Cambridge riot 1963

The Cambridge Riots of 1963, were race riots that occurred during the summer of 1963 in Cambridge, Maryland, a small town on the Eastern Shore. The riots emerged during the Civil Rights Movement, led by Gloria Richardson and the local chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and its opposition by pro-segregationist civilians and police.

By January, Baltimore's Civic Interest Group (CIG) - an affiliate of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) - begins organizing sit-ins and freedom rides in towns along Maryland's Eastern Shore. When SNCC organizers arrive in Cambridge, demonstrations are organized downtown to demand desegregation of local businesses. The Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC) is founded soon after these initial demonstrations to support and continue local protests.

Governor J. Millard Tawes urges the Maryland General Assembly to pass an anti-discrimination bill aimed at ending prejudice in establishments throughout the state, though the effort is hampered when Eastern Shore legislators push to allow counties to exempt themselves from enforcement of the bill.

By the close of the summer of 1962, most establishments in Cambridge are still segregated, with CNAC-led protests dwindling as school resumes for its student members.

Demonstrations by the CNAC resume at the end of March, when a local movie theater expands its discriminatory practices by relegating African-Americans to the back rows of the balcony instead of the entire balcony, as had been done previously. This escalation motivates leaders of both the CNAC and CIG to meet with city officials to discuss the desegregation of public accommodations, equal employment opportunities, and fair housing for African-Americans but their demands go unmet. In response, demonstrators march though downtown Cambridge to protest the continuing segregation allowed in public venues, which ends with the arrest of Richardson and sixteen other demonstrators for "disorderly conduct." A boycott of white-owned businesses is then organized by the CNAC, with this pattern of protests, arrests, boycotts, and harassment continuing through April.

...
Wikipedia