Sunday Herald (Sydney, NSW : 1949 - 1953), Sunday 15 July 1951, page 1


Bayonets In Chicago

Race Rioting

From Our Staff Correspondent

CHICAGO, July 14.-Police wounded five civilians with bayonets during an anti-Negro riot which raged through the night till dawn yesterday in Cicero, a Chicago suburb.

Using fixed bayonets, rifle butts, and tear gas, they finally cleared a 300-yard perimeter around an apart-ment block which the riot-ers tried to wreck.

It was the worst of a series of demonstrations in Cicero, an exclusively white suburb, since a Negro bus driver tried to move into a flat in this block a week ago.

The white mob, which began gathering at dusk,

tossed firebrands into the windows and on to the roof of the building from which twenty-one families,

had already fled.

They chopped woodwork and plaster, ripped out bathtubs, sinks, radiators, and toilets, broke down

doors, smashed windows, and set fires

Firemen who rushed to the building were bom-barded with bricks and stones.

About 6,000 whites, mainly teenagers, joined the rioting

Yesterday the streets were

nearly quiet, but a police

official warned: "There'll be

more hoodlumism unless we ican keep this perimeter clear."

Militiamen put up barbed wire barricades. State Gov-ernor Adlai Stevenson, of Illinois, threatened to use "a full militia division" if necessary to keep order.

Harvey E. Clark, the Negro, left his flat with his

wife and two small children before the violence began.

After another riot earlier this week, Sheriff John Babb charged the entire Chicago police force with "turning their backs on the mob," and threatened to prosecute every policeman.

Clark said yesterday that he was determined to move into his flat as soon as "pre-sent difficulties are solved."