Busting RAM

Through the small hours, the grand jury chambers of New York City's Queens County courthouse swarmed with police officers and district attorney's men. Then, when search warrants had been signed, teams of detectives organized, and watches synchronized, 150 cops fanned out in 15 different directions, heading for silent houses in Queens and other parts of New York City and Long Island. Minutes after sunrise, the squads simultaneously rapped on 15 doors and arrested a surprisingly respectable group of 16 Negro citizens. Among them were Assistant Junior High School Principal Herman Ferguson, 47, Brooklyn Schoolteacher Ursula West, 28, and Michelle Kaurouma, 24, the attractive wife of a French Guinean student. At almost the same time in Philadelphia, police arrested a 17th suspect.

Police said that all 17 were members of a small group of Negro terrorists calling themselves the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the same organization that, billing itself as the Black Liberation Front, had cooked up a cabal two years ago to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument and the Liberty Bell. This time, according to police, under the cover title of the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol Club, RAM members were drawing up a plot to assassinate N.A.A.C.P. Executive Director Roy Wilkins, Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young Jr. and at least three other moderate Negro leaders. The apparent idea was to blame the killings on whites and inspire nationwide racial uprisings. The only hitch in RAM's secret plans was that New York City police had been chronicling its activities for two years and had apparently infiltrated a Negro rookie cop into the group. Throughout the U.S., according to the FBI, the organization has an active membership of about 50.

Last week, alerted that RAM was about to start the terror, the cops moved. Along with the prisoners, they seized more than 30 weapons, including a machine gun and ten rifles. They also found portraits of Chairman Mao, tracts on Communist revolutionary strategy and Red Chinese flags.

Only slightly unsettled by the plot, Roy Wilkins remarked: "All of us in this movement are accustomed to threats. We recognize that this is an occupational hazard. This is the first time an alleged threat has been reported from a Negro group."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.