Fletcher F. Moon
Harlem Race Riot (1943)
Eight years after the 1935 riot, problems and tensions remained in Harlem and other large urban centers, even as the United States was in the midst of World War II. An incident involving confrontations between African Americans and police again led to widespread violence in the Harlem community, resulting in loss of lives as well as extensive property damage. On August 1, 1943, Marjorie Polite, a black woman, was alleged to have caused a disturbance at the Braddock Hotel in Harlem. She was subsequently arrested by New York City police and charged with the offense. An African American soldier in uniform, Robert Bandy, came to her defense and demanded her release from custody. It was uncertain what happened next, as accounts indicated that Bandy either took a nightstick from an officer or hit the officer and fled the scene. Bandy was shot and wounded by the police, but rumors quickly circulated that he was killed while trying to protect his mother. An angry crowd of approximately 3,000 blacks surrounded the hotel, Sydenham Hospital, and the neighborhood police precinct, where they threatened the arresting officers. Later that evening the crowd began breaking windows and starting fires, and the violence escalated and continued until the next morning. By the time order was restored, six African Americans were dead, nearly 200 were injured, and at least 500 people had been arrested. Property damage was estimated between $500,000 and $1 million.
Ironically, the incident that triggered the riot involved a confrontation between a Latino boy and a white store owner.
Frustration was already high among Harlem blacks because of other problems involving the police, as well as from ongoing discrimination in jobs and housing. Bandy also represented the discrimination and disrespect faced by blacks in the military, even as America was fighting to preserve freedom in other parts of the world. Noted African American writer Ann Petry, a journalist in New York at the time, recorded her impressions of the riot and its implications in the novella In Darkness and Confusion, while James Baldwin, then a Harlem resident, reflected on the riot in his Notes of a Native Son.
Mayor La Guardia again joined black and white community leaders in efforts to defuse the immediate situation and downplay the racial overtones of the riot; he made attempts to address longstanding issues, too. The mayor held meetings of the Emergency Conference for Interracial Unity, created the Office of Price Administration to rein in price gouging by merchants, and even reopened the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. The city had earlier closed the famous entertainment venue under questionable circumstances, which were widely believed to be unfair to the African American community. The actions of La Guardia helped him to gain additional respect and support from the sizeable number of constituents (and voters) in Harlem and other black neighborhoods in the city, but ongoing community problems would remain unresolved for the remainder of his tenure as mayor, and in succeeding years.
Fletcher F. Moon
Harlem Race Riot (1964)
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
High Point, North Carolina, Sit-ins (1960)
Shortly after the Greensboro sit-ins began on February 1, 1960, High Point and neighboring cities in North Carolina and other states launched similar efforts. In the case of High Point, sit-ins began on February 11 after coordinated planning between local leader Reverend B. Elton Cox and other activists, such as Floyd McKissick, and the network of ministers in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Cox also benefited from the presence of veteran civil rights activist Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth from Birmingham, Alabama. He had invited Shuttlesworth to High Point for a speaking engagement, not knowing that the students in Greensboro would take matters into their own hands and generate new energy for the Civil Rights Movement. Shuttlesworth in turn contacted Ella Baker at SCLC headquarters in Atlanta, and told her to inform Martin Luther King Jr. about the recent developments. Not only did Baker forward information to King, she also called contacts at other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to urge widespread student activism. The protests at the downtown Woolworth’s store led by Cox included 26 African American high school students the first day; it continued despite confrontations with whites opposed to changes in the store’s lunch counter policy. One of the original high school student demonstrators, Mary Lou Blakeney, later co-founded the February 11 Association to commemorate the High Point sit-ins, and on February 11, 2008, she, Cox, and others unveiled a historical marker at the former site of the Woolworth store in the city.
Fletcher F. Moon
Houston, Texas, Race Riot (1917)
This violent outbreak involved African American soldiers in conflict with white police and other authorities. The riot took place on Thursday, August 23, 1917,