Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
It's no consolation for yesterday's events, but there is far less extremism, racial antagonism, and violence in the U.S. today than there was 50 years ago.
1965: Watts riots. 34 dead and 1,042 injured.
1966: Race riots in 43 cities. 11 dead and 400 injured.
1967: Newark riots. 26 dead and 1,500 injured. Detroit riots. 43 dead and 2,000 injured. Riots in 127 other U.S. cities leave 83 killed.
1968: Martin Luther King assassination. Ensuing riots in 125 cities leave 46 dead and 2,600 injured.
Whole neighbourhoods were burned to the ground in these riots. Snipers fired at responding police and firefighters. Heavily armed Black Panthers marched into the California legislature. Volunteer militias patrolled white neighbourhoods in Chicago. The Soledad brothers stormed a courthouse, took a judge hostage and blew his head off in the ensuring chase. And that's not even getting into Vietnam, where by 1968 more than 500 Americans a month were being killed - most of them conscripts.
The U.S. has righted the ship in far worse seas than this.
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Agreed - I remember my Mom telling me about watching Detroit burn from across the river.
A lot of fairly recent, violent history for sure.