The Rat That Got Away: A Bronx Memoir

12. The Summer of Unrest: 1964

12 The Summer of Unrest: 1964 The summer of 1964 was a not a safe or a peaceful one. To say that the situation was getting deep would be an understatement. In all the big cities of America, black people were taking to the streets. We watched the television as Harlem went up in flames and heard reports of mass looting. Black people, young and old, were walking away with anything they could get their hands on: washing machines, sewing machines, clothes, couches, food. If it was not nailed to the floor, it was gone, and in some places even the floor was removed if people thought there were a safe or something of value underneath it. The people were in a rage, and finally the National Guard had to be called in. The effects of national events in my household and in my neighborhood was mixed. My mother was against all forms of violence. Her first impulse, in times of unrest, was to pray and to light a candle for the world. But the reality of the world, as leaders like Malcolm X saw and described it, was having an effect on a lot of idealistically thinking brothers in our neighborhood. While not everyone agreed that the white man was the devil, many people did agree with Malcolm that America had had it in for black people from the very beginning of our history and that nothing was going to change until we took matters into our own hands. How to go about making change was not always clear. Some people advocated violence, some wanted to use education as their means of getting ahead, and some called for black people to create their own organizations and build their own businesses. But many people were yearning 57 58 The Summer of Unrest: 1964 for some kind of action to let white America know we weren’t going to be quiet when we were denied opportunities that other Americans took for granted. The older brothers and sisters in the Patterson Houses did not alter their style much. They were going to school to get an education so that they could deal with The Man. I saw other groups of brothers and sisters working in programs to help young people and the elderly. These were the people channeling their rage and frustration in a positive direction. But many other people in my neighborhood talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk. Despite all the hype about black unity and black revolution , more people than ever were partying, drinking, smoking weed, and letting the good times roll. I’m ashamed to admit that I fell into that category. For one thing, the level of unrest in the Bronx was not nearly as high as it was in Harlem, so the need for action didn’t seem so immediate . On 3rd Avenue, some windows had been broken, some shops had been robbed, and a few cars had been destroyed, but what had happened here was nowhere close to the scale of violence that was happening in Harlem. Life in the Projects felt relatively safe. There were still some white people in our neighborhood, as well as a good number of Puerto Ricans, so the concentrated black rage one saw in Harlem didn’t take hold in the Bronx. In fact, the Puerto Rican influence in the Bronx not only saved us from Harlem’s fate, it also gave our community cultural variety and local color that defined what was best about our part of the city. By the mid- ’60s, there were a lot more Puerto Ricans in the Patterson Houses than there were whites, and almost as many as there were blacks. For the most part, the two groups got along well. Puerto Ricans had the same enthusiasm for food and music and dancing that black people did and were, for the most part, as tough and as streetwise. By the time I was in junior high, many brothers I knew started to have Puerto Rican girlfriends , and black dealers had begun to learn Spanish to better sell their product to Puerto Rican customers. Whenever I would visit PS 18 on a weeknight or Sunday, a group of brothers and sisters would be dancing, Latin style, to the music of Hector Rivera, Joe Bataan, Joe Cuba, or Tito Puente. I would watch as they did all those turns and spins and even learned some of the basic steps. One of...