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Chicago considering bringing in the National Guard to clamp down on violence

"National Guard troops patrolled the streets of Chicago's Negro West Side last night and early today. For the first time in four nights there was no major violence in the riot-torn ghetto area."

That was the first paragraph of a New York Times article that ran on Saturday, July 16, 1966.

If Illinois state representatives John Fritchey (D-District 11) and LaShawn Ford (D-District 8) have their way, the scene could soon be ripped from today's headlines, of course with different language and different circumstances....

The 1966 incident involving the National Guard in Chicago came after the community erupted in anger when the police turned off fire-hydrant sprinklers that Mayor Daley (the current mayor's late-father) had turned on to help cool neighborhood children on hot summer days, the article says. The sprinkler agreement followed a 90-minute meeting with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr....

Read entire article at The Root