“The first thing they did — at the corner of Milton Avenue on the 1200 block, it was then an A&P supermarket — they threw a firebomb and went in the store and just started disrupting it. The next place to get hit used to be a Sears on North Avenue and Central. They had this gorgeous plate glass window, where the courthouse is now, and they had already decorated it for the summer, and they had this beautiful sailboat in the window. The rioters tried to bring that sailboat out of the window and they couldn’t. Levinson and Klein had a big furniture warehouse, and they broke into that, too. Once it erupted here, it went across town and started moving.”

– Del. Hattie Harrison, one of the black leaders Mayor Tommy D’Alesandro called on to help quell violence

“Smoke was everywhere. It really felt like the entire city was on fire. ... I knew Martin Luther King Jr. I had seen him in person and I had shaken his hand. I was still a kid, but I had a very big impression of him. When he was killed, it just made you angry. You didn’t know who to lash out against, who to be angry with. It wasn’t the white guy down the street who killed him. You can’t be angry at all white people.”

– Del. Curt Anderson, D-43rd, 18-year-old college student during the riots

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“Riots are generally centered around people, but this was around property and merchants that had broken faith with those persons that were living in their neighborhoods. Interestingly enough, very, very, very few black businesses were destroyed, which was an indication that this was a war against the community that the blacks had supported. ... Black people didn’t start it. It was the inhumaneness of the surrounding community that started it. ... I had no strategy. My hands were tied. No one was in control. I did not play any role other than the hope the fires would be stopped, the looting would stop. I make no claim at having attempted to stop anything.”

– The Rev. Marion Curtis Bascom, city fire commissioner (the first black to hold the post) and pastor of Douglas Memorial Community Church during riots

“I just couldn’t believe I was watching this as people just went into stores and grabbed things like TVs and telling police the store owners just gave them away. We never had any racial tension during my times with the Colts. We just wanted to win championships. We didn’t care what color anyone was on the team.”

– Art Donovan, former Baltimore Colts defensive tackle

“I was out on Sunday morning on a basketball court shooting baskets, and I saw out of nowhere people running out of bars and convenience stores. Looting just appeared. It just got nuts. I remember the National Guard standing in front of my house [in the Gillmore Homes projects]. You don’t forget those things growing up.”

– Dunbar Brooks, state school board president and demographer for the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, who was 17 and working at a drugstore at Howard and Lexington the Thursday night King was assassinated