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WARNING: Video included in tweet contains profane language.
An angry woman is being applauded after she was caught on camera slapping her son and ripping him out of Baltimore riots on Monday.

"That's my only son and at the end of the day I don't want him to be a Freddie Gray," Toya Graham told CBS News, referencing the 25-year-old man who had died while in police custody earlier in April.

WMAR-TV captured footage of the woman screaming at the young man, 16, dressed from head to toe in black, to "take the mask off" and telling him to "get over here" as she slaps him.

Graham told CBS News, "At that point, I just lost it. I was shocked, I was angry, because you never want to see your child out there doing that."

Graham is a single mom with six kids, according to CBS. She says, "I'm a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me, know I don't play that."

By late Monday night, the video had become so popular that Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts referenced the incident during a press conference, CBS Baltimore reported. He said that many of the rioters were young people from nearby high schools and he encouraged parents to tell their children to go home.

"And if you saw in one scene, you had one a mother who grabbed their child who had a hood on his head and she started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed. I wish I had more parents who took charge of their kids tonight," Batts told reporters. "I think these were youth coming out of the high school and they thought it was cute to throw cinder blocks at the police department, and address it that way."

Charles Payne, Fox Business Network contributor, tweeted that the Baltimore woman is "mother of the year."
Follower @MaryBowerman on Twitter
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1GBXvsv

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Mom slaps son, rips him from Baltimore riots

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CLOSE WARNING: Video included in tweet contains profane language. An angry woman is being applauded after she was caught on camera slapping her son and ripping him out of Baltimore riots on Monday.

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Fires and riots in Baltimore on Monday reminded some of the another major civil disturbance the city once faced.

"We cannot let this be a repeat of 1968," Brandon Scott, Baltimore city councilman in the third district, said on Monday. "The neighborhood they're in right now is still burned down from 1968."
[Rioting rocks Baltimore: Hogan declares emergency, activates Guard]
Scott was not alone. Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young also said that Monday's events reminded him of the two weeks that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., when Baltimore and cities across the country burned.

"Many of the areas where we're seeing disturbances today actually never recovered from the 1968 riots," Lawrence Brown, an assistant professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore who studies housing, told the Los Angeles Times.

Baltimore was hit hard in 1968: Six killed, 700 injured, 1,000 small businesses looted or burned and 5,800 people arrested. Here's a look back:

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Baltimore riots evoke memories of aftermath of MLK's assassination

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Fires and riots in Baltimore on Monday reminded some of the another major civil disturbance the city once faced. "We cannot let this be a repeat of 1968," Brandon Scott, Baltimore city councilman in the third district, said on Monday. "The neighborhood they're in right now is still burned down from 1968."

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The Archives of Maryland Documents for the Classroom series of the Maryland State Archives was designed and developed by Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse and Dr. M. Mercer Neale and was prepared with the assistance of R. J. Rockefeller, Lynne MacAdam and other members of the Archives staff. MSA SC 2221-12.

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BALTIMORE -- Before this city was turned upside down by widespread violence Monday, a local African-American family laid to rest a young man from a neighborhood struggling with high unemployment, high rates of incarceration and low educational attainment. Freddie Gray -- the 25-year-old who suffered a fatal injury after his arrest by police earlier this month -- fled officers in the high-crime Sandtown-Winchester city neighborhood shortly before his arrest. He was about to become one of more than 400 people from the area who, as of February, were jailed or imprisoned for reasons stemming from the economic struggles that have affected many residents.

Baltimore, a city of nearly 623,000 with an unemployment rate of 8.4 percent, erupted in riots as residents clashed with and injured police officers Monday. Although some people sought to distance the peaceful protests over Gray's death from agitators who burned cars and buildings overnight, many residents feel frustration over the lack of economic opportunity and mobility -- factors that could point people like Gray to lives of crime and poverty.

"This is happening because of years and years of socio-economic disparity," said Brendon Joyner-El, a 25-year-old resident of West Baltimore who protested peacefully on Tuesday. "You take the education system out, you take the rec centers out, [and] a lot of issues we're dealing with, this is a human race issue." But others said the city has done little to address the systemic issues causing a cycle of poverty, criminality and low educational attainment. "How can you expect people to live and exist when you live in this situation?"

Baltimore, still one of the deadliest cities in the nation, has a decreasing incarceration rate because of local and state reforms in the prosecution of nonviolent crimes. But a third of Maryland residents in state prison are from Baltimore, an analysis by the Justice Policy Institute revealed. Maryland taxpayers spend approximately $288 million to incarcerate nearly 7,800 people from Baltimore.

The experience of incarceration poses re-entry challenges for anyone leaving jail, but it can be particularly difficult for residents of Baltimore, the Justice Policy Institute report found. Securing employment, housing and treatment, while also establishing positive social networks, is more difficult for Baltimore residents.

In Sandtown, where Gray is said to have lived, 42 percent of residents are employed, compared with the national average of 59 percent, say U.S. Census Bureau data obtained by Fusion. Just 54 percent of the neighborhood's residents are in the labor force -- either working or looking for work -- though more than 77 percent of residents are of working age. Just 4.5 percent of Sandtown residents had a bachelor's degree in 2013.

The median income for Baltimore residents was $41,385 in 2013, the Census Bureau said. Nearly 24 percent of the city's population lived below the poverty level, compared with 14.5 percent in the U.S.

Those statistics are a contributing factor to the anger and lawlessness seen after Gray's death, said Will Kearney, a 28-year-old African-American who volunteers for Baltimore City Public Schools. "This is bigger than Freddie Gray," he said. "What you're seeing now is the bubbling up of frustration. This is just the bubble being burst."

Other city residents blamed the riotous situation on police officers, who many residents believe are protected by their superiors from being held accountable for their conduct. Carlmichael Cannady, a 45-year-old African-American from the Reservoir Hill neighborhood, wasn't out during Monday's protests, but he said he understood why some young people resorted to destructive behavior. "I was afraid for the lives of young kids who were putting themselves in harm's way without knowing it," Cannady said. "The uneducated, the ones that don't really have a voice, this is how they speak."

The closing of recreation centers in favor of a $100 million prison -- in addition to Democratic politicians creating a welfare state in the city -- hasn't helped either, said a woman who would identify herself only as Ariella. Unemployed and in her 40s, Ariella said her Penn North neighborhood of central Baltimore used to be all Jewish before the racial turmoil of the 1960s, when whites moved out and blacks moved in. "This whole neighborhood changed. They put single mothers in here and filled it up with Section 8 housing. It's basically become a city that's been looking forward to getting grant money."

Some businesses and services crucial to the community were compromised in Monday's violence. Haywood McMorris, a African-American manager of the CVS Health pharmacy that burned at Pennsylvania and North avenues, was back at the store Tuesday, surveying the damage. Fire had gutted the inside of the store. Windows were broken, but the brick facade is still standing. "We're really appalled and we're hurt by the situation," said McMorris, who has managed the store for eight years. "We had longed for this store and everybody knew that. People didn't understand why they were out here doing this." He also said users of a senior center located behind the CVS relied on the pharmacy for prescriptions. McMorris said he was worried about them.

Kearney, the school volunteer, said he doesn't condone violence, but at the same time he can understand what is happening in his city. "They didn't depend on peaceful protest to get independence from England," he said, referring to the early Americans. "There was a revolution."
Aaron Morrison in New York contributed to this report.

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Baltimore Riots 2015: City Residents' Struggle Under Poverty, Income Inequality and Mass Incarceration Predates Freddie Gray Unrest

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BALTIMORE -- Before this city was turned upside down by widespread violence Monday, a local African-American family laid to rest a young man from a neighborhood struggling with high unemployment, high rates of incarceration and low educational attainment.

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I have a few partly formed, preliminary thoughts about some people's reaction to Baltimore (originally posted on my friend Miles Kurland's page as a comment, then on my facebook page, edited.)

What I'm mainly reacting to is the constant drone of people saying that rioting and anti-state violence in Baltimore is fully 100% wrong and will have 0% positive effect. That may or may not be true, but I have the impression that most of these reactions (mainly seen by me on Twitter, which does tend to lack nuance and detail) are of the knee-jerk sort and not well thought out. More importantly, perhaps, these reactions constitute, intended or not, a rejection of reasons that Baltimore is blowing up, a kind of punching down. The larger situation may call for something other than a simplified scolding of people engaged in behavior that is shocking or disturbing.

The only reasonable position is to not approve of riots, and to speak out against them. They are violent and messy and bad press for any movement.

The only reasonable position is to openly understand that when people are fed up they will do extreme things. That is not excusing the acts, it is understanding and explaining the acts. In some cases, it may even be appropriate to applaud such acts. We actually do this all the time. As a society we support many insurrections. We even try to incite them sometimes, almost always abroad of course.

Within the range of civil disobedience, there are actions that are less extreme and more extreme. It is very rare to start at the most extreme end of the spectrum. When the less extreme acts fail to produce results, more extreme acts are understandable, and in some cases necessary. When that fails to produce results, even more extreme acts are expected once escalation starts.

I think it is correct to use the American Revolution as an example, though the parallels are not (and need not be) perfect.

The American Revolution did not start with the forced Evacuation of Boston by attacking the established legal authority (the British military) with weapons and forcing them out. That was just the first effective act. the first meaningful win by the colonists. Before that there were attempts to change laws, to change local procedures for implementing existing laws, written and spoken protests. As that happened acts of violence and repression against the colonists such as the Boston Massacre started to happen and increased. That was met with even more peaceful and academic protest sprinkled with acts of civil disobedience that did not involve interpersonal violence. That did not work either, and was responded to with acts of military actions against colonists.

Then, Lexington and Concord, a draw; the colonists arms were destroyed, two British soldiers killed. This was followed by a full on military confrontation (the Battle of Bunker/Breed's Hill) in which the colonists got their asses kicked by a superior and enhanced British military force. That was followed by a non violent but potentially violent act by the colonists (Ticonderoga) in which arms were illegally stolen by the colonists. At any point up to this time the British could have stopped further non-violent and violent repressive acts by listening to the majority of the people but they chose not to. They were not playing fair not acting as moral actors, we say now with the hindsight of history.

Finally, the British were driven out of Boston and full on war results.

Is it the case that every illegal act, especially those that involved violence and weapons, was not justified by the colonists? Had they held out for five or 10 more years with negotiations, political acts in their various legal bodies, etc. would the British have let up? All the evidence suggests not. We don't look back at the Evacuation of Boston as an immoral or inappropriate act. We don't in retrospect feel that the colonists were wrong. That could be because they won, eventually, but it is mostly because they went to full on insurrection after years of trying not to. One could say "they did it right." But, at which point in time during the early days of the Revolution and the days leading up to it could an objective observer had said that at the time?

It may well be that the rioters in Baltimore lack patience and should wait two or three years, or a decade, before acting. Or even a few months. But as far as anyone can tell, police repression of minorities and the poor has increased not decreased, or at least continues apace.

Go look a the numbers. Oh wait, actually you can't look at the numbers because some of the key data sources have been shut down by Congress or other forces. I would like to see a full accounting of this, please post any links about police-on-people violence over the years in the comments if you have them.

We would like an academic study of violence against the population but such studies that fall under the study of gun related morbidity and mortality are no longer subject to funding, by act of Congress, and as far as I can tell some of the key databases collecting pertinent information have been shut down and made unavailable.

The argument that people should be more patient because the numbers show this or that can't be made because as part of this repression the numbers are no longer available or studied by people who can understand and measure data quality and reporting bias, etc.

So, really, the people who are doing, passively allowing, or benefiting from the repression don't really have the right to say that a particular response to continuous class and race repression should be or not be a particular thing. It just isn't a realistic option.

Stating that rioting is bad, then, is a reasonable thing to say but if it is the only thing you have to say, then you are part of the problem. If you say it along with a statement that one might understand what is happening, then it all depends on what you put first, foreground, prioritize.

We may be seeing a moment of change right now, this week. Or not. Hard to say. But insisting that the status quo is the only thing that is OK, is not a moral stand. The real situation is more complex. Everybody's got to put their big boy pants on and start recognizing that this is complex, and that identifying repressed people who strike out after decades/centuries (depending on what you are counting) of violent repression by the state and society is so simplistic that it is either full-on ignorance or complicity with that repression.

Martin Luther King condemned rioting. But he also said this:

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

The photograph at the top of the post was taken during rioting in Baltimore in, in 1968, response to the assassination of MLK.

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I have a few partly formed, preliminary thoughts about some people's reaction to Baltimore (originally posted on my friend Miles Kurland's page as a comment, then on my facebook page, edited.) What I'm mainly reacting to is the constant drone of people saying that rioting and anti-state violence in Baltimore is fully 100% wrong and...

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BALTIMORE (Tribune News Service) - The streets of this city erupted in violence Monday hours after the funeral of a black man who suffered a mortal injury in police custody, with hundreds of rioters setting police cars and businesses ablaze, throwing rocks, looting stores and injuring at least 15 officers, six of them seriously.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard. Police from nearby towns converged to help restore order after a week of protests turned violent over the weekend, culminating Monday in running street battles.

A Baltimore Orioles game at Camden Yards was abruptly canceled, sending hundreds of exiting fans streaming into the streets near downtown. Police in riot gear erected barricades around City Hall and the Inner Harbor tourist area as a string of structure fires burned in various parts of the city.

"Too many people have spent a generation building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who in a very senseless way are trying to tear down what so many have fought for," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said as she declared a citywide curfew beginning 10 p.m. Tuesday. She said city schools would be closed Tuesday.

The unrest was touched off by the April 19 death of Freddie Gray, 25, who had been arrested a week earlier and injured while in custody. His spine was partially severed, and how that happened is under investigation. Police are scheduled to release the results of their investigation Friday.

On Monday, Baltimore police announced they had received a "credible threat" that three violent gangs - the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips - were working together to "take out" law enforcement officers.

"This is a group of lawless individuals with no regard for people," said police Capt. Eric Kowalczyk. "We don't know who is out there. We do know they are criminals and have attacked officers without provocation."

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch - the first black woman to serve as the nation's top law enforcement officer - condemned the violence. She promised to work with community leaders to "protect the security and civil rights of all residents" as federal officials conduct an independent investigation into Gray's death.

The unrest began in the afternoon. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said a call had gone out to high school students on social media urging demonstrators to gather at the Mondawmin Mall, then move toward City Hall. Batts said officials had information that "a large purge of high school students" would be there.

He said 250 to 300 officers were at the mall, and they were outnumbered.

"Yes, we planned for it," he said. "That wasn't the issue. We just had too many people out there" for the officers to handle.

Fifteen officers were injured, including six seriously, Batts said.

He called for parents to step up, citing a mother who had stopped her son. "I wish I had more parents that took charge of the kids out there tonight," he said.

A 2013 movie called "The Purge" was based on the idea of a temporary suspension of all law.

James Eldredge, 25, of Baltimore saw people throwing rocks near the mall. A nearby corner was littered with bricks and chunks of rock. "It's kind of sad to see what's going on here," he said. "It's not a movie, it's not Ferguson. This is home."

A few blocks away, helicopters hovered overhead as crowds of people milled around. A firefighter standing by a hydrant said rioters had tried to cut fire hoses.

George Roy, 49, a surgical technician, lives about six blocks from where Gray was arrested, and about a block from a CVS pharmacy that was set afire Monday afternoon. All the businesses up and down his block had been looted, he said, calling it "outright crazy."

"They destroyed the city and they didn't wait for the investigation to occur," he said.

The violence came about two weeks after Gray's arrest. Gray and a friend were walking in West Baltimore on April 12 when, officials have said, Gray made eye contact with an officer and fled. Police gave chase.

Videos of the arrest show Gray being put into a police van, dragging his feet, with his hands cuffed behind him. He can be heard screaming. During the trip to police headquarters, Gray asked for medical help, including for an inhaler, but did not receive it.

The van stopped at least twice. At one stop, captured by another video, Gray was taken out of the van and placed on the ground. His legs were put in irons and he was returned to the van. At the second stop, another prisoner was put inside, separated from Gray by a metal barrier. There is no camera in the van.

When officers reached headquarters and took Gray out of the van, he could not speak and was not breathing. Gray slipped into a coma, underwent surgery and died a week later.

Gray died of a severed spine, officials have confirmed. The family says his voice box was crushed and his neck snapped.

Demonstrations over Gray's death had been largely peaceful until Saturday, when 35 people were arrested and six officers injured.

Afterward, Gray's twin sister, Fredericka Gray, called for peace. "My family wants to say, 'Can y'all please, please stop the violence?' " she said. "Freddie Gray would not want this. Freddie's father and mother do not want any violence. Violence does not get justice."

The Gray family repeated that plea at a news conference late Monday.

Earlier in the day, thousands of mourners gathered for Gray's televised funeral at a church. Rawlings-Blake attended, as did a representative of the White House, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, comedian and activist Dick Gregory, Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., and Kweisi Mfume, formerly an NAACP leader and U.S representative from Maryland.

Screens on the church walls showed the words, "Black Lives Matter & All Lives Matter," which have become slogans at demonstrations around the country since a white police officer shot to death an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., in August. That case was followed by demonstrations over the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police in New York City; Cleveland; Tulsa, Okla.; and South Carolina.

"The eyes of this country are all on us, because they want to see whether we have the stuff to make this right," William Murphy Jr., a lawyer who is representing the Gray family, told the mourners.

"We need justice not just for Freddie Gray, for the Freddie Grays to come," he said.

Another mourner was Erica Garner, 24, daughter of Eric Garner, who died in New York police custody while gasping, "I can't breathe." His arrest was videotaped by a bystander.

Erica Garner said she came to Baltimore after seeing video of Gray's arrest. "It's like there is no accountability, no justice," she said. "It's like we're back in the '50s, back in the Martin Luther King days. When is our day to be free going to come?"

Los Angeles Times staff writers Matt Pearce and Michael Muskal in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

©2015 Tribune Co.

Visit Tribune Co. at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Baltimore firefighters battle a three-alarm fire at Gay and Chester Streets on April 27, 2015, in Baltimore. It was unclear whether it was related to ongoing riots.
JERRY JACKSON, BALTIMORE SUN/TNS

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Baltimore streets erupt in violence; governor calls out National Guard

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The streets of this city erupted in violence Monday hours after the funeral of a black man who suffered a mortal injury in police custody, with hundreds of rioters setting police cars and businesses ablaze, throwing rocks, looting stores and injuring at least 15 officers, six of them seriously.

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The stock tale of American feminism is one produced through the narrative of waves: the first wave rises with the suffrage movement, the second wave with women's consciousness-raising in the 1960s, and the third wave with the activism of riot grrrls, queers and young women of color. This narrative assumes vast periods of feminist abeyance, when, in fact, feminists have been active in many different periods and in a variety of locations. In their communities, workplaces, families, public institutions and everyday lives, women have, in some way, always challenged conditions of gender inequity and injustice, sometimes as part of movements, at other times as individuals. This conversation will consider different moments of feminism in the lives of Barnard alumnae across several decades, exploring what it meant and still means to be a feminist. We'll look at the challenges, victories, setbacks, ideas and movements that have emerged in different decades, and reflect on the current moment in feminist scholarship and activism.

Panelists include:

Kate Drabinski ('97) graduated from Barnard with a degree in Women's Studies. After a couple years knocking about, she entered the Rhetoric program at UC Berkeley where she earned her PhD in 2006. She taught gender and sexuality studies at Tulane University for four years and just finished her first year at UMBC in Baltimore, MD where she is Lecturer in Gender and Women's Studies and directs the WILL Program, a student feminist activist and leadership group. She has presented and published on pedagogies of transgender studies, teaching prison abolition, and the politics of autobiography and self narrative. She is currently working on a book about Baltimore museums and the use of public memory as urban redevelopment. In her spare time she rides her bicycle around cities and blogs about the politics of space, place, and community.

Katherine Franke ('81) is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches courses on Gender Justice, Queer Theory, Feminist Legal Theory, Critical Legal Thought, Gay Marriage, and The Law of Occupation. She also serves on the Executive Committee of Columbia's Institute for Research on Women and Gender and works closely with Columbia's Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation's leading scholars working at the intersections of feminist, queer, and critical race theory. Among her recent publications are: Dating the State: The Moral Hazards of Winning Gay Rights; Public Sex, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Afterlife of Homophobia; and Longing for Loving. Her book in progress explores the curious role of the right to marry in larger civil rights struggles, comparing African Americans in the immediate post Civil War period with same-sex couples today. In addition to her scholarly research she has conducted workshops for Palestinian women lawyers in Ramallah, Palestine, and writes regularly for a more popular audience in the Gender & Sexuality Law Blog and is on the Board of Directors of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Shilpa Guha ('12) is a recent graduate of political science and human rights. She has interned for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at the United Nations and in Geneva, the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, and most recently the Ms. Foundation. On campus, she coordinated AfterHours Tutoring, a Community Impact youth group, worked as a research assistant at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and served as a Global Symposium Fellow in Mumbai. She will spend this summer in Washington, D.C. interning for the American Bar Association, after which she hopes to pursue women's rights and international law in India.

Mila M. Jasey ('72) is Assemblywoman of New Jersey's 27th Legislative District. She was first elected on November 6, 2007, and is serving her third term representing 14 towns in Morris and Essex Counties. The abolishment of the Death Penalty in N.J. was her first bill and vote. During her tenure she has sponsored numerous bills that have become law, including significant measures addressing the prevention and treatment of traumatic brain injury among student athletes (including cheerleaders), creation of the TBI Task Force, the NJ HERO Act promoting organ donation, the Mortgage Stabilization and Relief Act, the Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit Act, the Traders to Teachers Act, the Vet-Teach Act and the PMI/PSI Act to address the shortage of math and science teachers in N.J. She is also prime sponsor of the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act, the strongest in the nation, the Interdistrict Public School Choice Law and enhanced penalties for hate crimes. While a student at Barnard, Jasey was very active politically. She served as co-chair of the fledgling Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters (BOSS) during her junior year. She also worked with the student government committees and served on a committee with the college president.

Courtney E. Martin ('02) is an author, blogger, and speaker. Her most recent book, Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors, was published last fall. She is also the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists and Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women. She is Editor Emeritus at Feministing.com, Founding Director of the Solutions Journalism Network, and Partner at Valenti Martin Media, a social media strategy firm. Her work appears frequently in The Christian Science Monitor, GOOD, and The Nation, among other national publications. Courtney has appeared on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and The O'Reilly Factor, and is the recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics, a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Centre, and is a TED speaker. She is the leader of the Op-Ed Project's Public Voices Fellowship Program at Princeton University. She is currently collaborating with the Barnard Center for Research on Women on a project to further the sustainability and impact of online feminism. Read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.

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Feminisms and Feminists Today: A Conversation Across the Decades | Barnard Center for Research on Women

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The stock tale of American feminism is one produced through the narrative of waves: the first wave rises with the suffrage movement, the second wave with women's consciousness-raising in the 1960s, and the third wave with the activism of riot grrrls, queers and young women of color. This narrative...

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Baltimore is not burning down.

Yes, you've been watching the news and it sure looks like the city was aflame. Residents frustrated by deep racial and economic divisions that cracked open long ago were throwing stones at police. Opportunists were smashing store windows and looting what they can carry. Fire crews were dousing small businesses struck by arson.

But the focus of cameras is narrow and bright. On Monday, the violence was scattered in areas across the city. It is not 1968, where rioting engulfed whole sections and set back Baltimore for generations. It is not a series-ending finale of "The Wire," with gangs rising to take over City Hall.

"What's so disturbing is that the news gives people the impression the entire city was in chaos, which wasn't the case," says Elizabeth Nix, an assistant professor of legal, ethical, and historical studies at the University of Baltimore and co-editor of a book on the '68 riots. "But with social media, people see these images over and over, and they get conflated with fictional depictions of the city."

Ms. Nix has lived in Baltimore for 20 years, much of that time on Union Square, former home of famed journalist H.L. Mencken. She's helped found a city charter school and sent her own kids to public schools.

"It is just very sad," she says of the events of recent days. "It is heartening today to see all the groups of people coming out, all kinds of people cleaning up."

The 1968 riots destroyed more than 1,000 businesses. Six people died over the course of eight days of violence. Yet city officials never really examined the causes of the social unrest. Baltimore's long, slow decline continued.

"I'm hopeful that isn't the case today," says Nix.

One contrast: No one was killed in Monday night's violence, which erupted after the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died after injuries sustained in police custody.

Lord knows the city has big problems. Whole blocks of East Baltimore are unoccupied. Police commissioners come and go on a regular basis, whipsawing department policy. The current commissioner, Anthony Batts, is a California transplant who arrived in 2012. In February, he made news by saying he was surprised at the "1950s racism" he'd encountered in his new job.

Mayors come and go, too. The most recent previous mayor was Sheila Dixon, a savvy former teacher and strong leader who was also, unfortunately, a crook. She was convicted in 2009 of stealing gift cards intended for distribution to needy families.

But if the leadership has been inconsistent, the Patapsco River is always there. Baltimore's waterfront vistas are a boon and an economic draw. Million-dollar condos line the Federal Hill, Fells Point, and Canton neighborhoods. The water draws corporate headquarters like Under Armour's Tide Point campus.

The city's historic neighborhoods and vibrant night life are a big draw for Millenials looking for "authenticity" in their residence of choice. Its proximity to Washington means some of the money that's washed through the nation's capital in recent decades sloshes up here. The school system is challenged as a whole, but Baltimore still has some of the best individual public high schools in America, which produce such national leaders are Rep. Elijah Cummings (D) of Maryland, who spoke Monday at Freddie Gray's funeral.

The city's resilience is reflected in the very places where rioting has occurred.

Much of the action on Monday took place near Mondawmin Mall, a sprawling shopping center on Liberty Heights Avenue west of Druid Hill Park. Mondawmin was developed in the 1950s by James Rouse, a visionary city planner instrumental in busting the restrictive racial covenants of some North Baltimore neighborhoods. More recently it's been rebuilt with a Target and other new store as a mid-city shopping oasis.

Other looting hit stores near the Inner Harbor. That's long been the face of Baltimore's national image, but at this point it's not just the harbor area but a miles-long waterfront area that stretches from the iconic Camden Yards stadium on the west to the high-rises and restaurants of Harbor East, next to Little Italy.

Shops were smashed and burned on the East Side near Johns Hopkins Hospital, too.

Baltimore has public health problems. Its infant mortality rate is high, for instance. But Hopkins is a world-class hospital located in a high-poverty area that treats all comers. It is the centerpiece of a regional medical economy that provides thousands of jobs for Baltimoreans, from doctors and nurses to receptionists and maintenance crews.

Maybe arson and looting will cripple these places. That's possible. It's possible unrest will spread and consume whole neighborhoods. On Tuesday, though, volunteers were out cleaning up and relative calm prevailed.

The British bombarded Fort McHenry and tried to burn the city in 1814. It didn't work then. And in 2015 when the violence cools and the camera crews depart, Baltimore will still be there.

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Baltimore is not burning down. Yes, you've been watching the news and it sure looks like the city was aflame. Residents frustrated by deep racial and economic divisions that cracked open long ago were throwing stones at police. Opportunists were smashing store windows and looting what they can carry.

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Watching televised scenes Monday night of looting, burning and rock-throwing in Baltimore brought back memories for Jewell Chambers. The West Baltimore resident was a young reporter for the Afro-American newspaper the last time the city saw a similar upheaval.

In early April 1968, the city exploded in a rampage of rock-throwing, arson and looting following the slaying of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. By the time peace was restored four days later, six people had been killed, 700 injured, 1,000 businesses ransacked or burned and 5,800 people arrested.

"There was absolute fear," said Chambers, now 72.

She recalls dodging rocks while covering the unrest - something reporters did Monday as well. She witnessed a bar owner pleading with rioters not to torch his place, and flinched when a jittery National Guardsman poked a bayonet into her car after stopping her for being out after the curfew.

The legacy of that trauma lingers 47 year later, say Chambers and others who lived through it or studied it. It also offers lessons, they say, for how to get past the latest eruption.

"A lot of the same issues that existed in 1968 in a lot of these neighborhoods still exist today," said Elizabeth Nix, an assistant history professor at the University of Baltimore who co-edited a book examining the 1968 riots.

While King's murder in Memphis sparked the rioting, Nix said, the violence fed on discontent in the African-American community over economic inequality, housing discrimination and perceptions of being disrespected by neighborhood merchants, many of whom did not live there.

The underlying resentment over poverty and racial inequities remains today, Nix said.

"There's still a lot of people who don't feel like their voices are heard and that they're cut off from the economic and social life of Baltimore," she concluded.

The 1968 rioting began in East Baltimore, as supermarkets, furniture stores, taverns and other shops were ransacked and burned. After hours of trying to quell the violence, Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro III called in more than 5,000 National Guardsmen and imposed an 11 p.m. curfew. Some criticized D'Alesandro then for not being more forceful in heading off trouble, as others now are faulting Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

But even the National Guard was not enough then. Rioting broke out the following day in West Baltimore, prompting Gov. Spiro Agnew to seek help from the White House. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in thousands of Army troops.

In one respect, the 1968 riots were not as disruptive as the current upheaval. The Orioles only had to postpone a single game, their season home opener. But two players, shortstop Mark Belanger and relief pitcher Pete Richert, missed the game, having been called up by their National Guard units.

The 1968 devastation had lasting effects, said Robert C. Embry Jr., who was a member of Baltimore City Council then. It accelerated an exodus of white residents to the suburbs, he said, and it removed a lot of stores from African-American neighborhoods - leading to a shortage of shopping opportunities that persists today.

Embry, who's now president of the Abell Foundation after a career in public service that included being the city's first housing commissioner, said he didn't believe the outburst of violence on Monday would be enough to scare off the recent influx of residents or investment into the city.

"But I could be totally wrong," he said.

Chambers said she's disgusted by the vandalism and looting. The CVS pharmacy that was looted and burned, she said, was there to serve local residents, including a nearby senior housing facility.

But she said she believes the rioting shouldn't distract from dealing with the festering anger over police treatment of residents in poor, predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Before the outbreak, there had been a week of mostly peaceful demonstrations over the death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, an incident protesters contend is part of a pattern of abuse by authorities.

"What we need to be concerned with in Baltimore is not so much black or white, it's blue," Chambers said. "It's the actions of the police."
Baltimore Sun reporter Mike Klingaman contributed to this article. tim.wheeler@baltsun.com

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City rioting evokes memories of 1968 unrest

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Watching televised scenes Monday night of looting, burning and rock-throwing in Baltimore brought back memories for Jewell Chambers. The West Baltimore resident was a young reporter for the Afro-American newspaper the last time the city saw a similar upheaval.