Harvard Forum Explores The Dynamics of Violence

"The die has been cast. Black people have turned to violence because they see no end to the oppression of the white power structure," Jeffrey P. Howard '69, president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Association of African and Afro-American Students, said yesterday afternoon.

Speaking at the Harvard Square Forum on "Violence in the Streets", Howard explained, "When a society kicks a whole race of people, that race is going to kick back. Black people are willing to risk death to get the American dream off their backs."

"Violence is reality," he added, "and it does no good to get hung up on its morality, because right or wrong the causes are still there." He attributed the racial violence of the past three years to the failure of integration and the due process of law to significantly alter ghetto life.

Martin L. Kilson, professor of Government, concerned. 'No one need apologize for the recent outbreak of violence in the ghettos of out cities," he said. "White America created the ghettos and now, with grotesque and devious racism, it searches for a peg-leg to stand on--claiming that the Negro has no cause to attack white institutions."

"At the heart of the riots," Kilson said, "is the perception that the Negroes will be left out unless they make themselves heard. They are crying out that there are people living within the disgusting and dilapidated walls of the ghetto."

BLACK NATIONALISTS

John P. Spiegal, director of Brandeis University's Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, was the third speaker at the Forum. Describing the preconditions for riots. Spiegel labeled Black Nationalists 'transitional figures." When they see no progress, he said, "they begin to revise the structure, preparing a new configuration of values which move in a revolutionary direction.''

He defined the four phases of riots as "a precipitating incident, street confrontation, Roman holiday, and seige." In the third phase, he said, "there is a carnival-like atmosphere. It's the kid's day in the sun, and no one can tell them what to do."

But the carnival soon gives way to seige, he explained. "Communication is no longer possible, and forces move with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. The riot stops when the people are exhausted.