing to abide by the city housing code, adding to the bitterness that comes to violenceat all. Si~ lks are brokl)n and unex..en and, with occasional how m any of them currently are in jai! serving time or awaitexceptions, grass is nonexistent. At night, the absence of street ing trial under $10,000 bond? lights makes the area very dar k and dangerous . ... None. _,. .."This deterioration has been accentuated through clearance by reducing the available low-income housing units . . "

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EVEN WHEN THE city takes them to court, what does Why does Summerhill exist, then? the Housing CourL of Atlanta do? Here is what it can do : It ~ * * can fine violator $500 and send him to jail for six months, MOST OF THE area has passed the point of rehabilitaand if there are 20 cases against him it can repeat that tion. So Summerhill has been designated for a future ur ban penalty in each. And here is what, by contrast, the Housing renewal site. Certainly that will not solve all or even the Court commonly does do: It finPs a mass violator $22 or $27, main problems of those who live ther e, but done properly and accompanied by the r ight moves for the people now or $50 and a suspended sentence. It is barg_ain. Even this is only after tenacious evasion of the law; n& ther e, it would r elieve many of the conditions. Why hasn't urban renewal begun? Summerhill is one of one is brought into Housing Court except as a last resort. In Atlanta, as in -most big cities, we do not seem to be eight areas proposed for urban • renewal ::::-- eight in which able to enforce laws against those who ill~all prgfil: from Atlanta has not moved because it would not raise the money the miser y of the slums, and who create the conditions that for the task. give us violence. Most of the CQSt of these renewal operations would be paid But we surely can be effective in enforcing the law by the federal ...government; but Atlanta has oot been willing 19 spend the money. The city government has not had it ; and against the trouble-m akers. We are a city of law and order. I* a - �