Some sixteen people, almost all Black, have been killed.

Abut 300 have been wounded, about 1,000 have been arrested.

The news media have tried to portray the rebellion here as a racist outbreak by Blacks intent on killing whites.

But so far the only confirmed death of a white in the area of the rebellion is a cop who dropped dead of a heart attack. Six cops were reportedly wounded by gunfire, none critically.

The rebellion began Saturday after an all-white Tampa jury freed the cops who murdered Arthur McDuffie. The verdict came in at 2:36 p.m. Youth poured into the streets immediately,

At eight o'clock that night, in response to a call by the NAACP, some 7,000 people gathered at the County "Justice" Building for a protest demonstration.

The outraged crowd carried placards that declared "Justice in America is a Damn Lie" and "Where is Justice for the Black Man in America?"

NAACP leaders had not planned through the hastily called rally. There was no public address system and speakers tried to address the throng with a small bullhorn.

There were no proposals for action. From the "Justice" Building people marched to the nearby Dade County Public Safety Building. It had been Dade County cops who murdered McDuffie and many others.  
 
May 30, 1955
A new era had begun in the South. The strike victories of 30,000 railroad and 5,000 telephone workers mark the opening of that era. Two powerful segments of Big Business, with unlimited Wall Street backing, tried to smash the rail and phone picket lines, to starve the strikers into submission. They failed completely. Their hopes of keeping the South a low-wage, open-shop province, not only for the superprofits squeezed from Southern labor, but as a weapon against Northern labor, have been frustrated. In fact their union-busting campaign evoked a Southern upsurge of labor solidarity and middle-class support for the strikers the like of which has not been witnessed in this country for over a decade.

The new contract of the 30,000 members of the AFL non-operating rail workers of the Louisville and Nashville and its five subsidiary railroads is a clear-cut victory. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal (May 23) had to head its story "L&N Settlement Is a Union Victory on Welfare Payments."

The main issue of the strike was the corporation's refusal, on grounds of "principle," to grant the non-ops a health-welfare plan that all other Class I railroads had granted. This plan, whose cost was shared equally by company and workers, had been recommended by a presidential emergency board last August. L&N refused to submit the dispute to arbitration. After a 58 day strike, during which the company tried unsuccessfully to operate with scabs and armed guards, it capitulated and agreed to arbitration.  
 
 
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