Violence ravaged the city Monday
evening following the funeral of Freddie Gray — the 25-year-old who
died from a spinal-cord injury in police custody earlier this month —
with looting, burning, smashing and rock throwing carrying on well into
the night. Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and, for
the first time since the riots sparked by Martin Luther King Jr.’s
assassination 47 years ago, the Maryland National Guard was deployed to help city and state law enforcement quell the chaos.
Simultaneously, many of Baltimore's religious leaders set out to promote peace from within the community.
Yahoo News was unable to reach Bishop M. Cromartie, but according to his Facebook profile,
he is a senior pastor at Prophetic Deliverance Ministries Inc. and a
resident of Baltimore. The viral image of the little boy is one of a
few photos and videos Cromartie has posted of the protests in Baltimore —
both Monday night, before they were hijacked by violence, and Tuesday
morning.
He has also used Facebook to
urge fellow Baltimore clergy members to unite in the face of upheaval,
posting messages such as: “Preachers of Baltimore need to come together
and protect and cover our city!!!!!! NOW!!!” and “PLESE [sic] DO NOT USE
THIS SITUATION TO GAIN PUBLICITY FOR YOU AND YOUR MINISTRY!!!!”
Like Ferguson, Mo., North
Charleston, S.C., New York City and all the other cities that have
experienced unrest following high-profile killings of unarmed black men
by police in the past year, the outrage in Baltimore is seen as the
eruption of long-simmering racial tensions and anger over police
brutality. The Freddie Gray incident was just the boiling point.
Gray’s death — ike Michael
Brown’s, Eric Garner’s and many others before them — might be an
opportunity to finally address and tackle a national problem. Still,
another kind of tension exists over how best to express that anger, with
many people, including President Obama, condemning the kind of behavior
that seared through Baltimore on Monday as “counterproductive.”
There’s been perhaps no better depiction of this frustration than the Baltimore riots’ other
viral moment: The video of woman hitting her teenage son after
realizing he was among the young people throwing rocks at police
officers Monday.
In an interview with CBS News
Tuesday, Toya Graham said she had one thing on her mind when she
noticed her 16-year-old Michael among those antagonizing the cops — and
it wasn’t whether or not she was on camera.
“That’s my only son, and at the
end of the day I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” Graham said. “But
to stand up there and vandalize police officers, that’s not justice.”