Few Americans today know concerning the events that took place 75 years ago within the small Hudson Valley community of Peekskill, New York. Riots broke out at a folk concert This marked a major turning point within the post-war political landscape.
The rebellion sharpened dividing lines and increased the danger of the approaching anti-communist “Red Scare” that might dominate the political climate of the Nineteen Fifties and beyond.
It also showed how the destructive power of hatred can gain legitimacy in times of political unrest.
We can see similarities to our own times, for instance within the rebellion on the US Capitol, when a mob committed seemingly senseless acts of violence. We also hear echoes of Peekskill within the political rhetoric of Donald Trump and his supporters, especially in his Language from the Cold War era and its seemingly anachronistic Attacks on Communism and Marxism.
I do know something concerning the Peekskill event, partly because I a historian who studied that period. But I also understand it because my mother, an aspiring singer and member of the American Communist Party, was attacked there.
Increased anti-communist fear
Originally planned for August 27, 1949, the concert was a profit for the Harlem branch of the Civil Rights Congressa company that historically campaigned against racism within the criminal justice system and was linked to the US communists.
Although the Communist Party of the USA once had some influence, its membership and influence have been declining because the end of World War II. This was the results of internal power struggles in addition to increasing attacks by American lawmakers. The attacks included a Prosecution in 1949 against several leaders of the Communist Party. This resulted in guilty verdicts and prison sentences for all eleven defendants.
Although the U.S. Communist Party was in decline, fears of the worldwide strength of communism were growing. Faced with mounting concerns a few growing Soviet nuclear threat, an impending communist victory in China, and fears of spies and subversives on American soil, American politicians vied to outdo their opponents of their anti-communist zeal.
Many saw the reach of this global communist system embodied within the figure of Paul Robesona singer, actor and one of the vital significant artists of the mid-Twentieth century who was the fundamental attraction of the event in Peekskill.
In the Thirties and '40s, Robeson became a vocal advocate for racial equality. After World War II, he began to talk out against the increasingly belligerent language of American leaders toward the Soviet Union. Robeson ceaselessly traveled to the us and likewise expressed sympathy for the Soviet system. He was accused of being a communist, but was never an official party member.
AP Photo
Because of those sympathies, he increasingly finds himself within the crosshairs of the growing hysteria of the Cold War.
Although Robeson had previously performed within the Peekskill area without incident, the political terrain had shifted by 1949. When Robeson's planned appearance on the concert was announced, national anti-communist hysteria found a neighborhood outlet. It turned what must have been a comparatively quiet musical event right into a indignant confrontation between Robeson supporters and native veterans, businessmen, American Legionnaires and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
At the time, a big selection of hatreds – anti-Semitic, anti-left, anti-black – managed to cover under the ever-widening cloak of anti-communism. Hundreds of protesters gathered on August 27 to stop Robeson from performing, hurling anti-Semitic and racist epithets and physically attacking concertgoers.
“Every n***a bastard dies here tonight!” Author Howard Fast was reported as one in every of the threats of the mob that day. Almost the master of ceremonies of the concert“Every Jewish bastard dies here tonight!”
My mother was amongst those attacked. She was sexually abused by a gang of men in a distant corner of the concert area.
The concert on August 27 never took place.
Undaunted, Robeson returned to Peekskill the next week. He continued to be the fundamental attraction, but quite a few artists also took the stage as a show of support against the previous week's attacks.
My mother was there to open the event — in front of nearly 20,000 people — by singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” Robeson sang several spirituals and his own defiant rendition of “Ol' Man River.”
After the concert, several thousand anti-Robeson protesters managed to terrorize concertgoers and artists, including lots of the same thugs who had forced the cancellation of the event the previous week.
They threw rocks and stones at departing vehicles, including the bus my mother had taken from New York City, and dragged passengers, especially black participants, from cars and buses and abused them. Eugene Bullarda black war hero from each world wars, was brutally attacked by a mob that included local police.
Old hatred gains latest legitimacy
In the aftermath, law enforcement, politicians, and commentators ignored the various hatreds that had driven the Peekskill mob; they saw only the ghostly specter of communism.
Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York, emphasized: “Communist groups obviously provoked this incident.”
A subsequent grand jury investigation concluded that the violence was “fundamentally neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Negro in nature,” Author Martin Duberman writes in his book about Paul Robeson.
In an evaluation published a 12 months later by the Jewish magazine Commentary, the authors agreed with this view.
“Neither anti-Semitism nor fascism” provoked the anger, They wroteand added that the blame clearly lies with the “communist virus.”
The authors of the commentary claimed that the “horror stories” concerning the “stripping and mistreatment” of girls could hardly be considered credible, as they were actually the stuff of communist propaganda.
I knew from my mother's story that this was a lie.
Peekskill's legacy
Although Anti-communist fighter Senator Joseph McCarthy Although his national debut was still ahead of him, Peekskill was already making it clear that the central focus of American policy can be to contain the communist threat, no matter how harmless the Communist Party of the United States had grow to be.
Moreover, the anti-communist crusade gave latest legitimacy to old hatreds. Under the guise of the fight against the Reds, anti-Semitism, anti-black racism, and a general hostility to progressive causes were capable of flourish.
My father, who helped organize the Peekskill concert, received a letter of thanks from the local Ku Klux Klan for his assist in recruiting latest members. “You see,” wrote the Klan secretary, “the people of Westchester County don't care about Negroes anyway, and when it comes to red Negroes, that's the limit.”
Today, the language of hate that has grow to be a part of the political vocabulary of many Americans doesn’t all the time sound just like the words of the Ku Klux Klan in 1949. Sometimes, nevertheless, there are surprising echoes, especially when Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene labels her democratic opponents “Communists” and “Marxists”.”
Obviously a job model for his mentor Roy Cohna person who helped fuel the Red Scare of the Peekskill era, Trump uses the specter of communism as a method of compressing any progressive reform into what writer Richard Seymour calls “single treacherous, devilish enemy.”
But there’s also a more hopeful echo coming from Peekskill: a commitment to protest music, to songs with which individuals can stand together against a culture that promotes oppression and discrimination.
image credit : theconversation.com