This summary provides the key points from the document in 3 sentences: The document discusses the roots of riots and violence in marginalized communities through analyzing Martin Luther King Jr.'s writings on riots, a news article on police brutality in Baltimore, and themes in Richard Wright's novel Native Son. It argues that slow oppression, poverty, and police brutality build pressure over time that can lead to explosive outbursts of violence and riots. While riots are condemned, the document examines the social conditions and injustices that provoke such responses from disenfranchised groups that feel they have no other means of being heard.

1. Weaver 1
Ashley Weaver
Professor Esdale
English 321
30 April 2015
Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, or Anywhere Else in America
“I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain
conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we
condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is
it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor
has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom
and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white
society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice,
equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused
by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in
the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social
justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”
– Martin Luther King Jr., “The Other America”
The past week has been tough on Baltimore. After Freddie Grey died of spinal injuries
while in police custody, protests and riots erupted. The headlines are head-achingly omnipresent:
“What Came Before Baltimore’s Riots,” “Baltimore Riots: ‘This Is A Dead Neighborhood,’” and
“Morning Plum: Baltimore riots enter the presidential race” are some of the first on a Google
News search for “Baltimore riots.” CNN ran a piece yesterday called “After Baltimore riots,
some leaders slam 'thug' as the new n-word” – in the article Reverend Jamal Bryant wonders at
the labelling of protesters as thugs instead of the accused Baltimore policemen (Levs). There are
a few narratives going on in the Baltimore situation, but two stand out as completely at odds.
One viewpoint is reflected in King Jr's above speech; it is the agenda of Bigger Thomas’
attorney, Max. There is more than Bigger’s culpability on trial in Richard Wright’s Native Son,
just as there were circumstances leading up to this week’s violent riots in Baltimore. But the

2. Weaver 2
other narrative intends to erase all fault except that which is Bigger’s, or that of the rioters in
Baltimore. King Jr promoted peaceful protest, but he understood the driving force behind rioting.
It does not spring up out of thin air; it is not present at birth. Bigger Thomas would probably not
have committed such violent crimes had he been born with the opportunities that Mary Dalton
had. Percival Everett’s Erasure mocks Native Son with a novel within a novel, My Pafology. The
wealthy Daltons in his tale are black – perhaps to insinuate that the Biggers and Van Goghs of
the world could have been members of the Dalton family, had they won the life lottery. However
the Mr. Dalton in Native Son represents a villain. He is the man behind Bigger Thomas’ poverty,
just as police brutality and oppressive poverty are behind the Baltimore riots.
James Baldwin’s essay, “Notes of a Native Son,” recounts his father’s death and funeral
in 1943, about a month after race riots had bloodied the streets of Detroit. The night his father
died, rioting broke out in Harlem. The murder committed by Bigger shares its roots with the
violent acts that take place during these riots. Baldwin states:
It would have been better to have left the plate glass as it had been and the goods
lying in the stores. It would have been better, but it would also have been
intolerable, for Harlem had needed something to smash. To smash something is
the ghetto’s chronic need. Most of the time it is the members of the ghetto who
smash each other, and themselves. But as long as the ghetto walls are standing
there will always come a moment when these outlets do not work. That summer,
for example, it was not enough to get into a fight on Lenox Avenue, or curse out
one’s cronies in the barber shops. (144)
Bigger’s murder of Mary Dalton was an outburst, and violent rioting is no different. It is a
reaction; provocations merit as much or more scrutiny as their consequences. Baldwin also notes
the diversity of the protesters gathered in Detroit. There were prostitutes, old ladies from church,
“race” men, religious and disbelievers, and they all “felt a directionless, hopeless bitterness, as
well as that panic which can scarcely be suppressed when one knows that a human being one

3. Weaver 3
loves is beyond one’s reach, and in danger. This helplessness and this gnawing uneasiness does
something, at length, to even the toughest mind” (137). Mary Dalton herself might have been one
of the young women Baldwin saw in Detroit had she been born into a different family, just as I
might have been part of the Baltimore riots had I been born there. Like Dr. King Jr, Baldwin
understood both the pointlessness of rioting and the causes behind it.
Violent explosions like the riots and Bigger’s murder result from a slow build-up of
pressure. What events contribute to this pressure? To name a few: oppression, poverty, and, the
tragically timely police brutality. Police brutality, I inwardly groan at the phrase; I am well aware
that there is a headline almost every day which includes it. Last September, the Baltimore Sun
released an article called “Undue Force,” written by Mark Puente. It is a gritty, detailed log of
everything related to police brutality in Baltimore since 2011. According to Puente’s article, the
city pays incredible figures in settlements, and the individual stories are horrifying:
grandmothers slammed to the ground, a pregnant woman shoved over, and always a different
story from the officers involved, some of whom have been charged with five or six separate
offenses. Also covered in the article are the city’s responses to the plethora of brutality charges,
laden with promises to clean police behavior up.
Puente’s article reveals a rocky history for the Baltimore PD: in September of 2012 “the
unit sparked outrage when a detective threw Anthony Anderson, 46, to the ground during a drug
arrest. Anderson’s spleen ruptured, and he died a short time later.” At the time of this article’s
publication, the trial for Anderson’s death was ongoing, but now the police involved have been
cleared. Another victim of the Baltimore PD, Jarriel Lyles, was punched in the face for refusing
to get down on the ground after being approached and frisked by policemen in hoodies and jeans

4. Weaver 4
– he thought he was being robbed at first. He filed a suit against the department (his nose was
broken during the encounter,) and three weeks later Lyles experienced this near his apartment:
The officers ordered Lyles to drop his pants and underwear. He did. They told
him to squat and cough. He did — out of fear. Lyles testified that an officer then
searched his genitals for drugs and rammed a gloved finger in his rectum.
He told jurors the incident wasn’t a “coincidence.” He believed the officers were
retaliating because he had complained about his broken nose. (Puente)
These are the events that build pressure. The police brutalize individuals and alienate
neighborhoods. Puente’s article sadly predicted the events that have been happening this week in
Baltimore.
Wright’s Native Son was a warning as well. While Bigger Thomas hides from the police,
the entire South Side is upturned in a search. Wright includes a fictional article describing the
hunt:
Police reported that many windows in the Negro sections were smashed.
Every street car, bus, el train and auto leaving the South Side is being stopped and
searched. Police and vigilantes, armed with rifles, tear gas, flashlights, and photos
of the killer, began at 18th Street this morning and are searching every Negro
home under a blanket warrant from the Mayor.
[...]
Reports were current that several Negro men were beaten in various North and
West Side neighborhoods.
[...]
Several hundred Negroes resembling Bigger Thomas were rounded up from South
Side “hot Spots”; they are being held for investigation.
In a radio broadcast last night Mayor Ditz warned of possible mob violence and
exhorted the public to maintain order. (308)
This article is written from the white point of view, but in it are the actions which push
communities to riot: unwarranted searches, beatings, unlawful detentions. The article mentions
“hot spots,” and immediately the white reader imagines throngs of malintentioned black youth,
ready to commit senseless, unprovoked crimes. The unlawfully detained men – who are not

5. Weaver 5
Bigger Thomas – are also guilty in the minds of the newspaper’s readers, just not of a crime that
they have committed or been caught for yet. The article speaks of vigilantes as if they are a good
thing, aiding police in the chase – but the idea of a good black vigilante is impossible. That man
is no more than a criminal, a thug.
In CNN’s piece about thug being the “new n-word,” Josh Levs reports that both President
Obama and Baltimore’s Mayor Rawlings-Blake used the word thug to describe the violent
protesters. But Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes said, “These are children who have been
set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us. No, we don't have to call them thugs.”
In the same article, Reverend Jamal Bryant is quoted as saying,
These are not thugs, these are upset and frustrated children.
It's amazing. You don't call six police officers who kill a man without probable
cause ‘thugs,' but children who are frustrated and don't have an outlet, you call
them 'thugs.' 'Thugs' is the 21st century word for the n-word.
If we are to condemn violence as a society, you can’t simply excuse police violence because they
wear a badge. If they commit violence and are not punished, how can we expect the people of
Baltimore to keep from exploding with anger? Max emphasizes that point in his defense of
Bigger when he interrogates Mr. Dalton about the South Side tenements he owns and operates
(412-14). Are we to call Mr. Dalton a real-estate agent when in fact he is a slumlord? No. The
glorified slumlord, Mr. Dalton, commits crimes which put tremendous pressure on the South
Side community. Bigger is no more of a thug than he is.
After Bigger is booked, he meets a madman in jail, rambling on about how his professor
is out to get him. A fellow inmate warns Bigger:
“He’s balmy!” a white man said. “Make ‘em take ‘im outta your cell. He’ll kill
you. He went off his nut from studying too much at the university. He was writing
a book on how colored people live and he says somebody stole all the facts he’d
found. He says he’s got to the bottom of why colored folks are treated bad and

6. Weaver 6
he’s going to tell the President and have things changed, see? He’s nuts! He
swears that his university professor had him locked up. The cops picked him up
this morning in his underwear; he was in the lobby of the Post Office building,
waiting to speak to the President.” (432)
Is the madman Richard Wright himself? The madman in Bigger’s cell saw the scope of
America’s disenfranchisement of black people and it drove him mad. Bigger himself experienced
madness when he killed Mary Dalton, but this man’s insanity is from a different source. Wright
implies that to truly understand institutionalized racism in America is to enter into mental
sickness. Anyone who sees the Mr. Daltons for who they really are, yet cannot do anything to
change it – that is Wright’s definition of a madman. Perhaps Native Son was written to keep him
from succumbing to the same fate as the lunatic in Bigger’s cell. He pathetically and accurately
sums up what builds pressure in the South Side:
I’ll tell ‘im you make us live in such crowded conditions on the South Side that
one out of every ten of us is insane! I’ll tell ‘im that you dump all the stale foods
into the Black Belt and sell them for more than you can get anywhere else! I’ll tell
‘im you tax us, but you won’t build hospitals! I’ll tell ‘im the schools are so
crowded they breed perverts! I’ll tell ‘im you hire us last and fire us first! (435)
Police beatings certainly raise tensions in low-income neighborhoods, but Wright’s madman is
upset at the less bloody wrongs done to South Side residents. These things slowly and subtly
work away at the innate goodness of humanity.
The strongest, best, brightest man has little more chance of success than the weakest in
these disenfranchised communities – and who can even say which category Bigger belonged to?
What was his full potential? What is left un-contributed to society when an entire neighborhood
is denied access to the basic human needs of hope, love, and security? Richard Wright tells us,
through the attorney Mr. Max: “Your Honor, remember that men can starve from a lack of self-
realization as much as they can from a lack of bread! And they can murder for it, too!” (504).
When we condemn rioters for violence while excusing police brutality, a double standard is

7. Weaver 7
upheld, not created, for the mindset of Mr. Dalton is alive and well 75 years later, in 2015. Can
we abandon the trout-enclosure brand of “aid” which Everett rails against in Erasure and
establish a never-before-seen, true equality in America?
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. "Notes of a Native Son." The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction. 1948-
1985. New York: St. Martin's, 1985. 127-145. Print.
King Jr., Martin Luther. "The Other America." Stanford University, Stanford. 14 Apr. 1967.
Speech.
Levs, Josh. "After Baltimore Riots, Some Leaders Slam 'thug' as the New N-word." CNN. 29
Apr. 2015. Web.
Puente, Mark. "Sun Investigates: Undue Force." Baltimore Sun. 28 Sept. 2014. Web. 29 Apr.
2015.
Everett, Percival. Erasure. Hanover: U of New England, 2001. Print.
Wright, Richard. Native Son. ePublished: Harper Collins, 1940. Kindle.

8. Weaver 8