Martin Luther King Jr. died from an assassin?s bullet around 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968. Less than 48 hours later, Baltimore?s streets were in chaos.
Around 5 p.m. on April 6, a few out-of-control looters were reported around the 900 block of Gay Street. Early on, the unrest, according to a 1968 report by the Maryland Criminal Investigation Commission, was nothing more than a few random fires.
Then suddenly, full-fledged rioting broke out and quickly spread to Patterson Park Avenue to the east, West Belvedere Avenue and 33rd Street to the north, Hilton Road to the west and Pratt Street and Washington Boulevard to the south.
A 1968 Report on Baltimore Civil Disorders timelined Gov. Spiro T. Agnew?s flurry of activity after declaring a state of emergency. First, he activated the Maryland National Guard?s 5,700 members and then placed the city under a daily curfew from 4 p.m. to 6 a.m. Agnew?s request for federal troops was granted, and 5,000 soldiers marched into town.
In six days of rioting, an estimated 700 buildings were damaged, according to the Maryland Crime Investigating Commission. More than 1,500 fire calls were made, 321 of them false.
“You could smell smoke in every nook and corner of the city,” said Rev. Marion Bascom, 82, a civil rights leader in Baltimore at the time.
Many attempts were made by Mayor Thomas D?Alesandro III to reach out to the rioters, and local minority leaders tried to calm things through peace rallies and meetings.
Once tensions began to calm, Agnew eased curfew restrictions. By April 11 the looting and fires had all but died out.
Aside from multimillion-dollar property damage, city residents faced a severe food shortage because of looted grocery stores. From April 10 to April 13, the Community Action Agency fed more than 30,000 people.
The final property damage estimate was between $8 million and $13.5 million, and the death and injury report provided by the Maryland Crime Investigation Commission was just as harsh ? six fatalities and 700 injured. There were 5,500 arrests.
