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1. The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968
- Temple University Press
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1 the dream deferred The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968 peter B. levy If riots come, ask the question: Who is responsible— those who have been drawn to desperation or those who drive them to desperation? —rev. Henry J. Offer (qtd. in paul Fairfax evans, City Life) A s the sun began to set on saturday, April 6, 1968, robert Bradby, a twenty-one-year-old black steelworker, was relaxing at his girlfriend’s house when a crowd of black men and women began to congregate about a mile away on Gay street in east Baltimore. two days earlier, martin luther King, Jr., had been assassinated in memphis, tennessee, and the black communities in Washington, D.C., and Chicago had erupted, but Baltimore, in the words of government officials, remained calm. Concerned about the safety of his girlfriend’s children, Bradby set out to find them. After learning that the children were safe, Bradby stopped for a beer at Club Federal, a local hangout at the corner of Federal and Gay. From the bar he could see a raucous crowd, which, when he left the bar, he did his best to avert. to his surprise, gunshots rang out, nearly hitting him. presumably, the shots were fired by either the owner of Gabriel’s spaghetti House, John novak, or by Clarence Baker, a forty-seven-year-old bartender, each white and each fearing the crowd was about to ransack his business.1 Bradby responded by concocting an improvised molotov cocktail and throwing it into the restaurant. A small fire erupted. it was about to go out when another man threw a bigger firebomb into the building. As a result, the fire spread. By the time firemen arrived, much of the building had been destroyed. unbeknownst to Bradby, louis Albrecht, a fifty-eight-year-old white resident of Baltimore who had sought refuge 4 / Peter B. Levy in the restaurant, died in the blaze.2 Around the corner another body, James Harrison, an eighteen-year-old black man, was later found. Albrecht and Harrison were two of Baltimore’s six fatalities during the Holy Week uprisings of 1968.3 At about the same time that Bradby left to search for his girlfriend’s children, Joe DiBlasi, a student at the university of Baltimore, was returning home from a national Guard drill session in parkville, maryland, one of the nearby suburbs. though he witnessed a few kids throwing rocks at cars, he did not expect such juvenile pranks to escalate into a riot. However, he received a call from the national Guard ordering him to report to the federal armory as quickly as possible.4 subsequently, DiBlasi was placed in charge of a squad of twelve men and given orders to take up a position at the corner of north and pennsylvania avenues, near the historic center of the African American community in Baltimore. From his post, DiBlasi witnessed looting, burning buildings, and defiant crowds. By the time he returned to civilian life, five days later, Baltimore had suffered more than $12 million in damage and over ten thousand troops (maryland national Guardsmen and federal forces) were encamped in the city. looking back, DiBlasi emphasized the surreal nature of the event. “you would just look around and say, ‘How can this be happening ?’”5 the pats sisters, sharon and Betty, in their teens in 1968, together with their parents sid and ida, had gone to bed on the night of saturday, April 6, just about the time that looting broke out on the corner of north and pennsylvania avenues. earlier in the day, a black woman from the neighborhood had warned their family that they “better get out.” And sharon pats singer later recalled that things had been tense in the neighborhood ever since King’s assassination. nonetheless, when the pats girls awoke on sunday morning, they felt secure enough to drive to Hebrew school and to go shopping. not until sharon steered her family’s car down north Avenue did she realize that much of her neighborhood was in smoke. Winding her way around crowds of people, sharon quickly picked up the rest of her family and drove away.6 shortly afterward, the patses’ home and business were looted. A day later the building was burned to the ground. it was “the end of [our] life as [we] knew it.” Her sister, Betty pats Katzenelson elaborated: “my mom was out of her job and...