Cambridge riot 1963

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The Cambridge riot of 1963, occurred on June 14, 1963 in Cambridge, Maryland, a small town on the Eastern Shore. ^[1]

[edit] Background

In 1960 one-third of Cambridge residents were African American, all of whom lived in the 2nd Ward which has been represented for six decades by the only Black on the five-member City Council. There were three Blacks on the police force who were limited to patrolling the Black neighborhood and were not allowed to arrest whites. Lunch counters, cafes, churches, entertainment venues and the local hospital were racially segregated. By 1962, Cambridge had fallen on hard times: the city's major manufacturer had closed its Cambridge plants and jobs gone. Whites unemployment was over 7%, twice the national average, and Black unemployment, 29%. Two of the remaining factories, both defense contractors, had a tacit agreement with their white workers and the city council: the companies will not hire Blacks in return for the workers rejecting any attempt at unionization. Under Federal poverty guidelines, Dorchester County is in the same income category as Appalachia.

In January of 1962, CIG/SNCC organizers Reggie Robinson and Bill Hansen arrived in Cambridge. Protests commenced in Cambridge with 100 activists marching downtown to desegregate various establishments. Half of the protesters are Cambridge high school students, the other half are students from Morgan State and other Maryland State Colleges, along with a few white supporters from Johns Hopkins University. Some of the demonstrators are arrested. Hostile whites jeer, and in some cases, assault them. Bill Hansen is beaten by a mob and then arrested for disorderly conduct. The Cambridge Mayor blames the violence on "outside agitators," and calls Hansen a "professional integrationist."

More than 300 Black residents attend a mass meeting that night at Waugh Church to show support for the protesters, and in the following days they found the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC) — pronounced "See-Nack" — to support and continue the protests. Frederick St. Clair and Enez Grubb are elected CNAC co-chairs at a mass rally. A week after the first protests, CIG and CNAC organize a second "freedom ride" into Cambridge, this time including supporters from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Northern Student Movement (NSM), Black students from Howard University, Morgan, Lincoln, and Maryland State Colleges, and white students from Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr Colleges. Again white vigilantes attacked some of the protesters, again Bill Hansen and others are beaten, and again Hanson and others are arrested. White students are beaten more than Blacks.

CIG expanded the freedom rides and sit-ins to other Eastern Shore towns such as Chestertown, Princess Anne, Salisbury, and Easton. This effort that evolved into the "Maryland Eastern Shore Project," a summer campaign of CIG/CNAC. Meanwhile, CNAC continued demonstrations in Cambridge, relying on local high school students led by Donna Richardson, Lemuel Chester, Dinez White, and Dwight Cromwell. For a while, Edward Dickerson, a local white student, defies family and community to take part in CNAC protests. His parents kicked him out of their home and threatened to commit him to a mental institution.

Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes asked the Maryland General Assembly to pass an anti-discrimination bill to end segregation in public accommodations throughout the state. However, Eastern Shore legislators weakened the bill with an amendment which allowed counties to exempt themselves. In other words, Eastern Shore counties such as Dorchester, where segregation was widespread, could choose to ignore the law. In Cambridge, the police allow white racists to beat nonviolent protesters, and then arrest the demonstrators. The all-white, volunteer Rescue & Fire Company (RFC) of Cambridge is a major civic institution. It ran the city swimming pool and skating rink on a segregated, white-only basis, and those facilities become targets of CNAC protests. In retaliation, the RFC threatened to deny ambulance service to Blacks.^[2] (In 1964, the state antidiscrimination statute was further amended to include all counties in Maryland.^[3])

The riot in Cambridge was just one in a string of incidents during 1963 that pointed to an explosive increase in racial tensions in the U.S. That spring, civil rights campaigns throughout the South started with a voter registration drive in Greenwood, Mississippi, and segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, Nashville, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia. Most of the protests were against segregation, but job discrimination and police brutality were issues as well. Several thousand blacks and their white supporters were arrested. From May 2 to 7 in Birmingham, 2,543 demonstrators were arrested, prompting Governor George Wallace to say he was "beginning to tire of agitators, integrationists and others who seek to destroy law and order in Alabama." On May 9, black leaders and the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce reached an agreement to desegregate public facilities in 90 days, hire blacks as clerks and salesmen in 60 days, and release demonstrators without bail in return for an end to the protests. Still, on May 11, 2 bombings of black organizers' homes provoked a riot of 2,500 blacks which ended with State troopers clubbing any blacks they could catch. In Detroit, Michigan a peaceful antidiscrimination march of 125,000 was held with the support of the mayor and governor. On June 12, Medgar Evers, a Mississippi civil rights leader, was shot in the back and killed late at night. ^[4]

Finally, August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 blacks and whites marched for civil rights in Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deleivered his famous "I have a dream" speech.

[edit] Cambridge Riot

On May 14, 1963, Gloria Richardson, one of the resident founders of CNAC, was arrested at the Dizzyland Restaurant in Cambridge for trespassing. This resulted in 62 people being arrested for protesting Richardson's arrest. On June 10 and 11, African Americans demonstrated again and the protests turned violent. There were shootings by blacks and whites, brick-throwing and fires started by Molotov cocktails. 20 people were arrested. Governor J. Millard Tawes ordered the National Guard into Cambridge. The Guard imposed a strict 10 p.m. curfew, ordered all businesses to close at 9 p.m., and ordered all establishments selling alcoholic beverages to close until further notice. Despite the pressence of the National Guard, on July 11th, two carloads of white men ripped down Pine Street, the main black thoroughfare of the city, at seventy miles an hour while shooting in all directions.^[5]

By the third week of July, the CNAC and Cambridge’s white politicians signed off on a non-binding agreement that became known as the “Treaty of Cambridge.” The “Treaty” was negotiated by United States Department of Justice members, including its head, Robert F. Kennedy, and was signed in his office at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. The “Treaty” contained a list of actions to be taken by the Cambridge City Council and other local elected officials and contained no specific action to be taken by CNAC. The City government was to create a bi-racial “Human Relations Commission,” begin ending de facto segregation in the city’s primary schools, and initiate the building of a public housing project. The document also pointed out that Cambridge’s City Council passed an amendment to the city’s charter to desegregate public accommodations. However, was the charter amendment could subject to referendum by city voters, if enough of them signed a petition to do so. Enough voters signed such a such petition and the amendment was placed on the local ballot on October 1, 1963.

Many black voters stayed away from the polls during the elections in October and the city charter amendment was defeated. National civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr. had argued that all eligible black voters in Cambridge should go to the polls, especially when so many millions of black people in the Deep South were struggling just to get the right to vote. In response, Gloria Richardson argued that when your fellow citizenry put up your rights for popular vote, it is best to stay out of that process because, while it may be legal, it is nevertheless an immoral and therefore illegitimate exercise of power.

[edit] References