Most of 14th Street Is Gone

In Most of 14th Street Is Gone J. Samuel Walker provides an in-depth treatment of the causes and consequences of the riots that occurred in Washington, D.C., after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. Walker rightly takes a long view of the conflict. In the first two chapters, he describes the political, racial, and economic factors that shaped the city's growth and development in the decades leading up to the riots. Low-income black residents faced poor living conditions, unfair policing, and segregation, providing the ingredients to spark a riot. At the center of Walker's book are two chapters detailing the April events as they unfolded. The author follows a large cast of characters with responsibilities for keeping the riots under control, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and the city's presidentially appointed mayor Walter Washington. He also examines the views of those who participated in the disturbance and those whose stores were damaged or destroyed by it. The final two chapters survey what became a decades-long recovery process and provide his central conclusions: “the outbreak of fierce rioting should be met by a prompt and massive show of force by police” and “mutual respect in police-community relations was essential for reducing tensions that could flare into explosive violence” (p. 135). Both points may be true, but it is difficult to see how they can operate simultaneously

Criminology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation · American Political and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

• How Whites Shaped the Study of Urban Unrest

  Jeffries Jeffries, Beckham Beckham•Spectrum A Journal on Black Men•2021

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