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Walter Edward Washington, former mayor of Washington, D.C., and the first black person to head the government of a major American city, died this past October at the age of 88. Washington, the great-grandson of a slave, was appointed mayor of Washington in 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Eight years later Washington was elected mayor in the first municipal election in the city in more than a century.
Six months after taking office Washington faced a daunting challenge. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968, the streets of Washington exploded in racial violence. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, called Washington to his office. He told the new mayor that an order should be given that looters were to be shot on sight. Washington looked Hoover in the eye. He said, "I'm the mayor and I make those decisions. I think this meeting is over."
Washington never issued the order to shoot. Instead he walked the streets of the city urging calm. He halted the sale of firearms and liquor and declared a curfew. The National Guard was called in to restore order.
Hoover never again interfered with...