By J. K. Schmid, Special to the AFRO
“My God, there’s going to be some action this summer,” the AFRO reported April 6, 1968. The quote is from an unnamed youth on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The AFRO reporting of the immediate aftermath of the murder of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. describes a community almost physically struck or dazed at the news.
“It don’t seem real, it just don’t seem real,” one youth stand on a Walbrook corner mumbled, his arms waving, pacing in front of two friends.
Over 700 people were injured and almost 6,000 arrested during the Baltimore Riot of ’68. (Baltimore Police Department)
Acts of arson were reported almost immediately, according to the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) reports, but their record considers the first significant act of violence to have started at 12:38 a.m. It was a firebombing of Hoffman’s liquor store at Park Heights Avenue.
The BPD was on the watch for anything, and marks the first signs of organized, or at least coalesced, unrest at Coppin State and Northwestern High School where students that Friday “refused to follow the regular academic routine.”
“There was school Friday, although my mother wasn’t sure whether she wanted me to go because everybody felt that something wasn’t right,” Robert Birt told University of Baltimore interviewers in 2008. He’s now a professor with Bowie State University. “But I did, and students were talking about it at Mergenthaler. I started noticing a certain uneasiness in the interaction between Black and White students, more so than usual. Everybody knew what the deal was, but nobody really wanted to talk about it, but it would come out anyway, and then emotions would blow up in classrooms, and teachers would have a difficult time just trying to keep things civil.”
The same day, Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro III declared Monday a Baltimore day of mourning, and Sunday a day of prayer.
Simultaneously, Governor Spiro Agnew placed the Maryland National Guard and State Trooper at high levels of readiness.
BPD reporting claims full control of the city, despite “sporadic” fires and incidents of looting, until Saturday morning.
On April 5, approximately 300 mourners attend a peaceful memorial service for Dr. King from noon until 2 p.m. Additional services continue until 4 p.m the early evening.
By 5 p.m., BPD begins receiving reports of smashed windows and looting in the 400 block of Gay Street. Police, attempting to cordon off 400 to 700 block, are confronted by rioters hurling bottles and stones.
Before 7 p.m., a curfew is declared keeping all Baltimore City residents to their homes after 10 p.m.
Not everyone obeyed the curfew, like Rev. Vernon Dobson.
“One of the first things that I remember was my father going out after curfew one night to go get a soft drink around the corner,” Sandra Dobson, his daughter, told the AFRO. “He was in his robe and pajamas, because it wasn’t far from the house. And he was arrested-one of the many times he was arrested. They didn’t keep him there, but that was the first thing that stuck in my mind about the riots: its effect on folk.”
While the riots were miles away, it was never as though Rev. Dobson was oblivious to the threat. Rioting and looting, coupled with the termination of public transit, left Baltimore residents unable to access regular supplies of food for days.
“When stores were burned down and there was no place to go to get food or supplies,” Sandra Dobson said. “And that was one of the things that he started doing out of Union , the Harvey Johnson Center, but then it overran the Harvey Johnson Center. The supplies couldn’t, there was no place to put them. So, he and Jim Rouse, the builder of Columbia, Peter Angelos, who now owns the Orioles, they got a warehouse.”
The project to feed Baltimore ultimately evolved into the 1971 establishment of the Maryland Food Bank.
The riots divided the Baltimore community.
“When it was decided that law enforcement would use rubber bullets against looters; this was perceived by some as Selma Alabama,” John Savage, a University of Baltimore student at the time, told the AFRO. “However, there were just as many that felt this was justified to quell the disturbance and stop the destruction of business property that had just started to openly serve the Black community in a respectful manner on a daily basis. Whites were nervous, terrified and voiced their concerns that the loss of Dr. King was a complete destruction of ongoing progress in race relations versus the absolute immediate demands of The Nation of Islam and Stokely Carmichael.”
Rioting and looting would continue for another four days. At peak, the US Army and National Guard deployed almost 11,000 troops. They would fire only four shots during the violence.
Six Baltimoreans would die in the riots. Three died in a fire. Two are suspected to have been shot and killed by looters. One person, a looter, was shot and killed by police. Over 700 people were injured and almost 6,000 arrested.