RAMPAGE & RESTRAINT

IN its sweep and immediacy, the shock wave of looting, arson and outrage that swept the nation's black ghettos after Martin Luther King's murder exceeded anything in the American experience. By week's end, 168 towns and cities had echoed to the crash of brick through window glass, the crackle of the incendiary's witch's torch, the scream of sirens and the anvil chorus of looters. Yet one sound was remarkable in its very diminuendo. The fierce fusillades of gunfire that exacerbated the disorders of years past were heard only rarely last week. And considering the specter of anarchy looming over every U.S. city, the nation weathered its April agony with remarkable aplomb.

All the same, TIME correspondents from Albany, Ga., to Youngstown, Ohio, from Pompano Beach, Fla., to Pittsburg, Calif., compiled a depressing dossier of destruction: 5,117 fires, 1,928 homes and shops wrecked or ransacked, 23,987 arrests throughout the nation, and $39,544,205 in damage to property (see BUSINESS).* In all, 72,800 Army and National Guard troops were called to duty. Yet riot-connected deaths totaled only 43--no more than in Detroit alone last summer.

Goods v. Lives. The low "kill-rate," to borrow an unhappy term from the other war, was due in large measure to lessons learned from three years of urban upheaval. Heeding the advice of the Kerner riot-commission report, which warned that "the use of excessive force--even the inappropriate display of weapons--may be inflammatory and lead to worse disorder," lawmen in most cities refrained from gunplay, and magistrates quickly processed those arrested for rioting, setting low bail as the commission suggested. There were few black snipers on the rooftops; on the streets, police and National Guardsmen mostly kept their weapons holstered or unloaded except in cases of extreme provocation. "It seems to me a high-policy decision was made to trade goods and appliances for human lives," remarked Negro Psychologist Kenneth Clark. "Police have shown remarkable restraint," added former CORE Leader James Farmer.

That restraint may have resulted in part from the white man's inchoate sense of guilt over King's death. It was abetted by the carnival air that pervaded the looting mobs ("Hell, I can't kill a kid running away with two sports coats," said a Chicago cop) and the unprecedented cooperation of many black leaders--moderate and militant--in helping police to pacify angry slum dwellers.

More Than Khe Sanh. In Newark, where in last summer's rampage 23 persons lost their lives and the authorities expended 13,319 rounds of ammunition, there were no casualties and only one shot was fired--by a policeman, as a warning into the air. Mayor Hugh Addonizio crisscrossed the riot area in an unmarked prowl car. Some 200 Negro youths wearing the pink, silver and white badges of the United Community Corp., Newark's antipoverty organization, also patrolled the ghetto--and to better effect. The kids made an impressive contribution to cool; so did a courageous "Walk for Understanding" by 25,000 people, predominantly white suburbanites, who hiked through the city's smoldering Central Ward to show white concern with ghetto conditions. Nonetheless, some 270 fires were set (kerosene tins, shredded mattresses and broken Molotov-cocktail bottles were found in many gutted buildings), and as usual the hardest-hit were the Negro slum dwellers.

The nation's capital, afflicted for the first time since 1962 by racial turmoil, endured three days of pillaging and burning that brought a force of 15,246 regular troops to its defense--more than twice the size of the U.S. garrison that held Khe Sanh. Total damage to the capital's buildings and property: $13.3 million, highest in the U.S. Arsonists and looters were highly selective, hitting elegant clothing stores such as Lewis & Thos. Saltz, or else stripping liquor or grocery shelves and then burning credit records. Ten deaths were counted in the capital. The 711 fires that plumed the city afforded a pyrotechnical spectacle unmatched since British troops burned the capital in 1814. Police and soldiers alike kept their fingers off the trigger, and at week's end Vice President Hubert Humphrey pointedly rewarded troopers who were still on duty in Washington with a special screening of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?*

Tear Gas & Rumors. A few cities disregarded the lessons learned at such cost in previous summers. When 1,000 high-spirited Negro youths cut classes in Kansas City, Mo., and marched on city hall to complain that their brothers across the river in K.C., Kans., had been given a day off from school in tribute to King, Mayor Ilus W. Davis acted sensibly to calm them by linking arms with a band of black ministers and accepting the offer of a Roman Catholic priest to give the students an afternoon of rock music at a nearby church. Davis, aided by Kansas City Chiefs' Football Stars Curtis McClinton and Buck Buchanan (both black), cooled the crowd. But then, as the youngsters began boarding buses, Kansas City police responded to a thrown pop bottle with a popping of tear-gas bombs. During the rock concert itself, officers investigating a report of a glass-breaking incident heard the tumult from the church basement and hurled tear gas inside, routing the kids. That added fuel to a rampage resulting in 250 fires, $500,000 damage in looting and burning, 65 injuries and six deaths--all of them Negroes shot by cops.

Chicago's toll of eleven deaths, 911 injuries, 3,965 arrests and $11 million in damage might have soared far higher without the efforts of Rumor Central, a ten-month-old agency that checked out reports and squelched unfounded fears. Praised by the Kerner riot commission for its work during last year's strife, Rumor Central added 35 volunteers to its staff of 47 and in this year's five-day flare-up handled 40,000 telephone calls--most of them concerning such fantasies as the lynching of two nuns and the landing of Stokely Carmichael from a submarine on Lake Michigan.

"Between Bloods." For the most part, Negroes rejected the call of Black Powermonger Stokely Carmichael to "get your gun." On the evening of King's death, Carmichael was undecided as to what response he should make. Then, intelligence sources said, he received a call from the Cuban press agency Prensa Latina in New York, after which he appeared on Washington streets waving a pistol and urging blacks to arm. "A lot of people who were afraid to pick up guns will now pick up guns," he said later. "They clearly made a mistake when they killed Dr. King. It would have been far better if they killed Rap Brown or myself. Then they could have said that 'they lived by the sword and they died by the sword.' '

Despite Stokely's call to arms, a number of major cities remained relatively quiet: New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Milwaukee, among others. In all of them, black militants were the most influential peacemakers. Watts's Ron Karenga, abrasive boss of "US," a black nationalist outfit, supported the "Committee for Operational Unity," which had cooled the ghetto the week before. The time was not right for revolution, argued Maulana (meaning teacher) Ron, urging that "differences between bloods" be forgotten. Harlem's Charles Kenyatta, a chieftain of the American Mau Mau, preached in favor of racial peace and praised Mayor John Lindsay's casual walking tours among ghetto dwellers: "They want to feel that someone is concerned, and he goes out and reads people's faces."

"Neighbor-to-Neighbor." The death of King also had a profound effect on the white conscience. Some 300 girls from Goucher, a private college outside riot-torn Baltimore, loaded cars, microbuses and a borrowed hearse with 300 cartons of food and relayed them into the city's burned-out core, racing against a 4 p.m. curfew. Many matrons in Washington and its suburbs contributed food, clothing and shelter to the capital's riot victims. In New York, 5,000 suburbanites signed up for a massive "clean-in" this week in the city's slums.

Indeed, most white Americans were moved by conscience and events to seek means of cementing racial amity rather than further polarize black and white animosities. Some proposed "neighbor-to-neighbor" visiting programs to ease psychological prejudices. Universities and colleges from Massachusetts to Oregon instituted Martin Luther King scholarships for black students; Berkeley and Stanford pledged to double their minority-group enrollment by 1969, and more than 30 Stanford professors agreed to donate 10% of their salaries to a King fund. A group of San Franciscans moved to rename the Bay Bridge for King, reasoning that "he himself spanned the gap between black and white."

A more meaningful offer was made by the nation's largest housebuilding contractor, Levitt & Sons, which pledged to end racial discrimination in its 80,000 dwelling units from coast to coast and in all its new projects in the U.S. and abroad. Whatever the ultimate effect of these and a score of other proposals made in Martin Luther King's name, the unexpected restraint shown by black and white together last week may prove a worthy memorial to King's cause and, just possibly, a harbinger of greater interracial cooperation and understanding in the future.

*Insurance companies estimated the damage at $45 million, but their totals invariably shrink once investigators make their surveys. Damages during last summer's riots, originally estimated at $664.5 million, were finally computed at $200 million.

*In which a Negro maid, when asked to guess who, says, "The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."--a line that has been removed from the film since the murder.

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