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Preface An enraged and exasperated crowd took to the streets of Harlem on the after- noon of July 18, 1964. Residents joined in with activists of the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which originally had organized a protest that day to demonstrate against the disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi almost a month earlier. Instead CORE leaders decided to spotlight the issue of police brutality in light of a recent incident closer to home. Just two days earlier in the Yorkville neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, 15-year-old James Powell, an African American summer school student from the Bronx, had been shot and killed by an off-duty police lieutenant who said the boy had charged at him with a knife. The rally cul- minated in a march to the officer’s regional precinct, with some of the event’s leaders pushing for immediate action against him. Satisfied that the encoun- ter between Powell and the officer was being looked into, they left. But the rest of the protesters were fired up and ready to vent their frustrations. What originally started as a peaceful gathering to raise civil rights concerns in the United States soon turned into an avenue for African Americans to voice their dissatisfaction with their status in society. The next morning, front- page newspaper articles blared that thousands of black residents had partici- pated in rioting—looting businesses and taunting their white neighbors. For a total of six nights the violence and destruction continued, first in Harlem, then in neighboring Brooklyn. Soon after, other northern cities erupted with racial violence, too. “The dawn broke hot and somber in Harlem yesterday,” declared the New York Times on July 20.1 And, indeed, the dawn of a new era of rioting broke as well. Before the 1964 Harlem uprising, white Americans—fueled by racism and fear—were the primary participants in rioting, using this type of vio- lence on their black neighbors to murder, terrorize, and eliminate whole thriving communities. Their ultimate goal was to deny African Americans an equal footing in society. Dozens, or even hundreds (see chapter 1 for the