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

drop like spittle from the mouths of idiots; but it was newer then and the blood was not dry on us yet from the fight we had been through, and it was, therefore, the harder to believe and accept.
    There were twenty minutes then, and each minute was long and full of hurt, and I stood there waiting and thinking and trying to relate that night to all I had read and heard of Germany, and to tell myself, “This is how it happens, and all over the land people sleep and they don’t know and don’t particularly care. But it happens this way because decent people cannot learn from watching it happen somewhere else, and because the workers are fed the wormy crust of anti-Communism, and because the sell-out is the new god of the land, and because somewhere a great horror is in the making and it is necessary to instill terror, so that we may accept horror as the pattern of our lives.…
    Cars were coming back and forth now, and the hollow was alive with action and with blue uniforms and with gray uniforms, and the fine, jack-booted palace guards of Thomas E. Dewey were strutting all over the place, showing their slim waists and handsome profiles, and there was a conference taking place too among the big brass of the little army which had descended upon us; and then the local Westchester cop, the one with a core of something human left inside of him—a small town cop from a small town nearby—nodded at me, and I went over to him and he whispered,
    â€œIt’s all right now. This guy isn’t going to kick in. In fact, he just got a little bit of a cut in the belly and they don’t know who cut him, so you can stop worrying.”
    I went back and spread the news around and we began to smile a little. There was a sudden change in the attitude of the state troopers; they became courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, just as the book says they are, those fine gray guardians of the law and the people of the sovereign state of New York, and the big brass of them came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, nice and warm and friendly, and said,
    â€œLook, Fast, what we want now is to get your people out of here, and we’re going to get them out so that not a hair on anyone’s head is harmed, and I guess you’ve had a tough night of it, but it’s over now and you can just stop worrying. Now I want you to separate them into groups according to the town or place or resort they came from, and my troopers will drive them home in our own cars.”
    (I wonder what order had come through then? From the murder rap to this, but perhaps Albany began to realize the quantity of the lousy smell arising from that hollow near Peekskill.)
    I did as he said. Our people were tired and worn, but their spirits were not broken. The women were very good and very patient, and the little children began to doze now in the arms of their mothers. The first part of the nightmare of Peekskill was approaching its finish.
    Things moved quickly after that, and we were shown how efficient the state police could be when they had orders to be cooperative and efficient. Car after car was loaded and driven away. In less than an hour the hollow was cleared and the men and women and children who had lived through that first horror of Peekskill were either at home or on their way home.
    At the end a handful of troopers remained, myself, a Negro woman, the wife of an old friend of mine, and two white women. Since they were all three bound for Croton, they had waited for me; and I asked the troopers to stand by until I discovered whether my car was all right.
    It was—and incidentally one of the few cars there that night which was not smashed beyond any hope of repair. We got into the car and drove out. I had to drive slowly since my glasses were gone, but I managed all right, and in a little while the women were home.
    (It is worth noting that as we drove out of the picnic grounds, troopers were beating the underbrush for bodies;