The piece I wrote the other day on the miss-named "flash-mob" riots spurred some back and forth emails and the reading of the blogs of a number of friends and acquaintances. It also jogged my memory of riots I remember from the past.
I was living in New York City during the 1964 riots, but they really didn't effect me much, since they were confined to neighborhoods I seldom visited. I do remember that I was told by a fellow jazz buff I had met at Rhodes Prep School that it would not be entirely safe for me to come up and visit him or to go to jazz clubs in Harlem "for the time being."
The Watts Riots happened in August of 1965. I heard about them, but I was living in New York and had gone to Miami for the Columbia Record Company convention, in hopes that it would draw a lot of overflow talent that my partner and I could sign to management contracts. I fancied myself a music producer and manager. When I came home from Miami, Watts was erupting and I had gotten my draft notice, so things changed both in the macrocosm and the in microcosm where I lived my life.
I went to basic in New Jersey at Ft. Dix in September of '65 and observed the New York black-out of that summer as a dark horizon where there had been light. Amazingly enough, given all that had transpired in the previous year or so, the black-out produced more babies, according to legend, than looting or other disturbances. After basic, I went to language school, based in the DC Metro area and living in the District on 16th Street NW. I was learning Lao through the Foreign Service Institute, bound for a classified job with the Army Security Agency. After Language school, I went to Ft. Meade, up the BW Parkway just south of Baltimore for further training at the National Security Agency.
From there, I was the first in my unit -- and the only married man in my specialty -- to get sent to SE Asia. There is a whole story about how and why I came home and went where I did, but that is for another time. When I came back, I was assigned as a unit armorer with the Weapons Training Brigade of Ordnance OCS. I had been there, keeping track of a weapons room with lots of hardware and an ammo bunker with tens of thousands of rounds of ammo. One of the other armorers was from Detroit and he regaled us with stories about his experiences during the riots there in 1967 at his family's gun store, with all of them armed and a legally-owned machine gun mounted inside to repel rioters, looters or anyone else that might decide that the store was a tempting target. We were all talking about it, and even the Black members of our unit sympathized.
On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and the District erupted into flame. The members of my unit were on an off-cycle, having just finished our part in training the latest class of young 2nd Lieutenants. We were sitting around the day room watching TV when we learned that Dr. King was dead. The CO gave us all leave to go home and we left after lunch.
I drove from Ft. Meade to my apartment in Adelphi, near the UM campus. My wife was working in DC at the time. I walked in to a ringing phone. It was my wife asking me if I could drive in and pick her up. I assumed that she had gotten sick and said something about that and she said, "Haven't you heard? The District is burning and they're sending us home." I was still in my uniform and popped the white helmet liner on my head. I also tucked my .45 pistol in my waistband and a couple of magazines in my pocket. I drove into the District in my bronze '60 Ford Falcon. I was being waved through intersections by police and got to my wife's work in about the usual fifteen minutes.
I asked her to drive and we headed home. Without thinking, she took the usual route, which put us right in the middle of the northern end of the rioting along 14th Street. It was a foolish mistake and we couldn't see the end of the short hood of the Falcon for the smoke from all the burning buildings and cars. Angry black faces appeared out of the smoke, hands slammed on the car and I had the .45 ready, with a round in the chamber and the safety on. When the gun was seen, they backed away from the car, but as we moved forward at a snail's pace, new faces replaced the old and it continued until we were nearly to the Maryland line.
The drive, which had taken me 15 minutes inbound took us over an hour going the other way and was as scary as anything I've encountered. When we finally got home, both pretty drained from the experience , I walked in to another ringing phone. It as the Staff Duty NCO at my unit calling us all in. They were using our unit to give refresher training with the shotgun and the bayonet as the 11th Armored Cavalry geared up for riot duty.
The riots went on for 5 days. I went to work, training 11th Cav troopers how to deploy the shotgun and how to use an M-14 with the bayonet attached. My wife's work remained closed until the following Wednesday, the 10th. I drove her in and then took a little tour around the neighborhood not more than a couple of blocks from where we had lived before I went to SE Asia. It looked like photos of Europe after the World War. I never expected my nation's capitol to look like this.
One evening, the second day of the riots if I remember right, I got a call from the wife of one of my motorcycle racing buddies. They were both Quakers, teaching the deaf and they were a little uncomfortable around me, a close and visible representation of the war which they opposed. Becky said, "I'd like to apologize for the way we've been treating you, the distance and the cold shoulder, especially from me. Don sees you mostly as another bike racer, but, well, I saw you as a soldier first. There's some kind of tank or something on the corner with guys like you standing around it and I know that they're the only thing between us and that angry mob. So, thanks for being there and we'll try to treat you better. Have a good night." I didn't really have a chance to say anything to her until much later.
With the memory of the riots in LA following the not guilty verdict in the trial of the officers involved in the aftermath of the Rodney King car stop still very fresh in mind we geared up for the potential aftermath if the verdict in federal court went against the hopes and wishes of many people in the commnity. Based on our total lack of preparation for the relatively minor disturbances that followed the first verdict in LA, our department, assigned to the San Francisco General Hospital, located on the border of two fairly high-crime areas, wanted no problems. They cancelled days off and held everyone for double shifts. We were authorized more than the usual compliment of weapons and we patrolled the area around the hospital with four officers to a car. It was a pretty mellow night and the let-down after we had gotten ready for a tough shift was odd. Relief, of course, but also the feeling of being all dressed up and with no place to go. Not that we wanted a riot; but we were prepared. The effects of an adrenaline dump in those situations can really wipe you out.
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