July 26, 1964 - Widespread rioting and looting by Negroes broke out in Rochester, N.Y., last night for the second time in 24 hours. One white man was killed, and a number of people were injured.
The rioting, in defiance of a dawn-to-dusk curfew ordered at 1:30 p.m., started anew in a neighborhood about a mile and a half from the scene of the earlier disorder, which rolled on for 10 hours before police restored order in mid-morning. Fifty white families were evacuated from a biracial neighborhood last night.
At City Manager Porter Homer’s request, the State Liquor Authority at 5 p.m. ordered a 24-hour ban on all liquor, beer, and wine sales in Rochester and nine surrounding towns.
The first fatality in the Rochester disorders came near the Clarissa-Atkinson Street intersection at around 10 p.m., when Judson Brayar, a white man in his 50s, was killed in a chain-reaction sequence.
Residents said several youths were pitching rocks through a grocery store window when Brayar suddenly appeared. He said nothing but stared at the youths. One of the rock-hurdlers walked over and began punching him, knocking him unconscious to the street.
A Negro resident rushed to the spot to flat away passing cars. One car did veer and miss the prostrate victim, but a second car close behind struck and dragged Brayar some 100 feet. The driver, apparently panic-stricken by the mob, fled. Brayar was dead on arrival at Genessee Hospital.
More than 100 state policemen wearing steel helmets tear-gassed hundreds of rioters. The entire 2,574-man state police force was put on emergency alert.
Police said the Negroes were firing shotguns and pistols in the air and hurling bricks and bottles.
Looting spread into white and other integrated neighborhoods. Merchandise was taken away in cars. Objects too heavy to carry were destroyed.
Some merchants used guns to defend their stores. In the Central Park section, a white jeweler fired five shots at looters. He did not know if they had been struck. Generally, however, white residents were not fighting Negroes.
The few Negro-owned establishments were spared, as were a Black Muslim mosque and the local headquarters of the Congress of Racial Equality.
One Negro, David Teasdale, was reported to have been taken to a hospital with a bullet wound in the head. A city patrolman, Gaylord Louth, was seriously injured when he was struck on the head.
At a clothing store called Itkin’s, stripped mannequins lay in grotesque positions.
Potato chips, crushed cigars, watermelon rinds, and shoes were strewn on the street around heaps of glass.
“The people are mad, mad, mad,” said a Negro man who refused to give his name.
“What you see here is going to look like a Sunday school picnic after tonight. There are two sets of law, one for white and one for black. We just took enough of it. Police brutality, that’s the name for it.”
Another Negro expressed disgust with the rioting: “I don’t think it’s helped the cause at all,” he said.
A third Negro man said too much blame had been placed on Negroes. A group of Italian-American youths had tormented Negroes and increased the neighborhood’s hysteria, he said.
By midnight, the city jail was overflowing, and incoming prisoners were taken to the Monroe Count Penitentiary.
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