IN its sweep and immediacy, the shock wave of looting, arson and outrage that swept the nation's black ghettos after Martin Luther King's murder exceeded anything in the American experience. By week's end, 168 towns and cities had echoed to the crash of brick through window glass, the crackle of the incendiary's witch's torch, the scream of sirens and the anvil chorus of looters. Yet one sound was remarkable in its very diminuendo. The fierce fusillades of gunfire that exacerbated the disorders of years past were heard only rarely last week. And considering the specter of anarchy looming over every U.S. city, the nation weathered its April agony with remarkable aplomb.
All the same, TIME correspondents from Albany, Ga., to Youngstown, Ohio, from Pompano Beach, Fla., to Pittsburg, Calif., compiled a depressing dossier of destruction: 5,117 fires, 1,928 homes and shops wrecked or ransacked, 23,987 arrests throughout the nation, and $39,544,205 in damage to property (see BUSINESS).* In all, 72,800 Army and National Guard troops were called to duty. Yet riot-connected deaths totaled only 43—no more than in Detroit alone last summer.
Goods v. Lives. The low "kill-rate," to borrow an unhappy term from the other war, was due in large measure to lessons learned from three years of urban upheaval. Heeding the advice of the Kerner riot-commission report, which warned that "the use of excessive force—even the inappropriate display of weapons—may be inflammatory and lead to worse disorder," lawmen in most cities refrained from gunplay, and magistrates quickly processed those arrested for rioting, setting low bail as the commission suggested. There were few black snipers on the rooftops; on the streets, police and National Guardsmen mostly kept their weapons holstered or unloaded except in cases of extreme provocation. "It seems to me a high-policy decision was made to trade goods and appliances for human lives," remarked Negro Psychologist Kenneth Clark. "Police have shown remarkable restraint," added former CORE Leader James Farmer.
That restraint may have resulted in part from the white man's inchoate sense of guilt over King's death. It was abetted by the carnival air that pervaded the looting mobs ("Hell, I can't kill a kid running away with two sports coats," said a Chicago cop) and the unprecedented cooperation of many black leaders—moderate and militant—in helping police to pacify angry slum dwellers.