Bleeding Kansas

Violence is no stranger to Lawrence, a community of 40,000 in Kansas' eastern-border country. A century ago, m the bitter Border War over whether Kansas and Nebraska would be slave or free, guerrilla bands moved back and forth across the Kansas-Missouri line, pillaging at will.*

Lawrence, now the home of the University of Kansas, was once more churning with violence last week. Flames lit the sky over the town, gunshots crackled in the night air. Police and National Guardsmen patrolled the streets, and nervous citizens, fearful of the new outlaws in their midst, could only watch and wonder why "Bleeding Kansas" was being bled once again.

Fire Bombs. The first indication that not even the conservative University of Kansas could escape the violence that has wracked other U.S. college campuses came early this month. Arsonists attempted to fire Haworth Hall, an abandoned classroom building, and threw a bomb, which failed to explode, into a bank near the university. A week later a bomb-set fire gutted a Lawrence furniture store.

Last week a blaze believed to be set by arsonists swept through the student union building, causing $2,000,000 in damages despite the efforts of students who helped firemen carry out art objects and furnishings. Nor did the terrorists confine their activities to arson. Snipers shot at firemen who came to fight a fire in an off-campus building, drilled three holes in a fire engine.

Trouble also erupted at Lawrence High School. Earlier in the month, black students aided by members of the university's Black Student Union seized administrative offices. Among their demands were the election of two black cheerleaders, hiring of more black teachers and teachers' aides, selection of a black homecoming queen and the addition of black studies courses. Last week their fellow students voted 924 to 167 not to accept the blacks' demand for cheerleaders, and resentment quickly boiled over into violence. About 150 black youths, some armed with clubs and chains, gathered in a park across the street from the school, then rushed the building, breaking 21 windows and nearly overwhelming security guards before police reinforcements drove them back with Mace and tear gas.

No Explanations. State officials moved quickly to restore order. Kansas Governor Robert Docking declared a "state of public emergency" and dispatched 242 National Guardsmen and 25 state troopers to help fatigued local police enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Police arrested 68 students and youths, three of them for possession of an incendiary device. Some 350 white businessmen formed an organization for better law enforcement to protect their property.

Neither school nor law-enforcement officials were able to explain the sudden outbreak of violence. Kansas has had no recent history of radical activity; blacks are so outnumbered that there has been little serious racial trouble. University Chancellor Laurence Chalmers, 42, praised the students who had helped fight campus fires and denied that there was any racial organization behind the disorder. Instead, he blamed the firebombings on "pyromaniacs," and attributed the high school disturbances to a small group of "sick if not insane people who use the cover of student unrest and political tension in the high school to destroy."

Lawrence was not the only Kansas community to bleed in the new outbreak of violence. Bombings rocked Topeka and Wichita and terrorized the Kansas City area. The ordeal began early this month when a bomb was thrown into the home of Real-Estate Man Miller Nichols, causing damage but no injuries, and continued as bombs damaged a high school, a church and the police academy in Kansas City, Mo. Last week officials in both Kansas City, Kans., and Kansas City, Mo., worked together to keep order in the two cities. They activated the Metro Squad, which includes 40 law-enforcement officers from seven neighboring counties, and Missouri put 168 state troopers into the streets to look for would-be bombers. Kansas sent in its state troopers and its highly rated Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Despite the offer of a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the bombers, law-enforcement officials still have no idea who is responsible for the outrages.

* A proslave band sacked free-soil Lawrence in 1856; Abolitionist John Brown responded by massacring five alleged slave owners at nearby Osawatomie a few days later. In 1863, an outlaw band, led by the notorious William Clarke Quantrill, descended on the town like Attila's Huns. Before they left, they had burned most of the town and murdered 142 of its citizens.

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