VI. PLAINFIELD

New Jersey's worst violence outside of Newark was expe'rienced by Plainfield, a pleasant, tree-shaded city of 45,000. A "bedroom community," more than a third of whose residents work outside the city, Plainfield had had relatively few Negroes until 1950. By 1967 the Negro population had risen to an estimated 30 percent of the total. As in Englewood. there was a division between the Negro middle class, which lived in the East side "gilded ghetto," and the unskilled, unemployed and underemployed poor on the West side. -

Geared to the needs of a suburban middle class, the part-"time and fragmented city government had failed to realize the -change in character which the city had undergone, and was unprepared to cope with the problems of a growing disadvantaged population. There was no full-time administrator or city manager. Boards, with independent jurisdiction over such areas as education, welfare and health, were appointed by the part-‘time mayor, whose own position was largely honorary.

Accustomed to viewing politics as a gentleman's pastime, city officials were startled and upset by the intensity with which demands issued from the ghetto. Usually suCh demands were met obliquely, rather than head-on.

In the summer of 1966, trouble was narrowly averted over the issue , of a swimming pool for Negro youngsters. In the summer of 1967, instead of having built the pool, the city began busing the children to the county pool a half-hour's ride distant. The fare was 25 cents per person, and the children had to provide their own lunch, a considerable strain on a frequent basis for a poor family with several children.

The bus operated only on three days in mid-week. On week..-ends the county pool was too crowded to accommodate children from the Plainfield ghetto.

Pressure increased upon the school system to adapt itself to the changing social and ethnic backgrounds of its pupils. There were strikes and boycotts. The track system created de facto segregation within a supposedly integrated schobl system. Most of the youngsters from white middle-class districts were in the higher track, most from the Negro poverty areas in the lower. Relations were strained between some white teachers and Negro pupils. Two-thirds of school dropouts were estimated to be Negro.

In February 1967 the NAACP, out of a growing sense of frustration with the municipal government, tacked a list of 19 demands and complaints to the door of the city hall. Most dealt with discrimination in housing, employment and in the public schools. By summer, the city's common council had not responded. Although two of the 11 council members were 'Negro, both represented the East side ghetto. The poverty area was represented by two white women, one of whom had been appointed by the council after the elected representative, a Negro, had moved away.

Relations between the police and the Negro community, tenuous at best, had been further troubled the week prior to the Newark outbreak. After being handcuffed during ajoutinit arrest in a housing project a woman had fallen down a flight of . stairs. The officer said she had slipped. Negro residents , claimed he had pushed her.

When a delegation went to city hall to file a complaint, they were told by the city clerk that he was not empowered to 'accept it. Believing that they were being given the run-around, the delegation, angry and frustrated, departed.

On Friday evening, July 14, the same police officer was moonlighting as a private guard at a diner frequented by Negro youths. He was, reportedly, number two on the Negro coin-. munity's "ten most-wanted" list of unpopular police officers.

(The list was colorblind. Although out of 82 officers on the force only five were Negro, two of the 10 on the "most-wanted" list were Negro. The two officers most respected In the Negro eommouity were white)

Although Most Of the youths at the diner were of high school age, one, in his mid twenties, had a reputation as a bully. Sometime before 10 p.m., as a result of an argument, he hit a 16-year-old boy and split open his face. As the boy Tay bleeding on the asphalt his friends rushed to the police 'officer and demanded that he call an ambulance and arrest the &fender. Instead, the officer walked over to the boy, looked at him, and reportedly said: "Why don't you just go home and wash up?" He refused to make an arrest.

The youngsters were incensed. They believed that, had the two participants in the incident been white, the older youth , would have been arrested, the younger taken to the hospital Omediately. '

On the way to the housing project where most of them lived, the youths traversed four blocks of the city's business district. As they walked, they smashed three or four windows. An observer interpreted their behavior as a reaction to the-incident at the diner, in effect challenging the police officer: "If you won't do anything about that, then let's see you do something about this!"

On one of the quiet city streets two young Negroes, D. H. and L. C., had been neighbors. D. H. had graduated from high school, attended Fairleigh Dickinson University and, after receiving a degree in psychology, had obtained a job as a reporter on the Plainfield Courier-News.

L. C. had dropped out of high school, become a worker in a chemical plant, and, although still in his twenties, had married and fathered seven children. A man with a strong sense of family, he liked sports and played in the local baseball league. Active in civil rights, he had, like the civil rights organizations, over the years, become more militant. For a period of time he had been a Muslim.

The outbreak of vandalism aroused concern among the police. Shortly after midnight, in an attempt to decrease tensions, D. H. and the two Negro councilmen met with the youths in the housing project. The focal point of the youths' bitterness was the attitude of the ploice—until 1966 police had used the word "nigger" over the police radio and one officer had worn a Confederate belt buckle and had flown a Confederate pennant on his car. Their complaints, however, ranged over local and national issues. There was an overriding cynicism and disbelief that government would, of its own accord, make meaningful changes to improve the lot of the lower class Negro. There was an overriding belief that there were two sets of policies by the people in power, whether law enforcement officers,newspaper editors, government officials: one for white; and one for black.

There was little confidence that the two councilmen could exercise any influence.' One youth said "You came down here, last year We were throwing stones at some passing cars, and You said that this was not the way to do it, You got us to talk with the man. We talked to him. and we talked with him all year long We ain't got nothing yet!" '

However, on the promise that meetings would be 'arranged with the editor of the newspaper and with the mayor tater that same day, the youths agreed to disperse.

At the first of these meetings the youths were, apparently satisfied by the explanation that the newspaper's coverage was not deliberately discriminatory. The meeting with the mayor, however, proceeded badly. Negroes present felt that the mayor was complacent and apathetic, and that they were simply' being given the usual lip service, from which nothing would develop.

The mayor, on the other hand, told Commission investigators that he recognized that, "Citizens are frustrated by the political organization of the city," because he, himself, has no real power and "each of the councilmen says that he is just one of the 11 and therefore can't do anything."

After approximately two hours, a dozen of the youths walked out, indicating an impasse and signalling the breakup of the meeting. Shortly thereafter window smashing began. A Molotov cocktail was set afire in a tree. One fire engine, in which a white and Negro fireman were sitting side by side; had a Molotov cocktail thrown at it. The white fireman was burned.

As window smashing continued, liquor stores and taverns were especially hard hit. Some of the youths believed that. there. was an excess concentration of bars in the Negro sec-lion,' and that these were an unhealthy influence in the cotn,, „,siunity.

Because the police department had mobilized its full force, the situation, although serious, never appeared to get out of hand. Officers made many arrests. The chief of the fire department told Commission investigators that it was his conclusion that "individuals making fire bombs did not know what they weredoing, or they could have burned the city."    ,

At 3 o'clock Sunday morning a heavy rain began, scatter:, ing whatever groups remained on the streets.    -

In the morning police made no effort to cordon off the 'area. As white sightseers and churchgoers drove by the housing project there was sporadic rock throwing During the early afternoon such incidents increased.

Al the housing project, a Meeting Was convened by 'LC: to draw' up a formal petition of grievances. As the youths gatha. erect it became aPpOent that some of them had been drinking -A few kept drifting away from the parking lot where the
meeting- was being held to throw rocks at passing cars. 'It , wa,s decided to move the meeting to a county park several. blocks away.

Between 150 and 200 persons, including almost all of the rock throwers, piled into a caravan of cars and headed for ` the perk. At approximately 3:30 p.m. the Chief of the Union County Park Police arrived to find the group being addressed by David Sullivan, Executive Director of the Human Relations Commission. He "informed Mr. Sullivan he was in violation of our park ordinance and to disperse the group."

Sullivan and L.C. attempted to explain that they were in the process of drawing up a list of grievances, but the chief temained adamant. They could not meet in the park without a permit, and they did not have a permit.

After permitting the group 10 to 15 minutes grace, the chief decided to disperse them. "Their mood was very excitable," he reported, and "in my estimation no one could appease , them so we moved them out without too much trouble. -They* left hi' a caravan of about 40 cars, horns blowing and yelling and headed south on West End Avenue to Plainfield."

Within the hour looting became widespread. Cars were overturned, a white man was snatched off a motorcycle, and the fire department stopped responding to alarms because the police were unable to provide protection. After having been op alert until midday, the Plainfield Police Department was caught unprepared. At 6 p.m. only 18 men were on the streets. •' Checkpoints were established at crucial intersections in an effort to isolate the area.

Officer John Gleason, together with two reserve- °Meer', had been posted at one of the intersections, three blocks from the housing project. Gleason was a veteran officer, the son'of a former lieutenant on the police department. Shortly after, 8 p.m. two white youths, chased by a 22-year-old Negro, Bobby Williams, came running from the direction of the ghetto toward Gleason's post.

As he came in sight of the police officers, Williams stopped. ' Accounts vary of what happened next, or why Officer Gleason; took the action he did. What is known is that when D. H. the newspaper reporter caught sight of him a minute or 2 two later, Officer Gleason was two blocks from his post. Striding after Williams directly into the ghetto area, Gleason already had passed one housing project. Small groups, were-. milling about. In D.H.'s words: "There was a kind of shock and amazement," to see the officer walking by himself So deep in the ghetto.

Suddenly there was a confrontation between Williams and Gleason. Some witnesses report Williams had a hammer in his hand. Others say he did not. When D.H., whose attention momentarily had been distracted, next saw Gleason he had drawn his gun and was firing at Williams. As Williams, critically injured, fell to the ground Gleason turned and ran back toward his post.

Negro youths chased him. Gleason stumbled, regained his balance, then had his feet knocked out from under him. A score of youths began to beat him and kick him. Some residents of the apartment house attempted to intervene, but they were brushed aside. D. H. believes that, under the circumstances and in the atmosphere that prevailed at that moment, any police officer, black or white, would have been killed. -

After they had beaten Gleason to death, the youths took D.H.'s camera from him and smashed it.

Fear swept over the ghetto. Many residents—both lawless and law-abiding--were convinced, on the basis of what had occurred in Newark, that law enforcement officers, bent on vengeance, would come into the ghetto shooting.

People began actively to prepare to defend themselves. There was no lack of weapons. Forty-six carbines were stolen from a nearby arms manufacturing plant and passed out in the street by a young Negro, a former newspaper boy. Most of the weapons fell into the hands of youths, who began firing them wildly. A fire station was peppered with shots.

Law enforcement officers continued their cordon about the area, but made no attempt to enter it except, occasionally, to rescue someone. National Guardsmen arrived shortly after midnight. Their armored personnel carriers were used to carry troops to the fire station, which had been besieged for five hours. During this period only one fire had been reported in the city.

Reports of sniper firing, wild shooting, and general chaos continued until the early morning hours.

By daylight Monday, New Jersey state officials had begun to arrive. At a meeting in the early afternoon, it was agreed that to inject police into the ghetto would be to risk bloodshed; that, instead, law enforcement personnel should continue to retain their cordon.
All during the day various meetings took place between government officials and Negro representatives. Police were anxious to recover the carbines that had been stolen from the arms plant. Negroes wanted assurances against retaliation. In the afternoon, L.C., an official of the Human Relations Com' mission, and others drove through the area urging people to be calm and to refrain from violence.    -

At.8 p.m., the New Jersey attorney general, human relations. director, and commander of the state police, accompanied by the mayor, went to the housing project and spoke to 'several hundred Negroes. Some members of the crowd were hostile. Others were anxious to establish a dialogue. There were demands that officials give concrete evidence that they were prepared to deal with Negro grievances. Again, the meeting was inconclusive. The officials returned to City Hall.

At 9:15 p.m., L.C. rushed in claiming that—as a result of the failure to resolve any of the outstanding problems, and reports that people who had been arrested by the police were . eing beaten—violence was about to explode anew. The key . demand of the militant faction was that those who had been invested during the riot should be released. State officials de- - cided to arrange for the release on bail of 12 arrestees charged with minor violations. L.C., in turn, agreed to try to induce return of the stolen carbines by Wednesday noon.

As state officials were scanning the list of arrestees to determine which of them should be released, a message was _ brought to Colonel Kelly of the state police that general firing ' had broken out around the perimeter.

The report testified to the tension: an investigation disclosed : that one shot of unexplained origin had been heard. In response, security forces had shot out street lights, thus initiating the "general firing."

At 4:00 o'clock Tuesday morning, a dozen prisoners were' released from jail. Plainfield police officers considered this a sellout.

When, by noon on Wednesday, the stolen carbines had not been returned, the governor decided to authorize a mass search., At 2:00 p.m., a convoy of state police and National Guard, troops prepared to enter the area. In order to direct the search as to likely locations, a handful of Plainfield police officers Were spotted throughout the 28 vehicles of the convoy.

As the convoy prepared to depart, the state community • relations director, believing himself to be carrying out the decision of the governor not to permit Plainfield officers to participate in the search, ordered their removal from the vehi- cl ignite The basis for his order was that their participation might iognite a clash between them and the Negro citizens.    '

As the search for carbines in the community progressed; tension increased rapidly. According to witnesses and newspaper reports, some men in the search force left apartments in shambles.

The search was called off an hour and a half after it was begun. No stolen weapons were discovered. For the Plainfield police, the removal of the officers from the convoy had been a humiliating experience. A half hour after the conclusion of the search, in a meeting charged with emotion, the entire department threatened to resign unless the state community relations director left the city. He bowed to the demand.

On Friday, seven days after the first outbreak, the city began returning to normal.