The Education of a WASP

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen The long hot summer of 1964 was one of job-hunting for Ben and turbulent new insights for me. It would also be the first summer of Negro violence. Black patience had finally exploded. Until now, the riots severe enough to require National Guardsmen or state troopers-in Little Rock, Oxford (Mississippi ), Folcroft (Pennsylvania)-had all been white riots. I knew that tear gas and bayonets had not been used in Folcroft , but on May 11, 1964, I read that tear gas and bayonets had been wielded by guardsmen to break up a demonstration by black people in Cambridge, :Maryland. Even so, the first acts of violence that summer were still acts of white violence-until the middle of July. On June 9 police used tear gas, hoses, and clubs on Negro demonstrators in Tuscaloosa. On June 23 the burned stationwagon of three missing civil rights workers was found in a swamp near Philadelphia , Mississippi. Two days later, white newspapers reported that "300 white terrorists attacked Negro marchers in St. Augustine, Florida. Eighteen Negroes were hospitalized." In the beginning of July Lemuel Penn, a Negro educator - 198 - from Washington, D.C., was shot and killed driving home through Georgia after having fulfilled his Army Reserve obligations . Four days later, three Negro men were shot trying to integrate a Texas beach. All these events were telecast. Black people saw them just as I did. It seemed inevitable that they, too, would riot soon. On July 18, 1964, police killed a fifteen-year-old Negro youth in Harlem, and the first big-city black riots began. I read the newspaper accounts with confusion. Anger over the shooting of a child-was understandable, but I was distressed at the reports of looting. Protest was one thing, stealing was something else. The newspaper offered speculation, but nothing seemed clear. Philadelphia's black community would explode in August. By then I would understand more about white newspapers and much more about looting. Ben was going out each day following up leads for jobs. He was also trying to sell-to supermarkets, banks, manufacturers , anyone who would listen-a program of profitable involvement in black problems. Ben explained to businessmen that black executive-recruiting, job training, and even recreation centers for ghetto youth would create loyalty and sales in Negro communities as well as work toward eventual lowering of taxes for welfare. Ben, quiet and reserved, is no salesman, yet he went to company after company. His stubborn belief in the obvious self-interest of business involvement carried him through dozens of rejections. In 1964, before black riots began, no business firms were interested in ghetto problems. During the early summer months, Barbara and I were busy organizing a tour of our neighborhoods to be taken by the national delegates to the Summer Workshop of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The Philadelphia director had asked for my ideas for their conference on "Rearing Children of Good Will." I replied that living in our neighborhood was the best way I knew to achieve this. He asked if I would organize a tour. Barbara and I began to recruit - 199 - friends who would open their homes for small discussion groups after a bus ride through the neighborhood. On the day of the tour I directed the bus driver and talked with a blond, thirtyish, and pleasantly gregarious reporter from the Bulletin who rode with us. When the bus passed a group of children playing hopscotch , a woman delegate leaned across the bus aisle, pointed to the children, and asked me, "Was this planned?" It took me minutes to understand what she meant. This interracial group of children seemed so unusual to her that she felt it must have been arranged as some special demonstration for the tour. The reporter raised a sophisticated eyebrow. White bigotry , he inferred, was everywhere. He began to tell me his experiences covering the white riot in Folcroft. He had been punched and spat on by the Folcroft residents while reporting the disorder. Then he said, "That Negro couple had a lot of guts-no matter how much they were paid to move in there." Paid! As we had learned only too thoroughly through Paul and Joan Benson's house hunt, Negro families with the means and the need could seldom get a house. No organization (NAACP was the rumored group) would have to pay a family to...