The news out of Baltimore on last Monday afternoon hit me with an eerie feeling of familiarity. My family had moved to Baltimore in January of 1968. Just four months later, in April (coincidentally) of that year, the city erupted in riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King. I was only seven and barely understood what was going on, but I’ve never forgotten that time. We were home from school for a week while the National Guard rode down our street in big convoy trucks with guns facing out. My uncle took us up on the roof one night to see the fires that dotted the skyline to our south. Everyone was very freaked out.
Hearing then that a “mob” of “thugs” was making its way through the city toward downtown, touching many of the places that were hit so hard in ‘68, brought those years back again. It wasn’t a settling feeling. In the late ‘60s in places like Baltimore, there were adults who truly feared revolution. They thought that maybe the center wouldn’t hold. They were inordinately fearful of what they perceived as chaos, and certainly the events of that year were chaotic. I remember hearing my father saying to someone, “if they get to 25th Street, we’re going to have to leave.” Monday afternoon brought back that scary feeling of chaos to a lot of people old enough to remember.
