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

I think that at that point all of us stopped being afraid and stopped praying for a way to get out of that hellish valley. We simply stood there in our three lines, arms locked, singing that fine old song which, more than any other, has become the anthem of the democratic forces of America.
    Many, many times, for as long back as I can remember, I have heard people singing that old hymn, but I never heard it sung as it was sung that night, swelling out over the lunatic mob, over the road and over the hills, full of the deep rich voices of men who had fought so well. It was a moral enigma to the Legion heroes. They saw a line of Negroes and whites, arms locked, ragged and bloody, standing calmly and singing—and the singing stopped them. They halted a dozen feet from us, and their screaming stopped. They stood there in silence, watching us and listening to our song and trying to understand what sort of people we were—that has always been a difficult thing for them to understand. And then one of them threw the first rock.
    They didn’t want to touch us now, or they couldn’t, so they turned to the rocks. They moved back and gave themselves more space for throwing. First a rock here and there, then more, and then there was the heavy music of them as they beat a tattoo against the metal side of the truck. We continued to sing. A rock as big as a grapefruit thudded into the belly of the Negro next to me, the one who had fought so well when they clawed onto him. He doubled up and rolled over—and we helped him back to the truck. A Negro lad of seventeen or so received a rock the size of a baseball full in his face; one moment his face, and then a bleeding mass of broken teeth and smashed nose. The white man on my left was struck in the temple and collapsed without a sound. You didn’t have to look; when you heard the fleshy thud, the sound of bone and skin breaking, you knew that someone was hit and that there was one fewer to stand on his feet and face the mob, and it was happening very quickly. The volley of rocks had become a rain, and it was just a miracle that so many missed us and crashed against the truck behind us. First I counted how many of us were hit, and then I stopped counting and dropped back to the truck and put my head together with one of the seamen.
    â€œFive minutes more of this,” he said, “and we’ll be finished.” A rock had caught him in the groin and he stood bent over, his face wracked with pain.
    I had a notion, something I remembered from the war, and I told him about it quickly. What mattered were the women and children down in the hollow. We would do them no good if we became a heroic pile of corpses up here on the road. As long as we could hold this section of embanked road, it was quite proper for us to stay here. But it was now evident that we could no longer hold the road, and therefore it was incumbent upon those of us still standing to get down to the hollow, where perhaps we could hold the mob off a while more. Minutes mattered, for we still believed that at any moment the state troopers would turn up. Yet if we broke our formation they would be on us and we wouldn’t have a chance. Now suppose, I suggested, that we use the truck as a moving shield, a reverse tank tactic, that we make a group in front of it, running slowly, while the driver takes it down to the hollow in low gear.
    â€œLet’s try it,” he agreed. “We can’t stay here.”
    While I explained it to the truck driver the seaman whispered our plan along the line. Suddenly the motor roared.
    â€œAll right—let’s go!”
    There were about twenty or twenty-two of us still on our feet. We dashed around the truck as it lurched forward, backed onto the embankment, and then swung onto the road. And then, because the driver had forgotten to switch on his lights—an understandable error, considering that night—he drove off the road, missed it completely,