In the Heat of the Summer. Michael W. Flamm
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integrated membership. “It is time to let ‘the man’ know that if he does something to us, we are going to do something back,” responded a frustrated Chris Sprowal, chairman of Downtown CORE and organizer of Friday’s protest. “If you say ‘You kick me once, I’m going to kick you twice,’ we might get some respect.” Conceding that CORE was committed to nonviolence, he countered that “when a cop shoots at me, I will shoot back.”10
The crowd replied with cries of approval: “That’s right, brother” and “blood for blood.” But Sprowal’s final appeal for peaceful protest was greeted with hoots of derision—a sign that some younger blacks in New York were losing patience with nonviolent civil disobedience. “Let’s go down to that precinct and take it apart brick by brick,” yelled Howell. After Sprowal spoke a member of South Jamaica CORE charged that “45 percent of the cops in New York are neurotic murderers.”11
By now the crowd was excited and had grown to several hundred. Yet no real news appeared imminent, and so most of the reporters headed home or to a bar with ice. Among the few who remained was Paul L. Montgomery of the New York Times. A twenty-seven-year-old assistant religion editor, he became captivated by the action and opted to stay. As a result, he found himself on the front lines of a big story.12
After the CORE rally ended, Dukes spoke for twenty minutes, followed by Edward Mills Davis and James Lawson of the United African Nationalist Movement. Then the minister led the march to the 28th Precinct, where the protest resumed and became confrontational. Outside, a handful of officers donned helmets and linked arms to keep the crowd at bay while others raced to get their gear and offer assistance. As patrolmen rushed to the rooftops to halt the light rain of bottles and bricks, Montgomery asked the precinct captain how many officers he had. “Enough,” the captain replied. The actual number was only twenty. Inside, an ad hoc grievance committee consisting of a CORE member, two Black Nationalists, and Dukes met with Deputy Chief Inspector Thomas Pendergast. They demanded that the commissioner immediately suspend Gilligan and personally come to Harlem to make the announcement; Pendergast responded that the incident was under investigation and offered the committee a bullhorn to address the crowd in the street.13
At this point, the protest was a tense but predictable drama for Harlem. “This is their version of city hall,” Deputy Chief Inspector Casimir Kruszewski, commander of the 28th Precinct, observed later. “If they’re going to demonstrate against the government, they have to do it here.” Typically, the activists would offer some words, the followers would vent, the crowd would disperse, and everyone would call it a night. But July 18 was not a typical Saturday, especially for two Bronx teenagers who were at the headquarters of Harlem CORE, a second-floor walk-up on West 125th Street, when they learned about the protest and decided to witness it for themselves.14
Quentin Hill and Wayne Moreland were friends who lived in the Throgs Neck housing project. Like Powell, they were fifteen, which made his death resonate strongly with them. On weekends they both worked at Orchard Beach, where on hot days they earned good money by selling ice cream and soft drinks. After work Hill and Moreland usually liked to take the subway into Harlem to see the sights and shop. But on that night they decided to join CORE because the Powell shooting had convinced them that the freedom struggle in the South needed to become more assertive in the North.15
When the teenagers arrived at the 28th Precinct, the crowd was shouting at the officers, who “silently snickered and grinned” according to Moreland. At 9:20 P.M. a truck loaded with barricades arrived, and as darkness fell Pendergast raised a bullhorn. “This has become a disorderly gathering,” he announced. “I am instructing the police to clear the street.” But then both Hill and Moreland heard—“as vividly as if it happened yesterday”—the chief inspector state, “Okay, boys, you’ve had your say. Now why don’t you go home?” As he spoke, cries of “we’re not boys” erupted and someone hurled a rock. “That’s it,” said Pendergast as the officers and demonstrators clashed. “Lock them up.” The police immediately arrested sixteen people and dragged them roughly into the station house. Then a bottle struck Patrolman Michael Doris in the head and knocked him to the pavement with a concussion—the first officer injured.16
Angered, the police charged. Now the crowd broke and the teenagers ran. Moreland heard the “dull thud” of nightsticks hitting bone and flesh; Hill saw a Molotov cocktail (a glass bottle filled with flammable liquid and capped with a cloth fuse) float through the air and explode into flames. Amid the chaos and the sound of gunfire both were able to evade capture and duck into the Chock Full O’Nuts on 125th Street, where they dived to the floor along with the employees and other customers. At one point, Hill tried to raise his head to see what was happening. “Stay down,” ordered an older man. “I was scared,” recollected Moreland. “I recall thinking, just let me get out of here.” But Hill had a different reaction. “When you’re fifteen you’re not afraid of much,” he remembered, “and things were unfolding so rapidly that I’m not sure we had time to be afraid.”17
After the disorder abated, the teenagers went home to the Bronx. But the protest was a formative moment. For Moreland, who later became a professor of literature at Queens College, it was a radicalizing experience. “Whatever illusions I had about the political process or the inherent righteousness of justice” disappeared that night, he recalled. For Hill the rebellion confirmed his sense of the world. In “Time Poem,” which was published as part of the Black Arts Movement, he wrote, “go to the precinct / say hello to the sergeant / put your spear between his eyes and pull the trigger.” Hill later changed his name to Basir Mchawi and became an activist, editor, photographer, and educator in the public schools. He also taught at Queens College with his lifelong friend.18
While Hill and Moreland were able to avoid arrest, another protester was less fortunate. “I didn’t do it—you’ve got the wrong man,” the youth yelled as he was hauled into custody. “They’re beating him—they’re beating him,” chanted some bystanders. The false rumor quickly spread to 125th Street, where Mills and Lawson heard it. They rushed to the 28th Precinct, where they demanded to see the prisoner. The lieutenant on duty brought him from his cell and the protester denied the allegation. “They may have been a little rough when they arrested me,” he said, “but they haven’t bothered me in here.” Out there the correction made little difference as misinformation continued to circulate.19
By 10 P.M. Deputy Chief Inspector Harry Taylor, in charge of the entire Manhattan North area, had assumed command and reinforcements had started to arrive from other precincts. Many of them were off-duty detectives and patrolmen with police badges pinned to their civilian clothes. With the additional manpower and tactical support provided by two squads of TPF officers bused from Midtown, the police managed to clear 123rd Street in front of the station house and establish barricades at both ends of the block. On Eighth Avenue the crowd drifted away, but on Seventh Avenue it swelled as the curious came to contemplate the commotion. Soon the intersection contained an estimated thousand demonstrators.20
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