The Cambridge CONVERGENCE: How a night in Maryland 30 Years Ago
Changed the Nation's Course of Racial Politics  During the hot
summer of 1967, racial disturbances swept through Detroit and
Harlem and then through Minneapolis, Dayton, Cincinnati and
other cities unaccustomed to civic violence. But the turning
point that summer - indeed for that era - occurred in a town few
Americans knew existed.  Thirty years ago last week, in the
small city of Cambridge, Md., H. Rap Brown crossed rhetorical
swords with Maryland's Gov. Spiro Agnew. The two put the
convulsive actions of that summer into words in ways that
deepened the nation's racial divide. They popularized a style of
political speech that would increase black-white antagonism and
draw millions of white Democrats into the Republican Party.  "If
America don't come around, we're going to burn it down," shouted
Brown, standing on the trunk of a car, to a crowd of 500
cheering Cambridge supporters. His speech occurred an hour
before police exchanged gunfire with