ABSTRACT
The history of the United States has been characterized by a tragic amount of inter-racial violence which has taken a variety of forms and produced a variety of outcomes. Among the most dramatic kinds of inter-racial violence has been the Black/White race riot made highly visible by the large number of impassioned participants. Grimshaw believes that the Southern style race riot is unlikely to occur again in the United States primarily because the Black population will no longer adopt a passive stance to White assaults. In the past five years the militant side of the Black movement has received wide publicity. The analytical context in which the data will be presented is based on a social psychological approach to mass violence taken by Roger Brown. He suggests that a useful way to analyze the behavior of crowds is to examine the kinds of evaluations and decisions made by individual members of the collectivity.
