Race Riots

An all-white jury was seated Thursday in the trial of three white men charged with murder in the shooting death of a young black woman during York's 1969 race riots. The jurors were selected from within York County, which is about 93% white. The city of York, about 85 miles west of Philadelphia, is about 25% black. Former Mayor Charlie Robertson is among those on trial.

TULSA, Okla. - In the wake of what locals are calling the Good Friday Shootings, dozens of worried residents from Tulsa's mostly black north side attended an NAACP meeting in the heart of their troubled neighborhood for some truth-telling. Yes, they were relieved that two men had been arrested in the shootings that left three African Americans dead and two wounded. They were pleased that the glare of the national spotlight was forcing local officials to work with black leaders.

Contradicting police reports, a black man who allegedly threatened white gang members hours before a black woman was killed during race riots in York testified he was not driving a car similar to the one in which she was killed. James Spells Jr. was testifying in the trial of former Mayor Charlie Robertson and two other white men charged in the death of Lillie Belle Allen, who died in a hail of gunfire July 21, 1969, at the hands of a white mob.

As a white kid growing up in Tulsa three decades ago, Brian Haas never heard about the 1921 race riot that obliterated Greenwood, a neighborhood that rode the Oklahoma oil boom to become the wealthiest African American community in the United States. That's not surprising. With information about the pogrom actively suppressed until the late 1990s, most of his black peers didn't learn about it either. What's unusual is that Haas' band, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, recently released "Race Riot Suite" (The Royal Potato Family)

Bracing for more race riots, authorities at the Pitchess Detention Center on Thursday took the unusual step of segregating inmates after three days of brawling between Latino and African American inmates. Chaplains moved cell to cell, squads of jail guards patrolled the halls, and many black inmates were removed from group dormitories and put in their own facility--something deputies have historically resisted doing, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Cmdr. Steve Day.

In this hardscrabble former mill town, they were sweeping broken glass and piling heaps of shattered bricks Monday, cleaning up after Britain's worst outbreak of racial violence in years. Harder to rebuild, community leaders say, will be the harmony they insist that Oldham--a onetime textile center of about 220,000 people on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Manchester--once enjoyed.

A jury began deliberating in the murder case against two black men in the slaying of a white police officer during race riots that rocked York in 1969. Stephen Freeland, 51, is accused of firing the bullet that pierced an armored police truck and felled rookie officer Henry Schaad. Leon Wright, 54, is accused of being among a group of black men who fired at the truck.

Former York Mayor Charlie Robertson, 68, and two other men declined to testify in their defense in a murder trial for the 1969 slaying of a young black woman during race riots. The all-white jury will base its decision on the testimony of more than 80 witnesses. The jurors are expected to get the case before the end of the day Thursday. The men are charged in the murder of Lillie Belle Allen, who was visiting York when race riots broke out in July 1969.

Two white men convicted in the fatal shooting of a young black woman during the city's 1969 race riots were sentenced Wednesday to more than four years in prison. Robert Messersmith, convicted of firing the bullet that killed 27-year-old Lillie Belle Allen, gave a 15-minute statement in which he blamed the killing on a man who committed suicide two years ago. "Why didn't you tell that before?" Allen's daughter screamed at him.

The shattered windows of the Live and Let Live pub have been boarded up. The burned-out automobile carcasses and police barricades have been removed since Britain's worst race riots in decades broke out last weekend. But the rage that fueled two nights of pitched street battles between police officers and Pakistani and Bangladeshi youths is still simmering. The wounds inflicted on all sectors of this deeply segregated town on the outskirts of Manchester are open. "We are a part of this country.

The Rev. Al Sharpton has threatened to sue conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for writing in a column that the civil rights leader had played a role in two New York race riots. In a column Saturday in the Wall Street Journal about his derailed bid to become part-owner of the St. Louis Rams, Limbaugh accused Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson of making comments that helped get him booted from a group that was trying to buy the NFL team. Limbaugh derided Sharpton as having played "a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot" and the "1995 Freddie's Fashion Mart riot."

AS YOU read St. Louis journalist Harper Barnes' new history, "Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement," it's hard not to zero in on the cold reality that this is a single nation of multiple histories. And some of them are not pretty. Barnes' book centers on a race riot in East St. Louis, Ill., on July 2 and 3, 1917, that killed at least 48 men, women and children, 39 of them black, and destroyed a large swath of mostly black neighborhoods across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.

Re "In L.A., race kills," Opinion, June 12 Kudos to Sheriff Lee Baca. They say that the first step to curing a problem is to admit that there is a problem. When will the mayor and police chief of Los Angeles wake up and smell the coffee? I think back to the numerous senseless murders of young men and women in the last year -- the athlete killed in L.A., the shootings of innocent people stopped at a light in Torrance or standing at a hamburger stand in L.A. And I recall Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton responding to the media and saying it was gang violence, not racially motivated violence.

Re "Forgive and remember," Opinion, April 29 When the race riots hit Los Angeles 15 years ago, I was an Asian American youth growing up 150 miles north of the epicenter. Just like many of my classmates, I was oblivious to the root cause of this uprising. As I came of age, I learned that the tension brought by Korean immigrants moving into neighborhoods fueled the anger of black youths who felt pinned both by the police and a long-term economic recession. This is the very point that Kyeyoung Park and Thomas Burgess are trying to obliterate in their article.

In rioting triggered by racial tensions, more than 2,000 inmates went on a four-hour rampage Saturday at a maximum-security jail in Castaic, leaving one prisoner dead and nearly 50 others injured. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies from throughout the area poured into the North County Correctional Facility, and authorities fired tear gas and pepper balls into dormitories before order was restored.

The children and sisters of a black woman who was killed during race riots in York 36 years ago will share in a $2-million settlement, city officials announced. The deal would settle the lawsuit that Lillie Belle Allen's family filed against the city and five former police officers, one of whom was more recently the city's mayor.

At 92, Robert Fairchild is losing his hearing, but he can still make out the distant shouts of angry white men firing guns late into the night 75 years ago. His eyes are not what they used to be, but he has no trouble seeing the dense, gray smoke swallowing his neighbors' houses as he walked home from a graduation rehearsal, a frightened boy of 17. His has been a life of middle-class comfort, a good job working for the city, a warm family life.

A dwindling number of race-riot survivors -- some more than 100 years old -- will finally have a chance to make their case for reparations, eight decades after a white mob tore into a thriving black neighborhood, leaving as many as 300 people dead.

Playwrights and pop singers -- from Luis Valdez ("Zoot Suit") to the Cherry Poppin' Daddies ("Zoot Suit Riot") -- have elevated the 1942 slaying known as the Sleepy Lagoon murder and the so-called Zoot Suit Riot of 1943 to mythic status in the popular culture.