In 1964, there were race riots in Rochester, New York. At the time, I was a couple of months shy of my 11th birthday. It was big stuff. I remember the Rochester Times Union (the evening paper) - or was it the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (the morning newspaper)? - having a front page collage of other city’s newspapers reporting it on their front pages. I'm not giving a history lesson. There are people for whom the riots had a far more personal effect. They were there, not just reading and hearing about it from the safety of lily-white suburbia. I had to look up the Wiki page to nail down some details (such as the year), but this is mainly giving my thoughts - with inevitable conflation - from a fifty year-old memory based in a ten year-old’s brain.
There were many cities on fire in the summer of 1964 and the surrounding years. Despite the already mentioned “pride” in Rochester being mentioned in newspapers in places like Chicago and Los Angeles, the riot was a scary thing and a part of a much larger scary thing, the blacks were revolting.
I would not say I was prejudiced or raised to be but I was a child of the 50s/60s, raised in suburbia. When I started public high school in 1967, out of over 1200 students there was exactly one black. There was no problem that I was aware of, he was fairly popular if only because of his sheer novelty. My infrequent meetings with blacks were awkward for me. Added to that was the guilt I felt for feeling awkward. I knew I shouldn’t feel that way. I did not recognize it then but there was the dynamic that this black person represented all blacks. That his personality differences were not his but represented all blacks everywhere. I remember meeting a black co-worker of my father’s whose quickness to laugh – loud and long – embarrassed me as a shy, quiet and easily embarrassed child, resulting in a “blacks are weird and embarrassing” non-verbal pronouncement.
From the earliest I remember, I felt drawn to “liberalism”, perhaps anarchy would be a better term. The fact that cities were burning with protests appealed to me as evidence that things were moving in a positive direction (Okay. Don’t ask). I also enjoyed the hushed tones with which the adults talked; the fear they had that the whole world was going nuts and the personal threat they felt.
But I also kinda agreed: Why push it? Even the currently considered “safe” black, Martin Luther King, why stir things up? At the time, he was better than the really scary Malcom X, but going around protesting? Surely there were better ways of getting rights than confronting and inconveniencing whites. Just keep it to yourselves, please, it will work out.
Sometimes, it exploded into not so hushed tones. One man, who owned a roadside farmers market/convenience store, spoke with bravado about owning a gun and if those rioters came to his store, he would “take out a lot of them before they get to me.” While I followed the logic and the fear driving it, even at ten, I wondered how reasonable it was to think that the rioters would decide to leave their neighborhood, march south a half mile, turn left, march seven miles, turn right, go another three quarter miles to loot a roadside farmers market, which – my guess – none of them had ever been to before. That is without even considering attrition of the mob along the route and far more lucrative targets on the way. You just never know with blacks, I guess. There were millions of them in the ghetto and they love to loot.
Another example of the threats of the time was Cassius Clay. Part of what I liked about him was how he bothered so many people (especially my parents). The loudmouth arrogant. Granted, anybody who competes has to have some kind of confidence in his ability but I never thought he had an ego problem. I accepted that the loudmouth was just part of his schtick. (I recently had a friendship with a guy who competed in the Olympics with him and I read a book on the 1960 Olympics which both kinda confirmed that) "He only wins because it's fixed and he's black" (pre-affirmative action affirmative action, I guess) was a not uncommon comment, which always caused me to ask "what about all his opponents being black too?" (Okay, there was Jerry Quarry, but still) I really never took his rants as much more than a show. Pure entertainment. Not everybody agreed with that, though, Clay was viewed as a threat because the status quo was changing.
In the end, the riot lasted three days. The store owner did not have to back up his bravado and litter his parking lot with dead blacks. The adults stopped talking about it with a “they hurt themselves more than they hurt us” shrug. Later, anniversary “follow up” newspaper stories talked about how things changed or how they stayed the same.
All this to observe how little has changed. The decades have not removed resentful “only because he was black” concerning successful blacks from our discourse. All blacks still have to answer for one black. Blacks peacefully protesting injustice are greeted with the same words and attitudes and the same “you didn’t hurt me” dismissal from whites as those in the burning black neighborhood of my youth. Black leaders are still dismissed as cranks and troublemakers. Those who now quote Dr King trying to turn the clock back on civil rights then treated King worse than they now treat Al Sharpton or Jeremiah Wright or Jesse Jackson (who, remember, was on the balcony with Dr King when he was shot). The racial status quo of the 50s (and earlier) still lives on as a societal goal for many. And the fear, the felt threat of blacks exercising rights and living their lives as human beings. They aren’t ready, they say.