The heart of the city: civil rights, resistance and police reform in New York City, 1945-1966

This dissertation uses New York City’s July 1964 rebellions in Central Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant to explore issues of civil rights, liberalism, policing and electoral politics in New York City between 1945 and 1966. The city’s rebellions, the first of the 1960s urban uprisings that would come to define the decade, had widespread repercussions and shaped political campaigns at the local, state and national levels. Looking both backward and forward from the rebellions, I examine the causes many observers gave for the rebellions as well as what outcomes the uprisings had. Using archival records, government documents, newspapers and correspondence between activists and city officials, I look at the social and economic conditions in which black New Yorkers lived during the postwar period, the various ways in which black citizens and their white allies tried to remedy pervasive segregation and its deleterious effects, and the results of those attempts at reform. In providing a previously unavailable narrative of the nearly weeklong July rebellions, I show the ways in which the city’s black citizens expressed their frustrations with city officials, the police and local black leaders and how each group responded. By 1964, many black New Yorkers were frustrated with the glacial pace of civil rights progress in the city and were searching for alternatives to integrationist movements, leading to activism and sentiments that would soon be labeled as Black Power. The civilian review board referendum of 1966 represents the last stand of the city’s interracial liberal civil rights coalition. Exploring the campaigns for and against the board helps us to see the growth of white political conservatism, the previously unknown political power of the police, the decline of support for liberalism among black and white populations and the increase in racial hostility in New York City after 1966. Through looking at civil rights in the city during the postwar period, we can see the limits of liberalism. New York was considered one of the most liberal cities in the country during the postwar period, but its black citizens still faced the same issues as their counterparts in Chicago and Detroit.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Christopher Haye