©2012 Christopher Hayes ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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2012 Christopher Hayes ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE HEART OF THE CITY: CIVIL RIGHTS, RESISTANCE AND POLICE REFORM IN NEW YORK CITY, 1945-1966 by CHRISTOPHER HAYES A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History written under the direction of Dr. Mia Bay New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION THE HEART OF THE CITY: CIVIL RIGHTS, RESISTANCE AND POLICE REFORM IN NEW YORK CITY, 1945-1966 By CHRISTOPHER HAYES Dissertation Director: Dr. Mia Bay This dissertation uses New York City’s July 1964 rebellions in Central Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant to explore issues of civil rights, liberalism, policing and electoral politics in New York City between 1945 and 1966. The city’s rebellions, the first of the 1960s urban uprisings that would come to define the decade, had widespread repercussions and shaped political campaigns at the local, state and national levels. Looking both backward and forward from the rebellions, I examine the causes many observers gave for the rebellions as well as what outcomes the uprisings had. Using archival records, government documents, newspapers and correspondence between activists and city officials, I look at the social and economic conditions in which black New Yorkers lived during the postwar period, the various ways in which black citizens and their white allies tried to remedy pervasive segregation and its deleterious effects, and the results of those attempts at reform. In providing a previously unavailable narrative of the nearly weeklong July rebellions, I show the ways in which the city’s black citizens expressed their frustrations with city officials, the police and local black ii leaders and how each group responded. By 1964, many black New Yorkers were frustrated with the glacial pace of civil rights progress in the city and were searching for alternatives to integrationist movements, leading to activism and sentiments that would soon be labeled as Black Power. The civilian review board referendum of 1966 represents the last stand of the city’s interracial liberal civil rights coalition. Exploring the campaigns for and against the board helps us to see the growth of white political conservatism, the previously unknown political power of the police, the decline of support for liberalism among black and white populations and the increase in racial hostility in New York City after 1966. Through looking at civil rights in the city during the postwar period, we can see the limits of liberalism. New York was considered one of the most liberal cities in the country during the postwar period, but its black citizens still faced the same issues as their counterparts in Chicago and Detroit. iii Acknowledgements First, I have to thank my advisor, Dr. Mia Bay. She has seen me through a lot in graduate school and has always looked out for me. She still kept working for me even when I gave her reasons to do otherwise. I really owe her. Her hard work on my behalf has paid tremendous dividends. I shudder when I think about the “finished” drafts I gave her. May no one else ever read them. Dr. Beryl Satter has provided me with a wealth of knowledge on urban history. Her constructive criticism has pushed me to work harder and think differently. I know I’ve frustrated her pretty greatly at times, but she never gave up. I’m not sure I’ll ever know how she was able to turn around chapters back to me with detailed comments so quickly. I hope I can learn that skill someday. I cannot thank Dr. Ann Fabian enough for coming through with the last-minute save. She somehow read everything, some of it multiple times, in a very short amount of time and gave me such helpful criticism. What I was previously trying to pass off as an introduction was a frightening mess when I handed it to her. Being incredibly insightful and generous, Dr. Fabian cut right through to what I needed to do, and stated it so clearly, even though she hardly knew me. I would definitely recommend everyone get someone on her or his committee who is a bit of an outsider to your work. What that reader may think is a “left field comment” will most likely be some of the most helpful things you’ve heard, because you aren’t just writing to your niche and need other people to understand your work. Dr. Brian Purnell far exceeded my expectations of an outside reader and continues to do so. He has been so charitable with his praise that sometimes I think he is just being iv nice. He has managed to pick me up from some serious depths of despair and frustration. The man is a recommendation-writing machine, even when he is ill and has many more important things to do. He has been so supportive of my work and especially my professional development. And he does it all while being real. I feel very fortunate to have him on my team. I aspire to develop his work ethic. So to my committee as a whole, I thank you all for pushing me and giving me so much of your time and thought. Sometimes I think about what dissertations would be like without committees to rein in poor writing and outlandish drafts and I envision a kind of Wild West where anything goes. It’s horrible. Of course, I owe quite a bit of gratitude to the Rutgers University Department of History for granting me the opportunity to earn this degree, ensuring students can live without having to take away too much time from our research, seeking out faculty members of such a high caliber and its devotion to maintaining a robust and flourishing African American history program. In particular, I need to express my appreciation for Dawn Ruskai, Candace Walcott-Shepherd and Tim Alves. Graduate students in the department owe so much to Dawn. We would be lost without her. Thanks are also due to Marsha Barrett and Leigh-Anne Francis, two of the rare people in life who understand. I would not be at this place at this time without Nancy Yaeger’s help. Bean and Patti provided endless companionship and distractions. The Jani family has given me love, belonging, concern and inclusion I have never known. They are truly great people and I am fortunate to know them. Wherever I may wind up, I look forward to spending many more holidays with them. I will always have a home. v And finally, to Alissa Jani, it’s hard to put anything down here now. I thought it would be easy, but there is so much to say. I guess I will just tell you that your love and support have enabled me to be who I am today. You believed in me when I did not. I’m so glad I stole your seat. Thank you, and I love you. I did it, J. vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 Chapter One: Black New York, 1964 22 Chapter Two: Rebellion 80 Chapter Three: Spreading Anxiety 127 Chapter Four: The Post-rebellion Struggle for Civilian Review Reform 190 Conclusion 246 Bibliography 260 vii 1 Introduction “The real danger of Harlem is not in the infrequent explosions of random lawlessness. The frightening horror of Harlem is the chronic day-to-day quiet violence to the human spirit which exists and is accepted as normal.” – Dr. Kenneth Clark, July 19641 In July 1964, the streets of Central Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York City exploded in rebellion in response to the police killing of a fifteen-year-old African American boy. For six days, residents of the two neighborhoods fought police, looted stores and committed acts of property destruction. After nearly a week of upheaval, one man was dead, hundreds were injured, police had arrested more than five hundred and nearly seven hundred businesses were damaged, with costs to the city topping $4 million. In the rebellions’ aftermath, the demand for a panel of civilians to review citizen complaints against police emerged as the most salient local outcome. The city’s police resisted civilian oversight and when a new mayor, John Lindsay, introduced private citizens into the complaint review process in 1966, the local police union and its allies waged a successful campaign to remove them via referendum and amend the city’s charter to prohibit civilians from serving on any police review board. New York’s rebellions were the first of the urban uprisings that would come to define the 1960s.2 The July 1964 upheaval in New York City was major news nationally and internationally, shaped political campaigns at every level and touched off a chain of rebellions throughout the nation’s cities. Beginning within days of New York’s uprisings, 1 Kenneth Clark. “Behind the Harlem Riots – Two Views.” New York Herald Tribune 20 July 1964: 1, 7. 2 The upheaval in Birmingham, Alabama in May 1963 as documented in Glenn T. Eskew’s But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997, was a mixture of the old “race riot” model of black self-defense against white terrorist violence and the coming model of property destruction, looting and battling the police in black neighborhoods with police and firefighters usually the only white people present. 2 at least six other northern cities experienced similar events before the end of the summer.3 Hundreds more would come over the course of the decade, forever altering the country’s racial and political landscape.