“If Cambridge doesn't come around, Cambridge got to be burned down,” activist H. Rap Brown declared during the summer of 1967. For the mainstream, it was the summer of love, but it was anything but lovely for our people.
As the temperatures rose, folks became more fed up with increasing poverty, unemployment, and policing in our communities. So we took to the streets in cities across the country to fight back.
In Newark, taxi driver John Smith was beaten by cops and then arrested. Word had spread that they'd killed him, and five days of uprisings ensued. Detroit saw the largest riot of the summer when police stormed an after-hours spot and arrested dozens before locals took to the streets.
Anti-Blackness was brewing for decades in Cambridge, Maryland when H. Rap Brown came to town to speak power to the people about self-determination and controlling our neighborhoods. Hours later, the city was burning after police fired two shots.
This summer was a long, hot summer of uprisings fueled by generations of systematic anti-Blackness as a catalyst.
We’ve always been willing to fight for ours. Sometimes that fight manifests as an uprising, other times it's a ballot – but often resistance looks like building and supporting grassroots organizations working to house, feed, educate, employ, and care for our people.