Riot. Rebellion. Resurrection. How We Remember Four Days in April 1968 By Michon Boston photographs by darrow montgomery
I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in an interview with Mike Wallace on CBS in 1966 In a city where less than an inch of snow can cripple public transit and force school closings, D.C. appeared committed to being open for business on Friday, April 5, 1968—the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis. Workers were expected on the job. D.C. public school principals had the option to issue an early dismissal. But things quickly began to deteriorate. Parts of the city where mostly African Americans lived erupted in a cathartic civil disorder. Students, business owners, and District and federal workers had to foot it home when the buses stopped running. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed executive orders to deploy a militarized National Guard to the streets. Mayor Walter E. Washington ordered a 5:30 p.m. curfew and prohibited the sale of liquor, guns, and explosives. After four days, calm and some order returned. Monday’s evening edition of the Washington Star reported eight deaths—most by smoke inhalation or in fires, two by police shooting, one by stabbing. Thirteen is the final death toll. More than 7,000 people were arrested. Damages were eventually estimated in the tens of millions in 1968 dollars. In 2018 we’re still reaching for the words to describe four days in April of 1968. “Riot” and “Rebellion.” It’s one or the other, or they overlap, depending on one’s political sentiments and interpretations of loss and gain. The four days had the feeling of a crescendo that had been years in the making.
In 1953, the Supreme Court desegregated D.C. restaurants in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. In 1954, the Court desegregated schools nationwide in Brown v. Board of Education. That same year, bulldozers arrived to level a swath of Southwest residences and businesses by eminent domain for urban renewal. Thousands of residents, mostly black, were displaced. King gave his now infamous “I have a dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The next year, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty in his 1964 State of the Union address, and D.C. residents cast their first ballots for a U.S. president, a result of the ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chairman Marion Barry arrived in D.C. in 1965 to start a local chapter. In the same year, Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem and a traffic stop incident sparked civil unrest in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Johnson appointed Washington mayor of D.C. in 1967. He was the first black mayor of a major American city, and accepted the appointment on condition of having complete authority over the police department. Johnson created and appointed a nine-person city council for D.C. that year. (Home Rule wouldn’t come for the District until 1973.) In July of 1967, incidents and protests touched off civil unrest in Detroit, Cleveland,
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Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Newark, and other cities. Johnson formed a National Advisory Board on Civil Disorders, the Kerner Commission, to deliver a report and recommendations in response to three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again? That October, 100,000 anti-Vietnam War demonstrators marched to the Pentagon. Polls revealed American support for the war had dropped below 50 percent. In January of the new year, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, a surprise attack on South Vietnamese. Though the North Vietnamese lost one of the bloodiest battles of the war, they gained a public relations win—American support for the war cratered. March 25, 1968: Hundreds of Howard University students ended a four-day sit-in inside the administration building after round-the-clock negotiations. Their demands included the resignation of President James M. Nabrit Jr.; more Afro-American history and culture in the curriculum; and closer links with the D.C. community. No single story encapsulates D.C. in 1968, and the four days in April that devastated hearts and minds and blighted several neighborhoods—14th Street/Columbia Heights, H Street NE, U Street NW, Shaw, and parts of Adams Morgan and Anacostia. Out of those ashes grew, in D.C., a set of residents who committed themselves to serving the city for decades to come. They were ordinary people in extraordinary times managing ordinary lives, even when it seemed the rest of the world was coming apart. In these oral histories, those who have been watching D.C. evolve for 50 years offer their sharp memories of King’s death the period that followed. Riot or Rebellion? The witnesses have no difficulty finding the words to describe the four days in April 1968. It’s become part of their resurrection as stakeholders in the city.