July '64 (review)

Director Carvin Elson's documentary, July '64, explores three nights of racial violence in Rochester, New York, during the summer of 1964, an episode that resulted in the first National Guard intervention in a Northern city during the civil rights era. The film underscores the yawning gap between white perception and black experience in post-war urban America and the explosive results of that chasm during the sixties.

For most white residents of Rochester, the period following WWII represented a golden age of economic expansion, rising wages, home ownership, and cultural revival. Home to industrial giants like Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Xerox, as well as historic figures like Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, Rochester prided itself as a progressive city with a reputation for equal opportunity. Yet, this success also contributed to what some viewed as a smug and complacent attitude among affluent residents and civic leaders. White Rochesterians displayed a general apprehensiveness toward outsiders and a stubborn unwillingness to recognize the growing racial inequality in their community and, thus, the need for change.

African American experience in Rochester stood in sharp contrast to the prosperity enjoyed by most whites, but was sadly typical of black circumstances across urban America at the time. Between 1950 and 1960, the black population rose roughly three hundred percent from 8,400 to more than 30,000 as African Americans fled the Jim Crow South in search of greater respect, increased job opportunities, better housing and quality education for their children. Upon arrival, though, black migrants faced cramped, segregated housing in dilapidated, rat-infested structures, widespread employment discrimination, and substandard urban public schools. In the film, residents call the conditions "inhuman," "shameful," "uncivilized" and "drastically wrong."

The resulting poverty led inevitably to a growing "quiet rage" and rising tensions with local police who used strong-arm tactics and German shepherds to maintain order in black neighborhoods. African Americans referred to the situation as a "police state" while the mayor of the city suggested that black residents were over-reacting. Either way, by the mid-1960s, most African American citizens agreed that Rochester's two predominately black wards were a "keg of dynamite and all it needed was a match."

The explosion took place on July 25th as police tried to subdue an intoxicated black reveler at a neighborhood block party. Some claimed the crowd reacted to excessive force by the officers, while others said the culprit's friends interfered with police. Rumors that a police dog bit a young girl and that an officer slapped a pregnant woman only added fuel to the fire. One resident suggested that identifying a trigger was "like finding the raindrop that caused the storm or the snowflake that caused the blizzard." Whatever the immediate catalyst, the long-simmering tensions of urban racial inequality finally boiled over, resulting in three days of unrest. Young black residents clashed with hundreds of policemen armed with batons and fire-hoses in scenes that many will find eerily reminiscent of racial conflict in Birmingham the previous year. Dozens of storefronts were smashed and businesses looted before National Guardsmen finally restored order. Constance Mitchell, a ward supervisor prominently featured throughout the film, called the disturbance "a crude awakening" for the city. While the eruption brought new attention to the struggles of Rochester's black community, the documentary also makes clear that large-scale demographic and economic trends have ensured the continuation of urban racial inequality up to the present day.

Aesthetically, July '64 takes a traditional documentary approach to its subject. Based primarily on archival footage, colorful (and, in retrospect, somewhat humorous) promotional films and interviews with local people, including the mayor, city council members, journalists and residents, the film also relies heavily on Dr. James Turner and journalist Jack Germond to situate local events within a broader historical context. The singular voice of Roscoe Lee Brown provides the narration. The film does include some rough cuts, but overall, it is well constructed.

Historically, July '64 provides an important look at racial violence in...