"Law and order" at large: The New York civilian review board referendum of 1966 and the crisis of liberalism

Historian

Volumn 64, Issue 3-4, 2002, Pages 643-665

  Flamm, Michael W ^a  

^a OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 3042637244     PISSN: 00182370     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6563.00009     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. In New York, murders rose over 23 percent in 1961. The overall crime rate set a record in 1962 and climbed steadily in 1963. See "Crimes Set Mark, Rising 3% in 1961," New York Times, 13 July 1962, 50
2. "Crime Here Rises 9.1%; Murders Increase by 9.3%," New York Times, 15 October 1963, 78
3. Ruth Cowan, "The New York City Civilian Review Board Referendum of November 1966: A Study in Mass Politics" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1970), 6, 393
4. David W. Abbott, Louis H. Gold, and Edward T. Rogowsky, Police, Politics, and Race: The New York City Referendum on Civilian Review (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 7-8
5. and "Tally of Votes for Governor, Statewide Offices, Police Review Board, and Judgeships," New York Times, 10 November 1966, 10
6. By October Lindsay was not confident of victory. "I am not at all sure that we're going to win. But one thing I am sure of - we're right. I have never been so sure of anything in my life." Woody Klein, Lindsay's Promise: The Dream That Failed (London, 1970), 245,250
7. The best account of this race is Matthew Dallek, The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics (New York, 2000)
8. Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York, 1991), 9
9. For a similar national perspective, see Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 1984)
10. For a similar local perspective, see Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1985)
11. See also Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, 1996)
12. Thus a Charlestown, Massachusetts, housewife, Alice McGoff, could support the 1964 Civil Rights Act but later oppose forced busing. See J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York, 1985), 26
13. "As issues became more salient and politics intruded on more individuals, there was a heightened awareness of discrepancies between what the parties stood for as opposed to what they were believed to stand for." Norman H. Vie, Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (New York, 1979), 269
14. See Gerald Sorin, The Nurturing Neighborhood: The Brownsville Boys Club and Jewish Community in Urban America, 1940-1990 (New York, 1990), 91, 159-63, 168. Another, more anecdotal description of the flight of the Jews from Brownsville can be found in Rieder, Canarsie, passim
15. See, for example, "The Big Story in the Big Cities," U.S. News, 19 December 1958, 46-54
16. and "The Negro Crime Rate: A Failure in Integration," Time, 21 April 1958, 16-20
17. The proposal, which originated with the NYCLU and Reform Democrats like later mayor Ed Koch, vested the board with the power to pursue cases independently regardless of any ongoing criminal investigations. Cowan, "The New York City Civilian Review Board Referendum of November 1966," 116-17, 126
18. "Rise in Murders Reported by City," New York Times, 18 July 1964, 23
19. "Maccabees and the Mau Mau," National Review, 16 July 1964, 479-80
20. From the window of a TV repair shop, Gilligan saw an argument erupt over whether the superintendent had intentionally or accidentally sprayed the teens with water. Powell got a knife and chased the superintendent into the building. After failing to catch him, Powell encountered Gilligan, threatened the officer with a knife, and was shot dead. This version of events is found in James Lardner, Crusader: The Hell-Raising Police Career of Detective David Durk (New York, 1996), 75
21. "Harlem: Hatred in the Streets," Newsweek, 3 August 1964, 19. Property losses ranged into the hundreds of thousands of dollars
22. Farmer was not alone in his views. "The black man is mad," declared Adam Clayton Powell Jr., "mad with the continued police brutality of white policemen." Woody Klein, "Harlem: The Ghetto Ignites," The Nation, 10 August 1964, 50-51
23. William F. Buckley Jr., "Remarks to the NYPD Holy Name Society, April 4, 1965," National Review, 20 April 1965,326
24. Vincent J. Cannato, The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York (New York, 2001), 69-70
25. Cowan, "The New York City Civilian Review Board Referendum of November 1966," 300-301
26. Flyer, "WHITE POWER -vs.- BLACK POWER," "Civilian Review Board - New York, 1966, miscellany," Box 183, Legal Department (1966-), NAACP Papers, LOC
27. Cannato, The Ungovernable City, 179; New York Times, 26 October 1966
28. Bernard Weinraub, "Kennedy Sees Peril to Civilian Control of Police," New York Times, 4 November 1966, 29
29. Sidney E. Zion, "'Sleeper Issue' on Police Referendum Wakes Up," New York Times, 30 October 1966
30. Klein, Lindsay's Promise, 202
31. See William W. Turner, The Police Establishment (New York, 1968), 225
32. Klein, Lindsay's Promise, 232; Press Release, 22 September 1966, "Police Department (1)," Box 68, Departmental Correspondence, Lindsay Papers, NYC
33. David Garth, campaign manager for FAIR, later termed the pursuit of Irish and Italian votes "a waste of time." Cowan, "The New York City Civilian Review Board Referendum of November 1966," 317, 331; Klein, Lindsay's Promise, 255
34. See Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond the Los Angeles Riots: Next Stop, the North," Saturday Review, 13 November 1965, 34
35. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul On Ice (New York, 1968), 132-33. In 1968 the Harlem branch of the NAACP called for stiffer penalties - including mandatory five-year sentences - against muggers conducting "a reign of criminal terror in Harlem." It also demanded minimum ten-year sentences for drug pushers and thirty-year sentences for first-degree murderers. AP Release, 13 December 1968, "Memos to DJ Officials from AG, 1968-69 (1)," Papers of Ramsey Clark, Box 109, LBJ Library
36. See also Lionel H. Mitchell [a black conservative], "When Law and Order Fail," National Review, 30 July 1968, 741-42
37. Aaron Wildavsky, "The Empty-Head Blues: Black Rebellion and White Reaction," The Public Interest 11 (spring 1968): 3-16
38. Lisa McGirr, "Suburban Warriors: Grass-Roots Conservatism in the 1960s" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1995), 250
39. Draper, A Rope of Sand, 121-23; Minutes of AFL-CIO Executive Council Meeting, 15 November 1966, GMMA
40. See "Narrow Victory, Wide Problems," Time, 15 November 1968, 20
41. "Nixon's Hard-Won Chance to Lead," Time, 15 November 1968, 22