AVENGING WHAT'S-HIS-NAME

IF Negro rioters demeaned the cause of nonviolence, that was not in most cases their intent. The majority of plunderers and burners in American cities last week were about as ideologically motivated as soldier ants. Many, to be sure, were venting the longstanding resentments of black Americans in a white society. But the Negro looters were predominantly driven by a combination of self-help and help-yourself. What of Martin Luther King? "His death just gave us an excuse," said Ronald Rudolph, 22, in Pittsburgh. "I never did dig the man much when he was alive." When a well-provisioned Harlem "liberator" was asked why he was stealing, he cried: "It's because they killed what's-his-name!" "You know why people loot?" explained one young rioter. "Because they ain't never, so long as they live, gonna have enough money to buy a color-television set. Man, I got big ambitions but not much will power."

First, in most cases, came the teenagers, already milling on the crowded curbs. Once windows began to shatter and the bolder youngsters reached through the shards to pluck out plunder, the party was on. Next came the followers, still mostly teen-agers and men in their twenties. New York City's deputy police commissioner Jacques Nevard estimated that 80% of his area's looters were under 21, fully half 16 or under.

For the most part, only the less adept or mobile were caught. Seeing police take a stance of calculated restraint, adults joined in the pillage. Often cops stood by without hindering looters. In New York City, lone patrolmen sometimes were ordered to ignore the plundering and avert traffic backups that could make riot scenes more perilous. In Pittsburgh, one eager bargain seeker stocked up a shopping cart at a looted supermarket, rolled it out into an alley, bumped into a cop and asked blandly: "Is this the way to the checkout counter?"

"Grab the Book"

Then came the scavengers, mostly women and older people picking up what they could. It was at this point, as stores were picked bare, that most of the firebombs flared and late-arriving looters tended to get arrested. Thus a Washington survey found that most looters who got bail were mature, jobholding family people, but it did not take into account the fact that three out of four of those arrested were juveniles, and that these were quickly released without charge.

If the uprisings were mostly spontaneous, some highly selective arson campaigns were apparently planned to destroy stores' credit records and give ghetto residents a financial reprieve. "Don't grab the groceries," one mother told her son, "grab the book." Many apparently also grabbed cash. Said Chicago's Cook County jail warden Winston Moore: "Never have I seen such rich prisoners." The average adult looter arrested in his territory, according to Moore, had $300 to $400 on his person, and even youngsters "had over $100 on them."

Some Negro leaders saw the rioting as an opportunity to force white store owners out of the ghetto. Such tactics only enraged most Negroes, many of whom lived above burned-out stores, as well as many others who could then find no place to buy food for their families. In Newark, Timothy Still, Negro president of the United Community Corporation, which helped dampen ghetto violence there, threatened: "We are going to take care of the arsonists ourselves, if we catch any. When we're through with them, we'll turn them over to the police. If any man burns those poor Negroes' homes down, I say goddam his soul to hell."

Caught in the Maelstrom

Once the maelstrom began to swirl along the streets, the burgeoning sense of black identity took hold of staid citizens, who once would have shown up merely for the spectacle. In Pittsburgh, Moses Carper, 35, the scholarly, bearded editor of a Negro neighborhood paper, declared: "When the first window shattered it was like a bell ringing. I was running in the streets, running from cops, running from my own fears. I had to know this involvement, and when it came, it was like a release."

The collective impulse to thievery was relieved in some cases by capitalistic opportunism. An English correspondent, cruising the throbbing Washington ghetto, found that his car was low on gas and that there were virtually no filling stations open. Finally, spotting one that was, he asked to have his tank filled. The Negro attendant accepted $4.80 for the gas plus a $2 tip, and when told by the thankful journalist that he would be back soon, replied: "I won't be here. I just saw this station empty and figured I'd make a little money." How much? "About $200 so far."

If youthful boredom and the hankering for free goods were the principal factors behind the looting, life returned to normal just as euphoria follows fever. Asked why Youngstown, Ohio, was simmering down, Negro teen-agers laughed: "We got social plans for the weekend, and we don't want a curfew ruining our fun."

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