UNDER CONTROL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1943, Page 3

UNDER CONTROL

HARLEM DISTURBANCES

RIOT CASUALTIES & DAMAGE.

FIVE HUNDRED NEGROES

ARRESTED

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) NEW YORK. August 4.

With 8000 New York State guardsmen held in readiness for emergency and 6000 police assisted by 1500 volun leers, mostly negroes, patrolling the .streets of Harlem, the disorders (reported on Wednesday are now definitely under control, states the Mayor. Mr La Guardia. A curfew from 10.30 p.m. has been imposed in the district. The disturbances were the most violent in the history of Harlem. Five people were killed and 543 were injured. Property damage is estimated at 5,000,000 dollars, states the “New York Times."

Five hundred negroes have been arrested and charged with rioting, looting, and assault. All the dead and injured were negroes, except 40 injured policemen. The police emphasise that the disturbances were in no sense race rioting, but an outbreak of hoodlumism, resulting from a minor incident when a white policeman shot a negro soldier who was attempting to interfere with the arrest of a negro woman.

Wild rumours that a soldier had been killed caused gangs of young negroes, including girls, to run wild in the streets in an orgy of smashing windows, robbing and setting fire to shops, overturning and burning motor-cars, attacking policemen, and stabbing and shooting indiscriminately. Prompt action by Mr La Guardia and the police prevented the development of race riots similar to the recent Detroit disturbances. However, both the riots had similar explosive backgrounds —the rapid growth and overcrowding of the negro districts in recent years, alleged anti-negro discrimination in the army, navy, and war industries, demands for economic and social equality, and the rise of negro and radical agitators preying on these conditions.

Arthur Krock, writing in the “New York Times,” says that the seeds of race riots abound in the civic soils throughout the United States, as well as in Harlem, and the condition is deeply important, specially in war time. It is unquestionable that the disorders arc the outward signs of an inward sociological and economic sickness in the United States, requiring the wisest postwar solution.