Violence in Ferguson
I was around in 1964 when the first so-called "long-hot-summer" riot flared up in Harlem, N.Y. It too was sparked by the killing of an unarmed young black man (James Powell) by a white cop (Thomas Gilligan). I remember all of the tsk, tsks from older, more established leadership about "tearing up your own community," acting like savages and making things worse for black people in general. I bought none of it, and neither did most of my peers. The riots were invigorating to us, therapeutic. They were direct refutations of the horrifying and infuriating television images that blanketed us during those days; images of helpless civil rights workers being assaulted by frothing white mobs or snarling police dogs.
The riots, or rebellions as we later called them, were our way of saying; we aint' with that. So, when younger black leaders began talking about "revolution," the smell of burning buildings gave their words some resonance. Those buildings kept burning until this country had experienced urban unrest in almost 300 cities by 1969 when the pace eased a bit. By then, many affirmative action programs had been initiated and other changes had occurred. Companies were so desperate to hire black folks, I was hired at the Associated Press (considered a journalistic jewell) while still a student at Rutgers.
I'm just saying ... remember these things when we tell the Ferguson folks to be cool. And, of course, I'm not implying that violence works. How absurd would that be?