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- [00:00]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Wondry subscribers can binge all episodes of Empire City early and ad free. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Hey y'all. Just want to let you know this episode contains explicit depictions of violence. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself. I've had my share of run ins with the police since I was a kid, but it wasn't until I was making this series that I had one that truly showed me what the NYPD has become. It happened on a late spring day in 2024 and my daughter Enola is running across a plaza on the NYU campus where I teach. She's breaking down some slick four year old dance moves, she's singing and she's lifting her voice so that folks can hear what she has to say. Enyola's standing with me and her mom on the grounds of a protest encampment at nyu, a two minute walk from where we live. After watching the catastrophic, horrific and consistent attacks on Palestinians, we're here to demand that my university disclose and divest from Israel. I watch her skip off past tents and food, past hundreds of folks with green, red and white Palestinian flags, keffiyehs and hijabs, and past banners saying Never give up till Palestine is free. We're surrounded by students, faculty and other members of our community whose signs and chants call for an end to genocidal war. We see Jewish and Muslim students protecting each other's right to safely express their faith as humble but fierce resistance. But as the sun goes down and Muslim students kneel for prayer, that sense of safety is shattered. An explosion of sirens pierces through this prayerful moment and blue and red lights bounce off the faces of everyone around us just as an NYPD bus rumbles through the crowd. Panic and fear shoot through my body as I race to get to my family. I see Enola run to her mother and grab her leg. My wife picks her up and we exchange a knowing look before they disappear into the already scattering crowd and I stay behind with my students. I lock arms with about 20 other faculty members and together we form a wall with our bodies between our students and the nypd. Scores of police in riot gear, the strategic response team, start lining up on the plaza. They're wearing helmets, vests and guns, all funded by Mayor Adams new police budget. Bunches of white zip tie handcuffs and tear gas canisters are dangling from their belts as they march toward us. A loud electronic voice assaults our ears from the sky. The only word I can make out is trespassing A young white cop grabs me, forcing my arms apart, pushing me away from my students and zip tying my hands behind my back. He tightens it until the plastic cuts into my wrists. I watch as an officer tackles a Lebanese student, snatches her by her hair and drags her down the street. As she screams, another cop recklessly pepper sprays into the crowd. A student journalist's head jerks back as a projectile blast of mace sets his eyes on fire. It's barely half an hour since Enolas left the Plaza. I've been arrested, and 136 of us are being carted away by NYPD buses to One Police Plaza. I sit for hours on a cold metal bench in a cell, watching through a scuffed up, dirty glass window as my colleagues, students and other fellow New Yorkers are each dragged in and processed. All of us are outraged, but we're also energized. Some protesters are still chanting and singing to drown out any fear inside of us and to keep what's happening to families in Gaza in the forefront of our minds. And as I sat there, unable to contact my family, I couldn't help but wonder what my daughter might have seen that night. What is she thinking? Is she still awake in her bed, waiting for me to come home? When the NYPD showed up that night, what I felt was the opposite of safety. It felt like a naked, savage drive, spectacular and military had been unleashed on us, and it had nothing to do with protecting us and everything to do with violent disciplinary power. And even though New Yorkers are getting used to seeing our neighborhood police in riot gear on the news, at public gatherings and on our campuses, the NYPD wasn't always a force beefed up with tactical units, shields, and tear gas. So when did that change? And what was the threat that was so dangerous that it pushed the NYPD to ramp up their capacity and willingness to forcefully subdue masses of people, even when they're peaceful. From wondry and crooked media, I'm Chenjerai Kumanyika, and this is Empire City. Episode 4 They've Got Weapons After New York's two police forces beat the shit out of each other on the steps of City hall, the Metropolitan Police take over as the official nypd. And partially because of the riot, a lot of folks view this new police as another uniformed gang with nightsticks. And on day one, they have a problem. Huge parts of the city that the new police have to patrol are immigrant communities loyal to Fernando Wood and Tammany Hall. And by day two, tensions are already at A breaking point. It's Independence Day, and a cop goes to break up a huge fight between street gangs. But as he walks through the crowd, a guy knocks him down. The gangs attack him, rip off his uniform, and beat him with his own nightstick. When he finally gets away, he runs back to the police headquarters in his boxers. He tells his squad what happens and passes out. Of course, this kind of thing is a real problem for any police force, and these kinds of skirmishes went on for years. So the NYPD writes a request to city leaders, basically saying, hey, can we have half a million dollars to create a riot squad with horses, short swords, and revolvers? Most of the city leaders are like, oh, hell no. That's too much like a standing army. If that worry about the police sounds familiar, it's because it is. When someone first said, hey, can we have, like, 1,000 police instead of 200? Folks said, nah, man, that sounds too much like a standing army. But then later, some rich folks said, well, actually, as long as you leave us alone, that's okay. Then when someone suggested, let's give the police uniforms, people said, men in uniform patrolling our neighborhoods? Never. But then Matzler just put them in uniforms. And folks said, okay, maybe not that bad. Now, the police were asking for guns, and people were like, this is too far. But there's one city leader that has the cops back. His name is John Kennedy. No relation to those Kennedys. Since no one is budging on guns, Kennedy says, at least give us the horses or lassos, something. We can't have gangs beating up the police, and we need some way to put these rowdy folks in the city down. So the city leaders agree to horses. But what none of those city leaders knew is that in just a few years, the country would find itself smack in the middle of a bloody civil war with no end in sight. It's 1863, and that guy, John Kennedy, is the newest NYPD Police Superintendent, and he's tasked with overseeing America's first military draft in New York. And white folks are pissed about it. Now, up here in the north, in New York, a lot of folks like to puff out their chests because we were on the right side, the Abraham Lincoln side, right? But Kennedy's probably tuned into folks who feel a whole different way, because if you ask a lot of white folks in New York around that time, your.
- [09:19]
Ed O'Donnell
Worst nightmare is the liberation of the black man.
- [09:23]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Historian Ed O'Donnell says that even though New York is a free state, a lot of New Yorkers are enraged at the possibility that 4 million enslaved people might be emancipated.
- [09:32]
Ed O'Donnell
Because if you think you're poor now, you think you have trouble putting food on the table now, just wait. If emancipation comes, you are going to have your jobs taken, your women taken.
- [09:42]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
And the fact that they're now formerly enslaved black folks fighting in the Civil War made this fear seem even more real. Plus, there's one caveat that most white New Yorkers really ain't feeling.
- [09:52]
Ed O'Donnell
They had an exemption for wealthy people. If you could pay $300, you could buy your way out of the draft. And lots of people did so. Famous people like Andrew Carnegie did it, Theodore Roosevelt's father did it.
- [10:08]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
So essentially, rich people can spend their afternoons watching bougie British actors in Macbeth while poor people die on the battlefield.
- [10:17]
Ed O'Donnell
A rich man's war and a poor man's fight.
- [10:22]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
One person who doesn't fear black emancipation is Superintendent John Kennedy. When Kennedy hears that a bunch of black Union troops might be traveling through the city, he fears that white New Yorkers are gonna attack them and that his police are gonna have to protect them. He picks up his pen again, writes to the governor, and asks if he can send him on a different route. Kennedy succeeds in rerouting the black regiment, but the anger he's worried about is real, and it's rising in the city. Going into the first day of the draft, Kennedy's nervous that the city might explode. You know how in bingo, there's a big cage filled with lottery balls and someone spinning the cage and calling out numbers one by one? Sanford, Henry, Harrison, Sweezy, Richard M. Believe it or not, that's how the draft is carried out. Except if your name gets called, you don't fill out a spot on your bingo board. You have to fight in the Civil War on the first day of the draft. There's some skirmishes in other cities, but to Kennedy's surprise, as the draft officials continue to announce the numbers in New York, nothing happens. The draft begins on Saturday, July 11, 1863, without a hitch. This puts a lot of folks at ease, including Kennedy, who breathes a big sigh of relief. So he heads home, assuming that Monday will go just as peacefully. But not everyone feels so sure. One person who's still worried is Captain George Washington Walling. Walling understood firsthand how quickly a mob of angry New Yorkers can spiral out of control. He had been through the Astor Place riot and the police riot, so unlike his boss, Captain Walling fears that even though the first day of the draft went okay, shit is going to turn up when they start calling out numbers again on Monday. But Walling is just one police officer. He doesn't have the authority to mobilize the whole department. So he spends Sunday night hunkered down in the precinct, preparing himself for any commotion that might surface when the draft resumes. And it turns out he's right. Early on Monday morning, a group forms at the base of Central Park. It's the most dangerous kind of group. White people filled with anger and resentment. They're enraged about the draft and being sent off to a war. And as the crowd swells, they feed off each other. They start marching downtown, hell bent on destruction. Eventually, they set off what's called the New York City draft riots, one of the biggest and deadliest urban riots in the history of America.
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Kamau Ware
So where we're standing right here is where things flipped.
- [13:21]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
I'm standing with Kamau warehouse, a black historian, artist, and tour guide. He's walking me through the events of the riots. We start at the bottom of Central park, and this location is important. Six years before the draft riots began, the thriving black community of Seneca village was destroyed to build this park.
- [13:42]
Kamau Ware
And so it's metaphorical that you had white mobs gathering here who also were just belligerent toward the presence of black people in the city at all. It's almost like an intentional place to gather. Let's go to the place where black folks got displaced, and let's gather here to protest the draft.
- [14:07]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Standing here today, it feels calm. Tourists are taking pictures. People are eating overpriced falafels. But on that Monday morning back in 1863, folks were gathering to protest, and the crowd starts to march toward the draft office. Another large crowd of irritated folks gets together downtown at the 9th Police Precinct, where the draft is about to resume. As draft officials pick up where they left off on Saturday, pulling out names one by one, the crowd there gets angrier and angrier. Finally, some firefighters can't take it anymore.
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Kamau Ware
They're the ones who kind of, you know, light the match and say, you know what? We ain't here for this. You're not going to tell us to go fight in this war. We're already serving this city. And then everybody else is kind of like, sparked by their anger. And then they just went ahead and broke glass, attacked the spot, and the cops ran.
- [15:02]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Kamau emphasizes this point. When the cops saw this huge mobile, they ran away.
- [15:09]
Kamau Ware
I want people to understand and appreciate the volume of people and the amount of threat that was displayed that made cops be like, we're not Dying today over this.
- [15:20]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The sight of cops running gives the mob confidence.
- [15:24]
Kamau Ware
There's this moment of, oh, I think we're in charge.
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Chenjerai Kumanyika
Now that they've gotten their first taste of how easy to overwhelm the authorities. The growing throng starts heading somewhere where they can get guns.
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Kamau Ware
Then they go in and they sack the armory. And now they got weapons. It's safe to expect that folks have been drinking, too.
- [15:48]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
After Superintendent Kennedy reads telegraphs about outbreaks of police violence and large crowds gathering around police stations, he hops in his buggy and heads out to see what's going on. Kennedy spots a large crowd of folks surrounding the 9th District Police Station. He leaves his buggy a few blocks away so he's less conspicuous and starts walking up to the station. At this point, Kennedy has civilian clothes on, but there's a former cop in the crowd who recognizes him and yells out, here comes that son of a bitch Kennedy. Let's finish him. The mob is merciless. Irish New Yorkers finally have the chance to take their vengeance on the NYPD official who's enforcing this draft, helping to send them off to die for a cause they don't believe in. He's walking, just kind of. And then, like, boom, he gets hit.
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Kamau Ware
Snuck. Yeah. If we could use it like street terms.
- [16:40]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Hell, yeah. Yeah. You already know, bro.
- [16:42]
Kamau Ware
Yeah, yeah. He gets stole, as they put it.
- [16:46]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Yeah, somebody stole the. Somebody stole the police superintendent. The former cop hypes up the crowd as they descended Kennedy saying, stick together and we can lick all the damn police in the city.
- [16:57]
Kamau Ware
He's beaten to a pulp, and then they're trying to drown him in a puddle. So, like, I mean, just imagine, like a commissioner of New York's police department getting his ass beat on the block.
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Chenjerai Kumanyika
Fortunately for Kennedy, a guy runs into the melee and convinces everyone that he's already dead. After the mob moves on, Kennedy is secretly taken back to the police precinct. Doctors count 70 knife wounds. By now, there's skirmishes and violence erupting all over the city. Walling heads into the street a few blocks away with his club in hand and a small group of police at his side. They must have looked like his strong arm squads from a decade ago, but this time, they're up against more than a small gang. Walling's crew are confronted by a mob of 2001 rage rioters. He temporarily deputizes his brother and hands him a club. As they head into the brawl, he tells his men, kill every man with a club. A small group of men versus 2000 armed rioters probably sounds heroic, but the truth is that Walling and his men barely make it out of that confrontation alive. When you think about a mob, you might think of an irrational horde consuming everything in its path. But this mob was selective. They ignore a lot of what they pass. They don't seek out the politicians who actually led them into war. Instead, they focus on destroying places they see as symbols of their pain. They attack an office of a pro war newspaper, and they even attack a Brooks Brothers store because it's a symbol of rich folks. But as the day goes on, a palpable shift takes place. The crowd moves from attacking symbols to people. And this time, it's not just the police.
- [18:48]
Kamau Ware
They got weapons. They're more agitated. They got bigger numbers. And now they're attacking black folks, taking them off stagecoaches, pulling them out of restaurants, tearing down neighborhoods.
- [19:00]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Now, the riots aren't just about the.
- [19:02]
Kamau Ware
Draft, and at that point in time, the agenda is to harm black people.
- [19:08]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Kamau says that this is something a lot of folks have really gotten wrong about this riot.
- [19:12]
Kamau Ware
There are people who are academics and writers have gone along with this positioning of this as a riot that had these egalitarian reasons of like, you know, people sticking up for themselves.
- [19:25]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
He says that version of the draft riots hides the fact that the media and politicians had convinced these rioters that black freedom was their biggest threat, which is why the focus of the riot transforms before the first day was over.
- [19:38]
Kamau Ware
And that's why I think it's a misnomer to call it a draft riot, because the draft riot lasted about five hours. The race riot lasted about four days.
- [19:49]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
And the mob is just getting started. Now they're going to set their sight on a place that represents everything they hate. The Colored Orphan Asylum is run by black women. It provides shelter and care to homeless black children. Before institutions like this, homeless black kids would be sent to prison. According to historian Ed O'Donnell, for some white New Yorkers, this large, stately black run building is kind of a sore spot.
- [20:15]
Ed O'Donnell
It's a black institution. So the rioters aren't really concerned about what kind of black institution. It's a black institution. And so they propose to set it on fire and shout, kill the inhabitants and so forth.
- [20:27]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The mob surrounds the building, pulling up cobblestones and throwing them through windows, tearing down the door with pickaxes before torching the whole thing.
- [20:36]
Ed O'Donnell
The rioters pour into there, smash the furniture, begin setting on fire.
- [20:39]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The police are vastly outnumbered, and it looks like they may not be able to stop the mob and save the children. But fortunately, the black women running the asylum aren't waiting around for the cops. These women are about to do what they do best. Protect their own. The enraged mob of white riders rush into the colored orphans asylum.
- [21:14]
Ed O'Donnell
Within just minutes, you know it's completely ablaze.
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Chenjerai Kumanyika
The black matrons hear the mob coming and quickly mop mobilized to get the children out the back door. As the asylum's consumed by flames. Over 200 black children escape unnoticed by the mob.
- [21:29]
Ed O'Donnell
Children are scampering away under protection of some local folks that are helping out, plus also a few police officers, and they all manage to get away.
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Chenjerai Kumanyika
Walling says the police escorted the children right to his precinct, and he describes them as being crazed with terror. And as the riots got worse, they were forced to hide there for the rest of the week.
- [21:50]
Ed O'Donnell
Miraculously, none of the children are killed in this incident.
- [21:54]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
O'donnell makes the point that many police did step up to protect targets of the mob.
- [21:59]
Ed O'Donnell
And so police do, in many cases, step in and provide at least a little bit of COVID a little bit of delay, so that the person can escape. Many policemen pay a heavy price for intervening on behalf of black victims.
- [22:12]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
But at the same time, some police.
- [22:15]
Ed O'Donnell
However, don't do anything. And there's at least a couple of documented cases where african american refugees fleeing the mob show up at the door of a police station, and the policeman, despite orders to do so, to let people in, refuses them entry.
- [22:30]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
I can't imagine what it must have felt like to have to rely on the police, to beg them to give you shelter from a bloodthirsty mob and to have the so called protectors turn you away. I've seen documents and books where police brag about how they defended the city during these race riots. But they never talk about this part, what they didn't do. They also don't talk about the fact that when they tried to help, there just wasn't much that they could do because for the most part, black new yorkers were left to defend themselves. Abolitionist William wells brown tells the story of stumbling into a room on thompson street filled with the thick, choking smoke. He sees eight black women standing around a stove pouring soap and ashes into tins filled with boiling water. The women are armed with ladles, ready to fling the hot liquid they call the king of pain at any rioters who may come in the door. When brown asks if they can throw the liquid without injuring each other, one of them responds, oh, yes, honey, we've been practicing all day. Further uptown on 30th street, the legendary abolitionist Reverend Henry Highland Garnett is also holed up in a room.
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Henry Highland Garnett
They were looking for certain leaders, churches, facilities affiliated with black people.
- [24:04]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Historian Kevin Magruder says that in Garnett's younger days, he earned a reputation as a rabble rouser, preaching fiery sermons and promoting radical strategies for black liberation. He reads an example of one of Garnett's most incendiary pieces of writing.
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Henry Highland Garnett
Let your motto be resistance, resistance, resistance, resistance. That's how he ends it. And so he's basically calling for a.
- [24:26]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Slave rebellion, armed slave rebellion.
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Henry Highland Garnett
He doesn't say that, but, you know, what kind of rebellion would it be without them?
- [24:41]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
This public image as a radical makes Garnett a target. And with no police protection, Garnett and a group of friends squeeze into his home. They wait with bated breath as the carnage unfolds outside.
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Henry Highland Garnett
They were looking for him.
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Chenjerai Kumanyika
The mob is going up and down the street, ready to burst into his home as soon as they can identify it.
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Henry Highland Garnett
It seems like the mob didn't have his exact address, but they knew, probably, maybe knew that he lived on the street and trying to figure out which building, and they're not going to attack all of them.
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Chenjerai Kumanyika
And then Garnett's daughter makes a courageous and smart move.
- [25:15]
Henry Highland Garnett
He had a nameplate on his house, and his daughter removes that. But if she hadn't, who knows? They might have figured out that that's where he lived.
- [25:30]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
On Wednesday evening, three days into the riot, Garnett makes a dangerous decision. He opens the door to his house and starts looking for the mob. Thirteen years earlier, New York police might have taken Garnett back into slavery. But in the middle of this riot, Garnett might have actually been hoping to see a police officer, because at that moment, he's especially vulnerable.
- [25:56]
Henry Highland Garnett
He had a peg leg, a lower portion. One of his legs was amputated. Okay, you have a peg leg. How fast are you going to be able to run if you need to?
- [26:10]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
But as a prominent black leader, Garnett feels called to see the violence for himself.
- [26:15]
Henry Highland Garnett
He feels he needs to be a witness of what has happened, because people are gonna expect him to respond.
- [26:25]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
And eventually, he witnesses a scene that strikes terror into his heart. A mob of white people has hanged a black person by their neck or right there on the street in front of them. And when they're finished, even the sight of a dangling, flinching black body isn't enough to satisfy the mob's bloodlust.
- [26:45]
Henry Highland Garnett
Then the people take a knife, and the person with the knife says, who wants a piece of end meat? And then people in the crowd are saying, I do. I do.
- [27:03]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
When we imagine white New Yorkers savagely and gleefully carving out the flesh of a black body that they just hanged, we should be clear this wasn't a moment of drunken, irrational violence that the perpetrators wanted to distance themselves from later.
- [27:17]
Henry Highland Garnett
It's kind of reminiscent of those lynching postcards where you've got this crowd around somebody and that's. It's that same kind of, this is a trophy, and we're gonna take an artifact.
- [27:35]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The police are nowhere to be found, so Garnett stays in the shadows. The mob moves on, and he slowly, quietly makes it back to safety. When Elizabeth Jennings Graham hears about the riots, she's at home with her husband and their baby, Thomas. Nine years earlier, Jennings Graham successfully sued a New York streetcar company for discrimination. But in the middle of the Draft riots, she knows there's only one thing she can do. She's one of hundreds of black folks who escape across the east river to communities like Weeksville and Flatbush in Brooklyn. Try to imagine the scene. You're holed up in your apartment with your family as the city goes up in flames. You know you're not safe. Phones haven't been invented yet, so you can't call 91 1, and you know you can't stay here. So under cover of darkness, you and your husband bundle up your son and head out into the night. You hurry past the wreckage of charred buildings and torn up streets. A jolt of fear runs through you every time you hear voices or any sounds that might be the mob. Finally, you make it to the east river and step onto a boat that'll ferry you to Brooklyn to safety. And as you set off from the shore of Manhattan and finally breathe a sigh of relief, you look down at your infant son cradled in your arms. But Jennings Graham's son Thomas was already a sickly child. During the journey, he falls into convulsions and dies a few days later. He was one year old. Unable to return home, Jennings Graham buries her son in Brooklyn, reflecting with Kamau on everything that happened. It kind of overwhelms me. I can't front. It makes me a little emotional. Like even when we were back at the statue.
- [29:41]
Kamau Ware
Yeah.
- [29:41]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
And I saw the brother there. We had his kids there. And I was thinking, what would it mean to be out here with your kids and to sort of know you can't protect them?
- [29:51]
Kamau Ware
Yeah. I mean, I also think that we've been walking from the same location where the mob gathered and what are they? What are they screaming and chanting? What's the sonics of that? Do you hear the mob coming? Do you hear screaming and shouting?
- [30:09]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
After four days of rioting, the city commissioner calls in thousands of troops from the Union army to support the police. Many of them had just fought in the battle of Gettysburg. With federal troops occupying the city, the draft riots finally end. During the riots, white mobs had stolen and burned property belonging to black New Yorkers. Leaders like Henry Highland Garnett pushed the city to establish a committee of merchants for the relief of colored people suffering from the late riots. But the money they raise is barely enough to scratch the surface of the collective suffering.
- [30:45]
Kamau Ware
How many folks left New York and took that trauma with them? How many folks stayed here and had that trauma triggered when they saw some of the same people in the mob who did not go to jail for a day for killing black folk?
- [31:01]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Some of the black residents who survived flee the city. New York's black population drops from 11,000 to 9,000.
- [31:09]
Kamau Ware
Imagine seeing a bunch of like, watching like 13, 15 year olds grow up and you know that one of those kids, you know, chased you out of your home with a bunch of other kids and whistling for other folks to come in and get involved in the violence.
- [31:25]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Kamau points to another major historical massacre, the Tulsa race riot. In 2001, the city of Tulsa formed a whole commission to investigate the riot and make it part of the historical record. But there's been no such effort when it comes to the Draft Riots in New York, not in the moment or in the years since. One of the biggest challenges is that so many of the records come from the police themselves. Historian Kevin Magruder says that people who ran boarding houses, small businesses and churches all pitched in in big and small ways. But the NYPD's heroic stories about cops don't capture that.
- [32:03]
Henry Highland Garnett
I'm not denying that the police did what they did, but I know there's a broader record that we don't have.
- [32:13]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The New York police have focused on moments of victory where they temporarily beat back the mob or save someone from being attacked. And even in the days after the riot, as the smoke still rose in the air from buildings across the city, as people searched for and mourned their dead relatives and black folks began to seek reparations, the press made the police the focus of their coverage. James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald gives the cops a glowing review. In not a single instance has assistance been required by the police when it has not been promptly rendered. Historian Ed O'Donnell says the police love that coverage.
- [32:51]
Ed O'Donnell
It's a golden opportunity for the police department of New York City to kind of rebrand themselves to New York and to the nation as this great force that will protect the populace from to dangerous classes.
- [33:08]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
The truth is, the mob had laid New York to waste and the police couldn't stop it. But as the carnage unfolded and the body count rose, politicians and New York's business leaders were hiding in their homes, praying the mob wouldn't come crashing through their doors.
- [33:24]
Ed O'Donnell
And many people say, well, I'm still a little leery of the police. I'm still a little leery of their political connections and the corruption, but man, we sure did need them. And we are going to need them.
- [33:33]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Because what they fear even more than the violent and racist mobs of the draft riots is the growing mass of organized, determined, working class New Yorkers. So they said, you know what? Maybe we will be safer if we have more police. And that decision is about to get tested. In 1849, when New Yorkers had rioted about Macbeth, a guy named Abram Doyea led the military regiment that protected the city by, well, by shooting and killing more than 20 people. Then in 1857, after the police riot kicked off citywide fighting, Dauye was there again to restore the peace by shooting people. I could keep going, but you get my point. See, ever since the Astor Place riots, the police had been forced to call in the military to shoot unruly protesters and restore order. And one of the guys that kept getting called is Abram Duray. He's tall and cocky, think Vince Vaughn in uniform with mutton chops. He makes a name for himself in the Civil War, and when he comes back, he trades in his military gear to become a New York City police commissioner. By 1873, he's leading a force that has grown exponentially since the draft riots, and he wants them armed. He reaches out first to the mayor and then to the governor and he says, look, I'm tired of the New York police having to call the military every time they want to put down a mob. Let's create a brigade, kind of like a 19th century SWAT team and let's give them guns. Deray requests that the New York Police should have 800 rifles, 100 revolvers, 150 swords, and most terrifying of all, 10 bugles. Duryea reminds everybody of the draft riots. He says, if we had something like this police brigade back then, we could have saved a million dollars in protective property. He didn't Say they could have saved lives, but, you know, I'm sure he meant that, but New York's governor says, wait, so you want me to sign off on a permanent mini army that's under the control of the mayor? Nah, I don't think so. So der ye. And the police chiefs still go forward with the brigade, but instead of rifles, revolvers and bugles, they're forced to use the same batons they already had. And this new brigade inside the New York police was just in time for another threat. The previous year, a wave of business and bank failures sends America into a depression.
- [36:24]
Daniel Citrom
Imagine you're a working class person. Life was hard in the city. There is no unemployment insurance. There is no Social Security, There is no Medicare. There is no minimum wage. There is no welfare as we know it today.
- [36:39]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Historian Daniel Citrom is an expert on the police in New York during the Gilded Age. And he says that the majority of working people can't afford clothes, rent, or oil to heat their homes. 90,000 people are evicted and cast into the streets.
- [36:54]
Daniel Citrom
And so the question becomes, if you're out of work for six months, if you don't have enough coal for the winter, if you have a fire and you're forced out of your tenement apartment, what the hell are you going to do.
- [37:10]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
In the streets? The police patrol tailors, cigar makers, streetcar drivers, and other working class people start getting ideas in their heads about exactly what is to be done. As the railroad tycoons and oil magnates of New York hobnob with one another and attend glittering balls dressed to the nines, this new wave of poverty makes them terrified about how it could all come crashing down. These elites are seeing a huge uptick in support for organized labor. Local and national unions are formed, and for the first time, you start to see strikes and other radical labor actions on a larger scale. Thousands of working people in New York see a way to stand with each other and change their working conditions and their lives. They see a way to make America live up to what they hoped it would be. But when wealthy New Yorkers see these changes, historian Ed O'Donnell says they thought back to the draft riots. They saw a mob of poor people who wanted blood.
- [38:09]
Ed O'Donnell
That idea of the masses rising up never gets out of the elite mind. In the Gilded Age, it's talked about incessantly. What's going to keep you, allow you to sleep at night is having a large, increasingly heavily armed, eventually professionally trained police force.
- [38:26]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
So New York's business community turns to the police as their enforcers.
- [38:30]
Daniel Citrom
The Chamber of Commerce types, the real estate people, the banking people, the people who own the big theaters and big hotels in the Tenderloin and other neighborhoods. You know, many of them, they worshiped the police department. They thought the cops were the only thing standing between them and anarchy.
- [38:46]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Starving workers. Labor leaders in an organization called the Committee of Safety meet to plan a rally.
- [38:52]
Ed O'Donnell
And their plan is to petition the mayor and the city council to say, please provide us at the very least with a moratorium on evictions, but also some kind of aid so we can feed our families.
- [39:03]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Labor activist Samuel Gompers describes this organizing push as a folk movement of primitive need. This is nothing like the violence and racial terror of the Draft riots. Those riots were led by mobs of racist, pro slavery white people. This rally is a peaceful gathering of working people fighting for their basic human rights. But to those in power, the difference is irrelevant. It's another mob of people that needs to be put down. And Gompers warns something about a marching folk group rouses dread. Those in authority do not rest comfortably. The police chief and other leaders meet at City hall, or what newspaper called a Council of War. On January 13, 1874, over 7,000 people gather in Tompkins Square Park. But unlike during the Draft riots, the police are now well prepared for the crowds. 1600 cops are mobilized between the park and City hall, fully two thirds of the entire force. Mounted squads are at the ready. And at the front of the line is Police Commissioner Abram Duryea with his newly formed Mounted Police brigade, armed with clubs and ready to crack skulls. As the crowd peacefully and passionately demands that the city address their poverty. The police chief orders these horse cops into the fray. And with that shit kicks off.
- [40:36]
Kamau Ware
Out.
- [40:37]
Ed O'Donnell
Of nowhere, mounted policemen and scores of other police on foot just assault the crowd. There's no order to disperse. It's just a full on assault. Cracking heads, stomping people, trampling people.
- [40:51]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
By the afternoon, the park is clear. 46 workers sit in jail, most of them immigrants from Europe. Justice Schwab, a young German anarchist, is attacked and arrested for wearing a red flag around his waist. Another German, a painter named Christian Mayer, is arrested for allegedly attempting to defend himself by striking a police sergeant with a hammer. A newspaper describes it this men tumbled over each other into the gutter. The horsemen beat the air with their batons and many persons were laid low. Commissioner Doyer was thrilled about the nypd. He writes, it was the most glorious sight I ever saw. The way the police broke and drove the crowd. Their order was perfect. As they charged with their clubs uplifted. And with that, the NYPD becomes the national model for what a police force looks like, what it's equipped with, and what it's meant to accomplish.
- [41:49]
Ed O'Donnell
People that are very well known that come out of that, labor activists, labor editors, and so forth, that just say, that was the moment for me. That's when I became fully aware of what they would say. Emerging class conflict or class warfare, that the police are now the instrument of oppressing the working class.
- [42:10]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Over time, the police are armed with even more advanced military equipment, and within 25 years, revolvers become standard issue. And these increasingly militarized police continue to come out in full force to protest. Whether they're against poverty and exploitation, racial discrimination, climate change, or genocidal war, it doesn't matter. When masses of ordinary people take to the streets to fight for the conditions they need to survive America, the NYPD is there to beat them, shoot them, handcuff them, and take them away to maintain order. After a long day, I'm sitting on my daughter's bed with my wife, winding down and reading to her right before I tuck her in. And with no warning, she starts talking about the police. So I quickly grab my phone.
- [43:04]
Enyola
I told you.
- [43:06]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
What did you tell me?
- [43:08]
Enyola
I told you that I don't want to go to jail.
- [43:12]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
I told you that I don't want to go to jail. My heart drops, and fear floods my chest. Enyola's looking me right in the face, waiting for my response. A year ago in Central park, when Enyola had told me that she thought the police keep people safe, I had panicked. I wanted her to understand the parts the police won't tell you. But now that she's directly telling me about her fears of jail, I feel like everything's moving too fast. What made you think about jail?
- [43:46]
Enyola
When we were eating our cookies?
- [43:48]
Henry Highland Garnett
Mm.
- [43:49]
Enyola
You had. You had. You had something on your phone.
- [43:54]
Kamau Ware
What did I have on there?
- [43:56]
Enyola
You. You just had something scary on it, and I didn't like it.
- [44:02]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
Earlier that week, when we thought she wasn't paying attention, Enyola saw us watching a video on my phone of police grabbing and handcuffing protesters.
- [44:10]
Enyola
They were saying, free. Free palazzo. That's what they were saying.
- [44:20]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
What Enyola didn't say explicitly was that she had been saying those same words while she danced right before the police showed up. How did it make you feel?
- [44:31]
Enyola
Sad.
- [44:34]
Chenjerai Kumanyika
At age 4, my daughter's starting to understand that people resisting were the ones that got thrown in jail. I finally get Enyola to bed. But for the rest of that night, I feel the weight of this conversation. As a parent, I always want to protect her. I hold her hand when she's crossing the street. I turn off a violent or explicit scene on the television. But I worry that what I think of as protection might actually be disempowering her, hurting her ability to build the awareness she needs to protect herself. That's the paradox of protection. While she's four, it feels right to protect my daughter's body and mind from the things that can hurt her. But for most of her life, she'll need the agency to navigate those dangers herself. Because when powerful men or the police or politicians say they're doing things to protect our minds and bodies, we would all be wise to ask, what are they really protecting and what are they unleashing? That's next time on Empire City. Follow Empire City on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondry.com survey if you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondry.com tips Empire City is a production of Wondery and Crooked Media. I'm your host and executive producer, Chenjerai Kumanika for Crooked Media. Our senior producer is Peter Bresnan. Our managing producer is Leo Duran. Our senior story editor is Diane Hodson. Our producer is Sam Riddell. Bowen Wong and Sydney Rapp are our associate producers. Sound design Mixing an original score by Axel Cocoutier. Our historical consultant and fact checker is History Studios for Wondry. Our senior producer is Mandy Gorenstein. Our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Our coordinating producer is Mariah Gossett. The executive producer at Push Black is Lily Werkneh. Executive producers at Crooked Media are Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, Tommy Vitor and Diane Hodson. Executive producers at Wondry are n'j'jeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall, Louie and Jen.