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Carl Stokes, a Negro state legislator who last November came within 2,000 votes of unseating Locher, had an entirely different insight. "Ralph can't comprehend the problem," Stokes said. "He thinks that because he doesn't have his hand in the cash box he's doing a good job. My campaign was for the people in Hough a symbol of hope, a chance to get at least a fair shake. Now they riot because they have no hope and nothing to lose."
SPONGE & Jacks. To some extent, the same futility underlay a racial outburst in the East New York section of Brooklyn last week. The catalyst was a menacing group of white men called the Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything (SPONGE). Their goading picket line, set up in a neighborhood that has been traditionally explosive because of racial street-gang rivalries, was an irresistible target for Negro bystanders. Fighting broke out and scattered gunshots crackled through the area, killing an 11-year-old Negro boy as he crouched in terror on a street corner. Rooftop commandos hurled everything from garbage to tire jacks at police and passersby. In all, 22 people were hurt and 29 arrested before 1,500 riot-ready cops managed to calm things down.
The turmoil was not nearly so bad as it might have been; and for once New York—long considered one of the U.S.'s most problem-plagued cities—could attribute the trouble's swift suppression to some foresighted if only partly proved civic remedies. The frenzied Harlem riots of 1964 taught officials a frightening lesson. Negroes on the police force have been given better assignments. Mayor Lindsay recently appointed a seven-man review board—including two Negroes, a Puerto Rican, and two men active in civil rights groups—to handle the predominantly Negro complaints of police brutality. Beyond that, a costly poverty program, run by Negroes for Negroes, has offered a measure of hope to thousands of restive slum dwellers.
Mayor Lindsay himself, displaying the alertness and concern that brought him a victory over a tired Democratic machine last fall, was on the scene during much of the worst of the rioting. He took time to call on the grieving family of the boy who was killed, talked coolly with street-gang leaders and SPONGE officials. Unknown to most New Yorkers was the fact that the mayor has been making tours of the ghetto areas ever since his inauguration last January. Before last week's violence, he strode one evening among the crowds of East Harlem, played the bongo drums with a pickup front-stoop combo, was bear-hugged by a blind Negro, tried with unquenchable determination to tidy up the streets. Another day the mayor went into the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, plowed into an angry crowd that was clamoring menacingly for more schools, and wound up bobbing on men's shoulders above a cheering throng. Lindsay's tactics struck cynics as canny politicking. Undeniably, though, the mayor and top city officials were visible to their lowliest constituents and in touch with them.