Racial violence is often set off by the most superficial of trip wires: an isolated arrest, a rumor of police brutality, the temperature climbing above 100°. But rarely has a racial conflict seemed quite so random and inexplicable as the sudden savagery last week in Baton Rouge, where blacks clashed with police in a battle that left two policemen and two blacks dead and another 31 people injured.
Baton Rouge (pop. 166,000), the capital of Louisiana, is an anomaly, a throwback to an earlier South in which black complaints were bitter but rarely voiced. Though blacks are 28% of the population, they account for only 12% of the police force. It is an unspoken rule that the black cops do not arrest whites. Nor do the city's blacks often demonstrate or make demands.
Trouble began on New Year's Day, when 20 black men and women checked into a Baton Rouge motel. City police soon began receiving complaints from local merchants that the group was vigorously canvassing their neighborhoods asking for contributions. Some witnesses say they represented themselves as a young artists group, while others allege that they handed out Black Muslim literature. The group also announced a street rally for early last week, to be followed by a march to city hall.
Though Baton Rouge Mayor Woodrow W. Dumas knew of the planned demonstration, there were no police at the rally, which attracted about 200 people, many of them merely curious. Several white newsmen were present; one, Robert Johnson, may have suffered irreparable brain damage when some in the crowd attacked him for no apparent reason.
White Devil. When the first police did arrive, there followed an inane conversation between a sheriff's deputy, Major Marion M. Binning, and a tall, slender man, later identified as Samuel Upton, whom Binning took to be in charge. "Are you the spokesman for the white, Caucasian race?" asked Upton. "No." "Who is?" "I don't know." "Is he on his way?" "I guess he is." "We'll wait for him."
More police appeared and took up positions at either end of the street, where the demonstrators had parked three cars so as to block the intersections. A deputy approached Upton and his men—all dressed in somber, single-breasted suits and some wearing crimson bow ties—who were now lined up across one end of the street, and requested that the cars be moved. "You white devil," Upton shouted, "either you or I are going to die today!" Another cop moved to penetrate the line of blacks. Someone grabbed him. There was a scuffle, and then shots.
No one has yet established who fired first or why. It is equally unclear whether the blacks were armed; the police have recovered no weapons other than their own. Some police admit shooting at the blacks, and one theory is that the two officers who were killed were shot accidentally by fellow cops. More likely, once the fighting started some of Upton's men grabbed guns from the police, then turned the weapons on them. Both dead policemen, Deputy Ralph Hancock and Deputy DeWayne Wilder, were shot with police guns; so were Upton and Thomas Davis, who were also killed. Of the 31 injured, 14 were police. Twelve blacks were also hurt, several by angry, club-wielding police searching for Upton's friends—all but three of whom have been captured.