Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 73

Eight years after the 1935 riot, problems and tensions remained in Harlem and other large urban centers, even as the United States was in the midst of World War II. An incident involving confrontations between African Americans and police again led to widespread violence in the Harlem community, resulting in loss of lives as well as extensive property damage. On August 1, 1943, Marjorie Polite, a black woman, was alleged to have caused a disturbance at the Braddock Hotel in Harlem. She was subsequently arrested by New York City police and charged with the offense. An African American soldier in uniform, Robert Bandy, came to her defense and demanded her release from custody. It was uncertain what happened next, as accounts indicated that Bandy either took a nightstick from an officer or hit the officer and fled the scene. Bandy was shot and wounded by the police, but rumors quickly circulated that he was killed while trying to protect his mother. An angry crowd of approximately 3,000 blacks surrounded the hotel, Sydenham Hospital, and the neighborhood police precinct, where they threatened the arresting officers. Later that evening the crowd began breaking windows and starting fires, and the violence escalated and continued until the next morning. By the time order was restored, six African Americans were dead, nearly 200 were injured, and at least 500 people had been arrested. Property damage was estimated between $500,000 and $1 million.

Ironically, the incident that triggered the riot involved a confrontation between a Latino boy and a white store owner.

Frustration was already high among Harlem blacks because of other problems involving the police, as well as from ongoing discrimination in jobs and housing. Bandy also represented the discrimination and disrespect faced by blacks in the military, even as America was fighting to preserve freedom in other parts of the world. Noted African American writer Ann Petry, a journalist in New York at the time, recorded her impressions of the riot and its implications in the novella In Darkness and Confusion, while James Baldwin, then a Harlem resident, reflected on the riot in his Notes of a Native Son.

Mayor La Guardia again joined black and white community leaders in efforts to defuse the immediate situation and downplay the racial overtones of the riot; he made attempts to address longstanding issues, too. The mayor held meetings of the Emergency Conference for Interracial Unity, created the Office of Price Administration to rein in price gouging by merchants, and even reopened the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. The city had earlier closed the famous entertainment venue under questionable circumstances, which were widely believed to be unfair to the African American community. The actions of La Guardia helped him to gain additional respect and support from the sizeable number of constituents (and voters) in Harlem and other black neighborhoods in the city, but ongoing community problems would remain unresolved for the remainder of his tenure as mayor, and in succeeding years.

Fletcher F. Moon