Lack of jobs, bad and segregated housing, u?ban destruction with little reconstruction, and harassment from police were the basic grievances. With blacks hanging out in the parks on hot night, police had decided to enforce the evening cunfew. Any job is hard to find because of the recession, but the good jobs are almost always denied to blacks.

By Tuesday, July 14, the Guard was pulled out and the curfew cut back. Eight white city officials (there is one black city councilman in the local government and a few black police) received a middle-class community delegation in the tidy new brick courtroom in the police station.

The officials' response ranged from befuddlement to obstructionism as the community delegation presented 12 demands, including a "hot line" on community problems, regulations on police conuct, suspension of the cop who arrested Gipson, appointment of several black city officials, tenants representation on the public housing board, and pressure from the mayor on the banks to make loans for housing available to blacks.

Not only were the demands weak, but a large segment of the community noted that the middle-class blacks and whites who had long made NAACP so weak were the "spokesmen" the mayor heard.

"I don't recognize any of them," shouted one worker as he stomped out of a meeting where the argument had centered on which ministers to include on the negotiating committee.

In response to demands for regulation of police conduct, the deputy prosecutor (also the attorney for the Human Relations Commission) read off the standard police instructions to be courteous, respect property, and so on.

"Everybody has these rules," one man challenged. "That doesn't interest me as much as who punishes them if they break the rules."