In the Heat of the Summer. Michael W. Flamm
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IN THE HEAT OF THE SUMMER
POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA
Series Editors: Margot Canaday, Glenda Gilmore, Michael Kazin, Stephen Pitti, Thomas J. Sugrue
Volumes in the series narrate and analyze political and social change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present, including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded power in the public sphere and the language and institutions of politics at all levels—local, national, and transnational. The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives on social movements and the state, on gender, race, and labor, and on intellectual history and popular culture.
In the Heat of the Summer
THE NEW YORK RIOTS OF 1964 AND THE WAR ON CRIME
Michael W. Flamm
PENN
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In The Heat Of The Summer
Words and Music by Phil Ochs
Copyright © 1966 BARRICADE MUSIC, INC.
Copyright Renewed
All Rights Controlled and Administered by ALMO MUSIC CORP.
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-8122-4850-0
For Austin and Alexandra
CONTENTS
6 Heat and Dirt, Anger and Fury
8 Communists, Conservatives, and Conspiracies
List of Personal Interviews and Correspondence
PROLOGUE
“Come on, shoot another nigger!”
With tears streaming down her face, the black teenager taunted a helmeted phalanx of New York City policemen. Amid a barrage of books and bottles from two hundred black students, the officers struggled to maintain order outside Robert F. Wagner Junior High School on East 76th Street in Upper Manhattan. The only serious casualty at the scene was the sole black patrolman, who suffered a concussion when hit in the head by a can of soda. He remained on duty for more than an hour before collapsing, and was raced unconscious to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he eventually recovered.1
The heated protests spontaneously erupted minutes after Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan, a white off-duty officer in civilian clothes, fired three shots and killed a black student, fifteen-year-old James Powell, on July 16, 1964. The fatal confrontation followed an earlier altercation that Thursday morning between a white superintendent and black teenagers in front of an apartment building across the street from the school. But tensions were already high from a publicized series of violent crimes featuring black assailants and white victims.2
At that instant, three thousand miles away in San Francisco, weary aides to Barry Goldwater were putting the finishing touches on his acceptance speech to the Republican Convention. At the Cow Palace the previous night Goldwater had received the greatest prize of his political career—the presidential nomination. Now he would announce to the excited delegates in the arena and the American people watching on television that the conservative moment had arrived and what the nation needed was law and order.
Fourteen hours after Powell bled to death on the sidewalk, Goldwater strode to the podium as the band played “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and red, white, and blue balloons fell from the rafters. Grim and stern, with black-rimmed glasses that accentuated his political image as an angry prophet of impending doom, he denounced rising crime and “violence in our streets” to roars of approval from the convention. “Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government,” Goldwater intoned, “and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens.”3
The unexpected conjunction of these two events represented a pivotal juncture in the nation’s history, which had previously featured intermittent episodes of public interest in law enforcement and criminal justice. Although the federal government had periodically embarked on crusades against crime or immorality in the past, and plenty of local, state, and national politicians had voiced similar ideas, Goldwater’s words combined with impending developments would have an impact in the future that few of his listeners or viewers—not even devoted friends or avid foes—could have anticipated.4
On Saturday evening, thousands of Central Harlem residents took to the streets to protest the Powell shooting and other grievances. Most were bystanders, not participants, in the violence that erupted during the next three nights. The unrest then spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant