No large riot, and why that is the story
New York City did not suffer a large riot in 1967. There were tense nights and some localised disturbances, notably in East Harlem in July, but they were brief and did not produce the deaths, burned blocks or troop deployments seen in Newark and Detroit. The person most often credited with this outcome is the city’s mayor, John Lindsay. How much credit he deserves is debated, and it is worth looking at both what he did and what other factors may have mattered.
A new kind of mayor
Lindsay was a tall, photogenic Republican congressman from Manhattan’s affluent “Silk Stocking” district who ran for mayor in 1965 on a fusion ticket with the Liberal Party. He won in November and took office on 1 January 1966. Within hours of his swearing-in, the city’s transit workers went on strike, and the strike shut down the subway and buses for twelve days in freezing weather. It was a difficult start, and the strike left him with a lasting reputation, among some New Yorkers, as an aloof figure.
His style, though, was unusual for a big-city mayor of the time. He presented himself as a reformer who wanted to modernise a rigid city bureaucracy, and he surrounded himself with young aides and academics. He took a strong interest in the city’s poorer neighbourhoods and he cultivated contacts with Black and Puerto Rican leaders, including some in groups that older politicians had overlooked.
The street-level approach
The best-known part of Lindsay’s approach was personal presence. During hot weather, he would go into the streets of Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, the South Bronx and other areas, often in shirtsleeves and often with only a few staff, to listen to residents and to be seen. If a crowd formed, he was prepared to stand in it. Photographs of him walking through crowds of young men on summer nights became part of the image of the era.
Behind the visible gestures was a structure meant to give those gestures substance. His administration set up neighbourhood-based offices, which became known as Urban Action Task Forces, to bring city services and complaints directly to local officials. It expanded summer recreation and job programmes, supported partly by federal War on Poverty funds, and opened more pools and playgrounds. The police department was told to avoid heavy-handed tactics when crowds gathered, and officials tried to keep communication open with community leaders during incidents.
East Harlem, July 1967
In July 1967, in the same weeks as the Newark and Detroit violence, trouble broke out in East Harlem, the largely Puerto Rican and Black area of upper Manhattan. Accounts agree that there were crowds, thrown bottles and stones and some looting over parts of several nights, with a number of arrests, but exact details are less certain. What is reported is that the mayor and senior aides went to the area, spoke to residents and local leaders, and that the disturbance died down without a larger outbreak.
Lindsay’s team treated this as a test of their approach. Soon afterwards, President Johnson appointed him vice chairman of the Kerner Commission, which was set up on 27 July 1967 to investigate the causes of the riots.
Credit and criticism
Supporters argue that the combination of presence, programmes and restraint helped New York avoid worse. Critics offer several counterpoints:
- It is hard to prove a negative. Many cities with sympathetic mayors still had riots; Detroit’s Jerome Cavanagh had been widely admired as a progressive.
- Some police officers and their union felt the mayor was undermining them, and the relationship between City Hall and the department was often strained.
- Some residents saw the walks as symbolic politics that did little to change housing, policing or jobs.
- Lindsay was also lucky in the timing and the weather, as the most dangerous nights of 1967 happened to fall elsewhere.
The evidence is therefore not conclusive either way. A reasonable view is that his approach probably helped, alongside other factors, without being a guarantee.
Afterwards
His reputation was tested again in April 1968, after the King assassination. While riots hit Washington, Baltimore, Chicago and other cities, Lindsay went to Harlem within hours of the news, walked the streets and spoke to crowds. New York had some looting and disorder but nothing on the scale of those cities. That night is often cited alongside 1967 as the high point of his time as mayor.
He later faced worsening financial problems, a bitter school conflict and a sanitation strike in 1968, and he changed parties in 1971. Historians often rate his legacy as mixed, with praise for his race relations and criticism of his handling of budgets and labour disputes. On the narrow question of 1967, however, the record shows a city that came through a very hot summer without a major riot, and a mayor who made his presence on its streets a principle of governing.