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Notes

table of contents
  1. Introduction
  2. 1. Black Rochester at Midcentury
  3. 2. Uniting for Survival
  4. 3. A Quiet Rage Explodes
  5. 4. Build the Army
  6. 5. Confrontation with Kodak
  7. 6. FIGHTing for the Soul of Black Capitalism
  8. Conclusion
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. Notes
  11. Index

NOTES

Introduction

  1. 1. “No. HS-7. Population of the Largest 75 Cities: 1900–2000,” US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: April 1, 2003, https://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-07.pdf, accessed October 30, 2014, Wayback Machine.

  2. 2. Though present early on in Rochester, the most spectacular display of Black theology and Black economic development might very well have occurred some years later, with the creation of the Black Manifesto produced at the 1969 Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit, an event arranged by Black clergy.

  3. 3. Rochester was no stranger to social protest movements. In fact, the abolition and women’s rights movements of the nineteenth century garnered several interesting case studies. Indeed, much has been written about this city’s earlier movements. Of the bulk of Rochester’s twentieth century, however, historians have had little to say, despite its continued tradition of dissent and a demand for social and economic justice, which most glaringly coalesced in this new struggle for Black rights. For examples, see Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, NY, 1815–1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Nancy Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, NY, 1822–1872 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); and Milton Sernett, North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002).

  4. 4. The “Freedom North” studies began in earnest with the publication of Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, eds., Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles outside the North, 1940–1980 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Theoharis and Woodard, eds., Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America (New York: New York University Press, 2005). Other studies that are central to this literature include Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Patrick D. Jones, The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Clarence Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936–75 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009); Donna Jean Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); and Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis with Komozi Woodard, The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South (New York: New York University Press, 2019).

  5. 5. See Christopher Strain, Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005); Charles E. Cobb Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York: Basic Books, 2014); and Akinyele Dmowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2014).

  6. 6. See Michael Flamm, In the Heat of Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

  7. 7. At the 2009 Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH) conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, young Black Power scholars in several sessions struggled to place their current work in the Black Freedom Struggle historiography, which privileges the social, cultural, and political expressions of Black Power at the expense of economic expressions. Likewise, these same scholars felt frustrated by the literature in business history, which has traditionally ignored the Black Power movement altogether. Their various efforts, however, will likely bring about a significant change in the historiography, bringing together Black Power studies and business history. See Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig, eds., The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012); Brian Purnell, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013). See also Julia Rabig, The Fixers: Devolution, Development, and Civil Society in Newark, 1960–1990 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Nishani Frazier, Harambee City: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2017); Joshua Davis, From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).

  8. 8. Early examples of this work include Robert E. Weems Jr., Desegregating the Dollar: African-American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Emilye Crosby, A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Self, American Babylon; and Countryman, Up South. For more recent and intentional examinations of the economic threads of Black Power, see Hill and Rabig, eds., Business of Black Power; Michael Ezra, ed., The Economic Civil Rights Movement: African Americans and the Struggle for Economic Power (New York: Routledge, 2013); and Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014).

  9. 9. See Victoria Wolcott, “Recreation and Race in the Postwar City: Buffalo’s 1956 Crystal Beach Riot,” Journal of American History 93, no. 1 (June 2006): 63–90; Weems, Desegregating the Dollar; and Crosby, Little Taste of Freedom. There are, however, a few exceptions here. Both Matthew Countryman and Thomas Sugrue note the tension between traditional civil rights strategies and those engaged in the economic development more often associated with Black Power. See Countryman, Up South; and Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008).

  10. 10. Robert E. Weems Jr. and Lewis A. Randolph, “The Ideological Origins of Richard Nixon’s ‘Black Capitalism’ Initiative,” Review of Black Political Economy 29, no. 1 (Summer 2001): 49–61; Weems and Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Détente,” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001): 66–83; and Dean Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights: Politics, Principle, and Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

  11. 11. This work responds to and builds on three important recent trends in the historiography of civil rights and Black Power. First, it draws on the temporal extension of both movements called for by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. See Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (March 2005): 1233–1263. For examples of this literature, see Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Woodard, A Nation within a Nation; Theoharis and Woodard, eds., Freedom North; Angela Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007); Hasan Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt (New York: New York University Press, 2009); Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). To be sure, not all scholars of the Black Freedom Struggle support these historiographic shifts. Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang have argued that by stretching the parameters of the traditional civil rights movement, scholars have obscured rather than clarified the issue by placing the Black Freedom Struggle “outside of time and history, beyond the processes of life and death, and change and development.” See Cha-Jua and Lang, “The ‘Long Movement’ as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies,” Journal of African-American History 92, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 265–288. These same scholars reject the lionization of the Black Power movement in favor of the civil rights movement. For a fuller description of this literature and the subsequent shift in the literature, see Peniel Joseph, “The Black Power Movement: A State of the Field,” Journal of American History 96, no. 3 (December 2009): 752. Second, the Black Freedom Struggle has been reenvisioned spatially. Studies of the movement in the North and West radically depart from the previous literature, which located a singular type of movement that privileged the South. See Countryman, Up South; Self, American Babylon; Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino, eds., The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). See also Kimberley L. Phillips, AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915–45 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), which argues that both the civil rights and Black Power movements often drew from common sources, ideologically and organizationally. See Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes. Finally, this literature privileges the community as a central point of organization. In these local studies, federal policies, national organizations, and leading figures do not become peripheral; rather, their historical positions are clarified and illuminated further by local contextualization. Neither movement was monolithic, nor were national events and organizations received identically around the nation. See, for example, Theoharis and Woodard, eds., Groundwork; Emilye Crosby, ed., Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011); Crosby, Little Taste of Freedom; and Patrick D. Jones, The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

  12. 12. See, for example, Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper and Row, 1984); and Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987).

  13. 13. Ruth Forsyth, The Rochester Area Selected Demographic and Social Characteristics (Rochester, NY: Monroe Community College, 1984).

  14. 14. Dillard, Faith in the City, 89.

  15. 15. The term “hard-core unemployed” was widely used in this period to denote a person who was not easily employed because he or she had insufficient education or training, a criminal record, had suffered long periods of unemployment, or had never been gainfully employed.

  16. 16. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 429.

1. Black Rochester at Midcentury

  1. 1. “Baden Street Settlement, Fiftieth Anniversary, 1901–1951,” Rochester, 1951, Baden St. Settlement Files, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Library, Minneapolis, digitized March 12, 2018; Social Welfare History Project, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries, Richmond, http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/organizations/baden-street-settlement-1901-1951/.

  2. 2. Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 71.

  3. 3. See, for example, Joe William Trotter, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–45 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985); James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); James N. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African-American Domestics and the Great Migration (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994); Greta de Jong, “Staying in Place: Black Migration, the Civil Rights Movement, and the War on Poverty in the Rural South,” Journal of African-American History 90, no. 4 (Autumn 2005): 387–409; Carole Marks, “Black Workers and the Great Migration North,” Phylon 46, no. 2 (1985): 148–161; Carole Marks, Farewell—We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Allan Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem, The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890–1930 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996); and Kenneth Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976).

  4. 4. Trotter, Black Milwaukee, 39.

  5. 5. Gregory, Southern Diaspora, 18.

  6. 6. Gregory, 15–17.

  7. 7. Father Quintin Primo recalled, for example, that one day he received a call from the head custodian at Kodak. Kodak was looking to hire “janitors of color” for good pay and benefits. The company required only that a potential candidate for the custodial position have a minimum of two years in college. See the Right Reverend Quintin E. Primo Jr., The Making of a Black Bishop (Wilmington, DE: Cedar Tree Books, 1998), 80.

  8. 8. William Ringle, “A Tale of Two Cities: From Sanford, Fla., to Rochester, N.Y.,” Rochester Times-Union, March 10, 1969, 1A.

  9. 9. Victoria Sandwick Schmitt, “Goin’ North,” Rochester History 54, no. 1 (1992): 6. See also Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 165; Eugene Barrington, “New Beginnings: The Story of Five Black Entrepreneurs Who Migrated from Sanford, Florida to Rochester, New York” (PhD diss., Syracuse University, 1976), 24; and Dorothy Nelkin, On the Season: Aspects of the Migrant Labor System (Ithaca, NY: State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 1970), 11.

  10. 10. Patricia DuPont, Carl H. Feuer, and Jean Kost, “Black Migrant Farmworkers in New York State: Exploitable Labor,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 12, no. 1 (January 1988): 9.

  11. 11. DuPont, Feuer, and Kost, “Black Migrant Farmworkers,” 78.

  12. 12. Joyce Woelfle Lehmann, Migrant Farmworkers of Wayne County, New York: A Collection of Oral Histories from the Back Roads (Lyons, NY: Wayne County Historical Society Bicentennial Project, 1990), 26.

  13. 13. Lehmann, Migrant Farmworkers, 36–37.

  14. 14. Lehmann, 5.

  15. 15. “About Mott’s: Company History,” 2019, http://www.motts.com/about. See also chris1967-ga, “Q: Corporate Historical,” Google Answers, October 25, 2002, http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=68866.

  16. 16. Nelkin, On the Season, 21.

  17. 17. Lehmann, Migrant Farmworkers, 8.

  18. 18. Nelkin, On the Season, 26.

  19. 19. Nelkin, 26.

  20. 20. Lehmann, Migrant Farmworkers, 78.

  21. 21. Schmitt, “Goin’ North,” 22.

  22. 22. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 27–29.

  23. 23. Nelkin, On the Season, 64.

  24. 24. Gregory, Southern Diaspora, 11; DuPont, Feuer, and Kost, “Black Migrant Farmworkers,” 11.

  25. 25. Schmitt, “Goin’ North,” 4.

  26. 26. Ringle, “Tale of Two Cities,” 1A.

  27. 27. Barrington, “New Beginnings,” 12.

  28. 28. Barrington, 54.

  29. 29. Barrington, 229.

  30. 30. John and Constance Mitchell, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 12, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Mitchell interview.

  31. 31. Charles Buddy Granston, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 6, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  32. 32. Darryl Porter, Walter Cooper, and Laura Warren Hill, interview by Norma Holland, Many Voices, Many Visions, WHAM-TV, May 24, 2009.

  33. 33. Trent Jackson, interview by Chris Christopher, July ’64, directed by Carvin Eison, DVD (Brockport, NY: ImageWordSound, 2006).

  34. 34. Walter Cooper, interview by Laura Warren Hill, May 21, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Cooper interview.

  35. 35. Earl Caldwell, “Chapter 7: Boll Weevil,” Caldwell Journals, Maynard IJE History Project, Oakland, CA: Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, 1999, http://www.localcommunities.org/servlet/lc_procserv/dbpage=page&gid=00091000000967482594843765.

  36. 36. Caldwell, “Boll Weevil.”

  37. 37. Frederick Douglass quoted in Eugene E. DuBois, The City of Frederick Douglass: Rochester’s African-American People and Places (Rochester: Landmark Society of Western New York, 1994).

  38. 38. Adolph Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part III,” About … Time, September 1984, 17.

  39. 39. I employ the use of courtesy titles, drawing on the practice of scholar Charles M. Payne, who argues, “Southern Blacks had to struggle for the use of ‘courtesy titles’ and thus often had a different appreciation for them. More particularly, the use of titles was self-consciously a token of respect and affection that [people] commanded even from young men and women who [sic] were frequently contemptuous of social convention.” See Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 6.

  40. 40. Over the course of his lifetime, George Eastman bestowed $51,000,000 on the University of Rochester. He was integral in the creation of the medical school. A plaque affixed to the medical school reads, “The School of Medicine and Dentistry was established in the University of Rochester in 1920 by the gifts of George Eastman and the General Education Board founded by John D. Rockefeller and is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and to instruction in medicine and dentistry for the promotion of the health and happiness of mankind.” See Arthur J. May, “George Eastman and the University of Rochester: His Role, His Influence,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin 26, no. 3 (Spring 1971).

  41. 41. Adolph Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part II,” About … Time, August 1984, 12.

  42. 42. Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part II,” 21.

  43. 43. Rochester legend suggests the pair was responsible for acceptance of the first Black blood donors to the American Red Cross as well.

  44. 44. Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part II,” 12.

  45. 45. Bennett Parmington, “Dr. Charles Terrell Lunsford,” Field Reports from Mt. Hope Cemetery, Rochester, NY (December 22, 2008), http://hdl.handle.net/1802/6338; see also “A Shocking Inner City Crime” clipping, box 5A, folder 8, Franklin Florence Papers, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  46. 46. Mitchell interview; Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part V,” About … Time, November 1984, 32.

  47. 47. Primo, Making of a Black Bishop, 64.

  48. 48. Glenn Claytor, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 21, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Claytor interview.

  49. 49. Claytor interview.

  50. 50. Claytor interview.

  51. 51. Primo, Making of a Black Bishop, 68–73.

  52. 52. Interestingly, Cooper was a beneficiary of Lunsford’s agitation some decades earlier. Cooper was hired by Eastman Kodak only after the company reluctantly began to hire some African Americans with PhDs in chemistry and biology.

  53. 53. “Education: Should All Northern Schools Be Integrated?” Time, September 7, 1962.

  54. 54. Cooper interview.

  55. 55. Claytor interview.

  56. 56. Jack Germound, interview by Chris Christopher, July ’64, directed by Carvin Eison, DVD (Brockport, NY: ImageWordSound, 2006).

  57. 57. Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part III,” 33.

  58. 58. Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part V,” 34.

  59. 59. Reuben Davis, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 9, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  60. 60. Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part V,” 32.

  61. 61. Dupree, 32; Cooper interview; Mitchell interview.

  62. 62. Mitchell interview.

  63. 63. 1985 Presentation of the Annual Rotary Award to Constance M. Mitchell, May 21, 1985; Clarissa St. Reunion 10th Anniversary publication, 2005. Constance and John Mitchell provided these materials for use by the author.

  64. 64. Mitchell interview.

  65. 65. Claytor interview.

  66. 66. Mitchell interview.

  67. 67. Mitchell interview.

  68. 68. Mitchell interview.

  69. 69. Mitchell interview.

  70. 70. Cooper interview; Claytor interview; Mitchell interview.

  71. 71. Claytor interview.

  72. 72. Darryl Porter, interview by Laura Warren Hill, June 10, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  73. 73. Claytor interview.

  74. 74. 1985 Presentation and Clarissa St. Reunion.

2. Uniting for Survival

  1. 1. Chapter 2 was originally published as “ ‘We Are Black Folks First’: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, NY and the Making of Malcolm X,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 3, no. 2 (December 2010): 163–185. Some changes have been made to this version. Used with permission from The Sixties, Taylor & Francis Ltd., http://www.informaworld.com. For the anecdote, see Gloster Current to Messrs. Wilkins, Morsell, Moon, and Odom, memorandum, February 19, 1963; Gloster Current to Rev. J. Oscar Lee, February 21, 1963; Gloster Current to NAACP branches, Re: NAACP and the Muslims, undated; all three in Papers of the NAACP, Part 29: Branch Department Files, Series B: Branch Newsletters, Annual Branch Activities Reports, and Selected Branch Department Subject Files, 1966–1972, Folder “009059-010-0492: Black Muslims, Nation of Islam, and police brutality, 1962–1963 and undated,” ProQuest History Vault; herein referred to as Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers.

  2. 2. “Negroes Call for Unity to Protest ‘Abuses,’ ” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 18, 1963, 15; “The Rochester Image Two-Faced? Angry Voices Raised by Opposing Groups,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 13, 1963, 6. Both articles are in box 58, folder 766, Industrial Areas Foundation Records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

  3. 3. Scholars have built upon the popular perceptions created by contemporary newspaper accounts that drew sweeping distinctions between the separatist platform of the NOI and the integrationist agenda of the NAACP and the nonviolent strategies of the early CORE movement. For examples of this scholarship, see C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 141–145; Kevin Mumford, Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 81; Angela Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 232–233; Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 62; James H. Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991; reprint 2007), 200; and Judson Jeffries, ed., Black Power in the Belly of the Beast (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 3.

For examples of popular reporting, see Michael Clark, “Rise in Racial Extremism Worries Harlem Leaders,” New York Times, January 25, 1960, 1, 18. Here, NAACP president Roy Wilkins told reporters, “The Temple of Islam was no better in its racial creed than the Ku Klux Klan. We also feel … that any cult that seeks to make a minority believe that it can solve its problems through racial hatred is misleading the people and spreading destruction.” The same article quoted C. Sumner Stone of the New York Age, “The NAACP and the Urban League are doing a good job, but are not emotionally satisfying.… When you’re angry, you want to hear angry words.” The article opined, “The purveyors of angry words in Harlem are to be found mainly among followers of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.”

  1. 4. Adolph Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part V,” About … Time, November 1984, 23.

  2. 5. Hasan Kwame Jeffries identifies freedom rights as “the assortment of civil and human rights that emancipated African Americans identified as the crux of freedom. Framing the civil rights movement as a fight for freedom rights acknowledges the centrality of slavery and emancipation to conceptualizations of freedom; incorporates the long history of black protest dating back to the daybreak of freedom and extending beyond the Black Power era; recognizes African Americans’ civil and human rights objectives; and captures the universality of these goals. Moreover, it allows for regional and temporal differentiation, moments of ideological radicalization, and periods of social movement formation.” In Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 4.

  3. 6. Blake McKelvey, “Housing and Urban Renewal: The Rochester Experience,” Rochester History 17, no. 4 (October 1965): 19.

  4. 7. McKelvey, “Housing and Urban Renewal,” 19.

  5. 8. Olive Le Boo to Mayor Frank Lamb, July 27, 1964, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, Letters from Olive Le Boo”; and A citizen residing at 230 Trafalgar St. to Mayor Frank Lamb, July 29, 1964, Frank Lamb Collection, Mayoral Papers, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964; Correspondence from Individuals,” both in Frank Lamb Collection, Mayoral Papers, Rochester Municipal Archives and Record Center.

  6. 9. “As We See It: Community Leadership Needed to Stop Attacks on Police,” Rochester Times-Union, August 22, 1961; “A Start toward Better Relations,” Rochester Times-Union, August 25, 1961; and “A Way to Improve Racial Problems,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 26, 1961.

  7. 10. Desmond Stone, “The Tense, Sensitive No Man’s Land of Race Relations,” Rochester Times-Union, February 19, 1963, “S.C.A.C” folder, Walter Cooper papers. This set of papers was generously offered to the author for use. With Dr. Cooper’s permission, they have since been deposited with the Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester. All references refer to their original organization in folders by Dr. Cooper and will not necessarily correspond with the archival system employed by the University of Rochester; herein referred to as Cooper papers.

  8. 11. Walter Cooper, interview by Laura Warren Hill, May 21, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Cooper interview.

  9. 12. Some residents cited at least thirteen cases they viewed as truly egregious. Cooper interview; Franklin Florence, interview by Laura Warren Hill, September 19, 2008, transcript in author’s personal collection; herein referred to as Florence interview; and Glenn Claytor, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 21, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  10. 13. Cooper interview; Florence interview; “Two Cops Hurt Subduing Man,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 23, 1962, “RVF Police Cases and Incidents 1959–1969” clipping file, Rochester Public Library; herein referred to as RPL. See also The People of the State of New York v. Rufus Fairwell Preliminary Hearing transcript, box 18, folder 15, Howard Coles Papers, Rochester Museum and Science Center; herein referred to as Coles papers.

  11. 14. “Detective Testifies on Fairwell,” Rochester Times-Union, May 19, 1964, “RVF Police Cases and Incidents 1959–1969” clipping file, RPL; “U.S. Probing Fairwell Case, Rally Told,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, November 5, 1962, “RVF Police Cases and Incidents 1959–1969” clipping file, RPL.

  12. 15. The “man with a gun” story was repeated so many times that it became rather cliché throughout the city. See “Muslim Case Goes to Jury,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 25, 1964; “Muslim Trial Set Monday,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 27, 1964; “Officers’ Injuries Told to Muslim Case Jury,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 14, 1964; and “Police Deny Watch on Muslim Hall,” Rochester Times-Union, May 17, 1963. All articles are in the “Black Muslims” clipping file, RPL.

  13. 15. For descriptions of the arrest, see “Rochester: Cops’ Newest Target in Harassment Plot,” Muhammad Speaks, February 4, 1963, 5.

  14. 16. For more on the Wilmington Ten, see Larry Reni Thomas, The True Story behind the Wilmington Ten (Hampton, VA: U. B. & U. S. Communications Systems, 1982).

  15. 17. Statement of A. C. White, February 5, 1963, NAACP and Police Brutality folder, Cooper papers. This statement indicates that it “was not signed by Mr. White, because of the extent of injuries of his arm and hands!!!” which included “a broken left arm, a shattered bone in the left wrist, a broken bone in the right hand, a broken finger on the right hand, … a dislocated finger on the right hand, ribs and side … bruised from the kicking, and sore until [he] could hardly breathe.”

  16. 18. Florence interview.

  17. 19. Florence interview.

  18. 20. Florence interview.

  19. 21. For this list, Blake McKelvey included the Federation of Churches, which seemed to have changed around 1961 from the Federation of Churches of Rochester and Vicinity to the Rochester Area Council of Churches. McKelvey, “A History of the Police of Rochester, New York,” Rochester History 25, no. 4 (October 1963): 25.

  20. 22. The investigation by the Justice Department would eventually be dropped without a conviction of the officers. In exchange, the city of Rochester paid a very handsome settlement to Rufus Fairwell for his injuries. See “Police, Firefighters Back Homer on Fairwell Case,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, November 23, 1962; “Indictments Hit by Police Group,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, n.d; “City Agrees to Provide Results of Police-Abuse Probe to Group,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 21, 1963. All of these articles are in the NAACP and Police Brutality folder, Cooper papers. See also “The United Appeal of the United Action Committee for Rufus Fairwell,” box 18, folder 15, Coles papers; “U.S. Probing Fairwell Case Rally Told,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, November 5, 1962, “RVF Police Cases and Incidents, 1959–1969” clipping folder, RPL.

  21. 23. For more on the Nation of Islam, see Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  22. 24. Charles and Pauline Price, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 6, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Price interview.

  23. 25. Minister Franklin Florence indicated that he accompanied Malcolm X and Freddie Thomas to a meeting with the city fathers prior to the invasion of the mosque wherein Malcolm X provided them with information regarding the NOI in an effort to preempt any run-ins with the police. See Florence interview.

  24. 26. For more on the 1971 Attica riot, see Heather Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (New York: Pantheon, 2016).

  25. 27. For a more complete examination of the NOI’s formation and practices, see Garrett Felber, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020); Ula Yvette Taylor, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Lincoln, Black Muslims in America; E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Clifton Marsh, The Lost-Found Nation of Islam in America (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000); Dennis Walker, Islam and the Search for African-American Nationhood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2005); Jeffrey Ogbar, Black Power Radicals and African-American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Michael Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); and Claude Andrew Clegge, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

  26. 28. These cases ultimately determined that the NOI would be a constitutionally protected religion.

  27. 29. WE: Rochester’s Only Newsmagazine 19, no. 12 (January 7, 1963), clipping, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers.

  28. 30. Malcolm’s talk that evening was a variation of the commonly known “House Slave, Field Slave” speech. See Charles Holcomb, “Muslim Tells of All-Negro Nation Goal,” Rochester Times-Union, January 29, 1963, 22; and “Muslim Urges Nation in U.S for Negroes,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 23, 1963; both in Folder 009059-010–0492, NAACP papers.

  29. 31. Wendell Phillips, “About the Wendells,” Wendells Write (blog), 2009, http://wendellswrite.com/about/.

  30. 32. Holcomb, “Muslim Tells of All-Negro Nation Goal.”

  31. 33. Rodney Brown, Silent Leader: The Biography of Dr. Freddie L. Thomas (Rochester, NY: Brown Publishing, 2015).

  32. 34. Chad Oliveiri, “Remembering Brother Malcolm: Thoughts on the Prophet, Forty Years after His Death,” interview with Constance Mitchell, Rochester City Newspaper, February 16, 2005, City Newspaper digital archives. See also John and Constance Mitchell, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 12, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Mitchell interview.

  33. 35. Mitchell interview; see also Holcomb, “Muslim Tells of All-Negro Nation Goal,” 22.

  34. 36. After one of the era’s first race riots occurred in Rochester on July 24–27, 1964, the local police reported in an internal memorandum that much of the responsibility for this event lay with Malcolm X and the Black Muslims: “The incident of January 6, 1963 involving a response by police officers to an emergency call at a location on North Street where there was found to be a meeting of Muslims and every indication that the call was a set-up on the part of some persons who desired to incite an incident and ferment [sic] unrest among the Negroes is another classic example. Following this, Malcolm X appeared in our community and preaching hate against the whites and supremacy for the Negros [sic], literally frightened a large number of our residents. Threats were made of blood in our streets and rioting at that time which prompted many of our clergy into becoming more aggressive locally in the civil rights movement. The action of those clergymen involved in all faiths resulted in much unfavorable publicity against the police.” See Inter-Departmental Correspondence from W. M. Lombard, Chief of Police to Donald J. Corbett, Commissioner of Public Safety, Attention: Porter W. Homer, City Manager, September 29, 1964, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Summer 1964-General, City Manager Subject Files C, Public Emergency Riot, Rochester Municipal Archives and Record Center.

  35. 37. “ ‘Human Rights’ Violated, Muslims Say,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 8, 1963, 19. Interestingly, just weeks after Malcolm made this charge publicly, Rochester city police interrupted a Protestant church in full garb with K9 units in tow. See Florence interview. See also “Supervisors Get Report: Democrats Laud Anti-Bias Unit,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, October 12, 1962; and “Supervisor Cites 1961 Record: City Cops Charged in 16 Complaints,” undated; both articles are in the NAACP and Police Brutality folder, Cooper papers.

  36. 38. Interestingly, Monroe County, with the city of Rochester at its heart, had both a county Human Rights Commission and an office of the State Human Rights Commission. In the first nine months of 1962 alone, the county commission investigated more than 750 cases, approximately 725 of them initiated by nonwhite persons. Of the sixteen police brutality cases referred to this commission, all sixteen were against the Rochester City Police Department.

  37. 39. At this time, James Meredith had gained considerable national and international attention in his fight to desegregate the University of Mississippi through a federal lawsuit. See “Rochester, New York, Incident,” in FBI Papers, NY 105-8999, Miscellaneous NOI Activity, 17–20, http://wonderwheel.net/work/foia/1963/040263-050263/misc-noi.pdf, April 14, 2010, Wayback Machine; and “Jailed Muslims Fasting, or Dieting?” Rochester Times-Union, February 15, 1963, 15.

  38. 40. “Muslim Assails Police ‘Hostility,’ ” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 15, 1963, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers.

  39. 41. For examples, see RVF Black Muslims clipping folder, RPL.

  40. 42. “Muslims Bar Firemen from Hall,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 14, 1963, “RVF Black Muslims” clipping folder, RPL; and “Rochester Negroes Unite for Freedom: Hit Muslims’ Persecution, Protest Police Brutality,” Muhammad Speaks, March 18, 1963, 11.

  41. 43. Bruce Perry, ed., Malcolm X: The Last Speeches (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1989), 151–181.

  42. 44. A hand-drawn flyer that circulated throughout the Black community in Rochester after the 1964 uprising listed Loftus Carson as a “Tom,” and therefore someone to be wary of (unfiled, Cooper papers).

  43. 45. “Muslim Assails Police ‘Hostility,’ ” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 15, 1963, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers; “Muslim Head Pleased by Conference,” Rochester Times-Union, January 18, 1963, Black Muslims folder, RPL; and “Muslim Leader, Police Confer,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 18, 1963, Black Muslims folder, RPL.

  44. 46. Louis DeCaro, On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 185.

  45. 47. “Muslim March in N.Y. Protests Arrests Here,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 14, 1963, RVF Black Muslims clipping folder, RPL.

  46. 48. “Rochester Negroes Unite for Freedom,” Muhammad Speaks, March 18, 1963, 11.

  47. 49. “Black Muslims Released on $500 Bail Each,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, undated, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers.

  48. 50. “Meeting Set at Settlement,” Rochester Times-Union, February 16, 1963, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers.

  49. 51. “Negroes Call for Unity to Protest ‘Abuses,’ ” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 18, 1963, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers; author’s personal correspondence with Walter Cooper, July 21, 2008.

  50. 52. “Rochester Negroes Unite for Freedom: Hit Muslims’ Persecution, Protest Police Brutality,” Muhammad Speaks, March 18, 1963, 11.

  51. 53. Current to Wilkins et al., February 19, 1963, NAACP papers.

  52. 54. Current to NAACP branches, NAACP papers (emphasis in original).

  53. 55. “NAACP Hits Separatists,” Rochester Times-Union, January 17, 1963, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers.

  54. 56. “Rise of Muslims Laid to Bias,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 31, 1963, Folder 009059-010-0492, NAACP papers; Florence interview.

  55. 57. Walter Cooper, “7.24.64: Reflections on the Rochester Riots,” Rochester City Newspaper, July 21, 2004, City Newspaper digital archives.

  56. 58. Full-page advertisement in local newspaper, February 22, 1963, NAACP and Police Brutality folder, Cooper papers.

  57. 59. “City Agrees to Provide Results of Police-Abuse Probe to Group,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 21, 1963, NAACP and Police Brutality folder, Cooper papers.

  58. 60. “Talks Continue into Late Hour on Police Acts,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 25, 1963; “Review Board Progress Cited,” Rochester Times-Union, February 27, 1963; “Board May Be Month Away,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 28, 1963. All of these articles are in the NAACP and Police Brutality folder, Cooper papers.

3. A Quiet Rage Explodes

  1. 1. Temperatures had exceeded ninety degrees for several days leading up to the dance and then remained abnormally high well into the evening of July 24, 1964. See “Weather Reports throughout the Nation,” New York Times, July 24, 1964, 52.

  2. 2. Contemporary accounts by public officials disputed stories that a dog bite occurred. However, footage of the riot does in fact show a young person bandaged after a canine bite. See Carvin Eison, dir., July ’64, DVD (Brockport, NY: ImageWordSound, 2006).

  3. 3. Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Sidney Fine, Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989); Leonard Gordon, A City in Racial Crisis: The Case of Detroit Pre- and Post-1967 Riot (Dubuque, IA: W. C. Brown, 1971); Hubert G. Locke, The Detroit Riot of 1967 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969); Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995); Robert M. Fogelson, The Los Angeles Riots (Salem, NH: Ayer, 1988); Peter Rossi, ed., Ghetto Revolts (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1973); David Sears and John McConahay, The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

  4. 4. “Hot Summer: Race Riots in North,” New York Times, July 26, 1964, E1. The article’s author claimed that “the contagion of racial violence last week began in Harlem, swept across the East River to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, flared back briefly to lower Manhattan, and then late in the week leaped 300 miles to Rochester.” This type of reductionist reporting has encouraged scholars to focus on large urban centers as representative of the era, rather than to understand the context and particularities of location. I argue that Rochester is worthy of study in its own right for what it can tell us about the relationship between rioting and Black organizing in this era. A local article reaffirmed the belief in small, white cities that rioting would not break out; see “The Negro Influx: Problems Remain But Much Has Been Done,” Rochester Times-Union, August 20, 1964; Rochester Riots and Profile, Walter Cooper papers. This set of papers, herein referred to as Cooper papers, was generously offered to the author for use. With Dr. Cooper’s permission, they have since been deposited with the Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester. All references refer to their original organization in folders by Dr. Cooper and will not necessarily correspond with the archival system employed by the University of Rochester.

  5. 5. Whitney M. Young, “Middle Cities in Peril,” June 6, 1964, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964; Correspondence from Individuals,” Frank Lamb Collection, Mayoral Papers, Rochester Municipal Archives and Record Center; herein referred to as Lamb Collection.

  6. 6. The term “second-tier city” describes a city that falls into one of two categories. The first refers to population. During the twentieth century, Rochester, for example, did not crack the top twenty list of most-populated cities. At its apex in 1930, Rochester ranked twenty-two, with a population of 328,132. The second category describes cities that experienced the largest African American in-migration rates during the Second Great Migration, specifically during the years 1955–1959. These second-tier cities did not expand considerably during the First Great Migration, but instead became popular destinations for African Americans later in the century. While they could not compete with larger cities in terms of population, their rates were impressive. Many such migrants first traveled to large cities such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York, then moved to smaller cities such as Rochester, Auburn, and Elmira in New York; Racine and Milwaukee in Wisconsin; Spokane, WA; and Sacramento, CA. See Townsand Price-Spratlen, “Urban Destination Selection among African Americans during the 1950s Great Migration,” Social Science History 32, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 446.

  7. 7. Eison, July ’64.

  8. 8. Trent Jackson, interview by Chris Christopher, in Eison, July ’64.

  9. 9. Franklin Florence, interview by Chris Christopher, in Eison, July ’64.

  10. 10. Thomas Allen, Report on Rochester, N.Y. Incident, July 1964, p. 2, Papers of the NAACP, Part 27: Selected Branch Files, 1956–1965, Series B: The Northeast, Folder “001504-006-0001, Rochester, New York branch operations, 1964–1965,” ProQuest History Vault.

  11. 11. Allen, Report on Rochester.

  12. 12. “ ‘Hoodlums on the Unfiled’: Interview with Rochester’s Congressman, Frank J. Horton,” U.S. News and World Report, August 10, 1964, 40.

  13. 13. “We Demand,” undated, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, Letters about the Riots; City Ordinances ordering curfew, list of demands from Mr. Nathaniel Wise,” Lamb Collection.

  14. 14. Rochester mayor Frank Lamb, quoted in Eison, July ’64.

  15. 15. Porter Homer to the Council, Re: Riots of July 1964, April 27, 1965, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, Letters from Businesses and other Groups,” Lamb Collection.

  16. 16. “Rochester Police Battle Race Riot: Arrest of Negro Sets Off Melee by 1,000 in 50-Block Area of Upstate City,” New York Times, July 25, 1964, 1.

  17. 17. John and Constance Mitchell, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 12, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Mitchell interview.

  18. 18. Mitchell interview.

  19. 19. For a full description of Peck’s relationship to the community, see chapter 1. See also Walter Cooper, interview by Laura Warren Hill, May 21, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Cooper interview; Glenn Claytor, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 21, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; Mitchell interview; and Eison, July ’64.

  20. 20. Charles “Buddy” Granston, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 6, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  21. 21. James Malone to Seymour Scher, “Arrest Statistics, Preliminary Report,” August 5, 1964, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Summer 1964-General, City Manager Subject Files C, Public Emergency Riot, Rochester Municipal Archives and Record Center, Rochester, NY; herein referred to as Public Emergency Riot files.

  22. 22. Daryl Porter, interview by Chris Christopher, in Eison, July ’64.

  23. 23. Arthur Whitaker, interview by Chris Christopher, in Eison, July ’64.

  24. 24. Eison, July ’64.

  25. 25. Thomas Bell Jr., VP and GM of ITC, to Mayor Lamb and Public Advisory Board, August 8, 1964, bin 1274, folder “Riots of 1964,” Lamb Collection.

  26. 26. Loma Allen, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 7, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Allen interview.

  27. 27. Herb White, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as White interview.

  28. 28. Marvin Chandler, interview by Laura Warren Hill, May 13, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; White interview.

  29. 29. During the three days of rioting, three people were killed in a helicopter crash as a public official sought to get a closer look at events on the ground. A fourth man staggered into the road at another point and was hit by a car. He later died as a result of his injuries.

  30. 30. Constance Mitchell, interview by Chris Christopher, in Eison, July ’64.

  31. 31. Charles and Pauline Price, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 6, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Price interview.

  32. 32. Price interview.

  33. 33. Many major cities that experienced riots formed commissions to study the causes of the rebellion. In 1968, the federal government published the results of a national commission based on investigations in several cities; it is commonly referred to as the Kerner Report. See United States, The Kerner Report: The 1968 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998).

  34. 34. United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation Report, 1964, bin 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, Letters about the Riots; City Ordinances ordering curfew, list of demands from Mr. Nathaniel Wise,” Lamb Collection.

  35. 35. “Crisis in Race Relations: Rochester: Where a Race Riot Hit a ‘Model’ City,” U.S. News and World Report, August 10, 1964, 37, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, Magazine Articles about the Riots, Other Related Material from Watts to Civil Rights,” Lamb Collection.

  36. 36. For example, Darryl B. Harris, “The Logic of Black Urban Rebellions,” Journal of Black Studies 28, no. 3 (January 1998): 368–385; Susan Olzak and Suzanne Shanahan, “Deprivation and Race Riots: An Extension of Spilerman’s Analysis,” Social Forces 74, no. 3 (March 1996): 931–961; Susan Olzak, Suzanne Shanahan and Elizabeth H. McEnearey, “Poverty, Segregation, and Race Riots: 1960 to 1993,” American Sociological Review 61, no. 4 (August 1996): 590–613; and Mary C. King, “ ‘Race Riots’ and Black Economic Progress,” Review of Black Political Economy 30, no. 4 (Spring 2003): 51–66.

  37. 37. More recently, scholars have begun to examine the ways that self-defense facilitated the movement, making nonviolence safe. See Christopher Strain, Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005); Akinyele Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2014); and Charles Cobb, This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

  38. 38. Allen interview.

  39. 39. “We Demand,” undated, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, City Ordinances Ordering Curfew, list of demands from Mr. Nathaniel Wise,” Lamb Collection.

  40. 40. “Black Nationalist Movement Leaders Gaining Strength in Rochester,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 27, 1964, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, Letters about the Riots; City Ordinances Ordering Curfew, List of Demands from Mr. Nathaniel Wise,” Lamb Collection.

  41. 41. “Black Nationalist Movement Leaders,” Lamb Collection.

  42. 42. Eison, July ’64.

  43. 43. Allen, Report on Rochester, p. 1, NAACP papers.

  44. 44. Notes Relating to Attempt to Obtain New York National Guard Assistance in Rochester, undated, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Public Emergency Riot files.

  45. 45. John D. Madl, “Experiences—Techniques Used in Riots and Riot Control: A Study Based on Disorders in New York City, NY, Rochester, NY, and Philadelphia, PA, Summer-1964,” BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964, Letters from Businesses and other Groups,” Lamb Collection.

  46. 46. Madl, “Experiences,” Lamb Collection.

  47. 47. “Riot Organized or Spontaneous?” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 26, 1964, 1; “8 p.m. Curfew Ordered in City after Night-Long Negro Rioting, Rochester Times-Union, July 25, 1964, 1.

  48. 48. Chuck Mangione, interview by Chris Christopher, in Eison, July ’64.

  49. 49. Jackson interview, in Eison, July ’64.

  50. 50. “Friends of Negroes but Druggist Isn’t Spared,” Rochester Times-Union, July 27, 1964, Clipping File, Rochester Race Riot Papers, D.185, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  51. 51. Pictures located in the Rochester Race Riot Papers attest to this. See box 4, Photo Album, Rochester Race Riot Papers, D.185, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  52. 52. Mitchell interview.

  53. 53. Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008), 225, 332.

  54. 54. Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 172.

  55. 55. Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 80.

  56. 56. See, for example, Horne, Fire This Time.

  57. 57. Clarence G. DePrez, Deputy Chief of Police, to W. M. Lombard, Chief of Police, August 3, 1964, Preliminary Report of Riot Investigation, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Public Emergency Riot files (emphasis in original).

  58. 58. Peter Hickey, “He’s Aching but Alive Thanks to Army Truck,” Rochester Times-Union, July 25, 1964, 1.

  59. 59. Data compiled from arrest records in box 4, 1964–1966, Rochester Race Riot Papers, D.185, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  60. 60. DePrez to Lombard, August 3, 1964, Public Emergency Riot files.

  61. 61. Mitchell interview, in Eison, July ’64.

  62. 62. “Dr. Clark Warns That Riots Could Break Out Elsewhere,” New York Times, July 22, 1964, 18.

  63. 63. Mitchell interview, in Eison, July ’64.

  64. 64. “8 p.m. Curfew Ordered in City,” 1.

  65. 65. Joseph E. Middlebrooks, Colonel, GS, NYARNG to Mayor, June 7, 1967, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Public Emergency Riot files.

  66. 66. Madl, “Experiences,” Lamb Collection.

  67. 67. Lt. Col. Rex Applegate, “New Riot Control Weapons,” Ordnance (July–August 1964): 67–70, BIN 1274, folder “Riots of 1964,” Lamb Collection.

  68. 68. Applegate, “New Riot Control Weapons,” Lamb Collection.

  69. 69. Jerry E. Bishop, “Police vs. Riots: How Forceful Should They Be in Putting Down Disorders?” undated article, BIN 1274, folder “Correspondence, Riots of 1964,” Lamb Collection.

  70. 70. Colonel William F. Sheehan, “Command Report: Aid to Civil Authority, Rochester, NY 26 Jul–4 Aug 1964,” received by Rochester City Manager’s office on November 23, 1964, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Public Emergency Riot files.

  71. 71. Northern California Chapter of Radio and Television News Directors Association, “Broadcast Guidelines for Coverage of Civil Disorders,” February 23, 1967, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Public Emergency Riot files (emphasis in original).

  72. 72. Six-City Study—A Survey of Racial Attitudes in Six Northern Cities: Preliminary Findings, June 1967, BIN 301, boxes 4 and 5 combined, Public Emergency Riot files.

4. Build the Army

  1. 1. In this chapter title, “Build the Army” was a term used at the first organizational meeting of FIGHT, a new community organization formed in Rochester after the uprising. The temporary committee determined its initial call would “build the army.” See “Agenda of Rochester’s Temporary Committee,” March 30, 1965, FIGHT Steering, B, box 3B, Franklin Florence Papers, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Florence papers.

  2. 2. Peter Levy, The Great Uprising: The Urban Race Revolts of the 1960s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

  3. 3. Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 197.

  4. 4. Kristopher Burrell, “Outsmarting Racism: New York’s Black Intellectuals and Theorizing Northern Racism, 1945–1968” (PhD diss., CUNY Graduate Center, 2011).

  5. 5. “Who Speaks for the Negro?” New York Times, July 30, 1964, 26.

  6. 6. “Who Speaks,” New York Times, 26.

  7. 7. For further discussion of the national NAACP’s relationship with the Rochester branch, see chapter 2. For more on the divisive split between Black activists and the NAACP in Rochester, see chapter 1. Certain Black members of the local NAACP attempted to picket the homes of particular slumlords with poor reputations. One such slumlord contributed funds to the NAACP, so the picketing was called off at the behest of the National NAACP offices; see Franklin Florence, interview by Laura Warren Hill, September 19, 2008, transcript in author’s personal collection; herein referred to as Florence interview.

  8. 8. In fact, the president of the Black Power organization that formed in 1965 refused to meet with CORE because he claimed it was an all-white organization. See Ed Chambers to Saul Alinsky, April 21, 1965, box 40, folder 619, Industrial Areas Foundation Records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago; herein referred to as IAF records.

  9. 9. For further discussion of Rochester’s Nation of Islam branch, see chapter 2.

  10. 10. Kristopher Burrell, “Where from Here? Ideological Perspectives on the Future of the Civil Rights Movement, 1964–1966,” Western Journal of Black Studies 36, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 137–148.

  11. 11. For more on Herb White and the Board for Urban Ministry, see Herb White, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as White interview. See also P. David Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown: A Study of Conflict, Churches, and Citizen Organizations in Rochester, NY, 1964–1969” (PhD diss., Union Graduate School, 1975).

  12. 12. Marvin Chandler, interview by Laura Warren Hill, May 13, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  13. 13. Florence interview.

  14. 14. White interview; Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1966).

  15. 15. White interview.

  16. 16. Charles Silberman, Crisis in Black and White (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), 213.

  17. 17. Silberman, Crisis in Black and White, 213.

  18. 18. Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown,” 9.

  19. 19. Girls Scouts of Western New York, “Georgiana Farr Sibley, 1887–1980,” Stories in Stone: Biographies, Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery, 2009, http://www.fomh.org/Data/Documents/GeorgianaFarrSibley.pdf.

  20. 20. For a discussion of King and the SCLC’s work in the North, see Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), and David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow, 1986).

  21. 21. Phillip Benjamin, “Dr. King Confers with Mayor on City and U.S. Rights Issues,” New York Times, July 28, 1964, 15.

  22. 22. “Statement by Martin Luther King, Jr., on New York Riots,” July 27, 1964, King Papers, Speeches, Sermons, Etc., Series III, box 6, May 30, 1964–Oct 30, 1964, King Center for Research, King Library and Archives, Atlanta.

  23. 23. Martin Luther King Jr., to Dr. David Eisenberg, June 2, 1964, King Papers, box 51, folder 22 “Roch, NY, B’Nai B’rith, 1964–1967,” King Center for Research, King Library and Archives, Atlanta.

  24. 24. Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America, 197.

  25. 25. Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown.”

  26. 26. Andrew J. Young, “SCLC Dispatches Anti-Riot Team North: Finds Teen-Agers Hostile to Everyone,” Southern Christian Leadership Conference Newsletter 2, no. 8 (July-August), King Papers, Speeches, Sermons, Etc., Series III, box 6, May 30, 1964–Oct 30, 1964, King Center for Research, King Library and Archives, Atlanta.

  27. 27. Desmond Stone, “What Price Violence? A Tense Struggle Goes on to Change Views of Negro,” Rochester Riots: A Scar or a Spur (Rochester, NY: Rochester Times-Union, August 1964), box 11, folder 17, Howard Coles Papers, Rochester Museum and Science Center; herein referred to as Coles papers.

  28. 28. Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown”; see also Stephen Rose, “Rochester’s Racial Rubicon,” Christianity and Crisis, March 22, 1965, 55–59; and James Ridgeway, “Saul Alinsky in ‘Smugtown,’ ” New Republic, June 26, 1965, 15–17, Alinsky folder, Walter Cooper Papers. This set of papers was generously offered to the author for use. With Dr. Cooper’s permission, they have since been deposited with the Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester. All references refer to their original organization in folders by Dr. Cooper and will not necessarily correspond with the archival system employed by the University of Rochester; herein referred to as Cooper papers.

  29. 29. Stone, “What Price Violence?” On the young men’s hostility to the strategy of nonviolence, see also Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America, 196–197.

  30. 30. Reuben Davis, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 9, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Davis interview.

  31. 31. John and Constance Mitchell, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 12, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Mitchell interview.

  32. 32. Young, “SCLC Dispatches Anti-Riot Team North.”

  33. 33. R. D. G. Wadhwani, “Kodak, FIGHT, and the Definition of Civil Rights in Rochester, NY: 1966–1967,” Historian 60, no. 1 (Fall 1997): 60. There are several other possible explanations; however, on the surface, it appears that Rochester may have been tainted by the riot. Perhaps SCLC felt the ministers had already invested in a more radical form of organizing than they were prepared to support. However, local historians have suggested that the SCLC’s recommendation that the council of churches work with Alinsky and the IAF suggest that the SCLC felt Rochester’s problems were economic in nature and required an economically based form of organizing. While SCLC declined to organize in Rochester, James Bevel had private conversations with Franklin Florence and Constance Mitchell, two of Rochester’s young Black leaders, regarding Bevel’s desire to quite the SCLC. He discussed with both leaders “some cooperative ventures in Rochester.” See Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown.”

  34. 34. Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America, 197.

  35. 35. Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown.”

  36. 36. Young, “SCLC Dispatches Anti-Riot Team North.”

  37. 37. For more information on the Industrial Areas Foundation and Saul Alinsky, see Robert Bailey Jr., Radicals in Urban Politics: The Alinsky Approach (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1989); and Sanford D. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy (New York: Knopf, 1989).

  38. 38. Harold S. Hacker, “Who Is Saul Alinsky” (February 1965; revised March 1965), unpublished paper, Cooper papers.

  39. 39. Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown,” 35; see also Mitchell interview.

  40. 40. For a thorough discussion of these approaches, see Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown,” 35; and Nicholas von Hoffman, “Reorganization in the Casbah,” unpublished paper, Alinsky folder, Cooper papers.

  41. 41. Hacker, “Who Is Saul Alinsky,” Cooper papers.

  42. 42. Saul Alinsky, “The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky,” Harper’s, June 1965, 37–47, Alinsky folder, Cooper papers.

  43. 43. Mitchell interview; White interview.

  44. 44. Mitchell interview.

  45. 45. Ed Chambers, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 9, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Chambers interview.

  46. 46. Sanford D. Horwitt, “Citizenship through Acting Collectively,” Los Angeles Times, July 20, 1997; also published under the title “Alinsky: More Important Now Than Ever.”

  47. 47. Finks also argued that this use of language was important because “the class unrest orientation brought in some support which would have been absent were it merely racial trouble.” Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown,” 39.

  48. 48. James F. Findlay Jr., Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 172.

  49. 49. “Playboy Interview: Saul Alinsky,” Playboy, March 1972.

  50. 50. White interview.

  51. 51. White interview.

  52. 52. Florence interview.

  53. 53. Florence interview.

  54. 54. Florence interview.

  55. 55. The Board for Urban Ministry’s Herb White recalled, “I don’t think I ever met Malcolm, but he was very much an absent presence in Rochester, because Minister Florence and one or two of the other Black clergy knew him personally and struggled with their own theological opinions to remain Christian and Black and nationalistic.” See White interview.

  56. 56. Agenda of Rochester’s Temporary Committee, March 30, 1965, FIGHT Steering, box 3B, folder 23, Florence papers (emphasis in original).

  57. 57. “Negroes Say Unit Sets Own Policy,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, undated article, box 58, folder 766, IAF records.

  58. 58. Summary notes, Steering Committee, March 29, 1965, FIGHT Steering, box 3B, folder 23, Florence papers.

  59. 59. Summary notes, Florence papers.

  60. 60. Florence interview.

  61. 61. Marvin Chandler, “Remembering FIGHT” (speech, Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School, Rochester, October 3, 2005), in author’s possession.

  62. 62. Florence interview.

  63. 63. Florence interview.

  64. 64. Florence interview.

  65. 65. Florence interview.

  66. 66. See box 3B, folder 25, Florence papers.

  67. 67. FIGHT Steering Committee Meeting, April 5, 1965; FIGHT Steering Committee Meeting, April 7, 1965; FIGHT Steering Committee Meeting, April 5, 1966; all minutes found in box 3B; folder 23–24, Florence papers.

  68. 68. Mitchell interview.

  69. 69. Frank Riessman, “A Comparison of Two Social Action Approaches: Saul Alinsky and the New Left,” September 1965, unpublished paper, unfiled, Cooper papers.

  70. 70. Nicholas von Hoffman, “Reorganization in the Casbah,” undated, Alinsky folder, Cooper papers.

  71. 71. Official FIGHT Groups, undated, box 3B, folder 14, Florence papers.

  72. 72. “How It’s Being Waged, The Do-It-Yourself War on Poverty—an article reprinted from the Detroit Free Press,” August 22, 1965, box 58, folder 765, IAF records.

  73. 73. James Ridgeway, “Saul Alinsky in ‘Smugtown,’ ” New Republic, June 26, 1965, 15–17, Alinsky folder, Cooper papers.

  74. 74. Florence interview; White interview.

  75. 75. Mitchell interview.

  76. 76. Davis interview.

  77. 77. Porter interview.

  78. 78. Gus Newport, interview by Laura Warren Hill, March 27, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Newport interview.

  79. 79. Franklin Florence, “Speech FF Buffalo,” undated, box 62, folder 791, IAF records.

  80. 80. Angela Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 89.

  81. 81. Steering Committee Minutes, April 14, 1965, box 3B, folder 23, Florence papers.

  82. 82. Steering Committee Minutes, April 24, 1965; Housing Committee Minutes, July 8, 1965; and Steering Committee Minutes, July 13, 1965. All three sources are from box 3B, folder 23, Florence papers.

  83. 83. Steering Committee Minutes, November 16, 1965, box 3B, folder 23, Florence papers.

  84. 84. Lillian B. Rubin, “Maximum Feasible Participation: The Origins, Implications, and Present Status,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 385, no. 1 (September 1969): 14–29. See also Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York: Free Press, 1969); Edward Schmitt, President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2010); Susan Youngblood Ashmore, Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008); and Robert Bauman, Race and the War on Poverty: From Watts to East L.A. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008).

  85. 85. Desmond Stone, “Poverty War a Challenge,” Rochester Times-Union, January 15, 1965, Cooper papers.

  86. 86. Cooper interview.

  87. 87. Proceedings and Debates of the 89th Congress, 1st sess., Congressional Record (July 21, 1965): 16982–16983, Cooper papers.

  88. 88. Report from Sidney Lindenberg et al. to J. M Friedman et al., February 21, 1967, box 59, folder 772, IAF records.

  89. 89. Ed Chambers to Saul Alinsky, memo, November 22, 1965, box 40, folder 619, IAF records.

  90. 90. Chambers to Alinsky, IAF records.

  91. 91. Joseph C. Brownell to Dear Sirs, December 22, 1965, Personal folder, Cooper papers.

  92. 92. Earl Caldwell, “Poverty War: Advancing or Retreating?” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, November 28, 1965, Cooper papers.

  93. 93. Desmond Stone, “Antipoverty Debate Held,” Rochester Times-Union, January 11, 1966, Nominating Committee of ABC, Inc. folder, Cooper papers.

  94. 94. Quoted in Stone, “Antipoverty Debate.”

  95. 95. Quoted in Stone, “Antipoverty Debate.”

  96. 96. Quoted in Stone, “Antipoverty Debate.”

  97. 97. FIGHTER (Rochester) 1, no. 3 (January 1966): 4, unfiled, Cooper papers.

  98. 98. Stone, “Antipoverty Debate,” Cooper papers.

  99. 99. Walter Cooper to Minister Franklin Florence, January 7, 1966, Nominating Committee of ABC, Inc. folder, Cooper papers.

  100. 100. Brian Donovan, “Three in FIGHT Asked to Join Agency,” Rochester Times-Union, undated, Nominating Committee of ABC, Inc. folder, Cooper papers.

  101. 101. Ed Chambers to Saul Alinsky, memo, January 27, 1966, box 40, folder 619, IAF records.

  102. 102. ABC Fact Sheet, distributed at Friends of FIGHT meeting, January 1966; “Friends of FIGHT Raps ‘Imbalance,’ ” Rochester Times-Union, January 12, 1966. Both documents are in Cooper papers.

  103. 103. Loren Crabtree, “Finding Guide, Baden Street Settlement House Records,” July 1967 (digitized 2007), Social Welfare History Archives, Department of Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, https://archives.lib.umn.edu/.

  104. 104. Lindenberg to Friedman, IAF records.

  105. 105. “Convention of Poor Approved by ABC,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 23, 1967, 5B, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  106. 106. “ABC Directors Shirk Real Job,” Rochester Times-Union, September 15, 1967, 10A, box 61, folder 782, IAF records.

  107. 107. Franklin Florence, interview by Laura Warren Hill, Summer 2008, transcript in author’s personal collection.

  108. 108. The issue of the Urban League’s arrival in Rochester has been debated for decades. In our 2008 interview, Walter Cooper insisted that the corporate community, including his employer, Eastman Kodak, had played no role in excluding the Urban League from Rochester. However, several contemporary sources have contradicted this assertion. David Finks argued that “faced with … growing militancy and the immanent [sic] arrival of the Alinsky organizers, the white leadership … invited the National Urban League to set up a chapter in Rochester … although the Urban League had been denied entrance to Rochester by these same groups several times before the ’64 riots.” James Ridgeway, a reporter for the New Republic, expanded upon Fink’s assertion, suggesting the incredible sway of the Community Chest in Rochester: “For a number of years the city toyed with the wild possibility of bringing in the Urban League. When Alinsky’s people arrived the businessmen got together $40,000 and suddenly the League opened an office.” See Finks, “Crisis in Smugtown,” 49; and Ridgeway, “Saul Alinsky in ‘Smugtown.’ ”

  109. 109. Ridgeway, “Saul Alinsky in ‘Smugtown.’ ”

  110. 110. Cooper interview.

  111. 111. Marcus Alexis, interview by Laura Warren Hill, March 27, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

5. Confrontation with Kodak

  1. 1. Prakash Sethi, Business Corporations and the Black Man: An Analysis of Social Conflict: The Kodak-FIGHT Controversy (Scranton, PA: Chandler Publications, 1970), 16. See also Raymond A. Schroth, “Self-Doubt and Black Pride,” America, April 1, 1967, 502–505, box 56, folder 754, Industrial Areas Foundation Records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago; herein referred to as IAF records.

  2. 2. As a point of reference, Xerox, Rochester’s second-largest corporation, ranked 171. For a complete listing of Fortune 500 companies in 1966, see “1966 Full List,” Fortune 500: A Database of 50 Years of Fortune’s List of America’s Largest Corporations, CNNMoney, 2018, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/full/1966/.

  3. 3. Jules Loh, “ ‘Rochester’s Agony’ … As an Outsider Sees It,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 23, 1967, 4M.

  4. 4. “The Fight That Swirls around Eastman Kodak,” Business Weekly, April 29, 1967, 38–41, box 57, folder 759, IAF records.

  5. 5. “Fight That Swirls.”

  6. 6. James Farmer, foreword to Sethi, Business Corporations.

  7. 7. Schroth, “Self-Doubt and Black Pride.”

  8. 8. Sethi, Business Corporations, 21.

  9. 9. This phrase was suggested in FIGHT’s working papers for posters for a rally to be held February 14, 1967 (box 58, folder 763, IAF records). The claim, of course, was a play on John L. Lewis’s statement that “a man’s right to a job transcends the right of private property.” See “The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky,” Harper’s Magazine, June 1965, 37–47, Alinsky folder, Walter Cooper papers. This set of papers was generously offered to the author for use. With Dr. Cooper’s permission, they have since been deposited with the Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester. All references refer to their original organization in folders by Dr. Cooper and will not necessarily correspond with the archival system employed by the University of Rochester; herein referred to as Cooper papers.

  10. 10. “$20,353,788 Earned by Eastman Kodak,” New York Times, April 8, 1931, 36.

  11. 11. Beginning in 1912, Kodak paid a yearly wage dividend to its workers; in 1930, that wage dividend amounted to an average of $135 per employee. This is the equivalent of $1,650 in 2009. By 1956, the dividend had increased to $687 per employee. This is the equivalent of $6,589 in 2020. See “Eastman Employees to Share $2,378,647: Annual Wage Dividend Will Be Divided Today among 17,601 Workers,” New York Times, July 1, 1930, 41.

  12. 12. It is also interesting to note that George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, sent large sums of money to Black colleges and universities, including Tuskegee, Meharry, and Hampton. The company refused, however, to hire their graduates. See Laura Warren Hill, “Strike the Hammer While the Iron Is Hot: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, NY, 1940–1970” (PhD diss., Binghamton University, 2010).

  13. 13. Sethi, Business Corporations, 23.

  14. 14. “Jackson Condemns ‘Parasite’ Finance,” New York Times, January 16, 1938, 4.

  15. 15. The company’s expansion resulted in part from military war orders for sensitive aerial photography equipment, portable darkrooms, and a special V-mail program that delivered mail to and from touring soldiers at a rate of thirty-five million letters per month. See “Eastman Prepares for Post-War Output,” New York Times, March 24, 1944, 24; and “$219,759,664 Sales by Eastman Kodak,” New York Times, April 3, 1943, 22.

  16. 16. After serving a “key role in the development of the Social Security Program” and having served on multiple federal committees, Eastman Kodak treasurer and director Marion B. Folsom was named under secretary of the treasury in the Eisenhower administration. See John D. Morris, “Official of Kodak and Chairman of C.E.D May Supervise Internal Revenue Bureau,” New York Times, December 12, 1952, 47.

  17. 17. “Kodak to Sponsor Sullivan TV Show,” New York Times, June 24, 1957, 35.

  18. 18. Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, and Entrepreneurship, 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Adolph Dupree, “Rochester Roots/Routes, Part II,” About … Time, August 1984, 14.

  19. 19. Walker, History of Black Business; Dupree, “Roots/Routes, Part II,” 14.

  20. 20. On Caledonia Street alone, without ever entering a white-owned establishment, African Americans could rent a room, get a haircut or hair styling, visit a Black doctor or dentist, and buy groceries, a newspaper, artwork, and furniture. In the surrounding neighborhood, they could plan a homegoing service, play billiards, drink a whiskey while listening to a Black musician, and get their car serviced, all in Black-owned businesses. For a more complete record of Black Rochester’s business activity, see Dupree, “Roots/Routes, Part II,” 22.

  21. 21. Dupree, “Roots/Routes, Part II,” 22. The Jentonses’ grocery stored boasted a “full line of fancy and staple groceries, southern produce” and undoubtedly to the delight of local residents, a confectionary.

  22. 22. Dupree, “Roots/Routes, Part II,” 20.

  23. 23. See, for example, selected coverage in the New York Times: “Strike-Free Kodak Credits ‘Dividends,’ ” December 12, 1948; “Rail Wage Demands Opposed: Profit Sharing Proposed at Method of Avoiding Further Bankruptcies,” November 4, 1941; “Eastman Charted Path for Industry,” March 15, 1932; “A Way to Save Children,” September 1, 1940; “Wider Programs of Health Urged,” September 12, 1944; and “Kodak Says Rochester Offers Few Skilled Negroes,” July 29, 1964. See also letter from FIGHT to Kodak, September 14, 1966, unfiled, Cooper papers.

  24. 24. Quoted in Schroth, “Self-Doubt and Black Pride,” IAF records.

  25. 25. Dupree, “Roots/Routes, Part II,” 12.

  26. 26. “Kodak Says Rochester Offers Few Skilled Negroes,” New York Times, July 29, 1964.

  27. 27. Marvin Chandler, interview by Laura Warren Hill, May 13, 2009, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Chandler interview.

  28. 28. Clarence Ingram, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 12, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  29. 29. Charles and Pauline Price, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 6, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Price interview.

  30. 30. Price interview.

  31. 31. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony.”

  32. 32. “Fight That Swirls.”

  33. 33. Germaine Knapp and Rhona Genzel, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 20, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  34. 34. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony.”

  35. 35. Lewis G. Robinson, Director, Jomo Freedom Kenyatta House, to Franklin Florence, December 6, 1966, box 3C, folder 29, Franklin Florence Papers, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Florence papers.

  36. 36. Transcription of remarks given by Saul Alinsky and Franklin Florence on WORK-TV, October 26, 1966, box 61, folder 782, IAF records.

  37. 37. “Fight That Swirls.”

  38. 38. “Fight That Swirls.” Florence frequently made this argument in public interviews.

  39. 39. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony”; James Ridgeway “Attack on Kodak,” New Republic, January 21, 1967, 11–13, box 56, folder 754, IAF records; Chandler interview.

  40. 40. “Kodak, FIGHT at Impasse on Job Talks,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 12, 1967, 3B, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  41. 41. Chandler interview.

  42. 42. December 20th Agreement, box 3C, folder 29, Florence papers.

  43. 43. December 20th Agreement.

  44. 44. “Kodak, FIGHT Remain Firm in Their Positions in Job Dispute,” Rochester Times-Union, April 26, 1967, box 61, folder 784, IAF records.

  45. 45. “Mulder Loses Post at Kodak,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, May 19, 1967, 1; “Kodak Directors Drop Executive,” New York Times, May 19, 1967. Both articles are in box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  46. 46. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony.”

  47. 47. Nicholas van Hoffman, “Picture’s Fuzzy as Kodak Fights FIGHT,” Washington Post, January 9, 1967, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  48. 48. Desmond Stone, “The Kodak-FIGHT Dispute: How It Began, Why It Continues,” Rochester Times-Union, April 21, 1967.

  49. 49. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony”; “New Threat for Employers? What a Negro Group Seeks from Kodak,” U.S. News and World Report, May 8, 1967, box 61, folder 784, IAF records.

  50. 50. “Militant Rights Group Expected to Attend Kodak Annual Meeting,” Wall Street Journal, April 24, 1967, box 56, folder 753, IAF records.

  51. 51. Ridgeway, “Attack on Kodak.”

  52. 52. “Kodak Charges FIGHT with Power Drive,” Rochester Times-Union, January 6, 1967.

  53. 53. “Fight That Swirls.”

  54. 54. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony.”

  55. 55. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony.”

  56. 56. Brian Donovan, “Carmichael Pledges Boycott,” Rochester FIGHTER, February 1967, Florence papers.

  57. 57. Schroth, “Self-Doubt and Black Pride.”

  58. 58. Donovan, “Carmichael Pledges Boycott.”

  59. 59. Transcript of WNYR broadcast, January 20, 1967, box 61, folder 784, IAF records.

  60. 60. “Churchmen Back FIGHT on Jobs,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 4, 1967, box 56, folder 753, IAF records. See also “1967 General Resolution, Eastman Kodak Dispute with FIGHT I,” Social Justice Statements, Unitarian Universalist Association, 2019, http://www.uua.org/statements/eastman-kodak-dispute-fight-i.

  61. 61. Henry B. Clark to All Members of the Commission on Urban Life, January 5, 1967, box 58, folder 765, IAF records.

  62. 62. For examples of this church support, see “High Noon at Flemington,” Christianity and Crisis, May 29, 1967, box 56, folder 753, IAF records; and “Church Groups to Question Kodak at Annual Meeting,” Presbyterian Life, May 1, 1967, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  63. 63. The rallying cry differed between Florence, who wanted other men of God to put their stocks where their sermons were, and Alinsky, who asked those same men to keep their sermons but provide their stock. See Franklin Florence to Dear Friends, May 2, 1967, box 57, folder 759, IAF records; Franklin Florence to Dear Friends, May 24, 1967, box 61, folder 784, IAF records; and “… And Kodak Will Ask, ‘How High?’ ” Fortune, June 1, 1967, box 57, folder 759, IAF records.

  64. 64. For a select example, see Robert E. Weems, Desegregating the Dollar: African-American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Emilye Crosby, A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

  65. 65. “Church Groups to Question Kodak at Annual Meeting,” Presbyterian Life, May 1, 1967, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  66. 66. “Focus on Flemington” was the title for FIGHT’s new stockholder strategy.

  67. 67. Kodak’s annual meetings were held in Flemington, New Jersey, for tax purposes. Despite its Rochester headquarters, Kodak incorporated in New Jersey rather than New York because the neighboring state claimed more liberal corporate tax laws. The legal firm responsible for Kodak’s incorporation and documentation boasted more than sixty Fortune 500 clients including United Fruit, American Tobacco, Republic Steel, and Standard Oil. See “Kodak Holds Its Meeting amid Racial Protests,” New York Times, April 26, 1967, box 61, folder 784, IAF records.

  68. 68. Loh, “Rochester’s Agony.”

  69. 69. “Kodak Will Ask.”

  70. 70. Edwin Kruse to Minister Florence, April 9, 1967, box 58, folder 764, IAF records.

  71. 71. Rolf Meyersohn to Minister Florence, April 11, 1967, box 58, folder 764, IAF records.

  72. 72. M. J. Rossant, “All You Need Is One Share,” New York Times, May 7, 1967, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  73. 73. Rossant, “All You Need.”

  74. 74. Barbara Carter, “The FIGHT against Kodak,” Reporter, April 20, 1967, 28–31, box 57, folder 759, IAF records.

  75. 75. “FIGHT Gets Support in Kodak Feud,” Rochester Times-Union, April 11, 1967, 6B, box 56, folder 753, IAF records.

  76. 76. “FIGHT Gets Support.”

  77. 77. “Kodak, FIGHT Remain Firm in Their Positions in Job Dispute,” Rochester Times-Union, April 26, 1967, box 61, folder 784, IAF records.

  78. 78. Earl C. Gottschalk Jr., “Militant Rights Group Expected to Attend Kodak Annual Meeting,” New York Times, April 24, 1967, box 56, folder 753, IAF records.

  79. 79. “Vaughn Defends Kodak Role in Dispute,” Rochester Times-Union, April 25, 1967, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  80. 80. Carter, “FIGHT against Kodak.”

  81. 81. “Mediation Sought by Javits,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 15, 1967, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  82. 82. Ed Chambers to Saul Alinsky, internal memo, April 18, 1967, box 39, folder 613, IAF records.

  83. 83. Potential signs considered by FIGHT, box 58, folder 764, IAF records. See also images of the Flemington picket, which shows these slogans used on signs, box 119, folder 1, Kodak Historical Collection #003, D.319, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  84. 84. “Kodak Picketed on Negro Hiring,” World Journal Tribune, April 25, 1967, box 57, folder 762, IAF records.

  85. 85. Bus Captains Instructions, box 3C, folder 31, Florence papers.

  86. 86. Betty Flynn, “Negro Protest Stirs Kodak Uproar,” Chicago Daily News, April 25, 1967, box 56, folder 754, IAF records.

  87. 87. “Kodak Picketed on Negro Hiring,” World Journal Tribune, April 25, 1967, box 57, folder 762, IAF records.

  88. 88. Flynn, “Negro Protest”; “FIGHT Chairman Bolts Meeting in Dispute with Kodak,” Buffalo Evening News, April 25, 1967, box 61, folder 784; “Plan Protest at Kodak Meeting,” Kansas City (MO) Times, April 25, 1967, box 57, folder 759; “Kodak Picketed on Negro Hiring,” New York World Journal Tribune, April 25, 1967, box 57, folder 762; “Rights Debate Disrupts Kodak Meeting,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 26, 1967, box 61, folder 784; “Civil Rights Group Turns Kodak Parley into Shouting Match,” Pittsburgh Press, April 26, 1967, box 57, folder 762; “Action Group Declares War on Kodak at Tumultuous Stockholders’ Session,” Washington Post, April 26, 1967, box 57, folder 762; “Negroes Protest Kodak Policies, Disrupt Meeting,” Cleveland Press, April 26, 1967, box 57, folder 762; “Kodak Holds Its Meeting amid Racial Protests,” New York Times, April 26, 1967, box 61, folder 784; “Kodak Refuses to Restore Negro Job Pact”; “Rights Group Vows ‘War’ against Concern,” Wall Street Journal, April 26, 1967, box 57, folder 762. All of the preceding articles are in the IAF records.

  89. 89. “Kodak Gives $15,000 to Flemington School,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, May 5, 1967, box 61, folder 784; John Kifner, “Negro Ad Agency Hired by Kodak,” New York Times, April 28, 1967, box 56, folder 753. Both articles are in the IAF records.

  90. 90. The 1965 Moynihan report, titled “The Negro Family: A Case for National Action,” stirred a great debate in the nation for its portrayal of the African American family as pathological and Black woman as promiscuous. The US Department of Labor has the full text available on its website (https://www.dol.gov/). For discussions of the text, see Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load (New York: Norton, 1999), 198–203; Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (New York: Verso, 1990), 30–31, 109–116; and Annelise Orleck, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), 81.

  91. 91. Timothy Crouse, “Moynihan Helped Smooth Way for Kodak-FIGHT Reconciliation,” Crimson, July 3, 1967.

  92. 92. Louis K. Eilers telegram, box 3C, folder 31, Florence papers.

  93. 93. John and Constance Mitchell, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 12, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  94. 94. “Fight That Swirls.”

  95. 95. For example, shortly after the Flemington meeting, “Mrs. Porter Brown, general executive of the board of missions of the Methodist church [attended] the May 19 annual meeting of General Motors Corp. to question GM about its ‘deep involvement’ in South Africa.” See “In the Kodak Dispute, Churches Take a New Civil-Rights Tack,” National Observer, May 3, 1967, box 57, folder 762, IAF records.

  96. 96. Edward B. Fiske, “Churches Flex Their Economic Muscle,” New York Times, April 16, 1967, E11, box 56, folder 54, IAF records.

6. FIGHTing for the Soul of Black Capitalism

  1. 1. Chapter 6 was originally published as “FIGHTing for the Soul of Black Capitalism: Struggles for Black Economic Development in Postrebellion Rochester” in The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America, edited by Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig, 45–67 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012). Used with permission from University of Rochester Press in partnership with Boydell & Brewer. The chapter title is obviously a play on W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Co., 1903).

  2. 2. Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” speech, Cleveland, April 1964.

  3. 3. Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998). See also Abram L. Harris, The Negro as Capitalist: A Study of Banking and Business among American Negroes (New York: Negro University Press, 1936).

  4. 4. Here Walker engages E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957); and Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963).

  5. 5. See Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Dover Publications, 1995 [1901]); Daniel R. Fusfield and Timothy Bates, The Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984); Essien Udosen Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961); and Wilson J. Moses, Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

  6. 6. See, for example, Robert Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969); and Earl [Hutchinson] Ofari, The Myth of Black Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).

  7. 7. Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie; Ofari, Myth of Black Capitalism; Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America.

  8. 8. For a more complete account of Black business development in the twentieth century, see chapter 1.

  9. 9. Robert E. Weems Jr., Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 31.

  10. 10. For example, Walker rightly privileges the experiences of Black businesspeople and practitioners in her narrative. Her discussion of Black capitalism, however, is driven by the relationship between national figures (Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King Jr.) and organizations (the Nation of Islam) and the federal government (the Small Business Association) in the promotion of Black capitalism. Weems spends just two pages to note the relationship between corporations and black activists in the development of Black capitalism. Of importance to this piece, however, is that he highlights the relationship between Xerox and FIGHT as a model of Black economic development in this era.

  11. 11. Steven M. Gelber, Black Men and Businessmen: The Growing Awareness of a Social Responsibility (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1974), 161.

  12. 12. “Rev. Gene Bartlett, 79: Led Divinity School,” New York Times, November 11, 1989, 33.

  13. 13. Peter B. Taub, “Industries to Recruit in Inner City Here,” Rochester Times-Union, September 14, 1967, 1.

  14. 14. Romney went on to become Nixon’s first secretary of housing and urban development. See Alexander Polikoff, “Beyond Ghetto Gilding,” response to Owen Fiss, “What Should Be Done for Those Who Have Been Left Behind?” in Forum: Moving Out of the Ghetto, Boston Review 25, no. 3 (Summer 2000), digital, Boston Review archive.

  15. 15. Gelber, Black Men and Businessmen, 181.

  16. 16. Richard Nixon, “Statement on the Merger of the National Alliance of Businessmen and Plans for Progress,” June 13, 1969, The American Presidency Project, Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, directors, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239441. There is further information to be found regarding the National Alliance of Businessmen in contemporary accounts of Black capitalism. See, for example, William F. Haddad and G. Douglas Pugh, eds., Black Economic Development (Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969), especially Howard J. Samuels, “Compensatory Capitalism,” 61–74. The papers in this volume were first used as background reading for the Thirty-fifth American Assembly which met at Arden House, Harriman, New York, April 24–27, 1969 to discuss Black Economic Development. They now appear for general readership and as background for additional Assemblies in the United States.

  17. 17. In 1969, Germaine Knapp and her husband came to Rochester when he obtained a job with Xerox through the NAB to hire and train the hard-core unemployed for the various job programs Xerox had undertaken. As a result, Knapp herself would be hired to work for Step Up, a GED and job training program sponsored by Xerox and FIGHT. See Germaine Knapp and Rhona Genzel, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 28, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  18. 18. Neil Ulman, “Negro Pioneer: Philadelphia’s Rev. Sullivan Preaches Self-Help, Not Protest,” Wall Street Journal, 15 April 1966, box 56, folder 754, Industrial Areas Foundation Records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago; herein referred to as IAF records. See also “Symposium: ‘The Lion of Zion: Leon H. Sullivan and the Pursuit of Social and Economic Justice,’ ” Journal of African American History 96 (Winter 2001), 39–95.

  19. 19. Of some import to FIGHT, Sullivan derived his brand of Black Power from the community, a strategy to which FIGHT subscribed. He organized a “10–36 plan,” wherein each member of his congregation invested ten dollars for a period of thirty-six months. This initial seed money created Zion Investment Associates, which laid out the money for Sullivan’s various economic development plans, including the symbolic conversion of a jail cell into a job training center, a garment manufacturing company that employed women, and a shopping plaza with sixteen Black-managed businesses. Zion turned its profits back to the community: two-fifths to the initial investors, one-fifth in profit-sharing plans for the employees, and two-fifths into a nonprofit charitable trust used for further economic development in the community.

  20. 20. Martin Skala, “Inner City Enterprises: Current Experience,” in Haddad and Pugh, eds., Black Economic Development, 151–70; Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

  21. 21. Proposal, box 61, folder 782, IAF records.

  22. 22. Skala, “Inner City Enterprises,” 157.

  23. 23. Ideological opposition to capitalism was a driving force for a growing number of Black activists, including James Forman and Richard Allen, leaders of the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale, chair of the Black Panther Party, argued, “In our view it is a class struggle between the massive proletarian working class and the small, minority ruling class. Working-class people of all colors must unite against the exploitative, oppressive ruling class.” See Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1991), 72. See also Charles E. Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered] (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 337–358; Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, eds., In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 2006); Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America; and Ofari, Myth of Black Capitalism.

  24. 24. Lincoln, Black Muslims in America, 88.

  25. 25. Walker, History of Black Business in America, 272.

  26. 26. The Nation of Islam’s Honorable Elijah Muhammad organized all his economic enterprises under the motto “Do for self.”

  27. 27. Weems, Business in Black and White, 130.

  28. 28. Robert E. Weems Jr., and Lewis A. Randolph argue that Nixon’s promotion of Black capitalism created a “national discourse.” While I agree with them that Nixon’s plan garnered much criticism and discussion in the Black community, I suggest this debate was underway in Rochester before Nixon fancied a 1968 presidential run. The national discourse that emerged reflects the efforts of local communities to negotiate power. See Weems and Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s ‘Black Capitalism’ Initiative: The Success of Domestic Détente,” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001): 66–83.

  29. 29. General Ideas for a Florence Talk to Rochester Business Leaders, box 62, folder 791, IAF records.

  30. 30. FIGHTON Today: Beginning of the Beginning (published circa 1969), box 57, folder 762, IAF records.

  31. 31. Rather than serve as competition for the film conglomerate Eastman Kodak, Haloid’s presence in Rochester, like that of many small companies in the Flower City, served its wealthiest industrial neighbor. Haloid and others prevented federal antitrust lawsuits from disrupting Kodak’s dominance. As one historian put it, “[Haloid’s] very existence was ideal legal evidence that Eastman Kodak was not really a monopoly.” See Charles D. Ellis, Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006), 21.

  32. 32. Minister Franklin Florence originally proposed the idea of FIGHTON to Xerox CEO Joe Wilson under the name “Operation Mainstream.” The phrase, however, had wider national use. Minister Florence was likely familiar with the provision that “Amendments to the Economic Opportunity Act to provide for the direct employment of the adult poor in conservation and beautification efforts are officially labeled ‘Operation Mainstream.’ ” The economist Frank Davis argued, “If we apply this definition with respect to business and employment opportunities of the Black community, we would expect the policy of Black Capitalism to place Black entrepreneurs in the principal or dominant course of American business.” See Frank G. Davis, The Economics of Black Community Development (Chicago: Markham Publishing, 1972), 93.

  33. 33. General Ideas for a Florence Talk.

  34. 34. Stewart Perry, “National Policy and the Community Development Corporation,” Law and Contemporary Problems 36, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 297–308.

  35. 35. “Xerox Corporation Back Black Business: Cites FIGHTON as Example of Progress,” Chicago Defender, June 27, 1968, box 62, folder 791, IAF records.

  36. 36. Ellis, Joe Wilson, 3–4.

  37. 37. Ellis, Joe Wilson, 6–16.

  38. 38. Ellis, Joe Wilson, 237.

  39. 39. Ellis, Joe Wilson, 242.

  40. 40. Horace Becker, interview by Laura Warren Hill, August 20, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Becker interview.

  41. 41. “FIGHT,” episode of Need to Know, originally aired February 3, 2000, WXXI (public broadcasting), Rochester, digital copy accessed May 7, 2007; the online version is no longer available.

  42. 42. Basic Goals of FIGHT’s New Job Program, undated, box 3C, folder 34, Franklin Florence Papers, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Florence papers.

  43. 43. “Xerox Plans to Hire 150 for ‘Step Up,’ ” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 28, 1967, box 61, folder 78, IAF records. Plans for Step Up were underway by the fall of 1965 between Xerox and its union affiliate, Local 14a of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. See Xerox Management letter, October 26, 1965, box 58, folder 765, IAF records.

  44. 44. Joseph Schumpeter is quoted in Walker, History of Black Business in America, xxi.

  45. 45. US Department of Labor press release, “Negro Group to Open Rochester, NY, Plant with Aid of Xerox,” June 13, 1968, box 62, folder 791, IAF records.

  46. 46. Introduction, FIGHTON Proposal “Operation Mainstream:” Joint Study, FIGHT and Xerox, box 4, folder 1, Florence papers.

  47. 47. Skala, “Inner City Enterprises,” 168.

  48. 48. Skala, “Inner City Enterprises,” 168.

  49. 49. FIGHT’s fact sheet on enterprises, box 3, folder 43, Florence papers.

  50. 50. FIGHT’s fact sheet on enterprises.

  51. 51. “FIGHT,” Need to Know.

  52. 52. Millicent Hartzog, interview by Laura Warren Hill, November 21, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  53. 53. Darryl Porter, interview by Laura Warren Hill, June 10, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.

  54. 54. Minister Florence to DeLeon McEwen, memo, May 22, 1969, box 4a, folder 7, Florence papers.

  55. 55. In the past twenty years there has been an explosion in the literature on corporate social responsibility. See, for example, Andrew Crane, et al., The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Responsibility (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Edmundo Werna, Corporate Social Responsibility and Urban Development: Lessons from the South (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); and David Crowther et al., The Ashgate Research Companion to Corporate Social Responsibility (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008).

  56. 56. “The Slums: Business Rolls Up a Sleeve,” New York Times, January 8, 1968, box 61, folder 782, IAF records.

  57. 57. “Xerox Plans to Hire 150.”

  58. 58. Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, “Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation Helps Ghetto Dwellers Own Businesses,” in Urban Action Clearinghouse Case Study (Washington, DC: Chamber of Commerce of the US, 1968), appendix A.

  59. 59. Becker interview.

  60. 60. General Ideas for a Florence Talk.

  61. 61. General Ideas for a Florence Talk.

  62. 62. Chamber of Commerce, “Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation,” appendix A.

  63. 63. Chamber of Commerce, “Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation,” appendix A.

  64. 64. Chamber of Commerce, “Rochester Business Opportunities Corporation,” appendix A.

  65. 65. See, for example, “FIGHT Industry to Open Soon,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 6, 1968, box 57, folder 756, IAF records; note and article sent from Minister Franklin Florence to Ed Chambers, IAF organizer, box 56, folder 753, IAF records.

  66. 66. Clarence Ingram, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 12, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Ingram interview.

  67. 67. Ingram interview.

  68. 68. “Urban League Responds to Kodak Plan,” Rochester Times-Union, December 1, 1967, box 61, folder 782, IAF records.

  69. 69. Dr. Andrew Billingsley (Consultant), “Rochester Urban League,” undated, Urban League Folder, Walter Cooper papers. This set of papers was generously offered to the author for use. With Dr. Cooper’s permission, they have since been deposited with the Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester. All references refer to their original organization in folders by Dr. Cooper and will not necessarily correspond with the archival system employed by the University of Rochester; herein referred to as Cooper papers.

  70. 70. Billingsley, “Rochester Urban League.”

  71. 71. Laplois Ashford, Executive Director, to John J. Rolle, Project Director OJT, March 10, 1970, Urban League Board, 1970 folder, Cooper papers.

  72. 72. Ingram interview.

  73. 73. “FIGHT Industry to Open Soon,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 6, 1968, box 61, folder 782, IAF records.

  74. 74. Geoffrey P. Faux and Twentieth Century Fund, Task Force on Community Development Corporations, CDCs: New Hope for the Inner City; Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Community Development Corporations (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1971), 30–31.

  75. 75. Faux and Twentieth Century Fund, CDCs, 16–17.

  76. 76. In 1970 Time magazine published an article titled “The Beginnings of Black Capitalism” in which the author noted sharp Black skepticism of federal programs that promised much and delivered little. The Nixon administration, in particular, was singled out as drawing the ire of African Americans who believed it to be little more than “smooth honky talk.” See “The Beginnings of Black Capitalism,” Time, April 6, 1970.

  77. 77. A. Wright Elliott, “ ‘Black Capitalism’ and the Business Community,” in Haddad and Pugh, eds., Black Economic Development, 76.

  78. 78. Points for Steering Committee, December 17, 1968, box 3B, folder 24, Florence papers.

  79. 79. Weems, Business in Black and White.

Conclusion

  1. 1. Michael Flamm, In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

  2. 2. Heather Ann Thomson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (New York: Pantheon, 2016).

  3. 3. Attica Inmates, “Declaration to the People of America,” September 9, 1971, read by L. D. Barkley, quoted in Attica Prison Uprising 101: A Primer, edited by Mariame Kabe, September 2011, digital version by Project NIA, “Resources,” NIA Dispatches, https://niastories.wordpress.com/resources/.

  4. 4. Interview with Lavern Barkley, conducted by Blackside Inc., on August 22, 1989, for Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965 to 1985 (PBS), Henry Hampton Collection, Film and Media Archive, Washington University Libraries, St. Louis, http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/index.html.

  5. 5. Raymond Scott, interview by Laura Warren Hill, July 11, 2008, transcript, Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Project, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester; herein referred to as Scott interview.

  6. 6. Scott interview.

  7. 7. Dan Lovely, “Leadership, Recognition the Key Gain,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 10, 1974, sec. A.

  8. 8. Homer King, “A Profile of FIGHT Square,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 7, 1978, sec. A.

  9. 9. Lovely, “Leadership”; Michael Wentzel, “FIGHT Village Owes Funds: HUD Says Lost Money Must Be Repaid,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, November 4, 1996, sec. B.

  10. 10. Dan Olmstead, “Fight Had Gone Out of FIGHT, Inc.,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 7, 1978, sec. A.

  11. 11. Alejandro Reuss, “That ’70s Crisis: What Can the Crisis of U.S. Capitalism in the 1970s Teach Us about the Current Crisis and Its Possible Outcomes?” Dollars and Sense: Real World Economies, no. 285 (November/December 2009), http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/1109reuss.html.

  12. 12. Kim Phillips-Fein, “The Legacy of the 1970s Fiscal Crisis,” Nation, special New York issue, May 6, 2013, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/legacy-1970s-fiscal-crisis/.

  13. 13. See Robert E. Weems Jr., Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 2009); Robert E. Weems Jr., and Lewis A. Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s ‘Black Capitalism’ Initiative: The Success of Domestic Détente,” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001), 66–83.

  14. 14. Bob Lonsberry, “Riots of 1964 Are Nothing to Celebrate,” Bob Lonsberry (blog), July 14, 2014, http://www.lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=3734&go=4.

  15. 15. James Goodman, “1964 Riots Revisited: 3 Days That Shook Rochester,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 20, 2014, https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2014/07/19/roberta-abbott-buckle-rochester-riots/12855941/.

  16. 16. The Cooper Academy is a public school open to all children. However, in 2020, Rochester city schools were 85.48 percent Black and Latino.

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