Ballots and Bullets: Black Power Politics and Urban Guerrilla Warfare in 1968 Cleveland

On July 23, 1968, police in Cleveland battled with black nationalists in a night of terror that saw 6 people killed and at least 15 wounded. The gun battle touched off days of heavy rioting. The confrontation was surprising given that Cleveland had just elected Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of a major US city, who just four months earlier had kept peace in Cleveland the night that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Now his credibility and reputation lay in tatters; the leader of ...