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Remembering the rage
Rev. Lonnie Simon and Sheriff Wellington
Video
Angry blacks were ‘emulating what their peer groups were doing in bigger cities,’ one official said.
YOUNGSTOWN — Hillman Street looked like a war zone.
Angry blacks threw Molotov cocktails at police, set cars and porches on fire, hurled bricks and rocks through windows and aimed a few projectiles at firefighters. Two patrolmen were shot and the 24-year-old suspect took a bullet in the hip.
The terrifying scene from 40 years ago is firmly implanted in Mahoning County Sheriff Randall A. Wellington’s mind. He was a 34-year-old patrol sergeant with the Youngstown Police Department and smack in the middle of the riots that began late afternoon on Monday, April 8, 1968, four days after the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a Memphis motel.
The violence, confined mostly to the South Side, continued for several days, quelled only by Ohio National Guardsmen brought in to help local police restore order.
On April 8, what started out as a peaceful march by 200 or so young blacks from a South Side playground to the Mahoning County Courthouse downtown to hear speeches erupted later that day in civil unrest. The next morning, 500 Guardsmen arrived, along with eight armored personnel carriers and 40 Jeeps. The Guard set up base at South High School and Christy Armory.
Earlier, at the courthouse, Ron Daniels, then a Youngstown State University instructor, told the crowd: “Today is the turning point for Youngstown because it is the first time that the black people have left the poolroom, the bar and the neighborhood corner to come downtown and take care of their business. There will be no more killings and shooting of each other. If we need a burger, we will build our own. If we need a country club, we will build our own. If we unite, we can get anything we want.”
Marchers’ signs included this slogan, “City Hall isn’t for all.”
Reports from the newspaper
The Vindicator – it was The Youngstown Vindicator and an afternoon newspaper at the time – had these headlines in the early edition Tuesday, April 9: “Guard, Curfew Quiet City; 44 Jailed” and “Patrolman Grady ‘Fair,’ 2 Leave Hospital After Shooting.”
The flash point, Wellington said, was a bar in the Hillman Street-Parkwood Avenue area where marchers congregated that Monday and refused to disperse. He closed his eyes in a conference room chair as he talked, the vivid memories playing in his mind.
“They were taunting us, cursing. It just kept getting worse,” Wellington said. “I talked to Chief [John] Terlesky, told him we needed more manpower. We formed like a riot squad, a wedge formation, at Parkwood and Hillman to disperse the crowd.”
A newspaper photo from the time shows police across the width of Hillman advancing north toward West Woodland Avenue. Ahead of the officers is Friendship Baptist Church. Wellington said that photo was taken after police managed to split the crowd in half.
Here’s an excerpt from The Vindicator account: “Negro leaders and witnesses agreed that police brutality dispersing youths from Hillman Street and Falls Avenue at 4 p.m. Monday touched off yesterday’s violence but police said taunting youths who refused police orders to disband are to blame.”
Daniels and the Rev. Lonnie Simon, then-pastor at New Bethel Baptist Church on Hillman Street, were quoted at the time as saying police overreacted.
The Rev. Mr. Simon, now 83 and retired, holds the same sentiment he expressed 40 years ago. He said he could have been useful to ease tensions because, in 1967, he attended a 10-week training course in Chicago and learned how to handle civil disturbances.
Mr. Simon recalled heading out to get gas and seeing police going up Woodland Avenue after the courthouse march. He turned back.
The police, including Wellington, told him they were there because of a disturbance.
“I said ‘What you have to understand, the black community, we lost our leader and I’m sure most cities like Youngstown are having rallies,’” Mr. Simon said, leaning back in his wheelchair at his Campbell home, a large Barack Obama button on his crisp shirt. “The police said there were reports of breaking windows, throwing stones. I said I could talk to the leaders, like Ron Daniels.”
“They didn’t need that many policemen on the corner,” Mr. Simon said of the “skirmish” on Hillman Street. “I had training to deal with disturbances.”
More police arrived. After the gunfire at a playground at Hillman and Falls Avenue, “All hell broke loose,” Mr. Simon said.
“Any car – any white face coming up Hillman – those kids were stopping them and turning them over,” Mr. Simon said. “We had to tell the people ‘Don’t come up here. Go back, go back.’”
The reason for the unrest
Why did it happen? He said the scenes in Youngstown reflected social unrest found throughout the country.
“During that time in the civil rights movement there were disturbances in most major cities,” said Mr. Simon, one of four local pastors who had joined King on the march to Montgomery in 1965. “This was not a riot here, like in Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit; more like a skirmish.”
The Vindicator’s national news headline from Palm Sunday, April 7, 1968, read: “LBJ Orders 5,000 troops to Chicago.”
That Sunday, Mr. Simon gave the King eulogy at a packed memorial service at Stambaugh Auditorium. King’s funeral was the next day. Major League Baseball openers were set back two days; also postponed were golf, hockey, basketball and soccer.
Clergy on the South Side, he said, got together to try and bring peace to the community. He acknowledged that it took the assistance of the National Guard to end the violence.
Contrary to Mr. Simon’s claims, the disturbance on Hillman, Wellington said, was handled appropriately by police. He said the rioters were “terrifying people” by stopping cars and then setting the cars on fire.
Wellington believes now, as he did then, that young blacks who resorted to violence were “decent kids just emulating what their peer groups were doing in bigger cities.” A headline reflecting national news from April 8 read: “Troops Cooling Riot-Torn Cities; Death Toll is 25.”
To Wellington, a Korean War veteran, the “turbulent hours” of destruction and lawlessness on the South Side — burned cars, some overturned, glass in the streets, windows smashed at homes and businesses — reminded him of a war zone. He readily agreed with Mayor Anthony B. Flask’s decision to have the governor send in the National Guard and establish a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew for the city’s 165,000 residents. The sale of liquor, beer and wine was banned.
Police used bullhorns to warn civilians to get off of the streets.
On Wednesday, April 10, 1968, Vindicator readers learned more about the civil unrest. The headline: “Jail 40 in Disorder Here; Jeep Upset.”
Excerpts of the story: “Scattered firebombings, shooting of a 13-year-old and window smashing marked Youngstown’s second night of civil disorders Tuesday as National Guardsmen and steel helmeted city police clamped down tightly on the curfew. Police reported 40 arrests Tuesday night and early this morning, chiefly for violations of the curfew. More than 80 have been arrested since the unrest began Monday afternoon.”
Mayor Flask declares state of emergency
When a gang overturned a National Guard Jeep and it set on fire, the mayor declared a state of emergency and more Guard units were ordered to stand by in Akron.
Further in the story: “A car driven by white youths went through a National Guard roadblock and ran down several Negroes, two of whom were hospitalized but not seriously injured. The white youths were jailed and the Negro youths disbanded without further incident.”
The 13-year-old boy was shot in the right hip by a unidentified civilian on Market Street near Wayne Avenue. Rumors had circulated that he’d been shot by a police officer.
Also on April 10, a relief National Guard unit, 300 men and helicopters, arrived and set up camp at Austintown Fitch High School on Mahoning Avenue. Another 700 guardsmen remained on alert in armories in the Akron area.
To give a clear image of life in black America at the time, a national news bulletin on April 10 from Washington said the House passed and sent to the White House a civil rights bill that included a ban on racial discrimination in housing. A Mississippi Democrat opposed to the bill said President Johnson’s administration and congressional leadership did not have the votes to pass the legislation before the MLK assassination.
The Vindicator’s headline in a late edition proclaimed good news on April 11, 1968: “Mayor Lifts City Curfew; Bars To Open.”
How things have changed since then
In the four decades since the civil unrest, Wellington believes police have a better relationship with the black community. He credits block watches, community policing and more interaction.
There’s also more minority officers and supervisors on the police force, he said.
The sheriff, however, concedes that the violence did have a detrimental effect on some South Side businesses. Some closed, some moved to the suburbs.
Mr. Simon agreed. He said disturbances in black neighborhoods always cause white businesses to leave.
Hillman today is peppered with vacant lots where family homes once stood and long-vacant stores, bars and restaurants have been ravaged by time and vandalism. Many South Side neighborhoods have succumbed to blight as the city’s population dwindled to less than half of what it was in 1968.
Mr. Simon’s church on Hillman, with his son as pastor, flourishes.
Born in Alabama, the son of a coal miner, Mr. Simon spent his youth in Pennsylvania, where his father found work. He’s been here for 61 years.
He has vivid memories of discrimination.
So does his 83-year-old wife. Things started to change, though, she said, with King’s death 40 years ago.
“I had wanted to be a sales clerk but being the color I am, wasn’t hired. I tried all the 5- and 10-cent stores downtown but no openings – they said,” Florence Simon recalled. “Then, in 1969, Sears sent out letters they were hiring. They were still on Market Street at the time, and they hired me on the spot.” Mrs. Simon worked 17 years for Sears.
Some things improved, some things “began to melt down” after the assassination, she said.
Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams, at 36, wasn’t born yet when the city erupted in civil disorder. His parents were in town but he doesn’t recall any stories from them about that turbulent time, other than their expressions of anguish and shock at King’s death.
“What would Dr. King think now, that’s often the perspective I find myself wondering,” Williams said. “While we’ve certainly made progress in this country – as evident by any number of things, including myself being elected the city’s first African-American mayor – many of the struggles that Dr. King spoke to and immersed himself in still exist today. On the anniversary of his death, we still see turmoil and tumult in this country and struggles in the African-American community.”
Paraphrasing a speech by Obama, the mayor said a lot of work still has to be done.
Have things had improved between police and the black community? The mayor said it depends on whom you talk to, whom you ask.
“There are some in the black community who would acknowledge that the relationship has improved,” he said. “There are others who would say absolutely not, that there still is a very significant amount of tension.”