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the fact that American Negroes rioted in the U.N. while Adlai Stevenson was addressing the Assembly shocked and baffled most white Americans.

Stevenson's speech, and the spectacular disturbance in the gallery, were both touched off by the death, in Katanga, the day before, of Patrice Lumumba.

Stevenson stated, in the course of his address, that the United States was `` against '' colonialism.

God knows what the African nations, who hold 25 per cent of the voting stock in the U.N. were thinking -- they may, for example, have been thinking of the U.S. abstention when the vote on Algerian freedom was before the Assembly -- but I think I have a fairly accurate notion of what the Negroes in the gallery were thinking.

I had intended to be there myself.

It was my first reaction upon hearing of Lumumba's death.

I was curious about the impact of this political assassination on Negroes in Harlem, for Lumumba had -- has -- captured the popular imagination there.

I was curious to know if Lumumba's death, which is surely among the most sinister of recent events, would elicit from `` our '' side anything more than the usual, well-meaning rhetoric.

And I was curious about the African reaction.