Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online

get through, and we’ll get your men to the hospital.”
    So I turned back to our line and said, “Look—we can take three of the worst hurt of you to the hospital. It’s all right, and there’s nothing to worry about. So if you think you’re hurt pretty bad, step forward.”
    At first no one of them moved. They stayed where they were, looking silently at these three dapper, composed gentlemen. The first to break it was a young Negro. He let go of the men alongside of him and walked over to me. “What the hell,” he said softly, swaying from side to side. There was blood over his face and the whole front of his shirt was soaked with blood. He bent his head and there were two cuts on the top, one a gash from forehead to ear, the other about two inches long. I nodded, and they helped him into their car.
    A second Negro came forward now. He lifted his swollen, bleeding lip to show me the smashed, gaping cavity in his mouth. I nodded again and he joined the first man in the car. The third was a white youngster; there was something wrong with his shoulder. “I think it’s broken,” he said.
    The three Justice men got back into the car, swung it around and drove off, and once again we were in the quiet darkness. I went back to the line and stood next to the others, wondering how men with broken shoulders and broken heads could go on fighting the way they had and not complain at all.
    Now three more of the army flares went off, arching into the sky and filling it with white light, and then settling lazily down to earth. (I learned later from J—— N——, who passed by on the road up above at just about this time, but who did not know that we were down in the hollow, that the state troopers were using the flares to search the underbrush for bodies.)
    None of that light reached us. Still in the darkness, we waited the minutes through, one after another; and then suddenly the silent scene in the hollow erupted into action and motion.
    First an ambulance which came roaring down into the hollow, siren wide open and red headlights throwing a ghostly glare. Then car after car full of troopers and Westchester County police. All in a moment there were a dozen cars on the meadow in front of us, and the place was swarming with troopers and police.…
    Properly, that should have been the end of it. Not that the police had come dashing to the rescue in the traditional “Jack Dalton” fashion; quite the contrary. We learned subsequently—and beyond any shadow of a doubt—that the police and troopers had been aware of the events at the picnic grounds for hours and had been in easy reach, but had been deliberately withheld so that the tragedy might run its course, and only when it became fully evident that the carefully-planned mass lynching would be frustrated, did they decide to enter the picture; yet in spite of this we considered that now there would be some surcease, some letup.
    Not yet; one more chapter in that night of horror had to be played through, and it began with an officer of the troopers who stalked up to us and demanded,
    â€œWho in hell is running this show?”
    â€œIt’s over,” I said to myself. “They talk like that because that’s a cop’s nature, but it’s over.” And then I told him that he could talk to me.
    â€œWho in hell are you?”
    â€œMy name’s Fast—Howard Fast,” I answered, gritting my teeth. Now the line had broken; our discipline broke for the first time that evening, and the people crowded around the trooper and me —and then they were thrust back by other troopers, and the one who was speaking to me snarled,
    â€œDamn it, keep them in their places, sitting down!”
    â€œSit down!” another trooper shouted. “All of you, sit down. Nobody moves!”
    â€œWhat’s this all about?” I asked the trooper officer. “Are you going to take us out of