BALTIMORE >> A mother who was caught on video smacking her 16-year-old son around after he threw objects at police said when they made eye contact, he knew he was in trouble.

“I’m a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me, know I don’t play that,” Toya Graham, a single mother of six, told CBS News. “He said, when ‘I seen you,’ he said, ‘ma, my instinct was to run.'”

Graham received wide praise from people on social media and even the Baltimore police commissioner, who said more parents should have taken charge of their children like Graham after the riots started.

A White House spokesman commented on Graham Wednesday, saying the Baltimore mother who chased her son away from a riot with police represented “a powerful expression about the role that parents can play.”

“The thing that resonated with me is — was her expression that she was concerned about her son facing the same fate as Freddie Gray,” spokesman Josh Earnest said. “And while I’m sure that it was not the immediate reaction of her son to feel like she was looking out for his best interest, there is no doubting that her reaction was one that was rooted in her concern for his safety and his well-being and her love for her child.”

Graham said she saw her only son wearing a hoodie and mask amid the protesters demonstrating just hours after a funeral for Freddie Gray, a black man who died after suffering an unexplained spinal injury in police custody.

“At that point, I just lost it,” she said. “I was shocked, I was angry, because you never want to see your child out there doing that.”

Graham said she and her son watched news coverage of the riots together. And then the images of her reaction went viral. Comments started appearing on her son’s Facebook page, many in support of her, she said.

“Friends and everybody making comments and saying, ‘you know, you shouldn’t be mad at your mother, you should give her a hug,'” Graham said.

She hopes it will be a teachable moment.

“And by him seeing everything what’s going on I just hope, I’m not sure, but I hope that he understands the seriousness of what was going on,” she said.

Meanwhile, schools reopened across the city and tensions seemed to ease Wednesday after Baltimore made it through the first night of its curfew without the widespread violence many had feared.

With 3,000 police and National Guardsmen trying to keep the peace and prevent a repeat of the looting and arson that erupted on Monday, the citywide, 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew ended with no reports of disturbances in the early morning hours.

Baltimore’s school system said all schools would be open and after-school sports and other activities would also take place. Monday’s riots began when high schools let out for the day and students clashed with police near a major bus transfer point.

But life was unlikely to get completely back to normal anytime soon: The curfew was set to go back into effect at 10 p.m. And baseball officials — in what promised to be one of the weirdest spectacles in major-league history — announced that Wednesday’s Baltimore Orioles game at Camden Yards would be closed to the public for safety reasons.

Activists stressed that they will continue to press for answers in the case of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man whose death from a spinal-cord injury under mysterious circumstances while in police custody set off the riots.

A few dozen protesters gathered outside the office of Baltimore’s top prosecutor to demand swift justice.

Organizers said they were rallying in support of State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who took office in January and pledged during her campaign to address aggressive police practices.

Police have said they will turn over their report on the death of Freddie Gray to Mosby’s office on Friday. She will then face a decision on whether and how to pursue charges against the police officers who arrested Gray. Six officers have been suspended during the investigation.

The protesters chanted “No justice, no peace!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” They say the city needs to return to peaceful protests.

The curfew got off to a not-so-promising start Tuesday night when about 200 protesters ignored warnings from police and pleas from pastors and other community activists to disperse. Some threw water bottles or lay down on the ground.

A line of officers behind riot shields hurled tear gas canisters and fired pepper balls at the crowd, which dispersed in a matter of minutes.

Just before midnight, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts declared the curfew a success.

“We do not have a lot of active movement throughout the city as a whole. … Tonight I think the biggest thing is the citizens are safe, the city is stable,” he said. “We hope to maintain it that way.”

Police said Wednesday they arrested 35 people, including one juvenile, after the city imposed a curfew.

Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said more than 100 people are still waiting in jail to be charged in the riots Monday night. He said police have a 48-window to charge them or else they will go free. About 100 people who were also arrested have been charged.

He says the backlog has occurred because officers have to fill out documents and do other work to file the charges. He says if people are released, they may face charges later after officers review video and social media.

The unrest occurred on the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral. He suffered critical injuries while in police custody.In an interview broadcast Wednesday on “The Steve Harvey Morning Show,” President Barack Obama said the riots show that police departments need to build more trust in black communities.

He called on police departments “to hold accountable people when they do something wrong” and said Attorney General Loretta Lynch is reaching out to mayors about retraining police and providing body cameras.

The president also said underlying problems such as poor education, drugs and limited job opportunities must be addressed.

Looting, fires and gunfire broke out overnight in Ferguson, Missouri, during protests triggered by Gray’s death in Baltimore. Ferguson was rocked by violence last year over the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by a white police officer.

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Associated Press writers Juliet Linderman, Matthew Barakat, Tom Foreman Jr., Jessica Gresko, Brian Witte and Jeff Horwitz contributed to this report.