46952

Please see full film @ http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/wsbn/id:46952 In this WSB newsfilm clip from July 27, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks about recent race riots in New York City and Rochester, New York and comments on the role of race relations in the 1964 presidential election. Dr. King, sitting at a desk with microphones in front of him, answers questions by an off-screen reporter indicating that New York City mayor Robert F. Warner reached him July 24 while he was in Mississippi to ask him to come to New York to try and help curb racial tensions in the city. Commenting on reports of "strong subversive and communist elements identified" in rioting in the neighborhoods of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, King suggests that while Communist groups may take advantage of African American discontent, he believes the rioting in New York is a result of a white, off-duty policeman shooting an African American boy. On July 10 an off-duty policeman shot and killed an African American young man he said was carrying a knife. The killing sparked rioting in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant.