Not Far removed: I Remember the Fires of 1968, and America Still Refuses to Learn

Posted by David Adams on April 8th, 2026

It was exactly 58 years ago today. I was only 2 years old, in my mother’s arms as she held me near the third-floor window of her apartment in the 2200 block of Brookfield Avenue in West Baltimore. Mom and Dad were only 22-years-old. Outside, the city was in chaos. I remember people coming down our block carrying items they had looted from the business district up on Whitelock Avenue at the top of our street. I remember National Guardsmen walking down the middle of the block with rifles pointed in the air while clearing the street. I remember fires burning across the city. I remember fear. I remember unrest. I remember a country coming apart in real time at just 2-years-old.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated on April 4, 1968, and by April 8, the pain, rage, and hopelessness in Black communities had spilled into the streets. That era was not ancient history. It was in my generation. Too many people speak about the Civil Rights era as if it belongs to some long-dead America, as if racism was buried with the past, as if the hatred, exclusion, police abuse, economic deprivation, and racial contempt that fueled those uprisings somehow disappeared. It has not. We are not far removed from that America at all. In truth, many of its foundations and social ideologies are still standing.

What some white Americans still refuse to understand is that riots and looting do not happen in a vacuum. They are not born simply from “bad behavior,” moral failure, or some manufactured idea that Black people are naturally disorderly. That kind of thinking is itself rooted in racism. What happened in cities like Baltimore after Dr. King’s murder was the explosion of generations of injustice, neglect, humiliation, and pain.

When people are locked out of power, denied dignity, brutalized by the systems sworn to protect them, and then told to remain peaceful while their lives are treated as disposable, eventually something breaks. Yet, even today, some still talk about the rioting and looting of 1968 with more outrage than they ever speak about the racism that gave birth to it. That’s the hypocrisy.

They condemn the response, but remain silent about the conditions. They criticize broken windows, but not broken humanity. They mourn property, but rarely mourn the decades of racial terror, segregation, disinvestment, and systemic abuse that made those streets a powder keg in the first place. That’s why America still struggles with race now. Too many people want the comfort of reconciliation without the truth of accountability. Too many want racial peace without racial justice. Too many want to lecture Black communities about behavior, while refusing to confront the historical and present-day forces that have poisoned relationships between the races for generations.

If we truly want to live better together, then honesty has to come first. We must tell the truth about what racism has done to this country. We must tell the truth about why cities burned. We must tell the truth about how white supremacy shaped housing, schools, policing, employment, and opportunity. We must tell the truth that racial wounds do not heal just because time has passed.

Living better together requires more than slogans. It requires empathy. It requires humility. It requires that people stop asking only, “Why were they rioting?” and start asking, “What kind of nation creates the conditions where despair and rage become that deep?” That is the real question we should be asking.

My memory of Baltimore in flames is not just a memory of destruction. It is a memory of unresolved pain in America. And 58 years later, this country still has not fully dealt with the sickness that put those flames in the streets.

We are not far removed from that racism. We are still wrestling with it. Still suffering from it. Still being divided by it. Until this nation develops the courage to understand the why behind the anger, not just condemn the anger itself, we will keep repeating the same cycles under different names.

Dr. King is gone. The smoke from 1968 has long cleared. But the moral failure that helped ignite it still lingers, and that should disturb every one of us.

David Adams

David B. Adams grew up in the Highlandtown section of Baltimore's southeast district and is his parent's youngest child. He experienced pervasive poverty, which taught him humility and compassion for the plight of others. His exposure to violence and gritty urban life were some of his early lessons of life's many hardships. Adams credits the upheavals he endured during his conformity with helping to shape the foundation of his outlook and perspectives on society. With a steadfast commitment to giving voice to the voiceless, Adams is a journalist, crime writer, and blogger renowned for tireless investigative journalism and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable populations. As founder and administrator of The People's Champion, Adams sheds light on critical social issues, championing the rights of: - Homeless individuals - Victims of violent crime and their families - Wrongfully convicted individuals - Missing and exploited children; Additionally, he is a seasoned investigative reporter, Adams has earned recognition for relentless pursuit of truth and justice. With a strong national and global focus, on inspiring meaningful change and crucial conversations impacting all of humanity.

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