July 20, 1964 - Violence broke out in Harlem for the second time within 24 hours last night, and at least 19 persons were injured.
Groups of Negroes roamed through the streets, attacking newsmen and others. Negroes standing on tenement roofs showered policemen in steel helmets with bottles and bricks, and the police answered by firing warning shots over the attackers’ heads.
The new disturbances, which ended early today, were less severe and less widespread than the racial rioting and looting Saturday night and early yesterday during which a Negro man was killed, and more than 100 persons were injured.
Early today, James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), said he was attempting to reach Governor Rockefeller to discuss the possibility of having the National Guard sent into Harlem. Rockefeller, vacationing in Wyoming, was unavailable.
The state troops are needed “to protect the people of Harlem” because the Police Department is not doing so, the CORE leader said.
Farmer had previously charged that patrolmen were firing indiscriminately into crowds, but a high police official denied this and accused Farmer of making “irresponsible, inciting, and dangerous statements.”
Last night’s trouble, like that of the night before, grew out of the death of a 15-year-old Negro, James Powell, who was shot in Yorkville Thursday by a white police officer, Lieut. James Gilligan.
The boy’s funeral was held last night at the Levy and Delany Funeral Home, at 2250 Seventh Avenue, near 132nd Street. More than 1,000 persons were outside when the services began at 8 p.m., in addition to about 150 who were inside.
Just before the funeral began, bottles began crashing to the street. Suddenly there were shrieks from the corner of Seventh Avenue and 132nd Street, and patrolmen, waving nightsticks, charged into crowds that were pouring from behind barricades.
The crowd broke up when shots were fired into the air. Three busloads of specially trained anti-riot policemen drew up and helped put down the outburst, but not before one man was knocked to the ground.
At the same time, more than 100 young Negroes, many carrying heavy pieces of lumber, were stopped as they crossed Seventh Avenue at 132nd Street. After one of the group had thrown a bottle that hit a Negro police sergeant, the group fled.
A New York Times photographer, John Orris, was attacked by a group of Negroes and punched in the eye. Patrolmen standing nearby dispersed the group by firing five or six shots over their heads.
In similar incidents, Robert E. Daley, a cameraman for CBS, was badly beaten, and Tuck Stadler, a reporter for radio station WINS, was burned by a lighted cigarette ground into the back of his neck.
Later, three persons were wounded by gunfire and three policemen were injured in fighting at 129th Street and Lenox Avenue. The pattern was the case that prevailed much of the night: missiles and gasoline-filled bottles thrown at the police, with shots returned.
Of the 19 persons reported injured, seven were treated for gunshot wounds at two Harlem municipal hospitals. Seven of those hurt were policemen.
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