How To Break Open A Secret

By Edward Barnes/York

For 30 years, no one said anything. "Everyone knew who was involved," says Charles Robertson, two-time mayor of the hard-knock river town of York, Pa. "But everyone just thought it was even. One black had been killed and one white--even." He was reflecting on the week of July 1969 that turned neighbor against neighbor, blacks against whites. By the time it ended, part of York lay in smoldering ruins and National Guard tanks patrolled the streets. "But everyone thought it was even." And for nearly the rest of the century the carnage remained an open, unpursued secret: no accounting, no justice. Then in April, two brothers--members of a white street gang--were indicted for a murder from that long-ago week. Police have since arrested six more suspects, last week including a former badge wearer: Mayor Robertson. Suddenly not only was York talking about its secret, so was America.

Robertson, 67, was a cop back in 1969. Last week, two days before he was arrested, he had just won a heated Democratic mayoral primary against a black challenger. He presented himself to police on Thursday (and is now out on $50,000 bail), yet he has refused to step down. He may once have been a racist, he says, but he is innocent of murder.

An affidavit says that during the race riots, Robertson provoked trouble by addressing a rally and yelling "White power!" Then, the affidavit continues, he provided ammunition to a gang known as the Newberry Street Boys and told them, "If I weren't a cop, I would be leading commando raids against n______ in the black neighborhoods." The ammunition that Robertson allegedly handed out was used on the night of July 21, 1969, when a car carrying a black family turned onto Newberry Street by mistake. It had got no more than a block when the driver saw a crowd of up to 200 well-armed whites gathered up the street. In a panic the driver tried to turn the car around but stalled it on railroad tracks--then the demarcation between black and white neighborhoods. Lillie Belle Allen, a mother of two visiting York from South Carolina, was in the back seat of the car and offered to help the terrified driver. When she got out to wave the crowd off, to tell them not to open fire, she was hit in the chest by a shotgun blast. Then more than 100 rounds of bullets were fired at the car.

Robertson says he arrived on the scene with an armored car to heroically stop the shooting, telling the four surviving passengers to drive away. "I saved their lives," he told TIME. "I looked down at Allen, and she was just shredded."

But the grand jury says that never happened. It says he went over and began talking to several armed Newberry Street gang members while another officer tended to the people in the car. No arrests were made. For decades, the city simply did not to talk about it--until a local newspaper story on the 30th anniversary ripped open old scars. "Before, people were just afraid or felt threatened," says a local businessman. "But York is a changing, more open and prosperous city today." The businessman, however, asked to remain anonymous.

York is still deeply divided; minorities make up 40% of its 41,000 people. Newberry Street is still a front line. Last week, at the spot where Allen died, Ronnie Young sat on the stoop of his row house wearing a red Newberry Street Boys hat. A Confederate flag hangs in his yard. "They say they were race riots, but all they are doing is indicting whites," he says. "They better find out who shot the white cop, or there will be another race war." That policeman was shot three days before Allen and died two weeks after. Black leaders too want a further accounting: the unsolved shooting of another African American, an unarmed teen, sparked the 1969 riots.

The years have taken their toll on those who kept the secrets. When police began re-examining the case less than two years ago, they questioned a gang member who left a taped confession implicating fellow members before killing himself. Three other members suspected in the shooting have committed suicide. Two more died in accidents. July 1969 produced a case that will not be easy to close. But it can no longer take refuge in silence.