Major rioting broke out in many American cities after the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King. There was significant rioting in 100 cities, with the worst taking place in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Kansas City. Property damage and loss of life were rampant and much of the land was engulfed in grief and fear.

But Oakland, with a large African-American population long in conflict with local police, had no significant rioting, despite a shootout between OPD and the Black Panther Party which resulted in the death of 18 year old Bobbie Hutton and the wounding of Eldridge Cleaver, BPP Minister of Information and the well known author of “Soul on Ice.”

How come? One can speculate on a lot of things but I know from direct involvement that a very important factor was the presence of a well planned crisis information hot line center run by a group known as Alamo Black Clergy (ABC). This militant group was committed to “Oakland’s not for burning!” because they were very aware that black communities suffered the most in urban riots. They felt especially strongly that their parishioners and the businesses they relied on should be protected—and they feared that false rumors could easily trigger serious conflagrations.

What was the Alamo Black Clergy group? It consisted of pastors who were actively involved in the civil rights struggle and were committed to working together, especially in times of crises. It got its name from a retreat center in suburban Alameda county where they had their organizing meeting. Its founding leader was W. Hazaiah Williams, director of the Center for Urban Black Studies in the Berkeley-based Graduate Theological Union (GTU). He was pastor of Berkeley’s Church for Today and a member of that
city’s school board.

He attended Boston University School of Theology at the same time as Martin Luther King, Jr., and, like the martyred civil rights leader, was mentored by Howard Thurman, perhaps the most important preacher/theologian/mystic/prophet of the civil rights era. Thurman’s influence on King and Williams was profound. His books, including Jesus and the Disinherited, several including meditations on African-American spirituals and his autobiography are classics well worth reading today. Williams taught GTU courses on Thurman’s thought.

Other ABC leaders included J. Alfred Smith, Sr., Will Herzfeld, Frank Pinkard, Hector Lopez and H. Eugene Farlough. Most of these had prominent pastorates in Oakland for years. Part of the group’s early decisions was to create a plan for a crisis hot line for any emergency that might happen. They made arrangements to use the facilities—and multiple phone lines—of a non-profit located on Berkeley’s “Holy Hill”, where many denominational seminaries affiliated with the GTU were located.

They also organized a network of pastors, lay people, civil rights organizations, activists, community/neighborhood groups and inner city Roman Catholic priests (organized as “Flatland Fathers”) which would inform the hotline center of what was going on in their neighborhoods—and check with it frequently to make sure that information being spread was true.

After King’s death, the plan was activated, with round-the-clock coverage of the phones by ABC members and their recruits. Beyond the network mentioned above, the center had regular phone contact with media, civil rights groups, Berkeley-based (largely white student) radical groups and, I believe, police, hospitals and the Black Panther Party (BPP).

As a white seminarian, I was a part of this activity for a week or so, subsisting on brought-in food and sleeping-bag-on-the-couch slumber. I was asked to be there because of my involvement in justice issues within Lutheranism with Will Herzfeld, one of the group’s leaders.

Needless to say, the days were intense. Grief, of course, was strong, as well as anger. Most of the ABC members were close to King and many flew to Atlanta for his funeral. We mourned for our nation and the local community and feared the destructive results of rioting.

The first two days after the assassination were pretty calm locally, but the potential for serious mayhem became serious on April 6th when a West Oakland confrontation happened between police and the Panthers.

The BPP was started in Oakland when two Merritt (community) College students, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, decided that OPD needed to be watched closely in view of the long history of police misconduct and brutality in the city. For years, major recruitment for the force concentrated on Southern military police products, who frequently had racist attitudes. A major activity was to show up during police traffic stops “armed” with copies of appropriate legal codes.

In the late ‘sixties, the party gained all sorts of notoriety, partially because of dramatic activities and actions, frequently covered by media. More quiet activities, such as a pre-school breakfast programs for children, did much to foster community support. Somewhat flamboyant black leather and beret “uniforms” added to their mystique and popularity.

Newton, Seale and Cleaver were often covered sensationally by local and national media and were viewed as heroes by many community activists.

The shoot out resulted in serious injuries to two police officers, as well as the death of Hutton, a young and early recruit to the BPP, and the wounding of Cleaver. Then things became intense because the rumor was spreading quickly that the latter had died. This could easily provoke a major riot. I’m not sure how the crisis center learned this not to be true, but it became very clear that this “fake news” needed to be squelched because of his fame and notoriety.

People at the center were soon phoning all their contacts to deny the rumor, but one problem was clear. No one could reach by phone some of the Berkeley radical groups which had very different attitudes about rioting. They hoped riots would happen big time, perhaps as the start of a revolution romantically, if naively, hoped for. Of course, if such happened in Oakland, it would affect most seriously its black community.

This was the context of what was to be one of the strangest nights in my life. The ABC leaders dispatched me in the middle of the night to go to several Berkeley communes and contacts they had to inform them that Cleaver was alive. You can imagine the reception— who are you and who sent you? Some were even upset that he
wasn’t dead.

Once that rumor was suppressed not much happened in Oakland, despite massive destruction in other cities. Much of the credit should go to the Alamo Black Clergy and its commitment that Oakland was not for burning.