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THOUGHTS AFTER A RIOT
So We Are a City of Law and Order? >
By REESE CLEGHORN é
ON TUESDAY, trouble came to Summerhill, near the At-
lanta Stadium. Police shot a man in an arrest. The
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee then seized
the opportunity to whip tempers and frustra-
tions to an explosive point. In the danger-filled
hours that followed, hundreds of Negroes
gathered and many attacked the police with
stones, 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 30,000 people who
live in slum conditions close to the stadium
had been involved. —_—
No one who had bothered to look into Atlanta slum con-
ditions was surprised miich by the event or the location.
Summerhill and the adjacent neighborhood of Mechanicsville
long since had been pinpointed as among our worst slums. _
The Community Council of the Atlanta Area told us Jast
February how bad conditions are there. (And how much has
been done since then?) ae
* *
“MUCH of the housing . around the stadium is beyond
repair, and the interviewers could find very few cases
of even minimal maintenance,” the report said. “‘As if in
deliberate harmony with housing conditions, the streets com-
monly have broken pavement and holes; many are not paved
at all. Sidewalks are broken and uneven and, with occasional
exceptions, grass is nonexistent. At night, the absence of street
lights makes the area very dark and dangerous. .
“This deterioration has been accentuated through clearance
by reducing the available low-income housing units .. .’
Why does | Summerhill Bie mrs i
ce aa
MOST OF THE area has raed the point of rehabilita-
tion. So Summerhill has been designated for a future urban
renewal site. Certainly that will not solve all or even the
main problems of those who live there, but done properly
and accompanied by the right moves for the people now
there, it would relieve many of the conditions.
Why hasn’t urban renewal begun? Summerhill is one of
eight areas propésed for urban “Yrefiewal = "eight in which
Atlanta has not moved because it would not raise the money
for the task. ~
Most of the cost of these renewal operations would be paid
by the federal government; but Atlanta has not been willing
to ie the Toney. The a Se digas has not had it; and
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 area—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 can it be done, some officials ask
in feply, When houses already are too dilapidated to be re-
habilitated, or why should it be done when an area already has
been proposed for urban renewal and perhaps already has
been zoned for future industrial use? So it goes.
ae Eo te ae
WE ARE HEARING a lot about the law.. After a riot,
everybody talks about law and order. Those believed to 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 already-
wretched 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 happening on
that front with what happens regularly to the w ‘ite-
collar landlords who fatten themselves on the TEED of the
slum dwellers, . -—~ at
How many major slum landlords of th kind who make a
habit of defying the law, and refusing to abide by the city
housing. code, adding to the bitterness that comes fo violence—
how many of them currently are in jai! serving time or await-
ing trial under $10,000 b bond?
None.
eee * * *
EVEN WHEN THE city takes them to court, what does
the Housing Court of Atlanta do? Here is what it can do: It
can fine a violator $500_ - and send him to jail for six months,
and if there are 20 cases against him it can repeat that
penalty in each. And here is what, by contrast, the Housing
Court commonly does do: It fines a mass. Violator $22 or $27,
or $50 and a suspended sentence. It is Sa
Even this is only after tenacious evasion of the law; ne
one is brought into Housing Cou Court except as a last resort.
In Atlanta, as in most big cities, we do not seem to be
able to enforce laws against those who illegally profit from
the misery of the slums, and who create the conditions that
= -
give us violence.
But we surely can be effective in enforcing the
Beas the trouble-makers. We are a city of law and order,
(