FIFTY years ago, Shaw, a historically black neighbourhood ten blocks from the White House, was ablaze. The spark had been lit nearly 900 miles away. On April 4th 1968 Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. After the civil-rights leader’s murder, riots gripped more than 100 cities. Shaw, a centre of black culture whose Howard Theatre had fostered the careers of Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, burned like a city at war. By the riots’ end 1,200 buildings were damaged and 12 people were dead. And more than life and property were imperilled. The whole project of civil rights seemed to be on trial. The year before, calls to tear down race barriers had both stoked, and been hurt by, massive riots in black quarters of Detroit and Newark.
In February 1968 the Kerner Commission, created by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate race riots, had warned that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black and one white—separate and unequal”. The commission...Continue reading
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