Ex-mayor beats murder charge

last updated 8 January 2015

York, Pa.

Former York, Pa., mayor Charlie Robertson was acquitted last week of conspiring to murder a black woman, Lillie Belle Allen, during a 1969 race riot. Robertson, then a police officer, admitted to shouting “White power!” at a rally, but denied charges he gave bullets to gang members and told them to go kill African-Americans. Last week, two other men were convicted of shooting at Allen after her car broke down in a white neighborhood, and six more pleaded guilty to joining the mob. Robertson said he was glad the case was over. “I’m a little tired,” he said. “And I’m going home.” But in York, the acquittal opened an old racial divide. “You have whites literally dancing in the street,” one trial witness said, “and blacks with their chins down.”