Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots (10 page)

BOOK: Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots
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“We don't need them,” Straus smiled. “There won't be any violence in this place.”

A while later, three hundred troopers marched out of the grounds and took up places on the road. Until now, the fascist demonstration on the road had made a pretense of being an orderly parade—orderly in form, but typically filthy in content of the curses and abuse and vile oaths flung at the people who entered the grounds. (It is worth remarking how consistently these apostles of “Christianity” and “Americanism” indulge in language not only unprintable but also unthinkable to decent human beings.) But now the police gave the signal to drop the pretense.

A barrage of rock-throwing began. Backed by hundreds of laughing cops, the American Legion heroes lined the road and heaved rocks at our defense line. The range was long, but every now and then a rock would strike one of our guards. Several of them were badly injured there, but not once in all the long hours of that day did the line break or retreat. It was a magnificent demonstration of quiet courage and determination.

The cops, on the other hand, went into their own routine—the time-worn routine of the American policeman when he is given a chance to show what he is made of. The entrance to the concert grounds was now blocked, and several late carloads of Negroes arrived.

These late cars—note that the concert had already begun, which I will return to in a moment—were halted by the fascists, and several of the Negroes were dragged out into the road. When they resisted and fought for their right to go through, the police took a hand. (Even as Louis Budenz has become synonymous with honor in today's America, so might gallantry be defined as the opportunity for a dozen cops to attack a single Negro with their nightsticks.) They took a hand in their typical manner, beating, clubbing the Negroes—beating and clubbing without reason or provocation, but with unbelievably ferocious hatred. This went on up on the road, and these particular incidents were photographed as well as attested to by subsequent statements of the Negroes involved; so my own testimony is neither involved nor in doubt. The incidents were cruel, senseless, barbaric and unnecessary, and at the time we did not know about them. The topography of the place was such that these beatings were not visible even to the line of guards, much less to the audience below.

Meanwhile, close to twenty-five thousand people were gathering in the hollow below to hear the concert. They had seated themselves, on the ground for the most part, in a half circle around the inner ring of guards; and I might mention that these guards were a precaution against the possibility of the infiltration of a small fascist gang with intent to assassinate Paul Robeson. Though this sounds somewhat dramatic in the telling, subsequent events proved that Leon Straus dealt with cold reality, and dealt with it very well indeed.

I think it was about noontime that Robeson arrived. The singers and musicians from People's Artists had arrived a little earlier, and since I had to make up the program, we sat down below, next to the sound truck, and talked it over. Under advice of the security people, Robeson remained in his car.

There were Pete Seeger, Sylvia Kahn, and a number of others, one of them a young concert pianist of talent and importance. They were thrilled by the occasion, the crowd, the sea of human beings. When had there been a chance to sing to a mass of people as great as this?

“And it's all yours,” I told them. “Whatever has to be said here today aside from my own remarks, you'll have to say with your music and songs.

“That's the moment we always dreamed of,” Pete Seeger grinned. “To do it with songs and with nothing else.”

“Well, that's the way you'll have to do it. Suppose we start some group singing in about a half hour. Then you'll lead off. Then the piano pieces; then Paul; then we'll take a collection; then you people again, and then Paul to close the program.”

“It sounds good.”

“Then write down the titles of your numbers, so I can announce them.”

I walked to Paul's car and said hello to him. It was the first chance to speak to him since the Saturday before, and I was full of the contrast between the two occasions and understandably proud of that wall of trade unionists which surrounded the whole area.

“A little different,” I remember saying.

He nodded, but he was sober and troubled. He felt what was in the making, but I was full of our own strength and our own discipline and full of contempt for the creatures on the road. Nothing was going to happen; this was our day!

I walked over to the sound truck and was standing there talking to the engineer, when the man responsible for security at the center came over and motioned me aside.

“Howard,” he said, “I want you to set the sound truck under that big oak, right under it.”

(You will recall that there was one great oak in the center of the arena area.)

“How can we? If we put the sound truck under the tree, our people will be singing through the branches. That doesn't make sense.”

“It makes sense.”

“Why?”

“Because we've had our scouts out in the woods and up there on the hills since early this morning, and we just learned that they flushed up two local patriots who had made a little nest for themselves up there overlooking the valley. And they had high-powered rifles with telescopic sights. In other words, they want to kill Paul, and they will stop at very little to do it. So put the sound truck under the tree.”

You do not equate fascism with sanity; I had learned that. You do not equate it with reason, with intelligence, with civilization or decency or morality. The impossible becomes possible, the incredible credible; what is evil is matter of fact and part and parcel of the whole.

I had the sound truck placed under the tree. Then I took the program notes, went up to the microphone, and announced that we would begin our concert. Believe me, I did not feel good or comfortable or brave; the branches made a poor shelter indeed, and I had no assurance that those high-powered rifles with the telescopic sights might not be indecisive as to their target. When I got down and when Pete Seeger had begun to sing, I went to our security head and told him.

“I don't think Paul ought to sing,” I said. “The hell with it! It's not that important, and if you want to be naked, just stand up there.”

“He's going to sing. He's decided that. He'll be all right. We've taken certain measures.”

They took measures, which meant that fifteen workers did a very brave and a very selfless thing. When Paul Robeson stood up to sing, those fifteen workers stood behind and alongside of him, forming a human wall between him and the hillside, and in this they were neither uncertain nor troubled. It was something they did quite casually and matter of factly, but it was also something I will never forget. They were white workers and Negro workers, and this giant of a man was one of the very, very few intellectuals in the whole land who had not fled from their side, who had not betrayed them, who had not crawled for cover, but stood like a rock unperturbed and unshaken. This was a better answer than words.

So our concert went smoothly enough, and with all the difficulties there was good music there that day. The great voice of Paul Robeson echoed back from the hills; the music of Handel and Bach was played there; and Pete Seeger and his friends sang those fine old songs of a time when treason and hatred and tyranny were not the most admired virtues of Americans. And the police did what they could. When they saw that they were not able to prevent the concert, they brought in a helicopter and it hovered over our sound truck constantly, swooping down to buzz us again and again, trying to drown out the sound of our music with the noise of its motor. To some extent they succeeded, but we were fortunate that the motor of a helicopter is less noisy than that of a regular airplane. It did not spoil the concert.

In any case, the important factor was that the concert had been held and that the right of assembly had been upheld; and through it all
no person on our side
had committed any act of provocation, nor had any person on our side broken the disciplined order of our defenses.

That was accomplished, but at the same time it was a new America, a different America, in which thousands of workers and their allies had to conduct a mass struggle of such size and consequence for a Negro singer to give his music to people who wanted to hear it. A change had come about, not in the eight days of
Peekskill—
more gradually than that, certainly for a long time before that in process—but brought to a head and climaxed by the eight days; and in this changed America, we had won a victory in the name of the American people, most certainly in the name of the American people and in the very best traditions of the American people.

Yet the day was not by any means over, not by any means; and it was only late afternoon now, and the night of terror and horror, so much greater terror and so much worse horror than a week before, still lay ahead. The concert was done, and once again I found R—— and the two of us walked aimlessly among the crowd. Now was the time for getting out, but though cars had driven into the entranceway and filled the inside road, nothing moved. We who were in the hollow below did not know what held things up. We took it for granted that it required time and patience to clear such a place of so many hundreds of cars through one narrow road. We didn't know that the fascists had blocked the road, that our security people were arguing with the police to clear it or let us clear it ourselves. We also didn't know that the police were set for their spell of riot, their own incredible plan of what should happen. We didn't know any of that yet. The evening was still early in the Hudson River Valley, with shadows becoming longer and the sun dropping lower, but with the enormous crowd in a holiday spirit, a picnic spirit, nobody too impatient, everybody pleased that this simple act of assembly had been carried through.

It was a family crowd, as it was bound to be on a summer afternoon. There were many women, more women than men, I suppose, for so many of the men were in the defense line of the perimeter; there were a great many children, a great many very small children, and at least a few hundred infants. You might wonder that so many people would bring children and little infants after what had happened the week before, but I must explain that by and large people were not ready to accept what had happened the week before, even intelligent progressive people who had known about fascism for so long. For one thing, until you read it in this account, there was no complete narrative of the first Saturday of
Peekskill.
I had not told the story fully, nor had anyone else; so that while it was known that there had been trouble, no one really saw the complexion of that trouble. People said to themselves,

“The first time, the trouble was an accident. The police didn't arrive until very late and things got out of hand. But this time the whole world has its eyes on Peekskill, and there can't possibly be any trouble. The governor would not allow it. The state troopers would not allow it. The county police would not allow it. District Attorney Fanelli is in enough hot water already, and certainly he would not allow it. So it will just be a sunny, peaceful concert, and we'll bring the kids and have a good time.”

Yes, as inconceivable as it sounds, that is what people said to themselves and to each other, and that is why they brought little children and nursing infants with them; for the reality of what did happen was even more inconceivable.

Now, while we were waiting for the cars to begin to move, two of our security guards appeared, escorting a young hoodlum who had crept through their lines. He sat on the grass, looking around him, a lad of eighteen or so with his face full of hate and his eyes full of terror. But no one had hurt him or made any move to hurt him, and while R——and I watched, two women tried to explain to him some meaning in connection with his role. He couldn't listen; there was too much hatred all through him, and when the guards told him to go, he bolted like a deer.

Cars were moving now and the afternoon was wearing on. R——, who has spent the best years of his life being a soldier in two wars and an industrial organizer, has a better nose for danger than I have, and now he was shaking his head.

“I don't like it, I don't like it,” he kept saying.

We got in the car. Two men begged us for a lift, and we put them in back. I started the motor and pulled into the outgoing line. Then the line stood still, and I cut my motor. It seemed like a long wait was on the agenda.

Two of the security guards passed down the line of cars, telling each driver, “Close all windows as you approach the exit. They seem to be throwing things.”

The situation was new to us, and Fords and Plymouths and Pontiacs were not built as military weapons. If people were throwing things, it seemed eminently correct that the windows should be closed protectively, and motorists as a whole have a rather childlike faith in the much-touted and widely advertised shatter-proof glass. No one questioned the advice, but even if they had, the damage would have simply taken other forms.

The line would move a few feet, then stop; a wait of about five minutes and then a few feet more. Driving an old car and depending on it, I was afraid of overheating, so I cut my motor constantly. But then suddenly we were in motion and the entrance was in sight and we rolled up and through it and out. A small cluster of hell was at work at the entrance; cops, in a craze of hate, were beating cars, not people, with their long clubs, smashing fenders, lashing out against windshields, doing a dance of frenzy as the autos rolled out of the place. Even through our closed windows we could hear the flood of insanely vile language from the police, the unprintable oaths, the race words, the slime and filth of America's underworld of race hatred compressed into these “guardians” of the law, and released now. There were about thirty of them grouped there at the entrance, and they flogged the cars as if the automobiles were living objects of their resentment.

BOOK: Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots
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