YORK, Pa. (FinalCall.com)�The dirty secrets coming out of this small manufacturing town of 41,000, just 17 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line hark back to news events of yesterday.

With the May 17 arrest of Mayor Charles Robertson for an alleged role in the 32-year-old murder of a Black woman, old sins haunt the city and its leading political figure. The mayor insists he is innocent of ties to the murder of Lillie Belle Allen, who was shot to death by a white gang in the midst of city race rioting. He was released on $50,000 bail.

On July 17, 1969, the city of York exploded in what became 10 days of open "warfare" between Blacks and whites following the shooting of two Black youths by a white man. More than 60 people were injured and whole city blocks were burned down.

Like nearby southern towns, York was racially segregated, Black unemployment was three times that of whites and police officers had a reputation for brutality. According to a 1968 investigation by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, "Black residents believed the police department�s canine unit was used against them to instill fear and created an increasingly employable means of inflicting physical injury ... by racist police."

Mayor Robertson was once a member of that police force and is at the center of the grand jury murder investigation.

According to an "Affidavit of Probable Cause," obtained by The Final Call, a warrant for his arrest charged him "as an accessory before the fact in the crime of first degree murder in the death of Lillie Belle Allen." Mayor Robertson is one of eight men charged with the crime.

On July 21, 1969 at approximately 9 p.m., the fifth day of the riots, Hattie Dickson�s husband Murray, father the Rev. James Mosley, mother Beatrice Mosley and sister Lillie Belle left for a brief shopping trip that changed her life forever. Lille Belle, 30, was visiting from South Carolina.

Driving her 1961 Cadillac Ms. Dickson spied a man leaning out of a window, pointing a gun, as her car climbed a hill at Gay Avenue.

"I panicked trying to turn the car around, it got caught on the railroad tracks," she explained in a special report printed in the York Sunday News. "Then they opened fire, from all angles it seemed, from windows, roofs and from the street. The car windows were shattered and bullets struck the seats inside. It was during the lull in the shooting that my sister made her move. She thought she could get us out of there. As she got out of the car a bullet struck her in the chest killing her."

The Newberry Street Boys, a purported white street gang, is suspected of the racially motivated killing.

According to the affidavit, a key witness against the mayor is Dennis McMaster, chief of police in East Pennsboro Township. Both were York police officers at the time of the riots. In the affidavit, Chief McMaster told the grand jury he saw Mr. Robertson "provide .30-06 ammunition to one of the men charged with the killing." The affidavit also states that during a July 20, 1969 white power rally in Farquhar Park, then policeman Robertson addressed the crowd screaming "white power!" He has admitted to making those remarks.

The affidavit also says Mr. Robertson told the Newberry Street Boys, "if I weren�t a cop, I would be leading commando raids against niggers in the Black neighborhoods." Other grand jury testimony says Mayor Robertson handed out ammo to the gang, saying "kill as many niggers as you can."

"I will tell you that when that lady was shot, I was the first one to tell them to stop shooting and to save the other people�s lives in the car. I�m the guy that saved the lives. You don�t hear about that," said Mayor Robertson on Fox News Channel May 17. Mayor Robertson won the Democratic mayoral primary by 48 votes over Black city councilman Ray Crenshaw. The mayor has refused to resign in light of his arrest, saying he is innocent.

"It�s tough. I don�t think they understand 1969. Around here, anyhow," he has told the media. Mayor Robertson steadfastly denies being a racist, claiming in published reports that post riot sensitivity training changed him.

Mayor Robertson�s supporters want to pass the indictment off as political maneuvering, noting that District Attorney Stan Rebert and prosecutor Tom Kelly are Republicans.

Still calls for Mayor Robertson to step aside are building. Longtime city councilman William Lee Smallwood wants the mayor to resign. "Its going to have a negative effect on York for a while to come, having a mayor under indictment for murder. It says, �This is York, Miss., � " Mr. Smallwood said in the May 17 edition of the York Dispatch.

Leo Cooper, head of the local NAACP branch, believes the mayor is still a racist. "I think he has learned how to disguise it over the years, but I think that attitude still exists. Hell, even Strom Thurmond and George Wallace learned how to coexist with people they supposedly hated. I think Charlie Robertson�s in the same boat," Mr. Cooper said.

Councilwomen Mary Anne Bacas a longtime Robertson ally sides with the mayor. "I don�t believe he murdered anybody and I hope people of good will and good faith will come forward and will not let these events spoil whatever harmony we have in the city," she said.

Meanwhile, like a plague, death continues to visit the Newberry Street Boys. Four of the dozen or so gang members who knew what happened the night Ms. Allen was murdered have killed themselves. The latest occurred on April 11, 2000.

Donald Altland, one of the shooters, left a tape behind detailing his involvement and jump-starting the grand jury probe. Before inflicting himself with a fatal gunshot wound to the chest, he wrote on a white napkin, "Forgive me God."