A Bad Night in the unnamed Port City. Sumer '67

The summer after I graduated from High School in the unnamed Port City to our south, I took a five week job as a traffic surveyor with the state DOT. It was our job to stand at an intersection all night long and when cars stopped to step forward with our clipboard to ask them questions about their trip. One night something terrible happened to the Port City while we were out standing at the side of the road - there was a race riot that burned down much of the core black neighborhood. The first we know of it was when a car came over the bridge where we were working looking for the hospital - someone had thrown a brick through the windshield and the passenger was injured. Other cars took one look at us (we were all teenagers but some of us were black) and made a u-turn at full speed to escape from us. We were a little puzzled until one of the cops assigned to watch over us called one of the black kids over and said "I thought you ought to know, there is a riot over in your neighborhood."

We looked over to that part of the great Port City and suddenly noticed that the night sky was redly glowing with firelight, as if half the town were burning. It was.

I remember this today because I came across the following quote from a citizen of the city that I copied into my notebook several months ago. And because Obama just made his speech on race.

He says the same of the riots that erupted in the Central Avenue district in 1967, after [Port City] police shot and killed Martin Chambers, a black 19 year-old. Many of the businesses that went up in flames never reopened or reclaimed their vitality. "We did nothing but hurt ourselves," he laments.

One of the fellows working with me that summer told me later that his father's pool hall was burnt down that first night of the riot. He had just invested all his money in remodeling it.