DCist read the Post’s retrospective on the 1968 riots and Resurrection City tent encampment with great interest. The city has certainly changed in the more than three decades since Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, but in many ways the city has not recovered either. While 14th, U and Seventh streets have seen a lot of rebirth, other riot-scarred corridors, like H Street NE, have had more trouble recovering from the riots after so many years.
While the piece is good reading, we suggest you supplement it by taking a look at Web excerpts of Ben Gilbert’s “Ten Blocks From the White House: An Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968.” (Warning, there are countless minor transcription errors.) It details how Stokley Carmichael, while trying to lead the restless angry masses at 14th and U streets, may have sparked the worst rioting the District has ever seen.
