Meadville in the 1970's :: Racial background

By 1974 Meadville had seen a lot of progress. A new city hall had been built, and with it a new police station and lockup. A new arterial highway was built along French Creek that nearly cut the town in half. It was called the Meadville bypass, and it has lived up to it's name. Now traffic can go through Meadville without stopping - making their way to the shopping plazas and malls across the creek in Vernon Township.

The by-pass also did another service to the city. It took out old, poor, rough, ethnic neighborhoods with mom and pop grocery stores, churches, taverns, small businesses and a deep sense of community and tradition. It spread the residents to various other parts of the city, where some could afford to live, and for those who couldn't afford to buy homes or rent apartments, the government built several projects for these folks to move into. Again, from a cop's point of view this was like scratching poison ivy. If you can put up with the itch in a small area and keep it contained it is a lot easier to deal with than if you scratch open the blister and spread it all over your arm, or leg, (or more sensitive parts of the body.) Housing projects all across the country have traditionally become a police nightmare, full of crime, violence, drugs, sexual assaults, and a breeding ground for juvenile delinquents. (at least that's what we used to call them. Now they are simply victims of their socio-economic environment and the community is to blame for causing the problem.).

Meadville has a small black population, about 12% I have heard it estimated. Many of these folks came from the south: Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia during the period during and after WWII when factories and the railroad were geared up for heavy production and transportation. Again, they were mostly honest, hard working, Godly people who provided a great resource and service to the community.

When the war was over, and peace broke out, people whose eyes were focused on Europe and the Pacific began to focus closer to home, and they realized who they were working with and living next to, and the color-blindness went away. Prejudice works both ways; it is a way of putting blame for your problems on somebody who is a different color than you.

By the 1970's the racial violence and unrest that had been plaguing the bigger cities had reached clear down to Meadville. The first couple of instances were ignited when a black man who was arrested and held for drunkenness hung himself in his cell at the police station. To the radical thinking of the times, this was seen by some as a lynching by the police department. It doesn't take much of a spark to ignite a big fire if there is enough dry grass and gasoline available. Groups of young people began to take to the streets and protest. It doesn't take long for a mob mentality to assert itself over individuals of normally good common sense. It doesn't take long after the first brick is thrown, or the first fire is set that common sense and reason are overcome by animal instincts, and the sin that we constantly struggle to keep under control gets loose and begins to harvest the crop that had been sown and watered for so many years in silent acceptance of bias and prejudice.

 After the fires went out and cooler heads prevailed, the pot was set to simmer on the back of the stove until the next incident. One evening in the middle of town, at Diamond Park there was a classic meeting of two opposites. It wasn't just white vs black, but it was a white Motorcycle gang and a few outspoken proud black youth. The end result of this meeting was that a rifle was discharged by a member of the white motorcycle gang and the bullet entered a car occupied by proud black youth, and entered the head of a 14 year old boy and ended his proud young life. Even though the police acted quickly and the gang members responsible were arrested and tried, the police department bore the brunt of the backlash from the black community. Demonstrations, and protests (not quite all-out riots) were keeping the state and local police busy 24 hours a day, just to prevent windows from being broken, fires from being set, and cars from being randomly damaged. In December 1973 the local Elks club sponsored their annual basketball tournament at Meadville High School. The Meadville police were on hand to provide security as usual. There was tension in the gym not so much generated by the competition, but by the animosity between black and white fans who had come to watch the game. The tournament ended abruptly as did the general peace when several fights broke out between white and black students, parents, fans and innocent bystanders. The police did what they could to stop the fights and arrest the troublemakers, but of course no one was happy with the result. The sentiment in the black community was that the (mostly white) police department unfairly arrested and persecuted the blacks, while the white community blamed the police department for not doing enough to stop the violence from getting out of hand. Police officers usually find themselves in the middle of controversy for just trying to do the best job they can.

Long after George Washington had passed through hostile French territory, and David Mead built his first cabin along the creek, and fortified the community against the hostile western tribes, and Col. Crawford was burned at the stake by hostile Delaware Indians, I was hired by Meadville police department as a patrolman in July of 1974 to try to keep hostility under control.

(read Meadville, a Short History to understand the background here.)