WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARED

A vigorous history of the 1968 riots in Washington, D.C., and their long-lasting effects.

In the unrest that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, writes historian and editor Sommers, Washington suffered nearly a quarter-billion dollars (adjusted to today’s value) in damage. The D.C. city council, which had already formulated plans for how to handle rioting, adopted a series of reforms that asked for measured and, when possible, nonviolent police response and encouraged community involvement. After the 1968 riots devastated the U Street Corridor and the historically Black Shaw neighborhood, the council also called for a rebuilding program that involved nonprofits working with the government rather than private developers. Unfortunately, although the rate of violent crime was lower than those in many other American cities, conservative politicians pointed to D.C. as proof that Black people could not govern—D.C. was then a majority Black city, much more so than today—and “demanded federal intervention, military occupation, and even dictatorship.” Funds for the rebuilding were supposed to come from Great Society programs, but they were canceled when Richard Nixon, who had campaigned on a law-and-order platform, took office. It took years for D.C. to rebuild, and when it did, after a long period when White suburbanites avoided the city, it was gentrified, with historically Black neighborhoods priced beyond the means of lower-income residents—neighborhoods redeveloped by private entities. Moreover, writes Sommers, who interviewed key witnesses such as Ben’s Chili Bowl co-owner Virginia Ali, the city’s demands for self-government and representation in Congress were thwarted. Sommers draws a straight line between Nixon’s war-on-crime programs, for which D.C. was an unwilling laboratory, and the militarized police culture that led to so much unrest after the killing of George Floyd—when, as in 1968, “many conservatives immediately decried the protests and chastised participants as criminals.”

A valuable contribution to the literature of urban affairs and its intersection with social justice.