The Murder of Lillie Belle Allen
On July 21, Lillie Belle Allen, a black woman from Aiken, S.C., who was visiting York with her parents, was riding in a car driven by her sister, Hattie Dickinson. Dickinson turned the car onto North Newberry Street and was looking for a grocery store when she saw a man with a gun leaning out of a second-story window. Multiple members of two all-white gangs, the Newberry Street Boys and the Girarders, were on the street that night, and many of them were armed.
Dickinson began to turn around in the intersection of Newberry Street and Gay Avenue but the car stalled. As more armed white men began coming onto their porches, Dickinson panicked. Her parents, who were in the back seat, beging praying. Her older sister, Lillie Belle Allen, jumped out of the car to get to the driver's seat and take the wheel. She flailed her arms screaming, "Don't shoot!" Multiple shooters opened fire from the street, rooftops and windows, fatally wounding Allen. More than one hundred rounds were fired at the car, and Allen was shot by several different types of bullets.
The day after Allen's death, Pennsylvania Governor Raymond P. Shafer declared a state of emergency and ordered an emergency curfew as two hundred National Guard troops arrived in York. Three days later the city settled down and the Guard left York.
Four prosecutors and four detectives spent two years trying to solve the Allen and Schaad murder cases, but people who knew about the fatal shootings kept silent, either because they were afraid or they didn't want to be seen as traitors. "It was tougher than pulling teeth," said Thomas V. Chatman Jr., who was lead detective on the murder investigations for the York City police. "There were witnesses. But no one wanted to tell you anything. People took sides according to race and didn't want to cooperate." Because there was distrust among blacks, prosecutors said they first tried to solve the Allen case, hoping that witnesses would then come forward to identify Officer Schaad's killer. They were never able to acquire sufficient evidence to charge anyone, and both shootings went largely uninvestigated for the next thirty years.
Read more about this topic: 1969 York Race Riot
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