The Long, Hot Summer of 1967

Urban Rebellion in America

M. McLaughlin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349444014, 9781137269621
• eBook ISBN: 9781137269638
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

It seemed at times during the 1960s that America was caught in an unending cycle of violence and disorder. Successive summers from 1964-1968 brought waves of urban unrest, street fighting, looting, and arson to black communities in cities from Florida to Wisconsin, Maryland to California. In some infamous cases like Watts (1965), Newark (1967), and Detroit (1967), the turmoil lasted for days on end and left devastation in its wake: entire city blocks were reduced to burnt-out ruins and scores of people were killed or injured mainly by police officers and National Guardsmen as they battled to regain control. This book takes the pivotal year of 1967 as its focus and sets it in the context of the long, hot summers to provide new insights into the meaning of the riots and their legacy. It offers important new findings based on extensive original archival research, including never-before-seen, formerly embargoed and classified government documents and newly released official audio recordings.

NOTES

Preface

1. Public Papers of the President of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, 1968), 721–724. For Cavanagh, “The Fire This Time,” Time, 90:5 (1967), 13.

2. Public Papers (1968), 715–717. Ramsey Clark Oral History Interview IV, April 16, 1969 (Harri Baker), 4–5 (pdf, LBJ Library). For police, Hubert G. Locke, The Detroit Riot of 1967 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 1967), 30–31. For deployment of troops, Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 214–218; Harry McPherson, A Political Education: A Washington Memoir (Austin, TX: U Texas P, 1995 (originally 1972)), 359–360; Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2007 (originally 1989)), 203–209; David C. Carter, The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965–1968 (Chapel Hill, NC: U North Carolina P, 2009), 204–208.

3. For 1964 summary, Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 324–325. Watts, Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995); Robert Conot, Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness (New York: Bantam Books, 1967). 1964–1967 overview: Kerner Report, 19–21.

4. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1998); Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1996); Ira Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?” in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (eds), The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1989), 185–211. Irwin Unger, The Best of Intentions: The Triumph and Failure of the Great Society Under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon (New York: Doubleday, 1996).

5. Jacqueline Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History, 91:4 (2005), 1233–1263; 1233–1234.

6. Suzanne E. Smith, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999). “Rush Limbaugh Attacks Detroit, But He Should Really Get His Facts Straight,” Huffington Post, August 2, 2013 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com, August 12, 2013).

7. Fred R. Harris, Alarms and Hopes: A Personal Journey, a Personal View (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).

Introduction Long, Hot Summers

1. Clark Interview II, February 11, 1969 (Harri Baker), 13. Referring to the same interview, Kenneth O’Reilly noted “Few people in the White House, the Department of Justice, or the FBI for that matter expected the ‘racial problem’ to jump the Mason-Dixon Line.” Kenneth O’Reilly, Racial Matters: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972 (New York: Free Press, 1989), 231. See also transcript, Harry McPherson Oral History Interview V, April 9, 1969 (T. H. Baker), 1–2 (pdf, LBJ Library).

2. Letter to Editor, Mary St. John Villard, New York Times, June 17, 1964 (pdf).

3. “Violence Sends a Message,” Ebony, 19:11 (1964), 140.

4. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 159.

5. For example, Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1995), 28–30.

6. McPherson Interview V, 2.

7. “King Forecasts ‘Long, Hot Summer,’” St. Petersburg Times, May 27, 1964, 11-B (http://www.news.google.com/archivesearch, August 26, 2013).

8. John R. Rachal, “‘The Long, Hot Summer’: The Mississippi Response to Freedom Summer, 1964,” Journal of Negro History, 84:4 (1999), 315–339, 324.

9. Kerner Report, 116, 118–19, 121.

10. “Lomax Predicts ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction   Long, Hot Summers
• One   An Explosive Mixture
• Two   Harvest of American Racism
• Three   Southern Campus Rebellion
• Four   Urban Uprising
• Five   The Battle for the Streets
• Six   The Apostles of Violence
• Seven   The City of Hope
• Epilogue   Dreams Deferred
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Index