BATON ROUGE, La., Jan. 10 —Two white deputy sheriffs and two young blacks were shot and killed and 31 persons were injured today in a wild exchange of gunfire that erupt ed when the police moved to clear a city street of an im promptu black militant rally.

Fifteen other policemen were injured—four by gunfire—and a dozen other blacks were hurt, including eight who were wounded in the barrage, ac cording to local officials.


Four white bystanders were hurt, including a television newsman who suffered critical head injuries when he was al legedly attacked by a crowd of blacks before the shooting broke out.


The authorities said the noon time incident was the worst outbreak of civil violence in this city of 162,000, the capital of Louisiana. It took place in a black neighborhood about half a mile from the towering Capi tol building where Senator Huey Long was gunned down by an assassin in 1935.

Gov. John J. McKeithen or dered 700 National Guardsmen into the city to help enforce a dusk‐to‐dawn curfew. The city was quiet as a cold rain fell far into the night.

The police contended that black militants from Illinois and California controlled events that culminated in a street rally that attracted about 100 blacks at noon today. About a dozen young black men in suits, close‐cropped hair, dress shirts and floppy, out‐sized bow ties stood on a Cadillac with Illinois license plates that barri caded the street and addressed the crowd.


The men, identified by the police as Black Muslims, had been vocal in pressing for im proved conditions in the Baton Rouge black community, and the rally was the second one held in the last few days.

A news team from television station WBRZ in Baton Rouge was apparently chased by mem bers of the crowd when it at tempted to film the rally, the police said. One of the news men, Bob Johnson, 38 years old, was critically hurt when sev eral men stomped on him, ac cording to the police.