2. Genesis of a Riot

There has been an official interpretation for riots ever since they began in the summer of 1964 in central Harlem; one which has never wavered in its recriminations against the general society, and in its implied exculpation of the rioters. Since “studies” of these affairs all come out the same way (like a fixed fight) and since the deeper the study, the more general the self-recrimination, I felt this time I should see the seminal event “live” and not on tape a few hours old. A prejudice is a prejudice, I thought, and some are old and some are new. And these new ones against the society, which must be really, unusually evil to cause so many cities to burn, sound thinner and more mindless than the old ones, which produced the obscene English of “nigger” and “spic.” And I understood that this oppressive, disparaged society had to be me. The indictment was not against the burners, but against those who did not burn, not against the looters, but against those who would not loot. Here, right at hand, lay an opportunity for a study truly in depth.

It was Monday night, July 24, 1967. I entered East Harlem a little after 7:00 P.M., from 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, and found it under occupation. Moving south down Lexington, and then switching over to Madison, I saw police on all four corners of every intersection, usually in pairs, sometimes bunched up in threes and fours. Besides the heavy foot-force there was the cavalry of patrol cars and scooters. The force appeared to be almost 90 per cent white, a fact which has been grist to the mill of some antipolice writers, but which I found viscerally reassuring—an example, alas, of prejudice, but a very comforting one.

ME

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Mark Edelson

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There has been an official interpretation for riots ever since they began in the summer of 1964 in central Harlem; one which has never wavered in its recriminations against the general society, and in its implied exculpation of the rioters. Since “studies” of these affairs all come out the same way (like a fixed fight) and since the deeper the study, the more general the self-recrimination, I felt this time I should see the seminal event “live” and not on tape a few hours old. A prejudice is a prejudice, I thought, and some are old and some are new. And these new ones against the society, which must be really, unusually evil to cause so many cities to burn, sound thinner and more mindless than the old ones, which produced the obscene English of “nigger” and “spic.” And I understood that this oppressive, disparaged society had to be me. The indictment was not against the burners, but against those who did not burn, not against the looters, but against those who would not loot. Here, right at hand, lay an opportunity for a study truly in depth.

It was Monday night, July 24, 1967. I entered East Harlem a little after 7:00 P.M., from 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, and found it under occupation. Moving south down Lexington, and then switching over to Madison, I saw police on all four corners of every intersection, usually in pairs, sometimes bunched up in threes and fours. Besides the heavy foot-force there was the cavalry of patrol cars and scooters. The force appeared to be almost 90 per cent white, a fact which has been grist to the mill of some antipolice writers, but which I found viscerally reassuring—an example, alas, of prejudice, but a very comforting one.