Workers all seek living wages, safe working conditions and affordable health care. When the flag was lowered again moments later, a larger group of angry construction workers broke through the police. The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Hard Hat Riot - YouTube Mayor Lindsay demanded an investigation into the May 8th incident. It was, in my opinion, a seminal moment in Americas culture wars. In a way, Vietnam continues to cast its shadow. When my friends in the anti-war movement called to tell me about the riot later that day, I was stunned. The Kent State shootings further widened the chasm among a citizenry divided over the Vietnam War. NYPD Film Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. Kuhn, who has written before about white working-class Americans, builds his book on long-ago police records and witness statements to recreate in painful detail a May day of rage, menace and blood. Back then, it looked like proof of something John Lindsay, New Yorks mayor, had said earlier that week: The country is virtually on the edge of a spiritual and perhaps even a physical breakdown.. Historians and journalists have debated the meaning of the incident ever since. Kuhn concludes that while the workers plainly came loaded for bear, their tantrum was essentially spontaneous and not, as some believed, part of a grand conspiracy. Some of them even egged on the thuggery. It started around noon when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970. While it is little-remembered today, more than a half-century later, it was a precursor to the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Municipal finances were in tatters. Lets remember what the United States was like in 1970: a country torn apart after years of political assassination, unpopular war, economic dislocation, race rioting and class disharmony. The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Why? Seventy people were injured and only six arrests were made. City Hall/NYPD relations were already strained, just a week earlier, Lindsay had established the Knapp Commission in response to Detective Frank Serpicos tales of widespread police corruption. The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White In 1970, a group of "hard hats" or structural iron workers got into a battle with anti-war student protestors in lower Manhattan. The next day, college students in New York City gathered with nearly 1,000 demonstrators to protest at the United Nations. The workers quickly pushed through a line of mostly indifferent police officers to get to the protesters, charging at, according to the Times, students who closely resembled the stereotypical longhaired hippie that had come to symbolize opposition to the war. They produced a blue-collar rampage whose effects still ripple, not the least of them being Donald Trumps improbable ascension to the presidency. The side-swept hair, straight and trim with delicate bangs, a tidy mustache, pinkish skin. Hardly every antiwar protester merits his go-to characterization of them as potty-mouthed hippies. Can we unite in solidarity, and build a future in which prosperity is widely shared by all? A female secretary reported that as she was beaten for trying to help a student a man said, If you want to be treated like an equal, we'll treat you like one.1. On May 11, a demonstrator shouted at a photographer with long hair. Republicans have since catered as ever to the rich but they have also curried favor with working-class whites, while Democrats seem more focused on others: racial minorities, gays, immigrants. Tells the story of the hardhat riot, which no book has focused on before; Draws from nearly two dozen boxes of NYPD records that were sealed for almost a half-century, effectively buried by city officials until now While not all of the them actively supported the war, they collectively saw themselves as patriots, and they saw antiwar demonstrators who sometimes, if rarely, set fire to the American flag at their protests as anti-American. In 1970, Wall Street was once again a grounds for protests and riots alike. Jefferson Cowie is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University and the author of Stayin Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class., The Hard Hat Riot Was a Preview of Todays Political Divisions, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/nyregion/hard-hat-riot.html, On May 8, 1970, construction workers violently disrupted a peaceful demonstration on Wall Street before marching to City Hall and Pace College. Fearing a disaster, officials raised the flag back to full mast. After Nixons landslide victory Brennan was appointed labor secretary. 1 https://prospect.org/article/then-one-democrat-anymore/, 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20150921181507/http://www.publicopinionpros.norc.org/ features/2006/jun/hugick_supp1p1.asp. The Hard Hat Riot: A Forgotten Flashpoint in America's Culture The workers who attacked them carried American flags and chanted, USA, All the way, and America, love it or leave it. They chased the students through the streets attacking those who looked like hippies with their hard hats and steel-toed boots. Now he was expanding the war, leaving Vietnam through Cambodia as the comedian George Carlin put it. Nixon invited union leaders, some of whom were involved in the riot, to the White House. The economic needs of working Americans dont differ dramatically across racial lines. Some even egged on the thuggery. The NYPD interviewed hundreds of witnesses, protesters, and police. Workers assaulting pedestrians on Broadway, May 8, 1970. The war has made us warlike." Kuhn argues persuasively that the riot sparked a vast national political shift driven by a widening divide between the working class and the educated elite that has. Construction workers on Broadway during the riots, May 8, 1970. Thanks in good measure to white blue-collar disaffection, Trump in 2016 narrowly won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, a hat trick he may yet pull off again in November. In the days after May 4, 1970, the date the Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam War, anti-war activists were galvanized. Give em one for me!. Just before noon, over 200 construction workers and others descended on Federal Hall from four directions, joined by others along the way. "The Hard Hat Riot was the prelude to the divide we now live with in America." David Paul Kuhn. NYPD Intelligence Records, Photograph Files, NYC Municipal Archives. In 1970, hundreds of construction workers pummeled around 1,000 student demonstrators in New York City including two of my friends. NYPD Film Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. They left the World Trade Center, and other . They demanded more support for the war and less coddling of subversives, carrying signs that read God Bless the Establishment and We Love Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, His Wife, and Reagan.. The 'Hard Hat Riot' of 1970 Pitted - Smithsonian Magazine In the wake of the massacre rapidly becoming a national flashpoint, Mayor John Lindsay, who had spoken against the war at the 1968 Republican National Convention, ordered the flag at City Hall flown at half-mast in the Kent State students memory. Flyer incorporating images from the Kent State shootings for an anti-war protest at 43rd and Madison, on May 8, 1970. Until now. Lessons learned from 'hardhat riots' - New York Daily News "Hard Hat Riot:" Union Workers Attack Anti-War Demonstrators in NYC Glory at the Garden: When the Knicks Won it All - Museum of the City of In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story of when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White An economist from the US Labor Department described pleading with police officers to help the students and make arrests. Kuhn ably and amply documents the cowardly beating of women, the gratuitous cold-cocking of men and the storming of a shakily protected City Hall, where the mayors people, to the hard hats rage, had lowered the flag in honor of the Kent State dead. Daley calls for a vote and wins, eight to two.". The construction workers then marched toward a barely-protected City Hall. Oxford University Press. The construction workers carried U.S. flags and chanted USA, all the way, and America, love it or leave it. They chased the students through the streets attacking those who looked like hippies with their hard hats, tools from their workplaces and their steel-toe boots. Author David Paul Kuhn discusses his book, The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution. Mayor Lindsay declared Friday May 8th a day of remembrance and high school and college classes were canceled. However, the 2,000 workmen and their supporters snarled downtown traffic for two hours and several bystanders were punched and kicked.. Seventy people were injured. How the Kent State massacre marked the start of America's polarization Book review of The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of That day, a riot broke out. The jacket and tie. A version of this article appears in print on, The Day the White Working Class Turned Republican, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/books/review/the-hardhat-riot-david-paul-kuhn.html. In the eight days preceding the 1970 riot, President Richard M. Nixon had announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.