An enthusiastic young reporter, Dave Lieberth just got his first assignment at WHLO radio station in Fairlawn. And it was a big one.
“I was baptized by fire in the news business,” said the historian, who diligently started calling hospitals and police stations to quantify the injuries, arrests and panic sweeping Summit County.
It was Sunday, July 21, 1968. On-again, off-again rioting on Wooster Avenue in one of Akron’s poorest black neighborhoods had paralyzed the region since Wednesday with dusk-to-dawn curfews.
With the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the civil rights movement was coming to a bloody end across America.
“It was a powder keg,” said the Rev. Benjamin Drone, who grew up in the Seventh Avenue projects in East Akron. “After Dr. King was assassinated, it was like your enemy has taken your hero away. It was a storm waiting to happen. And it didn’t take much to start the fire.”
Before Akron’s troubles, unrest in American cities followed a usual pattern: Something triggered an uprising that only ended after significant tragedy. Akron’s ordeal, now five days old, seemed to simmer with no end in sight.
The burning and looting were scattered. Property damage was minimal compared to rioting elsewhere. And no one had died, though several dozen were hospitalized.