Click on the link to read the entire Washington Post article. (Thanks to Bloomingdame for directing me to this article.)
I had no idea that there was any looting of businesses in Bloomingdale.
On April 4, 1968, the country was still reeling from racial tensions that had sparked deadly riots the year before in Detroit and Newark. But the capital city was said to be special. Some whites called it “the colored man’s paradise.” For thousands of blacks, there was a darker side to paradise, one where humiliation, poverty, segregation and discrimination had accumulated for a century.
Then, shortly after 8 p.m., word reached the District that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been slain in Memphis. His assassination ignited an explosion of rioting, looting and burning that stunned Washington and would leave many neighborhoods in ruins for 30 years.
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See the map of Bloomingdale below. The red circles represent declassified Secret Service reports.
You can read the report descriptions below the map.
2 comments:
Pictures of the damage are included in the Bloomingdale Village Center timeline. http://www.bloomingdalecivicassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/Bloomingdale-History-Timeline-3-bleeds_update-1.pdf
(I believe Commissioner Holiday requested funds from ANC5E to print more copies of this booklet, but was turned down.)
This is very interesting. Why were these in Secret Service reports and not just local police records?
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