ial action. In the 1990s, however, serious riots have even been sparked by the screening of motion pictures. The underlying causes of urban riots have evidently not been effectively addressed. Certainly, effective preventive strategies have often not been implemented.
Two specific urban riots from the mid 1960s are examined in some detail. Each of these riots occurred during the summer of 1967. The first occurred in Plainfield, New Jersey, while the second occurred in Detroit.
Public disorders involving clashes between blacks and whites, blacks and the police, and whites and the police occurred frequently in 1963 (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968). Such riots occurred in Birmingham, Alabama, Savannah, Georgia, Chicago, and Philadelphia. White racists shot at blacks, and bombed their homes and churches. Blacks, in turn, burned white owned businesses located in black neighborhoods.
The arrest and conviction of civil rights demonstrators in Jacksonville, Florida sparked a riot in that city in 1964. During the riot, black students stoned police and fire personnel responding to a bomb threat at a high school, and blacks, for the first time in the United States, used Molotov cocktails to set urban fires (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968). In Cleveland in the same year, a young white minister was killed in a demonstration protesting school segregation, and when police attempted to disperse the largely black crowd, a riot erupted.
In the summer of 1964, several young blacks walking to school became involved in a dispute with a white building superintendent. The intervention of an off duty police officer cause a 15 year old black boy to attack the officer, who then shot and killed the boy (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968). A large crowd of black teenagers then massed and began a rampage of smashing store windows. A large force of police was required to ...