Hard Revolution

Just below the apartment house of Derek Strange, at 13th and Clifton, the students at Cardozo High School began to walk out of classes. By midday, half of them had left the grounds. Along with students of other nearby high schools, many joined their friends on 14th and 7th Streets. Some walked to the grounds of Howard University, where Stokely Carmichael was scheduled to speak.

At a news conference that morning, Carmichael had said, “When white America killed Dr. King last night, she declared war on us. There will be no crying and there will be no funeral.” And: “There no longer needs to be intellectual discussion. Black people know that they have to get guns. White America will live to cry that she killed Dr. King last night.”

At Howard U, there had been an early service for faculty and students in Crampton Auditorium. Following a speech by university president James Nabrit, a choir led the attendees in Brahms’s Requiem, along with “Precious Lord,” which Dr. King had asked to be sung at Thursday night’s gathering moments before he was shot. The final song, “We Shall Overcome,” was reportedly less well received. Many young people in the Crampton audience refused to sing along.

Afterward, outside the steps of Frederick Douglass Hall, a more aggressive rally had begun, as speakers stepped up to denounce white racism to an audience of several hundred listeners. The crowd was heavy with serious faces, black turtlenecks, fatigue jackets, goatees and Vandykes, naturals, and shades. The American flag, flying at half-mast, was lowered, and the flag of Ujamma, a campus Black Nationalist organization that advocated a separate black nation, was raised. A female speaker came out against nonviolent response. “I might die violently,” she said. “But I am going to take a honky with me.” Stokely Carmichael, in sunglasses and fatigues, stepped up to the microphone next.

In the crowd stood Carmen Hill. She had been up half the night with her friends discussing the events and watching them unfold on TV. Most of her friends were in favor of the violence that had erupted Thursday night. None of them had participated. She had called Derek twice during the night at his apartment to make sure he was all right. There had been no response.

Carmen knew intellectually that what had happened, what was going to happen, had been coming for some time. She was a black woman, and in her heart she stood with her people. Like many young black people, she felt invigorated and emboldened by the response to the King assassination. She was also afraid.

Carmen listened to Carmichael’s speech. She watched him produce a gun from his jacket and wave it above his head, as he had on 14th Street the night before.

“Stay off the streets if you don’t have a gun,” said Carmichael, “because there is going to be shooting.”

Carmen thought of Derek and prayed to God to keep him safe.

A LITTLE AFTER noon, on 14th Street, just south of U, a fire broke out at the local Safeway. Four minutes later, eleven blocks north of the grocery store, a mob of young men set fire to a clothing store on the corner of Harvard Street.

Firemen and available police were called back down to 14th.

Almost immediately, teenagers and young men, who had been gathering all morning on the strip, began to initiate further activity. Fires were set in Belmont TV, the London Custom Shop, and Judd’s Pharmacy, which had already been damaged and looted the night before. As firemen tried to hook up their hoses to hydrants, they were bricked, assaulted, and verbally abused, protected only by small groups of baton-wielding police who had arrived on the scene. The fires spread to the apartments above and the tenement buildings behind the stores. The Worthmore Clothing store on Park Road began to burn.

The mob moved from one spot to the next, undaunted by tear gas canisters and gas grenades. They began to break into stores between Columbia and Park Road, a retail strip of chain and white-owned businesses. They used small missiles and trash cans, and kicked in windows with their feet. They uprooted street signs and used them as battering rams. Rioters swarmed into the Lerner’s and Grayson’s dress stores, Irving’s Men’s Shop, Carousel, Kay Jewelers, Beyda’s, Ca

Many black business owners had spray-painted or soap-written the words “Soul Brother” on their store windows or doors in the early morning hours. Many of these businesses were spared.

Middle-aged men and women began to loot. Families stole together. Parents and their children carted entire dining-room, bedroom, and living-room sets out of the Hamilton and Jordan Fine Furniture store at Euclid.

“Animals,” said one policeman, standing impotently on a street corner as a father and his sons carried clothing, still on hangers, on their backs, laughing as they walked without fear of reprisal down 14th. The cop could only watch. Few arrests were being made. The police were outnumbered and completely unprepared.

Molotov cocktails were concocted in alleys and thrown from sidewalks. Hahn’s shoe store burned after being picked clean. Beyda’s burned. Hoses lay serpentine in the street as firemen scrambled to find water sources amid the jeers and general confusion.

The G.C. Murphy’s was engulfed in a tremendous, raging blaze. Two teenage boys were trapped in the fire. Both died. One was burned beyond recognition and never identified.

Three hours after the first arson at noon, a large portion of 14th Street above U was on fire. By now, other parts of the city had begun to experience the same kind of devastation as Shaw.

Police officials called all available officers to duty and ordered scheduled late-shifters to report immediately as well. Lydell Blue arrived on 14th in a squad car packed with five men. He stepped out of the car, wide-eyed, and drew his stick.

DEREK STRANGE HEARD a phone ringing in his parents’ living room. He fell back to sleep. The phone began to ring again and continued to ring until he got off the bed, his head unclear, and answered the call.

The rioting, looting, and burning had spread to 7th Street and the H Street corridor in Northeast. Ed Burns, his duty officer, was on the line, telling him that he was needed. He’d been trying to reach Strange at his apartment and was now using the alternate number Strange had left on file.

“You don’t have to do this,” said Burns. “I know what you been through these past few days. I hated to even call you up, but I’m callin’ everyone, understand?”

“I’m fine,” said Strange, thinking of Alvin Jones, thinking of where Ke

“Good luck.”

Strange went to the stove in the kitchen and used a straight match to light the gas of one of the burners, where his mother had left half a pot of coffee. He returned to the living room and turned on the television news.

Fourteenth Street was burning. Hundreds of youths were reported to be moving south on 7th Street, looting and starting fires. The Charles Macklin Furniture Store, at O, had been looted and was now aflame. Crowds were forming on H Street, where a liquor store was on fire. Sporadic burning and looting had begun east of the Anacostia River. In the downtown shopping district, the Hecht’s and Woodward and Lothrop’s flagship stores had shut down and carpenters had boarded their windows after youths ran through the aisles, stealing small items and yelling obscenities and threats at customers and clerks.

Strange got a cup of hot black coffee, came back out to the phone, and looked up the number of the Washington Sanitarium in the book. The receptionist put him through to Troy Peters’s room. He told Troy about his night and relayed the current situation.