In the mid-1970s in Louisville, Kentucky, a social upheaval gripped the city in response to the court-ordered desegregation of the Louisville Public Schools. Racist mobs pelted buses carrying black kids as they entered predominantly white neighborhoods.
For several nights in a row, crowds of racists built barricades on a major artery leading south out of the city, lit the barricades on fire, and fought police and firefighters who tried to put out the fires and open the highway. Louisville became a nationwide rallying point for groups opposed to school desegregation. Many of those groups, including neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, sent dozens, if not hundreds, of members to Louisville to bolster the movement attempting to overturn the court’s school desegregation order.
In this context, a group supporting school desegregation organized a debate on Louisville’s waterfront plaza. Anne Braden, one of the city's most prominent supporters of racial equality, was scheduled to represent the pro-busing view. A prominent elected official agreed to debate Braden.
Before the debate started, it soon became clear that the assembled audience was almost entirely anti-busing forces. These were not the polite middle-class types opposed to busing but rather hard-core racist activists, many of whom had probably been building barricades the night before. Several were carrying firearms. The group of busing supporters in attendance amounted to no more than a handful, and we were quickly identified as such by the racist crowd and surrounded.
The racists pushed me around a bit, and I made my way over to one of the few police officers on the scene, all of whom were white. When I approached the first officer, he gave me a dirty look and walked away. I headed to another cop, and he said, “Get away from me.” It was clear that this group of white cops had no intention of protecting us.
Braden was to speak first, but before she could talk, the crowd shouted her down and hurled one racist insult after another at her. The elected official tried to distinguish his views from the overt racist stance of the mob and, by doing so, raised tensions considerably.
The official enlisted an assistant to make a phone call, and soon, a police captain arrived on the scene. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, he first attempted to extract the official from the plaza, but the crowd prevented him from doing so. I noticed that the few white cops on hand had left the plaza.
The police captain radioed for assistance, and in a few minutes, I was surprised to see a group of about 25 cops arrive, outfitted with helmets and batons. Nearly all of these cops were black and were usually part of a motorcycle squad. I guess that Louisville’s white cops were so closely associated with the anti-busing forces that they could not be trusted under the circumstances.
The cops surrounded our small group and moved us away from the plaza towards Main Street, where we had three cars parked. The cops put the official into a police car and escorted the rest of us to our vehicles with the angry mob close on our heels.
With a police escort, we headed west on Broadway. We had expected the gang to lose us when we took off in the cars, but they also had some vehicles nearby and followed us. We watched them out our back windows as we drove down Broadway. I don’t know if the cops had planned this or decided at the last moment, but they kept heading west into the west end, the heart of Louisville’s black community.
Realizing our direction, the racist mob decided they didn’t want to fight this particular battle so far from their turf, and after following us for a few blocks, they turned left, headed south, and abandoned their prey. The occupants of our three cars let out a sigh of relief, and the officers in the police cruisers offered us a wave and left us in safety.
( I am frequently asked who the public official was at the debate. I think he was the state District Attorney).
Photograph from New York Times.
