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Never Here. The home of the prestigious Augusta National Golf Club, site of the Masters golf tournament, Augusta appears on the surface, at least, a comfortable, if not rich community. But behind the façade exists an impoverished and thoroughly discouraged inner core of poor blacks. More than two-thirds of the city's ghetto dwellers live on incomes of less than $3,000 a year, while a quarter of the black adults are rated as functional illiterates (less than five years' schooling). Blacks insist that their greatest problem is a lack of good job opportunities. Though four blacks sit on the 16-man city council, there are but five in white-collar municipal jobs. The situation in private industry is little better: educated blacks feel they are unable to get jobs and salaries commensurate with their abilities.
Augusta's whites are generally complacent and self-satisfied about race relations. "We've always had harmonious relations between the races," says Mayor Millard A. Beckum, who after the riots talked of "protecting the good image, the good name and good people of Augusta." Says Sydney Felt, a retired New York merchant: "I never thought this could happen here."
Maddox at War. Governor Maddox, on the other hand, seemed not the least bit surprised that the riot took place during his tenancy in the statehouse. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the opportunity to dash around the state making inflammatory speeches reminiscent of his ax-handle-wielding days. Early in the week he called the riot a "Communist conspiracy," but later attributed it to the Black Panthers as well. He told a cheering rally of 800 law-enforcement officers in Fort Valley, Ga., that he would fire any patrolman he saw who did not "floor" any abusive demonstrator. Said Maddox: "We're in a war at home. So when you're on the field of battle and someone shoots you down, on the way down—if you get a chance —you kill him, don't you?"
As long as the Guard units remain in place, there probably will not be any further major outbreaks in Augusta. Now must begin the difficult task of putting the broken city back together. In partial compliance with black demands, Mayor Beckum has freed 200 of the 390 who were arrested during the riot and agreed to meet with black leaders to explore means of creating additional avenues of black participation in city government. Black leaders, for their part, presented the city with a Georgia state flag to replace the one burned on Monday. Late in the week, autopsies revealed that all six dead men had been shot in the back by 00 shotgun pellets rather than pistol fire, and the Justice Department began an investigation into whether any of the men's civil rights had been violated.