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New York Mayor Makes Televised Remarks on Riots

July 23, 1964 - New York Mayor Robert Wagner made a fervent appeal by television and radio last night for law and order in Harlem and elsewhere in the city.

“Law and order are the Negro’s best friend — make no mistake about that,” the Mayor declared. “The opposite of law and order is mob rule, the way of the Ku Klux Klan and the lynch mob.”

He warned that continued disorders could set back Negro and civil rights programs half a century.

The Mayor set forth a general program calling, among other things, for restraint on police power, greater contacts with the city’s minority groups, and stepped-up efforts against poverty.

Jobless and hopeless youths, he said, are “the loose gunpowder of our time.”

In what could be taken as a warning to extremists, he said: “We will not be browbeaten by prophets of despair, or by peddlers of hate, or by those who thrive on continued frustration.”

He reported that President Johnson had called him yesterday morning and authorized him to state that the assignment in New York City of FBI agents was “solely to assist, support, and supplement what we are already doing in the way of meeting the threats to law and order.”

And in a cryptic reference, the Mayor said that J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, had supplied Police Commissioner Michael Murphy “with certain information which is of greatest interest and use.”

This was as close as the Mayor came in his address to alluding to Council President Paul Screvane’s assertion that Harlem disorders had been incited by Communists and other “fringe groups.” Mr. Screvane was Acting Mayor while Mr. Wagner was in Europe.

The Mayor reported he had gone along Lenox, Seventh, and Eighth Avenues between West 135th and 110th Streets. He said he had seen “boarded-up windows,” “itinerant gangs,” frightened residents at windows, “some of the debris of battle,” and young toughs with crash helmets and walkie-talkie radios.

“I am convinced,” he declared, “that the overwhelming majority of those who live in the Harlem community neither participated in nor appreciated the violence and disorder.”

In a brief press conference after his telecast, the Mayor was asked if he had evidence that Communists, other leftists, and right-wing groups might have been involved in the riots.

“We have some evidence of that,” the Mayor said. “We’ll reveal it at the proper time. At present, it’s a matter between Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, Police Commissioner Murphy, and myself.”

The Police Department said that in four days of disorders in Harlem, one man had been killed, 81 civilians and 35 policemen had been injured, 185 persons had been arrested, and 112 business establishments had been damaged.

In two days of disorders in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, three civilians and two policemen had been injured, 185 persons had been arrested, and 112 business establishments had been damaged.


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