Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots Read Free

since one couldn’t count on the regular schedule. When J—— N—— comes,” I said to her, “tell him I’ve gone on ahead. I’ll see him there.”

Part Two
    The Night of Terror
    THAT GOLDEN EVENING of August 27 remains in my mind most clearly, most softly; it was such a soft and gentle evening as one finds on the canvas of George Inness, and even he could create that dewy nostalgia only when he painted one part or another of the wonderful Hudson River Valley. By choice, I took the little back roads twisting among the low hills and narrow valleys. I avoided the business section of Peekskill, but found the state highway north of the town. I had never been to the Lakeland Picnic Grounds before, and I drove slowly, looking for the entrance—which is on Division Street, a three-mile stretch of country road which connects Peekskill with the Bronx River Parkway.
    Yet I couldn’t have missed the entrance. Hundreds of yards before I reached it I found cars parked solidly on either side of the highway, which made me wonder since it was more than an hour before the concert was scheduled to begin; and at the entrance itself there was an already unruly crowd of men. Still, they didn’t try to stop me, but only jeered and thumbed their noses at me as I turned left into the picnic grounds. Only one more car was permitted to enter after mine; then the entrance was sealed off.
    Just inside the grounds I stopped my car. There, a few yards from the read, a handful of teen-age boys and girls had gathered.
    There were not more than five of them and they were trying to hide their nervousness at the jeering, hooting crowd on the road. They had come up from New York to be ushers at the concert. I told them who I was and they seemed glad that I was there, but they were still frightened.
    â€œWhat shall we do?” they asked.
    â€œWho’s running things?”
    They didn’t know, they said. It was so early—they didn’t think anyone had come yet. But maybe there was someone down below.
    â€œWell,” I told them, “don’t let anyone in who isn’t here for the concert. Just keep cool and be calm and nothing will happen.” That seemed to be a refrain of mine, that nothing would happen, that nothing could happen. “I’ll park my car and see if I can’t find someone to take things in hand.”
    To understand what happened from here on, you must have in your mind a clear picture of Lakeland Picnic Grounds and of the area where the concert was set up. The entrance to the grounds is a left turn off the main road as you drive from Peekskill; the entrance is double, coming together in Y shape to a narrow dirt road. About eighty feet from the entrance the road is embanked, with sharp dirt sides dropping about twenty feet to shallow pools of water. About forty feet of the road is embanked in this fashion, and then for a quarter of a mile or so it sweeps down into a valley —all of this private road and a part of the picnic grounds. At the end of this road, there is a sheltered hollow with a broad, meadow-grass bottom, a sort of natural arena, hidden by hummocks of low hills from the sight of anyone on the public highway. It was in this hollow that the paraphernalia for the concert had been set up: a large platform, two thousand wooden folding chairs, and a number of spotlights powered by a portable generator.
    I looked at my watch before I drove down to the hollow, and it was just ten minutes to seven. Parking my car against a clump of trees to the side of the platform, I got out and wandered around rather aimlessly. The platform was ready, the chairs set up, the spotlights in place, and there was a long picnic table piled with song-books and pamphlets. As I came in, a large bus had just discharged its passengers, boys and girls, Negroes for the most part, who had come early to be ushers. The bus lurched around and departed in a cloud of dust; the boys