The Nation : Calm Prevails in Tampa
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The mother of a black man whose death while in police custody triggered two nights of sporadic violence in his Tampa, Fla., neighborhood made a public appeal for calm, and black community leaders urged that teen-agers be kept at home. “Violence is not going to solve anything,” said Velma Brown, whose 23-year-old son, Melvin Eugene Hair, died when police, responding to a report that he threatened several people with a knife, used a choke hold to subdue him. Calm prevailed in the city after hundreds of black youths rampaged through the area Thursday and Friday nights, breaking windows and setting fires.
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