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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
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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.
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