Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 74

Over 20 years after the 1943 riot, conditions in Harlem had continued to deteriorate as existing social and economic problems were compounded by the influx of illegal drugs in the community. Much of the black middle class had left the area by 1960, and rising addiction, infant mortality, and crime rates were further indicators of widespread health problems, poverty, and joblessness. In the context of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, local activists such as Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Kenneth B. Clark, and others became national figures, but the work of these leaders and organizations such as the Nation of Islam, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) could not completely rebuild Harlem after decades of decline. Once again, a single incident sparked a community uprising, but in this instance violence was not the immediate result.

On the evening of July 18, 1964, a peaceful demonstration involving CORE activists and community members took place to protest the fatal shooting of 15-year-old African American James Powell by a white police officer. The demonstration only turned violent after some protesters clashed with police, and the riot continued for the next two nights in Harlem, then spread to the predominantly black Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Ironically, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had just been signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2. While only one person was documented as being killed in the riot, hundreds were injured and arrested. Once the destruction and looting of property began, some merchants and shop owners posted signs indicating that they were “black” in attempts to prevent or minimize property damage and theft.

Another ironic circumstance related to the event (and a byproduct of civil rights activism) involved the number of African American reporters covering the event for mainstream news organizations such as the New York Times and New York Post newspapers, the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) news services, Time and Newsweek magazines, and other national publications. Not only were they making history by their presence, in some instances they became “part of the story” when confronted by police themselves or while protecting non-rioting black bystanders and white press colleagues from random acts of violence. Even though the 1964 riot was smaller in comparison to previous Harlem uprisings, it foreshadowed other urban riots in Rochester, New York, and north Philadelphia during the summer of that year. The following year, major riots took place in the Watts community of Los Angeles, California, and two years later in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan, and in numerous cities nationwide after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Television news coverage of these events brought the images, problems, and other realities of black urban life to national and international audiences, much as the broadcasts of southern civil rights demonstrations and violent responses from whites also highlighted American racial conflict and controversy.

Fletcher F. Moon