Racial
Violence of the 1960s
By
Herbert F. Janick
In
the late 1960s, Connecticut cities, like urban centers across
the United States, were torn by race riots. During the summers
of 1967, 1968, and 1969, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Middletown, New
Britain, Stamford, Norwalk, and New London experienced racial
violence. The most serious outbreaks of disorder came in Hartford,
while the most unexpected took place in New Haven, considered
by most experts to be a model of enlightened urban revitalization.
For
three consecutive summers the streets in Hartford's North End
were turned into battlefields. In July and September 1967 swarms
of black youths surged through the ghetto pillaging and looting.
The assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968 sent
off
another shock wave. North End teenagers chanting: "You killed
Martin Luther King!" hurled bricks and stones at police
and firemen. Violence reached a peak on Labor Day 1969 when mobs
battled
with state and city police, set fire to a public library, and
damaged almost one hundred buildings. Over 500 persons were arrested
during the three days of turmoil.
When
New Haven succumbed to the epidemic of rioting in August 1967,
all of Connecticut was stunned. After a white storeowner shot
a Puerto Rican who threatened him with a knife, the city seethed
for two days with mobs of blacks and Puerto Ricans breaking
windows,
looting stores, setting fires, and clashing with the police.
A state of emergency was declared, and a National Guard Unit
was
brought to the edge of the city. "If we are a model city,"
concluded a saddened Mayor Richard Lee, "God save the rest
of the cities."
The
causes of the unrest of the late 1960s reach back to the years
of World War II and involve some fundamental changes in Connecticut
life. Lured by the prospect of employment in war industries, large
numbers of blacks began moving into the state. Between 1950 and
1960 the nonwhite population of the state doubled from 53,000
to 107,000. In the following decade more than 80,000 Hispanics
migrated into Connecticut. Almost ninety percent of the newcomers
settled in substandard housing in cities that were beset by escalating
demands for social services at a time when their tax bases were
contracting. At the same time, Connecticut's economy was moving
away from dependence on the heavy industry which had traditionally
provided jobs for unskilled workers. Simultaneous with the surge
of minorities into Connecticut cities was the flight of many of
the white middle class to the suburbs, thus leaving the downtown
cores of many Connecticut cities as the nearly exclusive domain
of the poor. The final ingredient that turned social and economic
inequity into violence was the growing militancy of a new generation
of black leadership which concluded that force was the most effective
weapon in securing public attention and government action.
For
Further Reading
Ralph
L. Pearson, "Interracial Conflict in Twentieth-Century
Connecticut Cities: The Demographic Factor," Connecticut History
(January 1976), is a brief comparison of population shifts in
Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, and Waterbury. New Haven's race
problems are best documented by Robert A. Warner, a black anthropologist,
who explores the roots in New Haven Negroes, A Social History
(New Haven, 1940).
A
number of works on New Haven redevelopment treat the background
of the riots. One limited, but fascinating, case study is William
Miller, The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society (Boston,
1966).
*
Entry under revision.
|
