Comrades by Judson L. Jeffries

Author:Judson L. Jeffries
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253027788
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Crawford’s analysis seems plausible. However, not every horizontal city was devoid of racial uprisings. Los Angeles, for example, is one of the most horizontal and sprawling cities in the United States, yet two of the most infamous revolts of the twentieth century occurred there. Also, Black unemployment in Indianapolis may not have reached the level of Chicago or other cities, but Blacks were still disproportionately impacted by unemployment. In fact, according to the 1970 census the Black unemployment rate in Indianapolis was 8.3 percent while Indianapolis generally was approximately 3 percent.31

Even in the wake of King’s assassination, Blacks in Indianapolis would follow King’s nonviolent philosophy after repeated urgings by local ministers and NAACP and Urban League leaders, as well as Mayor Lugar and Robert Kennedy, who was in town making a speech when he received news of the tragedy. Kennedy, who was on the presidential campaign trail, was scheduled to make a stop in Indianapolis and was told of King’s death minutes after his plane touched down at the airport. Kennedy arrived to find people in a jovial mood, anticipating the excitement of his appearance. Realizing that the audience was unaware of the assassination, he climbed aboard the platform and broke the news as women screamed and men gasped. Kennedy appealed to the crowd’s sense of loyalty to King’s legacy. He said,

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.... What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.32

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.