Prometheus 6

It will be as much fun and the Brown v Board of Ed. commemorations were, I'm sure.

The fire is still painful for some locals to discuss - some chafe at calling it a riot; others insist that's exactly what it was - but outside attention is returning as two universities and a national foundation plan to revisit this and other sites of 1960s racial strife to mark the approaching 40th anniversary of a report that examined the problem.

That report came from the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly called the Kerner Riot Commission, whose members visited Cambridge after the blaze and warned of racial divisions.

Site of Racial Tensions Still Has Scars
By KRISTEN WYATT
Associated Press Writer 

CAMBRIDGE, Md. (AP) -- Longtime residents of Pine Street say it used to bustle with traffic to black-owned businesses. Today, 40 years after racial tensions peaked with a devastating fire, it's hard to tell that the neighborhood of peeling paint and sagging porches was ever a thriving community.

"Pine Street was the heart of the African-American community," said the Rev. Enez Stafford Grubb, 64, standing outside Bethel AME Church. She's attended the church all her life and is now its pastor.

"There was a drug store and a pharmacy right there. There were doctors here, and a lawyer. We used to have it all decorated for Christmas."

These days there's not much business activity on Pine Street, save an Elks Club and a house with a handwritten "Barber Shop" poster hanging from the front porch. Residents say the neighborhood never recovered from the blaze that started at the neighborhood's segregated elementary school and burned much of the black section of Cambridge.