Troops quiet Texas rioters
Martial law rules Beaumont after 24-hour terror
Beaumont, Texas (UP) –
State militia, who spread their blankets on the city hall lawn last night with their submachine guns close at hand, restored order to this Gulf Coast shipbuilding center today after 24 hours of race-rioting in which a white man and a Negro were killed.
Acting Governor A. M. Aikin Jr. placed the city under martial law last night after 60 Negroes had been hospitalized and 100 homes and shops in the Negro district had been destroyed in the rioting, which broke out after a young white woman told police she had been attacked by a Negro.
Curfew is set
More than 1,000 State Guardsmen came to the aid of Texas Rangers and local peace officers with the imposition of martial law. While state troops slept restlessly on the city hall lawn, ready for any eventuality, other detachments patrolled deserted streets.
An 8:30 p.m. CWT curfew ordered last night kept everyone but war workers off the streets and prevented a recurrence of the violence of the night before, when mobs of white men invaded the Negro district, burned homes, dragged Negroes from their automobiles and set fire to the cars.
Shipyards resume
Production at the shipyards, which had been disrupted in the rioting, was restored almost to normal during the night, although no Negro employees had been called back to work.
The dead white man was Ellis Cleveland Brown, 55. He died yesterday of a skull fracture after a group of Negroes slugged him while he was walking down the street. John Johnson, a Negro, died of gunshot wounds last night.
About 125 members of the mobs which invaded the Negro district were held in jail. Under martial law, they cannot be released under bond. Both city and county jails were kept under heavy guard and a barbed-wire barrier was erected around police headquarters.
Search goes on
The Negro who assaulted the white woman had not been apprehended. The rioting began when mobs of white men formed to look for him and went to the jails to demand his release in the belief he had been arrested.
Many observers believed the violence resulted from growing animosity between Negroes and whites thrown together as the war-boom town grew faster than social adjustments could be made. Minor disturbances a few weeks ago prompted authorities to place separate busses in services for Negroes and whites.