LETTER THEEDITOR FROM
DeWAYNE WICKHAM
On Saturday, April 6, 1968 – two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. – rioting broke out in Baltimore. By Monday morning there were roughly 5,000 Maryland National Guardsmen and 1,900 Federal Troops on the streets of my hometown.
Baltimore was one of more than 100 cities that erupted in violence in the days following Dr. King’ s death. Many of them needed National Guard and federal troops to quell these conflicts. But no guardsmen were federalized, and no military personnel were sent into these cities without a request for help from local officials.
Already this year, President Donald Trump has sent National Guardsmen into the nation’ s capital and Los Angeles, this country’ s second largest city. He has ordered troops into Portland, Ore., and has said he will send soldiers into Memphis, Chicago, San Francisco and Baltimore.
Trump is threatening this widespread deployment of armed soldiers on the streets of American cities to combat what he calls“ the enemy from within.” But some people fear that by sending troops into cities run by Democrats now, the Republican president is trying to normalize their presence in those places before the 2026 congressional
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