Box 13, Folder 21, Document 97

For instance, while Ahmed rants, “Adolph
Hitler'’ roams, He is the bearded, long-haired
white youth who commands the Deuces, a
local notoreycle club that is patterned on

«California's Hell's Angels and vows alle-
giance to George Lincoln Rockwell’s American
Nazi Party. During last summer’s Hough riot
the Deuces, decked out in Levis, animal-skin
vests and chromed Nazi helmets, roared
through the ghetto. flailing with chains at
Negroes. ‘‘This is probably the group around
which other white gangs will rally should an
outbreak occur,’’ declares a social worker.

Both Ahmed and Adolph, and the circum-
stances that charge their activities with dan-
ger, are known to the police and presumably
to the man who sits atop the Cleveland powder
keg—Mayor Ralph Locher, Yet conversation
with city officials turns up little hope of pre-
venting new racial violence. Rather, discussion
centers on when, where and how it will occur.

Mayor Locher, a Democrat, up for reelec-
tion next fall, tries hard to accentuate the posi-
tive. “We're progressing nicely on many
fronts,”’ he says. But his optimism evaporates
when he is questioned about the possibility of
riots this summer. ‘‘No mayor can guarantee
peace,” he replies.

Others in the Locher administration and
private welfare-agency officials come close to
predicting conflict. Mrs. Lolette Hanserd, a
director of the Welfare Federation, an organi-
zation coordinating the activities of the city’s
social service agencies, has been receiving in-
creasing reports of black and white gangs not
only organizing but arming. “If the Negroes
don't stir up trouble, then some whites may
be trigger-happy,’’ she says forlornly.

An SOS to Washington

Most pessimistic of all is the director of |,
Mr, Locher’s human relations board, Bertram
Gardner. He fears an outbreak this summer
Targer than last summer's. “I suspect that it
won't be confined to the Negro community,”
he says. “I’m afraid it will extend to the
white communities and downtown—not a mas-
sive movement but guerrilla warfare."

White neighborhoods next to Negro ghettos
Share these fears, The Justice Department in
Washington already has received an appeal
for help from a social worker in Murray Hill,
known as “Little Italy,’’ which has been se-
lected by some Negroes as a target for dem-
onstrations this summer. If this happens,
warns the social worker, ‘‘violence could
erupt.’’ He adds plaintively: ‘‘Our experience

with local law-enforcing agencies has not been

comforting as we would like.”

Underlying such pessimism is the feeling
that much of Cleveland's attempt to deal with
its racial problems has failed, and that those
groups that might be expected to join in a
leadership effort are alienated from one an-
other.

City Hall and the Federal Government are
at odds. '

_ During the past 15 years or so, the city,
eighth largest in the U.S. with a 1960 popu-
ation of 876,050, has drawn up plans for
a dozen urban renewal projects; it now sur-
passes all other metropolises in acreage
tabbed for renewal. Yet Cleveland has been
aie. to close the books on only one project,
ace so slow that Housing and Urban De-
Ferran Secretary Weaver has begun cut-
ting off the city’s urban-renewal money. His

Please zie to Page 16, Column 2






| - VOL. CLXIX NO. 50



_ Racial Powder Keg
Went. White Hostility

Mounting in Cleveland
| As City’s Efforts Fail

Kemed Youth Gangs Growing;
Mayor Blamed by Business,
Established Negro Leaders

CORE, Reds, Klan Eye City



By Monrok W. KARMIN and DAVID VIENNA
Staff Reporters of THR WALL STREET JOURNAL
CLEVELAND — To Ahmed, the high priest

of Negro militancy here, the white man is a
“heast’ to be overcome. He predicts May 9
will be the “terrible day’’ that the anger of
this city’s black ghetto erupts into violence—
partly because, by his calculations, that will
be the day when an eclipse of the sun darkens
the sky. ;

Because of his devotion to astrology, Ahmed
is dismissed by many white Clevelanders who
doubt that astrology has any value. Besides,
Ahmed, whose real name is Fred Evans,
was arrested last week on charges of assault-
ing a police officer; he has been released on
$5,000 bond.

Nevertheless, Ahmed'’s warnings that
“blood must flow’' and “‘some must die’ are
gospel to a small but growing number of fol-
lowers, who gather every other Thursday night
to hear him or other Negro radicals conduct
what they call ‘dialogues in black.’ And
though these sessions may be a muddle of
mysticism and menace, they are all too
symptomatic of the tensions that make this
city one of the nation’s leading racial trouble
spots. Even to some city officials, Cleveland's
inability to make a significant start toward
coping with racial discontent seems to fore-
shadow a sequel, when the weather warms, to
last summer's five-day riot in the “tough
Hough” slum that left four dead,

Fears in Washington ‘

‘That also is the feeling of those in Wash-
ington who keep watch on racial developments.
John A. Hannah, chairman of the U.S. Civil
Rights Commission, which held hearings here
last year, says ‘‘the accounting of (Cleveland's)
accomplishments is very short, and the agenda
of its unfinished business is very long.’' An-
other civil rights specialist asserts that ‘what

makes Cleveland different from other cities’

a its potentiality for a racial explosion ‘ds
its complete lack of effective leadership” on
the part of City Hall, the business commu-
nity and the responsible Negro organizations.

‘This leadership vacuum and its effects are
apparent to anyone who peers behind the ''pns-
itive image’ that Cleveland officialdom seeks’
to project. Outside organizations ranging from
natio 1 civil rights groups to white-supremacy

groups, are marking Cleveland as an arena

r action this spring, Within the city, for

_anti- te Ne; there ¥e an
ee ge rae aM





o¢

os

SIV









Racial Powder Keg: Negro-White
Hostility Is Mounting in Cleveland



Continued From Page One

reason: The “‘long history of negotiations with,
and broken promises from, the local govern-
ment."’ Mayor Locher accuses Mr. Weaver of
unfairness.

City Hall and the Cleveland business com-
munity are at odds.

The Inner City Action Committee, led by
Chairman Ralph Besse of Cleveland Electric
Illuminating Co., was created after the 1966
Hough riots, to help the city cope with its
racial problems. But after six months it
severed relations with the mayor because
“the city administration will not accept mean-
ingful assistance and coordination.’’ Mr.
Locher accuses the businessmen of ‘playing
politics with the well-being of the people of
Cleveland.”

City Hall and the responsible Negro leader-
ship are at odds.

“Frequently when it’s most needed, the
Negro leadership just isn't there,’’ the mayor
charges. Leo Jackson, a Negro city council-
man, replies with equal intensity: ‘‘Locher’s
a decent, honest, sincere gentleman, but you
can't be a gentleman and cope with the prob-
lems of this town. You've got to be a hard-
fisted, practical guy who'll take risks.”

Established Negro leadership and the Ne-
gro community are at odds.

A training program sponsored by the Na-
tional Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and the Urban League has
flopped badly in its aim of getting Negroes
into building trades jobs. Ernest C. Cooper,
the Urban League director, says: “We were
in the position of preparing people to be put
on shelves.'’ With this failure, the NAACP
and Urban League dropped another notch in
the esteem of Cleveland's Negroes. According
to one civil rights specialist, “The NAACP
couldn't mobilize a picket line of 10 people
now,”"

The Negro community and the police are
at odds.

Harlell Jones, a slender Negro identified
by a grand jury as a leading figure in last
summer’s riots, but never indicted, and who
now works as a building maintenance man
in Hough, assesses the current mood of the
ghetto as worse than a year ago, The rea-
son? ‘‘Police brutality,’ he says. Police Chief
Richard Wagner replies: ‘‘We have no critics
west of the Cuyahoga; we cannot appease
those east of the Cuyahoga."’ Most whites live

‘jon the west side of the Cuyahoga River,

which runs through the middle of Cleveland;
most Negroes live on the east side.
Movement in the Schools

Still, Mr. Wagner has established a new
community relations unit in the department
and has opened eight new police athletic cen-
ters for slum youths. Also, there has been
some movement in education. A new school
board has initiated the construction of some
new schools, the opening of more kindergar-
tens, libraries and vocational classrooms, and
the creation of a supplementary education
center to draw white and Negro pupils for
specialized instruction.

“The only bright spot I can think of is
our schools,’ says Alan Kandel of the Jewish



some authorities expect Communist operatives
to be active here this year; the grand jury
investigating last summer’s Hough riots found
evidence of Communist Party participation.

Local organization is proceeding on both
sides of the color line. The United Black
Brotherhood (UBB), formed last fall and re-
garded by Police Chief Wagner as ‘‘militantly
racial,” is actively involved in the ‘‘dialogues
in black”? that present Ahmed and others to
the Negro community. The supposed aim of
the “dialogues’’ is to steer militants away
from violence and toward peaceful protest.

But police say the effect is to unite Negroes
under the UBB banner.

Lewis Robinson, identified by a grand jury
as a leader in last summer’s riots but never
indicted, and now a participant in the ‘‘dia-
logues,’"’ says of them: ‘‘We’ve had factional-
ism. Now we want to pull all these things to-
gether.”’ He views rioting as “productive and
good, a warning that drastic measures must
be taken.”

Harlell Jones also believes Negroes should
crowd into a single group for “‘political’’ pur-
poses. He plans to strike out on his own this
month to organize such a group.

White Organizing

An organizing drive among whites is being
planned by Robert Annable, chairman of the
Cleveland-based National Christian Conserva-
tive Society and also head of the North Ameri-
can Alliance of White People. Mr. Annable,
who believes that Negroes are “culturally and
intellectually inferior,” will begin holding ral-
lies,in May. William Murphree, vice president
of the White Citizens Council of Ohio, sub-
scribes to many of Mr, Annable’s beliefs and
also plans rallies.

The special targets of all these racial or-
ganizers, whether they admit it or not, are the
youngsters of this “city of nations,’’ most of
whom live in neighborhoods that are sharply
segregated along nationality as well as racial
lines. Murray Hill is largely Italian, Sowinski
Park largely Polish, Hough largely Negro, and
sO on,

As the pressures of social change have
mounted, what once were youth clubs have
become gangs and now, say social workers
and police alike, they are turning more vi-
ciously racist. ‘We know that white and Negro
youth gangs now are clashing,’’ says Mr. Kan-
del, ‘‘and we didn’t have that before.’

In Collinwood, a white neighborhood next to
the Negro Glenville section, a young fellow
in his twenties says: ‘‘When the civil rights
groups said they were going to march this
summer in our neighborhood, a bunch of the
guys in our club decided to form vigilante
groups.'’ The “‘club’’ he refers to is a neighbor-
hood social club, Mrs. Hanserd of the Welfare
Federation says, ‘“‘We keep hearing there's a
buildup of guns in the Collinwood area.”
“Chain Gang” Target Practice

In Sowinski Park, members of the white
Chain Gang recently have acquired shotguns.
“They're practicing with the guns in the base-
ment of one member’s home, shooting at pa-
per targets they call ‘niggers,’ a social work-
er says. “The purpose for the guns, they say,
is to defend themselves against the Neernes






Hon Thew ramprachrine sith the suns ai tie base=

er oo draw white and Negro. epap tor
specialized instruction.

“The only bright spot I can think of ts
our schools,’ says Alan Kandel of the Jewish

Community Federation.
See Saar ec SE Wan, But withe

out much visible result. The Businessmen’s
Interracial Committee on Community Affairs
is conscientious but, says Mr. Cooper, a mem-
ber, “‘they’re involved mostly in long-range
planning, not immediate action.’’ Two wood-
products trade associations have announced
plans to rehabilitate a section of Hough, but
the project is said to be stymied by slum
landlords who have jacked up prices. Other
public and private rehabilitation projects
amount to a drop in the bucket.

Mayor Locher, for his part, has some plans
he expects to reveal as election time ap-
proaches. He already has repaved some slum
streets, installed new street lights, and hauled
off the streets hundreds of junked cars. Soon
he hopes to start a citywide rat control pro-
gram, collect ghetto trash weekly instead of
monthly, let some contracts for play areas
and ‘‘vest-pocket’’ parks, and augment the
city’s supply of housing inspectors, policemen
and medical personnel.

Money Problems

_ But all this costs money, and the mayor is
having his troubles on that score. Voters de-
feated a city income tax in 1965. Last year the
city council enacted a tax to be effective this
past Jan. 1, but disgruntled citizens have
forced the levy to another ballot box test, to
be held in May or June. “If the tax is de-
feated,”’ says Mr. Locher, ‘‘then there will
have to be a severe cutback” in his plans.

Anyway, the mayor is willing to move only
80 far. To him some specific recommenda-
tions for easing racial tension in Cleveland
advanced by the Civil Rights Commission are
‘poppycock,"’ and he is steadfastly loyal to his
city officials, The Inner City Action Com-
mittee, in offering to supply the city with dol-
lar-a-year men to unsnarl the urban renewal

gle, insisted on the removal of the city’s
urban renewal chief. The mayor refused.

Mr, Locher is looking to Washington for
some new help. The White House is expected
0 announce soon a crash program to provide
jobs for unemployed Negroes in 19 cities, and
the mayor believes Cleveland will be one, But
Mr. Kandel of the Jewish Community Feder-
ation, who has been in on some of the local
planning, is not enthusiastic. ‘It’s too
ate," he says. ‘‘They’re talking about placing
2,000 people by June, and that’s only three
months away.”

Less than two months away js the ‘‘dooms-
jay" pinpointed by Ahmed. He is quite correct
m predicting an eclipse of the sun on May 9,
put authorities say the eclipse will be partial
and won't turn the Gleveland sky dark. And

med’s forecast of revolt may be wildly
xaggerated. But other events scheduled for
eveland soon are likely to arouse racial
lempers.
inter Martin Luther King

The Rev, Martin Luther King Jr. will visit
Cleveland soon to help prepare for simulta-
jeous demonstrations this summer here and in
jther cities, The militant Congress of Racial
quality (CORE) has narrowed its search for
1 summer ‘demonstration city’’ to Cleveland,
Dakland, Calif., and Newark, N.J. A spokes-
nan here says it ls “quite possible’’ that Cleve-
and will be the final choice.

“If CORE makes Cleveland its target city,”
ays J. B. Stoner, vice chairman of the white-
upremacist National States Rights Party,
we'll come to Cleveland to stage peaceful
ounter-demonstrations.’’ Last summer, after
. States Rights Party rally in Baltimore,
he 1966 CORE demonstration city, whites and

nthe tangled in the streets.

e Ku Klux Klan is preparing for an or-
ational meeting in this city in a few
reeks. ‘There are reports that the American
ai Party intends activity here this ing.





it the atte end of the pelted! spectrum,

only for scapes >)

ment of one member’s home, shooting at pa-
per targets they call ‘niggers,’ "’ a social work-
er Says. ‘The purpose for the guns, they say,
is to defend themselves against the Negroes

>) when,the riots come again this summer.’

In another white section, on the western
fringe of Hough, signs tacked on telephone
poles and painted on buildings warn “Nigger,
this is Alley Rat territory, keep your ass out,”’
or urge ‘‘Wallace for President.’ This is the
work of the Alley Rats gang whose members,
social workers say, have attended meetings of
the American Nazi Party in Detroit and Pitts-
burgh. The Outlaws, a Cleveland motorcycle
club, is reported laying plans to attack the
Checkered Cherubs, a Negro motorcycle club.

The United Black Brotherhood, whose
strongholds have been found by police to con-
tain fire bombs, has begun within the past
few weeks to instruct some Negro youth gangs
in ‘guerrilla warfare.’’ Police Chief Wagner
says the UBB has made contact with the
Ponderosas, a 200-member group preoccupied
until recently with vandalism but now turn-
ing increasingly anti-white.

A similar turn, says the police chief, has
been detected among other Negro gangs,
such as the Delamores, the Devil's Disciples
and the Marquis. ‘'They're getting away from
gang activity and are forming militant racial
organizations,'’ Mr. Wagner declares.

Interco Inc. Holders
Vote Stock Increases

Boost in Common and Preferred,
Creation of a New Preferred
To Enable Further Diversifying

By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter
ST. LOUIS Interco Inc. shareholders
cleared the way for further diversification of
the company by voting to increase authorized
common by four million shares, and the exist-

ing preferred by 327,060 shares in addition
to creating a new preferred issue of one mil-
lion shares.

However, aside from a pending acquisi-
tion of Sam Shainberg Co., Memphis, Tenn.,
operator of 79 junior department stores, for
410,000 shares of the present preferred, Interco
isn't seriously studying any possible acquisi-
tions, Norfleet H. Rand, vice chairman of the
board and treasurer, said after the meeting.

Since 1964, Interco has pursued an active
diversification program. It operates 210 junior
department stores, eight work and play cloth-
ing factories and six retail hardware stores
plus its shoe manufacturing and retailing
operations. ‘‘We’re interested primarily in the
soft goods, although we'd consider any field
that looked promising,’’ Mr. Rand said.

Sales and earnings in December and Jan:
uary, the first two months of the company’s
fiscal year, showed an improvement over the
Similar period a year earlier, the executive
said. And there will be ‘‘an improvement”
for the quarter ended Feb. 28 from the first
period of fiscal 1966, when Interco earned
$3,861,227, or $1.09 a share, on sales of $106,-
639,944, excluding results of Idaho Department
Store Co., acquired in February 1966. '

Mr. Rand also predicted higher sales and
earnings for the year ending Nov. 80, even
without a contribution from Sam Shainberg
Co. On a pro-forma basis for last year, for
instance, Shainberg would have contributed 18
cents a share, after preferred dividends, to In
terco's veported earnings of $14,598,000, or $3.91
a share, on sales of $469, 100,000. Results of
Idaho Department Store Co, were ow

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