July 30, 1964 - New York Mayor Robert Wagner and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wound up three days of talks at Gracie Mansion today, apparently without agreement on two major issues in the current racial unrest.
Again and again in the closed-door parleys, Dr. King pressed the demand of local Negro leaders for a civilian review board to investigate charges of police brutality and for suspension of Police Lieut. Thomas Gilligan.
It was Gilligan’s fatal shooting of James Powell, 15, a Negro schoolboy, on July 16, that touched off five days of rioting in Harlem and Brooklyn.
Meeting the press in the late afternoon, Dr. King issued a statement which made no mention of a concession on either point. The statement did attack Police Commissioner Michael Murphy. Wagner did not talk with newsmen.
Dr. King made this barbed comment: “I came to see that Police Commissioner Murphy is utterly unresponsive to either the demands or the aspirations of the Negro people. He is intransigent and has little understanding of the urgency of the situation. If he had, he would have suspended Lt. Gilligan at once and would not have obstructed establishment of a public review board to investigate charges of police brutality.”
Whatever had happened in New York City, said Dr. King, could happen in other cities, since New York City was the “capital of the Negro protest movement.”
It was Dr. King’s hope that Wagner would hold around-the-clock talks with local Negros on specific problems.
Dr. King said the major problem of the Negro people was essentially an economic one. He urged “people of good will” to register and vote, and to use their political power to remove the causes of frustration among Negroes.
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