Word: batons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Racial violence is often set off by the most superficial of trip wires: an isolated arrest, a rumor of police brutality, the temperature climbing above 100°. But rarely has a racial conflict seemed quite so random and inexplicable as the sudden savagery last week in Baton Rouge, where blacks clashed with police in a battle that left two policemen and two blacks dead and another 31 people injured...
...Baton Rouge (pop. 166,000), the capital of Louisiana, is an anomaly, a throwback to an earlier South in which black complaints were bitter but rarely voiced. Though blacks are 28% of the population, they account for only 12% of the police force. It is an unspoken rule that the black cops do not arrest whites. Nor do the city's blacks often demonstrate or make demands...
Trouble began on New Year's Day, when 20 black men and women checked into a Baton Rouge motel. City police soon began receiving complaints from local merchants that the group was vigorously canvassing their neighborhoods asking for contributions. Some witnesses say they represented themselves as a young artists group, while others allege that they handed out Black Muslim literature. The group also announced a street rally for early last week, to be followed by a march to city hall...
...Though Baton Rouge Mayor Woodrow W. Dumas knew of the planned demonstration, there were no police at the rally, which attracted about 200 people, many of them merely curious. Several white newsmen were present; one, Robert Johnson, may have suffered irreparable brain damage when some in the crowd attacked him for no apparent reason...
Where this really shows up is in her ability to cope when things go wrong onstage. Last month, while singing under the baton of City Opera Director Julius Rudel, she inadvertently skipped a few bars and hit a high A too soon. "I held up my hand, and she knew immediately what the problem was," recalls Rudel. "So she held the note until I lowered my hand eight bars later. To make anything clear to her, a finger, an eyebrow, is enough...