After H. Rap Brown gave a speech on the evening of July 24, black residents began to confront police while trying to have a protest march.
In the mid-20th century, many black people worked in low-level jobs in the growing poultry industry in the rural area, but still suffered low wages and unemployment.
Overt racial segregation in schools and public facilities had largely ended after the June 1963 riot and "Treaty of Cambridge," but black people still suffered from economic inequality.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy called a meeting in Washington, DC of both black and white leaders from Cambridge, hoping to negotiate an agreement that would allow progress and end the protests.
In 1964 they joined a voter registration and voting drive to elect a state representative to move for economic progress in the county.
In late 1964, Richardson left Cambridge and moved to New York, where she married photographer Frank Dandridge, whom she had met when he was covering the protests in her town.
In New York she met Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, better known as H. Rap Brown, a black activist who supported violent resistance.
H. Rap Brown was among the activists who went to Cambridge, where the local black community continued to press for improved conditions and opportunity.
On the evening of July 24, 1967, a crowd of 20 to 30 black Cambridge citizens began marching toward Race Street, where a group of police officers met them and prevented their continuing.
The adjutant general of Maryland said that Brown must have gotten hit later, during the full-fledged riot that broke out, but it did not start until after protesters learned that he had been wounded.
[citation needed] Many people of Cambridge, and the mayor of Baltimore, Thomas D'Alesandro III, alleged that the riots had been planned in advance.
Based on the reports from officials, public media thought that Brown was guilty and that his speech was a catalyst for the riot.
He referred to Brown as a “professional agitator.” Agnew became increasingly critical of black civil rights leaders for what he said was their “failure” to stop rioting.
In April 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in Memphis, Tennessee, Agnew invited fifty black civil rights leaders of Maryland to a conference.