WASHINGTON _ Disproportionately high rates of coronavirus. Historic levels of joblessness. Repeated cases of police violence toward African Americans. The crises have created a "perfect storm" of intolerable conditions that have pushed the nation to the brink, black leaders told McClatchy this week, comparing the current turmoil to the turbulence of the 1960s.
Protests over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody last month, have become a symbol of the racial disparities in America that black leaders say President Donald Trump has failed to effectively address.
"We have witnessed, perhaps, the worst 70 days in U.S. history outside of the Civil War. That all of the things that have bubbled to the surface over the last 70 days, is a direct result of the lack of leadership coming from the White House," Derrick Johnson, head of the NAACP, said.
Floyd's death after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes _ as he told the officer he couldn't breathe before he became unresponsive _ was a breaking point for many members of the black community, coming after the shooting deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
Trump at a Saturday event denounced Floyd's death as a "grave tragedy" and called for a "partnership with community leaders, local law enforcement and the faith community to restore hope."
His statements since then have primarily advocated for the use of "overwhelming" law enforcement presence to prevent violence in protests.
Trump delivered a Rose Garden speech on Monday, saying governors must "dominate" their streets with the National Guard or he will deploy active duty troops, at the same time that law enforcement officers were forcefully dispersing nonviolent demonstrators in Lafayette Square across from the White House.
Using charged language, Trump said in tweets that "hoodlums and thieves" should be brought to heel with "lowlifes and losers" and other types of "scum" defacing buildings and looting businesses, following an especially chaotic night of demonstrations in New York City.
He has attributed the unlawful behavior to radical leftists and the anti-fascist group antifa, although the White House declined to provide evidence to back up those conclusions.
Black leaders who spoke this week about their experiences in the trenches of the civil rights movement compared individuals who are intentionally inciting violence now to "outside agitators" and "provocateurs" who attempted to whip peaceful protesters into a frenzy 50 years ago.
Bob Woodson, a former civil rights activist who supports Trump, likened the current unrest to his experience working as an organizer in 1965 in Pasadena, Calif., where "anarchists tried to excite the black community to engage in violence."
"We knew that one of the ways that violence gets started, it begins with a fight," Woodson said. "Our guys would stop these fights before they got started, because they knew that it would start a riot."
Woodson said that he and fellow organizers one day discovered that the men who had been antagonizing the group were going to burn a chemical plant in the middle of a black neighborhood while families slept in order to spark a race war.
"I witnessed it. We found out who these provocateurs were and we dealt with them," he said.
The current head of a nonprofit organization that provides resources and support to community leaders in underserved areas said that black protesters are "rejecting white antifa organizers" who are turning peaceful demonstrations into violent encounters that have hurt black business owners.
Woodson said that Trump "should be a voice" for those black business owners, "to listen to and be a voice for what they are saying," and consult community leaders and law enforcement officials who have established responsible relationships with the black community.
Ja'Ron Smith, deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of American Innovation, told McClatchy that the White House has been in contact with black leaders and policing is one of the topics that they have discussed.
"President Trump and his White House continue to engage with African American leaders across America on issues ranging from improving police-community relations to empowering minorities for economic development," Smith said in a statement Tuesday evening. "This President has delivered funding for HBCUs, school choice, criminal justice reform and is only getting started."
Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina who is helping the White House develop policies to address economic inequality in the black community, said at a Sunday news conference that he had spoken to the president by phone. Scott said they discussed "Floyd's murder" and he urged Trump to "keep the focus on that issue."
"The fact of the matter is that the toxicity of the issue doesn't come from a single death. Terrible as it is, it's a pattern that is revealing itself again and again," Scott said. "Anytime you get sidetracked, at all, it dilutes our ability to solve these really important issues."
Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver in an interview with The Kansas City Star on Monday said that he does not "blame" Trump for the convergence of events that led to the protests that began last week in Minneapolis. But the Democratic congressman criticized the president for lack of leadership throughout the crisis.
Cleaver said Trump "does not have the much desired leadership skills for this particular moment" and has "forfeited unfortunately any ability to send a calming message to the country."
He said the protests are about "all of the things that have been unaddressed with regards to race."
Cleaver, who participated in a peaceful protest on Sunday, said that "bad actions" are primarily coming from people "who are not actually part of the community."
"This is a rough time and people express their anger in a lot of ways and some of the ways are stupid," he said.
Alveda King, an African American faith leader close to the president, said that, "The unrest that we see makes the peaceful protesters either afraid or frustrated."
Disavowing looting, burning and fighting, which she said is unnecessary, King said, "My uncle Martin Luther King Jr. did say that violence is the voice of the unheard. However he was going to say, with nonviolence, because he was sure that nonviolence was the best method. He never changed that: violence begets violence."
King recalled the bombing of her childhood home in 1963. Her father, Alfred Daniel "A.D." King, a minister and civil rights activist like his famous brother, urged nonviolent action after the attack on their Birmingham, Ala., home, she said.
"There were outside agitators in the community. And we were peacefully praying, Daddy was asking everybody to go home, saying we were safe," King said in an interview. "And then these people from outside came and began to turn over the police cars and throw fire bombs and just do all kinds of threatening things."
Drawing a parallel between peaceful protesters demanding justice for Floyd and her own family's fight against racial injustice, King said, "I appreciate the president calling to Americans' attention that these are not generally people who live in these communities and they are not tearing up their own communities."
Johnson, the president of the NAACP, said that protesters who have been gathering are peaceful. "Unfortunately there is an element that has been rioting," he said.
He said that rioters could be part of the "extreme right or extreme left or any number of groups in between."
"I don't want him to marginalize the true question that is confronting this nation. That we have an ongoing buildup of white supremacist nationalists that have gone unchecked for far too long," Johnson said, complaining that "nothing was done" about people who showed up at statehouses with guns demanding their governments reopen.
Johnson said that Trump's tweets have emboldened white supremacists and are contributing to the unrest.
"At the end of the day, this nation cannot be what it should, it cannot realize its potential, if we go down this path. And much of the tone and the outcomes rest at the feet of this administration," he said.
White House aides and supporters of the president insist there's little additional action that Trump can take to respond to Floyd's death and placate protesters crying out for government action beyond what he has already done. He spoke to Floyd's family and directed the Justice Department to expedite a civil rights investigation.
"He did whatever one could do from a federal level in that situation," Darrell Scott, CEO of the Urban Revitalization Coalition and a Trump ally, told McClatchy. "Police matters are usually handled on a local level, not on a federal level. And so he did what he could at that time, from a federal level. What more could he do? Go to the place where the man died and start crying?"
Johnson said Trump should immediately order the Justice Department to charge the police officers involved in Floyd's death with crimes and take steps, in conjunction with state and local officials beginning in Minnesota, to dismantle structural racism.
The NAACP president said Trump needs to expand access to COVID-19 testing in low-income communities, as well _ something that the president's White House task force has said is a priority.
Trump's reaction to the tumult will have consequences well beyond his time in office.
Cleaver, a former mayor of Kansas City, Mo., and a civil rights activist, said 2020 has been one the most painful periods of time in U.S. history for the black community.
"We've had some really tough times in the United States as African Americans," Cleaver said. "This current situation may exceed all of the other crises, save slavery and the Jim Crow era, in terms of pain."
