Harlem & NYC Urban Unrest, 1935-1970: Riots, Movements, ‘and Structural Roots

1935 Harlem Riot (“A Ghetto Mutiny”)

• Immediate Spark

  • Tue. March 19 1935, 2:30 p.m., Kress 5–10–25¢ store on 125th St.

  • Lino Rivera (16 yo, described variously as Puerto Rican/“colored”) steals $.10$ penknife.

  • Caught by mgr. Jackson Smith & asst. Charles Hurley; threatened with knife/beating in basement.

  • Rivera bites captors, commotion ensues; sales-girl faints; crowd (Time claims $\sim 500$) overturns counters.

• Rumor Escalation

  • Police Officer Donahue lets Rivera out rear basement door (124th St) to avoid crowd ➔ woman screams he’ll be beaten.

  • Empty ambulance leaves, unrelated hearse arrives ➔ belief Rivera killed.

  • Memories of Southern lynching + Harlem grievances reignited.

• Crowd Reaction & Leaflets

  • Street speakers arrested for “unlawful assemblage,” heightening tensions.

  • Young Liberators & Young Communist League print fliers: “boy near death,” call for boycott, anti-lynch protest.

• Riot Progression (≈7:30 p.m.–early a.m.)

  • Kress first stoned; crowd swells to $\sim 3{,}000$; spreads 7th Ave ↔ Lenox.

  • Looting playful yet resentful—perceived as reclaiming resources “long withheld.”

  • Signs: “COLORED STORE,” “COLORED HELP EMPLOYED,” Chinese laundry “ME COLORED TOO.”

  • 2 African Americans killed (incl. Lloyd Hobbs, 16 yo, shot by Patrolman John Heineray); $30\text{–}60$ injured; white man beaten to death.

• Explanations & Blame

  • Officials: communist plot (DA William Dodge indicts 16 “ringleaders”).

  • Alain Locke: depression spasm/ghetto mutiny/radical plot/rehearsal of revolution.

• Underlying Structural Causes (per Mayor’s Commission, chaired Dr. Charles H. Roberts)

  • Housing: black pop. in Harlem up $600\%$ (1910-35); densities $75\%$ > Manhattan avg; worst block $630$ persons/acre.

  • Rents $15\text{–}20\%$ > white immigrant areas; >$50\%$ income on rent common.

  • Employment: caste systems (e.g., Fifth Ave Coach Co.); union exclusion; high food prices.

  • Segregation via covenants & policing brutality (e.g., Scottsboro protests).

• Commission Findings (127-page report “The Negro in Harlem”)

  • Rooted in poverty, racism, official indifference.

  • Debunked communist-plot theory; radicals credited with steering violence toward property, not persons.

  • Marked transition from white-on-black pogroms to black destruction of white property—linking race & class.

• Aftermath

  • Mayor La Guardia appoints blacks to offices but little economic change; PWA housing continues segregation; NYPD practices untouched.

1943 Harlem Riot (Wartime)

• Context

  • WWII defense boom; Exec. Order 8802 (1941) bans industrial discrimination—but limited effect.

  • Detroit race riot (June 20 1943) fresh in memory.

  • Harlem overcrowding: $300{,}000$ people in space fit for $75{,}000$; rationing boards lack black reps.

• Trigger Event – Sun. Aug 1 1943

  • Braddock Hotel, 126th St & 8th Ave; rookie Patrolman James Collins vs. Marjorie Polite (disturbance).

  • Army MP Pvt. Robert Bandy (26 yo) defends Polite; tussle, grabs nightstick; Collins shoots Bandy in back (non-fatal).

  • Rumor: white cop killed black soldier in front of mother.

• Riot Dynamics (10:30 p.m.–Aug 4)

  • Crowds $\sim 3{,}000$ at hotel, hospital, 28th Precinct.

  • Businesses on 125th, 7th & 8th Aves looted; streetlights smashed; blackout feel.

  • Geographical spread: Lenox→St Nicholas, 110th→145th.

  • Response: thousands of NYPD, Nat. Guard on standby; MPs clear soldiers.

  • Curfews & Mayor La Guardia’s 5 radio appeals; food convoys.

• Casualties & Damage

  • $6$ black deaths; $\approx 700$ injured; $1{,}500$ stores hit; millions $in losses;$500\text{–}1{,}000$arrests; dozens officers hurt.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Interpretations</p><ul><li><p>Press: “hoodlumism,” not race; Times praises La Guardia.</p></li><li><p>Black leaders (Powell Jr., NAACP’s <strong>Walter White</strong>) highlight Jim Crow, housing cost, jobs; call for rent rollback to <strong>Jan 1 1942</strong>.</p></li><li><p>Race factor officially downplayed yet evident;$250$U.S. race riots erupted$1944$.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Institutional Outcomes</p><ul><li><p><strong>Committee on Unity</strong> (Mar 1944): urges hiring more black officers (only$155/16{,}000 at time). +500 recruited next decade.

  • Basis for Truman’s 1946 President’s Committee on Civil Rights.

1964 Harlem & Bedford-Stuyvesant Riot

• Tensions Pre-1964

  • CORE rent strikes, school boycotts; police brutality cases (Lenox fruit-stand incident; “meat grinder” precinct).

  • Civilian Review Board bill shelved June 1964.

• Spark – Thu. July 16 1964, Yorkville (Upper East Side)

  • Superintendent Patrick Lynch hoses black students; racial slurs.

  • Off-duty Lt. Thomas Gilligan confronts students; shoots James Powell (15 yo) 3 times, killing him.

• Escalation

  • CORE & NAACP demand probe; Sat. Jul 18 rally (initially for missing Mississippi workers) shifts focus.

  • Rev. Nelson Dukes leads \sim 250$march to 123rd St station; blocked ➔ bottles from rooftops; shots in air by police.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Riot Course (Jul 18 – 24)</p><ul><li><p>Nightly pattern: fires, smashed windows, Molotovs; spreads to Bed-Stuy.</p></li><li><p>Longest$6$-day unrest in 20th-c NYC.</p></li><li><p>Injuries$>100$; arrests$\approx 500; property loss heavy.

• Legal Aftermath

  • PLP’s William Epton speech: convicted of advocating “criminal anarchy” (first since 1920s) though no causal link found.

  • Grand jury declines to indict Gilligan (Sept 1964); CORE releases dossier of his past shootings.

  • Commissioner Murphy appoints Lloyd Sealey first black precinct captain (28th).

• Broader Consequences

  • Precursor to nationwide 1960s urban uprisings (Watts 1965, Detroit 1967, etc.).

  • Accelerated capital flight, housing abandonment; fed into 1968 Safe Streets Act ➔ policing funding; groundwork for War on Drugs.

1967 East Harlem Anti-Police Riot & Rise of the Young Lords

• Incident – July 23 1967, 12:15 a.m.

  • Off-duty white cops Thomas Ryan & Anthony Cinquemani shoot Renaldo Rodriguez (knife fight) 3$times ➔ death.</p></li><li><p>TPF deployed; officer yells slur “another spic.”</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Riot Waves (July 23 – 26)</p><ul><li><p>Teens burn trash-can barricades; march on 126th St station;$1{,}000+$NYPD mobilized.</p></li><li><p>Sniper exchanges (2:00 a.m. Jul 24); deaths: <strong>Emma Haddock</strong> (44 yo), <strong>Luis Torres</strong> (22 yo); violence spreads to Mott Haven, Bronx.</p></li><li><p>Mayor Lindsay negotiates removal of TPF yet calls unrest “small disturbance” due to “too much beer.”</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Structural Causes</p><ul><li><p>Puerto Rican pop.$>600{,}000$by 1960; unemployment in el barrio$\approx 40\%$; rat-infested housing; sanitation neglect.</p></li><li><p>Police racism: constant “spic”/“nigger” abuse.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Young Lords Organization (NY chapter 1969)</p><ul><li><p>Roots: Chicago street gang (1959); Nuyorican youth, ex-gang, ex-convicts; inspiration: Black Panthers, int’l liberation.</p></li><li><p><strong>Garbage Offensive</strong> (July 1969): community trash cleaning ➔ city inaction ➔ street-trash fires, thousand-person march on 126th St station.</p></li><li><p><strong>Church Occupation</strong>: First Spanish Methodist (Dec 28 1969 – Jan 6 1970) ➔ 105 arrests; rebranded “La Iglesia de la Gente.”</p></li><li><p>Public health: seized TB truck; tested$1{,}000 residents in a day; occupied Lincoln Hospital (Jul 1970).

  • Escalation: armed re-occupation Oct 1970; Puerto Rican Day Parade clash 1971 (19 officers injured). Organization splinters 1972.

1968 Columbia University Uprising (“We Want the World …”)

• Dual Grievances

  • Secret weapons research with Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) (Vietnam era).

  • “Gym Crow”: university gym invading Morningside Park with separate Harlem entrance.

• Timeline

  • Mar 27: SDS petition in Low Library; 6 students (“IDA Six”) disciplined.

  • Apr 23 Rally: SDS’s Mark Rudd & SAS’s Cicero Wilson; fence at gym site torn; Hamilton Hall occupied.

  • Overnight: SAS expels white students ➔ rename building “Malcolm X Liberation College.” Whites seize Low Library; later Avery, Fayerweather, Mathematics Halls.

  • Fri Apr 26: Rap Brown & Stokely Carmichael visit; university shut down.

  • Apr 30 2:00 a.m.: 100$NYPD enter tunnels; 5 building raids ➔$\ge 720$arrests;$90+$injured; brutal beatings (handcuffs/nightsticks).</p></li><li><p><strong>May 21</strong>: Re-occupation of Hamilton; barricades; fires;$171 more arrests.

  • “Counter-Commencement” & gym plan abandoned 1969 (hole becomes pond 1980s).

• Significance

  • Showcased alliance & tension between Black Power (SAS) & white New Left (SDS).

  • Police brutality galvanized wider antiwar & community solidarity; escalation leads to Weather Underground.

1968 Ocean Hill–Brownsville Teachers’ Strike (Community Control vs. UFT)

• Background

  • NYC desegregation stalled ➔ shift to community control for “sympathetic authority.”

  • Ford Foundation & Mayor Lindsay pilot in Ocean Hill–Brownsville (majority black/Puerto Rican).

  • Restrictive central board policies (no extra funds, limited budgets) sowed tension.

• Key Actors

  • Rhody McCoy – community-chosen superintendent.

  • UFT President Albert Shanker – defends citywide teacher job security.

  • NYC Schools Superintendent Bernard Donovan – mediates but vacillates.

• Escalation

  • Sept 1967: UFT citywide strike 2$weeks; local board keeps schools open.</p></li><li><p>May 1968: McCoy transfers$19$teachers/administrators for incompetence; UFT claims retaliation.</p></li><li><p>2/3 of$556$teachers strike; McCoy hires$350$replacements ($70\%$white).</p></li><li><p>Fall 1968: UFT launches <strong>3</strong> citywide strikes (total$36$days); \ge$1\text{ million} students disrupted.

• Racial & Political Fallout

  • Anti-Semitic flyer exploited by UFT (half-million copies); deepens black–Jewish rift.

  • New Left torn between union solidarity & black self-determination; black unionists urge settlement.

  • Comparisons to apocalypse: culmination of 1968 crises (Tet, MLK/RFK assassinations, Chicago DNC).

• Resolution & Legacy

  • Legislature decentralization bill: larger districts; elected boards delayed; firing power removed—community control neutered.

  • Perceived as most racially divisive NYC event since 1863 Draft Riots.

  • Shanker’s militant craft unionism praised by some labor, criticized for race-baiting (immortalized in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”).

Cross-Cutting Themes & Numbers

• Structural Oppression ≈ repeating root: segregated housing, inflated rents, job exclusion, police brutality.

• Riot Pattern Shift: from white mobs vs. black victims (pre-1935) to black/Puerto Rican uprisings vs. property & police.

• Police Composition: 1943 155/16{,}000$black officers (${\approx}0.97\%$); expanded by$+500$in decade.</p></li><li><p>Population Growth: Harlem black pop.$\uparrow 600\%$(1910-35); Puerto Rican NYC pop.$>600{,}000$by 1960.</p></li><li><p>Economic Strain: rents$15\text{–}20\%$higher; overcrowding up to$630$/acre.</p></li><li><p>Casualty Snapshots</p><ul><li><p>1935:$2$black deaths;$30\text{–}60$injured.</p></li><li><p>1943:$6$black deaths;$\sim 700$injured.</p></li><li><p>1964:$>100$injured;$\sim 500$arrests.</p></li><li><p>1967: multiple deaths (Rodriguez, Haddock, Torres); scores injured.</p></li><li><p>1968 Columbia:$90+$injured,$\ge 720$$ arrests.

Ethical & Practical Implications

• Rumor vs. Transparency: police secrecy repeatedly fuels violence (Rivera 1935, Bandy 1943, Powell 1964).

• Property vs. Personhood: shift toward attacking material symbols of oppression rather than individuals.

• Community Autonomy: Young Lords & Ocean Hill show power—and limits—of localized self-determination.

• Policing Paradigms: riots justify increased militarization (TPF, Safe Streets funding) yet also spur demands for civilian oversight.

• Coalition Fracture: 1968 teachers’ strike fractures black–Jewish & labor–civil rights alliances, illustrating intersectionality’s fragility.