Race Troubles: 109 U.S. Cities Faced Violence in 1967 Over fifty years ago U.S. News and World Report wrote:
More than 100 cities of the U. S. have been hit by Negro violence this year. At least 177 persons have been killed, thousands injured. Property damage has approached 1 billion dollars.
I remember the summer the cities burned. I was puzzled at the time, being 13 years old, why the rioters didn’t attack wealthy sections of town, instead of burning their own?
One explanation of the riots identified this recurrent pattern:
A particular pattern emerged: What usually ignited the powder keg of resentments was police brutality or abuse. Triggering the rioting in Newark was an incident on the hot summer night of July 12 in which police arrested John Smith, an African-American taxi driver, pulling him roughly from his cab during a traffic stop. The cops beat Smith and dragged him into the nearby Fourth Precinct station. Hundreds of residents watched from a large public housing project and an angry crowd quickly gathered outside the police building. A false rumor swirled through the streets that Smith had been killed, adding to the outrage.
The location of riots looks like happenstance, people riot where they are located when a triggering event takes place. In the 1967 riots, those locations were the ghettos where so many Black Americans were imprisoned and remain so to this day.
Data question: What if oppressed people assembled (not marched to) at locations frequented by the owners of government? Say gated communities for instance. If those assemblies were met with police brutality or abuse, would people riot? Any empirical evidence on that question? Asking for a friend.