City officially apologizes for police crackdowns during civil rights struggle
By Gerry May
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SHREVEPORT, Louisiana (KTBS) — Almost 60 years later, the City of Shreveport gives official apologies for police actions during the civil rights struggle.
City Councilwoman Tabatha Taylor sponsored resolutions to apologize to members of Little Union Baptist Church, students at Booker T. Washington High School, and Rev. Calvin Austin.
“Remembering our past that some would like to erase — you can’t,” Taylor said before the resolutions were read at the city council meeting on Tuesday.
Then addressing those who were victimized, Taylor added, “Because of what you did, we, as a number of black Americans, are able to sit in elected office. Because you chose to stand. Because you chose to believe in equity and equality, even if it meant your life.”
In September of 1963, officers stormed into the church to break up a memorial service for four girls killed in a bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Officers badly beat Rev. Harry Blake outside Little Union.
One week later, BTW student Calvin Austin led a march from the nearby school down Milam Street . Police attacked them with tear gas and batons. Austin was put in jail and expelled from school.
“This thing was never about me,” Rev. Austin says. “It was about the situation that occurred in this city that made me do what I did that Monday to — I guess — to get run out of this town for disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, and all the other things they could bring with it.”
Austin was at the council meeting to accept the resolution with some of his classmates. Little Union Baptist’s Pastor, Rev. C. E. McClain, and others from the church, were also there to accept their resolution.
“Long overdue,” Rev. McClain said of the city’s official apology for the brutal police crackdown. “It did severe damage to the psyche, the minds and hearts of people who come to church.”
The city issued a letter of apology to Rev. Blake in 2003, which was 40 years after his beating. Rev. Blake passed away two years ago.
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