Trial to Begin in Pennsylvania Riot Murders
YORK, Pa. — Jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of three white men, including the city’s former mayor, accused of the fatal shooting of a black woman during 10 days of paralyzing race riots in 1969.
Prosecutors say Charlie Robertson, a young police officer who later became mayor, gave ammunition to white gangs that ambushed a car in which Lillie Belle Allen was riding with relatives. The other two men are accused of taking part in the ambush.
The slayings of 27-year-old Allen and a white rookie police officer during the riots helped fuel a subsequent effort to build bridges between blacks and whites, even as the truth of the killings remained elusive.
“I think it’s important for all Yorkers to know the truth, to know what happened in 1969,” said John Brenner, York’s current mayor, who was just a year old when the riots erupted. “I think we all want the same thing: who did it, who’s responsible for both murders. And we want them to be held accountable.”
Allen’s shooting remained unsolved until late 1999, when prosecutors say new information surfaced and investigators reopened the case.
Since then, 10 white men have been charged in Allen’s killing. Six pleaded guilty to shooting at the car or being gang lookouts. Some may testify. A 10th man is to be tried separately. One former white gang member killed himself in April 2000 after talking to prosecutors
Two black men await trial in the killing of the white rookie officer, 22-year-old Henry Schaad.
Years of tension found a spark on July 17, 1969, when a black youth said he had been set on fire by whites, a story he later recanted. The same day, white gang member Robert Messersmith shot two black youths. Rumors spread that a white police officer was responsible for the shootings and rioting broke out.
The next day, Schaad was killed. Allen was killed three days later.
During the rioting, whole city blocks were burned, police barricaded black neighborhoods and enforced curfews, 60 people were injured, and 100 were arrested before National Guard tanks rolled into town.
At the time, little national attention was focused on the violence in York, then a manufacturing town of 50,000 in Pennsylvania dairy country. Earlier rioting had scarred cities including Los Angeles and Detroit. And it was the same week that a woman drowned when Sen. Edward Kennedy drove his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, Mass., and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
During the riots, Robertson was a seven-year veteran of the city police force. He gave up his pursuit of a third term as mayor last year after he was charged with inciting white gang members to violence against blacks and handing out ammunition to at least one of the shooters.
Robertson, 68, has admitted shouting “white power” at a rally the day before Allen’s killing, but he has denied the other accusations.
Messersmith is accused of firing the shot that killed Allen. Another former gang member, Greg Neff, is accused of shooting at the car in which Allen, her sister, brother-in-law, and parents were riding when they took a wrong turn into a white neighborhood.
Over the last dozen years or so, prosecutors have reached back to investigate 22 civil rights-era murders, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala., nonprofit group that monitors extremist groups.
“There have been 13 years of careful looking back at these cases and it could be soon that this era will come to a close,” said Mark Potok, who edits the law center’s newsletter, the Intelligence Report.
York today is a city of 41,000. Some 19,000 whites have left while the black population has risen from 12 percent to 20 percent.
The slain officer’s brother, Barry Schaad, speaks of better race relations, of people who “are more aware of the things they say and do, and how it affects other people.”
October 1st, 2002 at 10:01 pm
GUILTY IS THE ONLY VERDICT FOR ALL INVOLVED, ESPECIALLY “CHARLIE ROBERTSON”.