Preface

The Hough riots of 1966 hardly seem to be a proper subject for a history thesis in 1968. Historical perspective provided by detached observation of events and their subsequent consequences is prohibited by the factor of time. Final conclusions are necessarily relegated to the realm of conjecture and, therefore, historical analysis suffers in the purely academic sense. However, analysis, limited as its perspective may be, is most pertinent on the subject of civil disorder.

Our nation is presently faced by the gravest crisis of its brief history. Racial injustice and second class status for black citizens have culminated in wide-spread civil disorder that shakes the very foundations of our society. The events of recent days — the tragic assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the urban violence that followed in the wake of his death — have once again demonstrated the unwillingness of our country to give the black people equal rights. While the resources of our nation are being diverted for projects such as an unpopular war and an effort to place a man on the moon, millions of Americans who are black still suffer the consequences of discrimination. The means by which these people seek to attain equal status have been changing in recent years, accompanied in each case by increased misunderstanding in the white community. Only greater knowledge will result in the understanding necessary for permanent racial harmony.

The summer of 1966 was crucial to the entire civil rights movement. Watts had exploded the previous summer, and the great legislative gains achieved by the methods of non-violent protest had not resulted in significant de facto gains for the black people. A new cry was heard in the black ghetto — “Burn, baby, burn” — that threatened to alter the entire course of the civil rights movement in America. The events in Cleveland in 1966 were certainly relevant to the decision facing the civil rights movement as well as portentous of future civil disorder.

The discussion in this thesis is limited only to Cleveland. Cleveland is similar to many other metropolitan areas where disorder has erupted, and many of the causes for the riots of last summer delineated by the Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders abounded in Cleveland. The consequences of the riots there, however, were very different from those in other cities, and so a careful study of the events in Cleveland provides valuable insight into the problems and dilemmas facing other riot-stricken urban centers.

This thesis, then, is an etiological study of the Hough riots. The causes of the disorder are the central theme of the text, and consequences of the violence are briefly discussed in the last chapter. Understanding by whites of the problems and conditions of the black ghetto today is fundamental to their understanding of the principles and rationale of black power, the means advocated by new black leaders for the black people to attain equality. Thus, the study of the Hough riots, despite its lack of prerequisites for historical study in perspective, still merits historical analysis because of its relevance to the struggle for equal black rights today.

The bigotry which produces black ghettos like Hough debases everyone in society — its victims, its perpetrators, and in more subtle ways, those who acquiesce in it.^[1] Racism can no longer be tolerated in this country. Kenneth Clark, the noted sociologist, once said “Negroes will not break out of the barriers of the ghetto unless whites transcend the barriers of their own minds.”^[2] The barriers must now crumble.

April 10, 1968

Marc E. Lackritz
Princeton University