Medford+Race+Riot

 **Racial fights erupt at ****Medford **** High School ****; [City Edition] ** //Bob Hohler and Brian McGrory, Globe Staff//. ** [|Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext)] **. Boston, Mass.: [|Dec 11, 1992]. //Copyright Boston Globe Newspaper Dec 11, 1992 //  MEDFORD  -- Black and white students, capping a year filled with racial tensions, squared off in a bare-fisted, chair-flinging brawl at Medford High School yesterday afternoon that spilled from the cafeteria into the hallways and eventually the parking lot, witnesses and police said. One student was hit in the head with a baseball bat and injured, 15 others were arrested, and dozens of local police and state troopers with dogs and a helicopter were summoned to the school to quell the riot, officials said. "The cops were there, the dogs were there, it was a bloody mess," said Ray DeLorey, a junior who witnessed the brawl. In all, witnesses said, at least 60 students, and possibly as many as 100, were involved in the noontime riot. At least three youths said the fighting began when a black male student pushed a white female student in the cafeteria. From there, the room became awash in violence and anger as whites were pitted against blacks and blacks against whites in a fight split along racial lines. Said sophomore Scott Cali, "It was like a racial war." Amid the violence, classrooms were sealed and some students were later driven away in buses, as racial jeers and threats were flung with abandon. School officials, who huddled in a series of closed-door meetings last night in search of a solution, canceled classes for today to ease the tension. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">After the riot, black students, whose numbers have climbed at the school in the past several years -- they now make up 20 percent of the school's 1,250 students -- said they are routinely called "nigger" and mocked by their white classmates. Many said the brawl had become an inevitable expectation. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"Everything is racial here," said Desiree Williams, a black senior. "I said yesterday there is going to be a racial riot, and it happened." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Said Miskula Musukulla, "People make fun of the way we talk." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Cara Pace, a white senior, said the number of black students at the school was increasing rapidly. "I feel like a minority at the school," she said. "It is all about intimidation. People are trying to intimidate each other." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Carol Sharpton, a School Committee member and former guidance counselor, blamed school superintendent Philip Devaux, headmaster Salvatore Todaro and members of the faculty for being insensitive to what was becoming an obvious racial problem. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Sharpton said Devaux met with the local human rights commission three weeks ago and vowed to develop a student group to battle racism. That was not done, she said. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"There is racism at the high school," she said. "There are faculty members who have attitudes that are not befitting the classroom." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">After a closed meeting last night that included school administrators, parents and the students who were arrested, Todaro said: "These are attitudes on both sides that are inflammatory, that kids bring into this building. You aren't going to change attitudes overnight." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Devaux said the high school is closed today and may be closed on Monday. He said teachers will be in school today, however, to discuss the melee. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Last night, black parents complained that police were brutal toward the students. They said that a meeting may be held tomorrow at Shiloh Baptist Church in West Medford with a representative of the Civil Liberties Union to discuss a possible lawsuit against the city. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Local black leaders said students' requests for more emphasis on black studies were ignored or rejected by school officials, further fanning the flames of discontent. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"From what I understand, they had a lot of name-calling in the student body, and a feeling that minorities were being left out of the academic program, and not able to discuss Martin Luther King and Malcolm X," said Lena Phillips, president of the Medford chapter of the NAACP. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">City and school officials, apparently seeking to downplay the riot, said the fighting involved only a fraction of the students. They offered no explanation for the brawl, but conceded that it appeared racially motivated. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"We are not talking about the majority of the students at Medford High School," headmaster Todaro told reporters. "We are talking about a minority of youngsters." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">One Medford police officer said, "There is nothing to it." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">All 15 students arrested were released on $25 bail each yesterday. Most of the arrested students were black, police said, booked on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to assault and battery on a police officer. They ranged in age from 13 to 19, with the bulk expected to be tried as adults, authorities said. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Police arrived in droves, with some using chemical sprays and carrying nightsticks, according to several students. At least 20 state troopers, some with trained dogs, also separated fighting students. They were aided by transit authority police and officers from neighboring Somerville. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">No stranger to such incidents, the high school experienced a similar brawl in 1977, when blacks and whites clashed shortly after classes opened for the school year. The school was closed and when it reopened, the few blacks who initially returned were each escorted to classes by two faculty members. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In 1984, a black basketball coach who was fired by the School Committee in favor of his white assistant, charged racism and was eventually rehired. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Last night, religious and black leaders huddled with some students and parents around the city, including clergy at the Shiloh Baptist Church. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">At the West Medford Community Center, executive director Donald Crowe said he had already warned school officials of impending problems. He said they largely ignored his warnings, but yesterday asked him to help solve the racial conflict. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"They knew there was smoke," Crowe said. "I told them this had been brewing for quite some time. Correcting the problem can't begin with just one group. It has to happen with the whole community." <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Crowe attributed part of the problem at the school to tensions arising from interracial dating. "They have to better educate the faculty and staff on that," Crowe said. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Peter Iodice, a white senior, transferred from Madison Park High School in Roxbury, where he said he saw a boy shot and a girl stabbed last year, and where he was stabbed, too. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"I thought it would be peaceful here," Iodice said. "I thought it would be cool. But now the same thing is happening here." Critical Thinking Questions:
 * 1)  How does this riot compare and contrast with the Broad Street Riot?
 * 2) Why do riots continue to occur in society? What can we do to lessen their frequency?