Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots (9 page)

“I don't intend to hit anyone,” I answered, feeling more foolish than ever.

“You didn't last week either, did you?”

“That was something else.”

We stood there for about twenty minutes and then, under R——'s expert direction, we made several quiet circuits of the house. I hadn't played Indian since I was very young, and I felt astonishingly silly and reflected upon the idiotic things men do when they begin to shed civilization. It turned out, however, that R——'s precautions were based on reality. That night a series of separate attacks upon people in the area began. At my house, however, nothing happened. We slept quietly, and in the morning we were at N—'s house bright and early for breakfast.

When we left, N—— took his son with him, and suggested that we follow along in my car. We drove into Peekskill, along one of the main streets of the town, and saw the first of those banners which have since become the sloganized expression of that Sunday. Strung across the avenue, it read: “WAKE UP AMERICA! PEEKSKILL DID!” That was the first, but the slogan was everywhere, hanging from houses, pasted on telegraph poles, and stuck on the windshields of numerous cars passing us—early though it was. (It was now shortly after eight o'clock in the morning.)

Reflectively, R——said,
“Deutschland, erwache!”
the German equivalent, which had been shouted so often in the streets of Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Hamburg and Berlin, which had been chanted by the brownshirts as they fulfilled their divine purpose of beating Jews and Communists and flinging the works of Mann, Heine and Wasserman into the flames, and which had become the battle cry and the rallying cry for the taking of power by the Nazis. I wondered then—and have wondered since—whether this transliteration was one of the curious accidents of history, the symptomatic fever of a similar disease, regardless of geographical roots, or whether the “storm troopers” of Peekskill consciously translated the Hitlerian slogan to their own purposes. The latter would not surprise me; since, as I pointed out before, the fascists of the first attack had taken Hitler as their hero and shouted his name at us again and again. It is a mistake to imagine that fascists are just good-natured brutes, motivated by their spontaneous hatreds, without any conscious understanding of their aims and purposes; but it is also fascinating, if bitter, to contemplate a world wherein Adolf Hitler becomes the paragon of what is American, as opposed to such “un-American” elements as Robeson and Fast.

A short while later we reached the place chosen for the second Peekskill concert, and a word of explanation about this is in order. At the meeting at Mt. Kisco a week before—or more properly at Katonah, since it was nearer to that village—the
Westchester Committee for Law and Order
had come into being. This group of local citizens had established themselves as an ad-hoc committee to fight for civil rights in Westchester County, and one of their first steps was to invite People's Artists to hold another concert as soon as possible, with Paul Robeson as guest singer. As with the first concert, the Civil Rights Congress of Harlem was chosen as chief recipient of whatever funds might be collected. The trade unions in and around New York were called upon to protect the meeting, and I will tell later how they responded.

To decide to hold the meeting was one thing; to find a place to hold it was something else entirely. The owner of Lakeland Acres, the place of last Saturday's events, was friendy and well-disposed toward us; but he quite justly pointed to the havoc the fascists had made of his picnic grounds. He could not see himself going through that again, not to mention the threats and reprisals which would result from cooperation on his part. And dozens of other owners of picnic grounds and property said much the same.

Finally a place was offered to us, and it was gratefully accepted. This place was owned by a former refugee from German fascism, a man who knew on the basis of personal experience what
Peekskill
meant, and who was watching a hideous retake of scenes from his own early life. He knew the risks he took by offering his place to us; he also knew the consequences he faced—an attempt to burn down his house, as it turned out, bullets through the walls, etc—but in spite of this, he determined that as a principled measure, as his own blow for the right of public assembly and freedom of speech, he would make his place available for the concert.

Strangely enough, this place, the Hollow Brook Country Club, was almost an exact physical replica of Lakeland Acres. It lay in exactly the same position off the same road, and its entrance was only half a mile further from Peekskill than the entrance to the former place. Even its topography was similar, except that the private road leading in was somewhat shorter and that the open space at the bottom of the hollow was larger and flatter, making an arena at least four times the size of the one at Lakeland. It had once been a country club, and its broad meadows were grown long with seed grass. It was being held simply as real-estate property, and this was the first public use to which it had been put in some time.

We had expected to be among the very first to reach there early that morning; but it turned out that a good many others had the same idea, and were taking no chances on being prevented from reaching the place. At that hour there was no sign of any sort of fascist demonstration on the state road, but already more than a hundred cars of concert-goers and trade unionists were parked inside the grounds. The sight of that gave me an idea of what sort of crowd would turn up.

Driving well into the grounds, I chose a safe, out of the way place to park my car. While a concert in Westchester County is less dangerous than a war, it pays to learn; my ancient hired Plymouth had done yoeman service and would continue to give satisfaction. Then we strolled around the place, watching preparations being made to secure the grounds.

If ever my admiration for the discipline, strength and courage of the working class was confirmed, it was that day at Peekskill. Only in the weather was there any similarity to the week before and the awful, outnumbered fight our little group had made; the sky was blue and clear; the morning was crisp and cool and utterly delightful; and the lovely hills that hemmed in the valley were green, peaceful and deceptive. On a little hill which commanded the whole place, and which was to one's left as one entered the grounds, a command post had been set up by Leon Straus of the
International Fur and Leather Workers Union.
His staff consisted of representatives of half a dozen other unions as well as a group of his own men.

There on the hilltop was abundant evidence of order, discipline and organization. A tent had been raised as a first-aid shelter. Stacked and sheltered, were piles of first-aid supplies and gallon-size canteens of water. Six volunteer runners were already at hand, sitting and waiting for orders which would take them to any part of the dozen or so acres which had to be protected, and the group of trade unionists who had taken on the job of seeing to it that this concert would not be a repetition of the last were crouched over a scale map and plan for the defense of the grounds. It had to be a unique type of defense, a defense without weapons, a defense, if possible, without a blow being struck, a defense which would achieve its purpose through the highest type of discipline and restraint.

The story of the setting up and execution of that defense has never fully been told. It deserves to be told because that defense was wholly and uniquely an expression of the American working class; and for other reasons too, for this was the first time—to my knowledge—that our working class had engaged in precisely this kind of an effort, an effort so vast and so coordinated, in defense of a singer and a people's hero whom they loved and honored.

The best way to describe the defense is from my own vantage point there on the hillside where I sat for hours, watching it being set up, watching Leon Straus marshal it out, pull it together, set the pieces to matching. Also, I know of no better tribute to Straus than to tell what he accomplished there and of the leadership he gave afterwards. He has many qualities, great qualities.

After our arrival there was a steady stream of concert-goers, as well as trade union volunteers for the defense. The concert-goers came in individual cars or in hired buses, more of them in cars, I would guess, while the trade unionists—from Local 65, from fur and electrical, from furniture and the shoe workers' union, as well as from maritime and the needle trades—arrived for the most part by bus, each local sending its organized contingent. The concert-goers drove into the grounds, where their cars were parked in orderly rows, and they continued to arrive even after the concert had finally started. The trade unionists came earlier; for the most part they left their buses near the entrance and marched down the road toward the natural arena.

The arena lay just below and beyond the command post, sheltered to some degree from the road by the bluff of the hill. We were unable to provide chairs, and in any case we could only guess how many people would come, so it was decided that they would sit on the grass and make themselves comfortable in whatever way they could.

The first contingents of trade unionists were already arriving when we got there, and during the next two hours several thousand of them marched in. As each group appeared, they were met by one of Straus's runners, who identified them and stayed with them until they were given an area of the perimeter of defense. I have no way of determining now just how long this perimeter of defense was, and the pictures we have available show only sections of it; but it enclosed the whole space of the concert, twenty-five thousand in the audience and more than a thousand automobiles, and always there was a space of more than a quarter of a mile between any part of the perimeter and the edge of the audience, and the guards stood shoulder to shoulder, literally touching each other. Official estimates put the number of trade unionists on the perimeter at two thousand, five hundred. Thus it becomes apparent what a vast organizational problem it was to lay out these men in a solid line over the distance I describe. The credit for this must go to Straus and the men who worked with him.

To watch it happen, all within two and a half hours, was a thrilling sight. The groups of trade unionists cut over the fields, through the woods, out of sight frequently, and then all of a sudden the line began to take shape. First a piece of it here, then another piece there, then sections to fill in, then the gaps grew smaller and smaller, and then suddenly there was this endless wall of human bodies solidly around the whole great area.

Below, in the center of the natural arena where a single, tall oak tree stood, a second line of guards was established within the audience, covering perhaps half an acre.

While this went on, both the audience and the fascists began to gather. The audience swelled beyond belief. We had anticipated five, perhaps ten thousand men and women to hear the concert—but we had ten thousand and fifteen thousand and twenty thousand, and still they came. From Harlem, busload after busload; from Brooklyn and the Bronx and Manhattan, from Jersey City and Newark—more and more busloads. And private cars, hundreds and hundreds, each car loaded to capacity—something for which we paid an awful price, as you will see.

As our own crowd swelled, the fascist counter-demonstration, held on the state road, fell short of its goal. Not only had they themselves predicted that thirty thousand veterans would turn up to prevent the concert—a holy duty—but every radio station and newspaper in the state echoed their call for volunteers for violence. As it turned out, however, there were never more than a thousand men in their parade; and there is no doubt that for every war veteran in their demonstration, we had ten in ours. As far as these thousand were concerned, our guards could have taken ample care of them at any part of the perimeter, but this time the police entered the picture very early in the day, and this time there were a thousand state and county police, a thousand well-armed, coordinated police with a very definite purpose in mind.

And as our defense preparations were completed, as the audience grew and Straus's human wall formed itself—and held absolute position, resisting provocation under a hot sun for hours—the purpose of the police was put into action.

The role of the police on this day must be noted carefully—and noted again and again as the various incidents of the day are unfolded; for a cop's club is an agile weapon, and the man who swings it has the law and the courts and the judges on his side, and to prove anything against him is just about as hard as handling eels after you've coated the palms of your hands with vaseline.

When Straus and the people with him planned the defense, they knew they were acting wholly within the law. The defense was orderly and unarmed, and since we had rented the whole of the vast grounds, what we did on them was our affair and our right, just so long as we broke no law in doing it. But when the police saw the completeness and solidarity of the defense, they began immediately to attempt ways of breaking it down.

At eleven o'clock they marched about three hundred state troopers into the grounds and dispersed them over the area. At one o'clock, Superintendent Gaffney of the police came to Leon Straus and demanded that he pull in the whole perimeter a quarter of a mile. This would have placed the guards and audience in one solid block, giving the fascists an opportunity to swarm into the place and prevent the concert.

Straus refused. Gaffney ranted and threatened, but Straus pointed oat to him that we had hired this ground and that we could put our guards wherever we pleased and that we damn well intended to do so. He also pointed out to Gaffney that at no point were our guards less than twenty yards from the state road, and he didn't see how any trouble could arise unless we were attacked. Thereupon, Gaffney gave his ultimatum: either we pulled our line of guards back, or he would pull out every one of his cops.