The Turning Point

In the classic pattern, revolution leads to hope, hope to frustration, frustration to fury. Thus it is that so many revolutions end by devouring their own children and destroying the goals for which they were fought. This, it was increasingly apparent last week, may prove to be the fate of the civil rights revolution in America. During a summer of insensate riots and black-power demagoguery, the Negro's legitimate struggle for full citizenship sadly lost momentum, while white reaction against Negro excesses continued to mount.

The commonly accepted—if ill-defined—name for this reversal of sentiment is, of course, "white backlash," a catchall term that accommodates every shade of reaction from out-and-out bigotry through unexpected fear to sorrowful inaction. In whatever guise, backlash now threatens not only to overshadow most other issues in many parts of the nation at the polls next month but also to negate some of the signal achievements for which the U.S. Negro has striven so hard.

The warning signals had been flashing for weeks. After the 1966 civil rights bill's ignominious demise last month, it was plain that the overriding cause was white resentment over Negro rioting in the cities. In Maryland, Perennial Also-Ran George Mahoney beat out seven rivals for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination by keying his campaign to prejudiced—or frightened —whites. In Louisiana, twelve-term Congressman James Morrison paid for his moderate racial record by losing the Democratic primary election to Segregationist John Rarick, who attacked Morrison as an ally of "the black-power voting bloc."

Then last week Negro slum dwellers went on the rampage in two U.S. cities that had been relatively free of racial violence for decades.

No Guff. The upheavals in San Francisco and St. Louis were both kindled by the same spark: the shooting of a Negro by white police. In St. Louis, youthful Negroes on the western edges of the downtown district demonstrated for six nights after an armed-robbery suspect was shot to death, breaking the windows of autos and buildings, pitching stones and bottles at policemen, stoning firemen who replied to false alarms—and all the while shouting "Black power!"

In San Francisco, the explosion was touched off when a policeman killed a 16-year-old boy who was fleeing from a stolen car. Adult Negro leaders tried courageously to calm youthful rioters, but quickly learned that, as one of them said, "The kids wouldn't buy it." With admirable alacrity, Mayor John

Shelley telephoned Governor Edmund Brown, campaigning in San Diego, to ask for 2,000 National Guardsmen. Patrolling both the Hunter's Point and Fillmore ghettos with fixed bayonets and orders to "shoot to kill—take no guff from anyone," the Guard ended the melee in two nights. All told, 51 people were injured, 267 arrested.

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