Apartheid. USA 1988

June 5, 1987:

Ranks of white-robed Ku Klux Klan marchers plan to parade through the streets of Greensboro, North-Carolina on Sunday, their first public demonstration there since a bloody shootout between armed Klansmen and leftists in 1979 that left 5 people dead. What is happening in Greensboro the coming weekend is not only a story about a Klan march and the dark recollections it evokes. It is also the

[p. 79]

story of how blacks and whites in a Southern industrial town have worked together to come to terms with the Klan's existence and with their own racially troubled past. ‘These Klan people are not an innocuous bunch of misfits - they come to divide and polarize this community with their message of racial hatred,’ said John Shaw, chairman of the city's Human Relations Commission. Greensboro has 187 000 residents of which about one-third are black. Fliers that bear the message ‘This is not Klan country’ have been circulated widely. Radio spots have been urging people to take part in planned weekend events to promote racial harmony.^106.

Hundreds of homeless people abandoned their makeshift shelters as a line of about 40 police officers swept through Skid Row in Los Angeles, California, tossing people's belongings into the street and threatening to arrest those who refused to move. ‘Nobody was arrested for sleeping or blocking the sidewalk,’ said Lieutenant Dan Schatz, but the police made four arrests for public intoxication. On Towne Avenue, little was left of shelters after the police action. Street sweepers completed the job. Those living on Skid Row sidewalks had been warned all week. Most of the homeless people apparently did move on to settle down for the night in doorsteps and alleys elsewhere in the city. In a 50-block area near downtown Los Angeles an estimated 1 000 homeless were living in the streets.^107.

106. The New York Times, from a report by William E Schmidt

107. The New York Times, from a report by the Associated Press