3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

think in terms of armed conflict."~ Furthermore, the self-defeating nature of violent
revolution convinced many exponents of its fallacy. It was widely believed by many
whites that black revolutionaries were engaged in playing a game, or acting out a fantasy,
and that they rcpr+esented little danger to the community .
Whatever misgivings whites had about the earnestness of black revolutionaries
vanished on the evening of July 23, 1968, when shooting erupted in the Glenville area of
Cleveland's predominately black cast side . Before the evening had ended, seven people
were dead and fifteen wounded; three of the dead and eleven of those injured were police
officers . in the next five days after the shooting, sixty businesses were destroyed or
damaged by looting and arson . Property damage exceeded one million dollars .
Cleveland had been the first major American city to elect a black mayor, Carl B .
Stokes . Personifying Black Power, Stokes symbolized a new brad of civil rights leaders,
taking the helm of public service . Plagued with the characteristically urban problems of
choked thoroughfares, insufficient public transportation, crime, racial strife, poverty,
inadequate housing, and comrpt politics, Cleveland was ripe for a leader sensitive to
these issues .
Involved in the shooting were Fred (Ahmed) Evens and from fifteen to twenty of
his group, the Black Nationalists of New Libya . Evens, like Robert Williams, was a
soldier: a decorated Korean War veteran and two-hitch volunteer . Policemen
characterized the incident as a "planned ambush" while black Clevelanders saw it as a
classic example of police brutality . It came to light that Evens had received funds from a
Major, A Panther is a Black Cat , 31-32.
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