The Augusta Courier

Hundreds of Negroes, Whites Fight in Pennsylvania Towns

Bloody Race Riots Bring Chaos on Memorial Day Near Philadelphia

The Northern cities are still paying a terrible price for their experiments in trying to mix the white and Negro races.

And now, the city of brotherly love is being paid for its folly. Philadelphia is the scene of the latest race riots.

Philadelphia had two race riots on Memorial Day.

One took place at a picnic park thirty miles North of Philadelphia. The second occurred on an excursion boat sailing down the Delaware River below Philadelphia.

Many Persons Injured

More than forty persons were injured and some of them seriously.

The first occurred when 372 Negroes went by special train from Philadelphia to Forest Park near the town of Chalfont, Pennsylvania, on a picnic. When they got there, they found fifteen thousand white picnickers already there from the Philadelphia area.

As soon as they arrived, the riot began and more than five hundred persons were engaged in the riot.

The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin said that within a few moments the park was converted into a site of terror as some five hundred persons swung baseball bats and tire irons and hurled beer bottles and stones.

Women and Children

Women and children screamed and ran for shelter.

The police at Chalfont were unable to halt the rioting. Reinforcements were called in from the state police and from surrounding communities.

The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin further said:

"The rioters overflowed the park grounds. Scattered skirmishes were reported as far as half a mile from the park . . . the rioters grabbed anything that could be used for a weapon. Many swung baseball bats. Others threw beer bottles or broke them and swung them as weapons. Some hurled rocks . . .

Bottles, Stones Used

"Members of the sorority party had made their way to the train. Bottles and stones flew between the coaches and the picnic grounds. Some 40 windows in the first two cars were broken. Window shades were ripped."

Some fifty miles down the Delaware River, two thousand passengers were aboard an excursion vessel named State of Pennsylvania.

They were on a cruise to an amusement park at Pennsville, New Jersey.

The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin said that the entire two thousand people "were terrorized during the entire thirty-mile trip by gangs of white and Negro youths fighting with their fists, knives and beer can openers."

Knock-Down-Drag-Out

The Philadelphia Inquirer had this to say:

"Wielding chairs, ropes and chains ripped from the ship's equipment, the rioters at one point slugged it out on the craft's three decks The crew was forced to turn high-pressure fire hoses on the struggling mass of men. Many non-combatants were drenched or injured as they struggled in vain to escape the furious battles.

"Order was restored after some 25 State and Pennsville police wielding night sticks boarded the ship at Pennsville . Police quoted Capt. Edward Savarin, commander of the excursion boat, as saying: 'It was the worst fight' he had seen in 45 years.

2)

The people of Philadelphia cannot understand why violence suddenly erupts when Negroes and whites in large numbers are thrown together.

They cannot understand why there exists such a feeling of hatred between the races.

Northern Whites Rebel

They seem to think that the white people ought to be willing to take the Negroes in their community and to mix with them socially, go to school with them and marry them without any trouble and any argument.

Philadelphia has a Commission on Human Relations and it has been trying to sell the white people on the idea of accepting the Negroes as neighbors and mixing with them.

However, the commission today admits that it is still impossible to sell Northern whites on the idea of living next door to Negroes.

Send Problems North

That's where the trouble comes.

The South has had to struggle with the Negro problem all of these years and have received nothing for their efforts except criticism from the North.

Now the South is shipping its problem to Philadelphia, New York, Detroit and the other big cities and our former critics are now beginning to get a taste of the problem with which we have been confronted.

However, in the South, we have been able to devise a pattern of living whereby whites and Negroes can live side by side in the same community in a state of peace and harmony and without race riots.

Same Old Story

But it is different in Philadelphia, New York and the other Northern cities.

It is the same old story everywhere— the Negroes are moving into the downtown areas and spreading out. As they crowd into the white neighborhoods, the white people resent it. The white people in these neighborhoods are confronted with two alternatives:

1. They can sell their homes and move to the suburbs, or,

2. They can stand and fight.

Northern Cities

Heretofore, in most of the Northern cities as the Negroes move into a white neighborhood, the whites panic and sell their homes and move to another neighborhood where there are no Negroes.

But every now and then there comes about a situation where a neighborhood is not able to move and they stand and fight. This they did in the South Deering area of Chicago.

Then, even though the whites flee to other areas, when they hit the public parks and the public schools where they are forcibly mixed by the police law of those cities. conflict after conflict has arisen.

Bitterness Exposed

These explosions in Philadelphia have erupted suddenly and have exposed the bitterness and the hatred that exists between the two races on account of the conditions under which they must live.

Some of these days the white people in these Northern cities will learn the truth and that is that it is impossible to mix the Negroes and whites without race riots, without murder, beatings, rapes and stabbings.

In the meantime, the white people of the Northern cities are paying a terrible price for the sociological experiments of their political leaders.