Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots Read Online Free PDF

boy—water boy—,” the song he had once sung to her, swinging her back and forth in his great arms. And now they were screaming for the killing of him or of ourselves. It does not seem real now that the knowledge and certainty of death should have been in each one of the thirty-six of us, but it was. There was no way out, and we were bloodied and soon we would not be able to fight anymore. I know I faced that. It appeared a curious way to die, there in that little corner of Westchester, but it was reasonable and there was a logic within it, and I know that when I spoke to the others afterwards, they felt that same logic.…
    Three Negro girls came running up from the hollow. It was all right, they said, it was all right because our six down below had beaten off the attack and scattered the hoodlums into the night. But their eyes widened and their bodies grew stiff at what was up there on the road, the screaming noise of it. The attack was starting again.
    â€œLie down in the truck,” I told them. “It’s all right, all right, all right here and down below, but you can’t go back now. Lie down in the truck.” I had seen shadowy figures moving over the hills on our left.
    Then we were fighting again, and again they were clawing at the huge Negro worker in our front row. They came with their rocks and their fence posts and their knives, and again we beat them off. They had such weight and so little courage that we beat them off and drove them back and back, until there was a good thirty feet clear before us, and once again we fell back to lean panting and bleeding against the truck. But now there were three who could no longer stand, and we helped them into the truck where they lay quietly. We had no means of first aid, no medicine nor bandages and no time for such.
    Now there was a sudden brilliant glare and the hills to our left stood sharp and black against a yellow background. There was a moment of silent cessation, and one of our men leaped up on the truck and cried,
    â€œA cross is burning!”
    We could only see the glare, but the symbolic meaning was not lost upon us. In this sweet land the movement had been rounded out; the burning cross, the symbol of all that is rotten and mean and evil in our land had blessed us. Our night was complete, and we would do well to kneel before the new patriots.
    We didn’t kneel. We locked arms, the better to support each other, and as that whole great mob rolled down upon us, well over a thousand of them now, we began to sing,
    â€œWe shall not—we shall not be moved!
    We shall not—we shall not be moved!
    Just like a tree that’s standing by the water,
    We shall not be moved!”
    Consider the scene: there are only thirty-two of us now, with our backs against the truck, and we and the road across the embankment in front of us are bathed in the glare of headlights and spotlights that have been rigged from the road. All the rest is in darkness, and now into the light come the “new Americans,” brandishing the fence rails they have stripped from along the road, swinging their knives and billies, a solid mass of them back to the public highway, rolling down to turn in for the kill and the great lynching, which is their peculiar privilege in a land which provides freedom for all except those who do not wholly agree with the gentlemen in Washington. It is a full hour and a half now since the fighting began, and there has been time enough for the news of what is happening at Peekskill to be wired to every corner of the nation. The press is here to see the great lynching, every New York newspaper, their crack writers and photographers, but not one policeman and not one state trooper—not one.
    So they came in for the kill, and the singing stopped them. You would have had to be there to understand that; those of us who were there understood it when it happened; it was no miracle to us, but logical and reasonable—for