Premature Test?

Although this was not the first case in which a march led by Dr. Martin Luther King had to be temporarily called off due to an outbreak of violence by Negroes, it was by far the most serious. Newsmen and pundits quickly pressed the question whether, at this point in history, it is possible to keep massive demonstrations controlled and nonviolent. Dr. King found himself on the defensive and faced with the necessity of making an unscheduled attempt, in a place not of his choosing for a major effort and within a narrowly limited time, to win a major civil rights victory by nonviolent means.

Dr. King defensively (and a bit ungraciously) explained that he and his staff had played no part in planning the Memphis march and, the victims of "a breakdown in communication," came to the march unaware there had been talk of resort to violence among Negro young people. He told a press conference on Friday he had been in conference with some of the militants that morning and they had complained that the local ministers who had been leading the Memphis protests had not given them a voice. (There were in fact two young militants on the steering committee, but they stopped attending planning sessions when the ministers refused to sanction stopping garbage trucks by any means necessary.) While not agreeing with nonviolence as a philosophy of life, the youths he had talked to had agreed, Dr. King said, to participate as leaders in a tactically nonviolent campaign.

Dr. King may have been underestimating both the strength of the nonviolent spirit of Memphis' Negro community and the seriousness of the challenge to his and the other ministers' leadership.

On the one hand, he need not have been defensive. As has been pointed out, the Memphis riot was somewhat exaggerated in the reporting. Arson was widespread, but ineffectual; damage from fire was very light. There were two reported cases of sniping, but nobody was hit, according to the New York Times. There were 155 stores with broken windows; of these only about 35 per cent had lost merchandise from window displays, and only five per cent had been entered. There were 41 arrests for looting.

On Thursday night, shopping centers in white areas were well protected by guardsmen, but stores in Negro neighborhoods, some of them isolated and many logical targets for rioters (such as liquor stores) were unguarded -- and unharmed. Not a few had broken windows, but were not looted. Dread of the curfew and of 4,000 guardsmen notwithstanding, the damage could and would have been far greater, had the roots of bitterness been deep and widespread.

One could argue that the relatively light toll of the Memphis "riot" was a tribute not to the swift forcefulness of police action, but to a store of benevolent wisdom and common sense which, incredibly, yet remains among Memphis Negroes. The rioters were only a token force.

But on the other hand, they were indeed a token -- a token of a far more serious challenge to Dr. King and to the philosophy of nonviolent protest which he symbolizes. There are in Memphis young people, fewer even than the number which broke windows on March 28, who are profoundly, bitterly alienated. Like true despair, their genuine bitterness is muted. Of them a local civil rights leader said, "The most Dr. King can hope for from them is that they will simply stay away from the area." With these, it will not be so simple as bringing them into the planning and leadership.