In the Heat of the Summer. Michael W. Flamm
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to Harris. “You call the ambulance.”15
From the corner candy store, the teen phoned for help as screams started to come from the crowd of students in front of the school. At the same time, Francke stepped outside, saw the body, and instructed his secretary to call an ambulance. But by the time it arrived Powell was dead. Later, a teacher found the black-handled knife, which Harris subsequently identified, in a gutter between parked cars about eight to ten feet from the body.16
That is how most of the adult witnesses interviewed by the grand jury saw the incident, with minor discrepancies such as the precise words Gilligan had used when confronting Powell. Among the adult witnesses, most of whom were white, were a bus driver, a truck driver, a nurse, a priest, two merchants (including the owner of the repair store), five teachers, and eight passersby. But that is not how most of the fifteen black students interviewed perceived the altercation. They maintained that Gilligan had not identified himself as a police officer, had given no warning, and had fired two shots into Powell’s back while he lay wounded on the sidewalk. Most of the students also claimed that Powell was unarmed and unthreatening.17
“I saw the boy go into the building and he didn’t have any knife then,” said a teenage girl. “When he came out, he was even laughing and kind of like running and the cop was on the street going into the building and then he shot him.” Even if she was wrong about the knife, it was understandable. In Harlem, it was common knowledge that police officers routinely carried throwaway knives because they risked disciplinary or criminal charges if they used deadly force against an unarmed assailant. The standard police jacket, which Gilligan was not wearing at the time, even had a concealed breast pocket—ostensibly for that purpose. Although it seems likely that Powell had a knife, especially since the shooting took place in broad daylight before numerous eyewitnesses, it is easy to see why so many blacks in New York would reach the opposite conclusion.18
At the crime scene, more trouble was brewing. As Gilligan was whisked to Roosevelt Hospital to get his arm bandaged (Lynch was also treated there for a possible fracture of his left hand, which was struck by a bottle), the students kept converging despite repeated warnings from police. The arrival of a news photographer caused the confrontation to escalate. “This is worse than Mississippi,” yelled female students in reference to the three missing (and presumed dead) civil rights workers from CORE who had disappeared in June during the “Freedom Summer” campaign to register black voters. “It looked bad,” said Francke. “I borrowed a bullhorn and tried to calm the youngsters but it was impossible to quiet the crowd.”19
As the police issued five riot calls, more than one hundred officers arrived in steel helmets. Eventually, the disturbance ended after ninety minutes without more violence or arrests, although three young women were briefly taken into custody and then released. But as the crowd dispersed emotions continued to run high. At the 77th Street entrance to the Lexington Avenue subway station, a group of fifty black students ransacked a newsstand, scattering papers and candy, and threatened a white motorman with a screwdriver. Another group slapped a white woman on the street and hurled a flower pot through the window of a flower store, terrifying the owner. “Are they going to let that cop go free?” challenged a teenage girl.20
Francke, the school principal, defended the students in the aftermath. “These children are not hooligans,” he said. “They’re dedicated to improving themselves and we never had any trouble with them.” A deli owner agreed. “This is a racial problem,” he observed. “They cry because they feel there’s no justice for them. Whether they’re right or wrong, we have to change their minds.” But other white residents of Yorkville disagreed. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be afraid to walk in my own neighborhood in broad daylight,” said an older man, “but when I see these kids coming I duck into the nearest doorway.” And a retired woman expressed resentment: “They hang around our hallways. When we tell them to leave they act as if we are prejudiced against them. We just don’t like having garbage and noisy people in our home.”21
Within hours of the incident members of CORE’s national office and East Side chapter were holding an impromptu press conference at the corner of 77th and Lexington. In front of newspaper reporters and television cameras, they spoke of police brutality and the pressing need for an independent civilian review board not composed of police officials to investigate the shooting. The NAACP also demanded an immediate inquiry by the district attorney. In response, Deputy Chief Inspector Joseph Coyle promised a prompt investigation, but asserted that Gilligan had acted in self-defense.22
The man of the hour, however, was silent and out of sight. Had Gilligan made a public statement in the immediate aftermath of the Powell shooting, it is conceivable that some of the rage and anger spreading across Central Harlem might have dissipated. But on the advice of counsel he was already taking a low profile and avoiding the media spotlight. Not so the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, who at that moment was preparing to deliver the biggest speech of his political life at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.
A year before the Powell shooting, Barry Goldwater had anticipated that racial unrest would spread from the South to the North. “I predict,” he told an interviewer in July 1963, “that if there is rioting in the streets it’ll occur in Chicago, Detroit, New York, or Washington, probably to a greater extent than it will occur in the southern cities.”23 Like most conservatives, he believed that the civil rights movement had contributed to urban black violence. In a letter to a friend, Goldwater wrote that “I am somewhat fearful of what might happen in some of our large northern cities … if this type of fire-eating talk continues among the Negro leaders and those whites who would use them only as a means to gain power…. I am afraid we’re in trouble.”24
Precisely which black leaders and white liberals Goldwater had in mind is not clear. But like millions of other Americans, he had seen the newspaper photos and watched the television broadcasts from Birmingham, Alabama, where Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor had jailed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in May and then unleashed police dogs and water cannons on black children marching for freedom and justice. In June, Goldwater had listened to John Kennedy speak to the nation about the pressing need for immediate action on civil rights.
“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue,” said the president, only hours after segregationist Governor George Wallace had made his infamous “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” in a vain attempt to prevent two black students from registering for classes at the University of Alabama. “It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.” Kennedy also expressed concern at how prejudice and discrimination against African Americans discredited the image of the United States in the eyes of the world.25
Like Goldwater, Kennedy saw a threat to order and security—white liberals and conservatives feared black unrest, although they differed on the causes of it. “The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand,” the president observed. “Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.” To preempt the danger, he asked Congress to enact legislation making public accommodations such as hotels and restaurants, stores and theaters, open to all regardless of race.26
The introduction of the civil rights bill placed Goldwater in a challenging but promising political position. Kennedy’s action had led more southern whites to reconsider their allegiance to the Democratic Party. But could Goldwater win their votes without becoming known as a racial extremist and losing the support of white moderates elsewhere in the country?
There is no substantiated evidence that the senator was prejudiced in his private life, that he ever made racist remarks or told racist jokes. By the same token, Goldwater was clearly and strongly in favor of gradual and voluntary integration. In his family’s department stores, he had welcomed black customers and hired black employees. In his hometown of Phoenix, Goldwater was a founding member of the National Urban League chapter and had played