Did Columbia U. Press Book Cover-Up Columbia's Impact On 1960s Harlem?

In the 21st-century, some 1960s U.S. history buffs living in the Upper West Side’s West Harlem/Morningside Heights neighborhood, or elsewhere in the USA, often assume that the first anti-racist urban rebellion that erupted in the major U.S. cities of the North and West, during the 1960s, took place in the Watts section of Los Angeles in August 1965.

But as Christopher Hayes notes in the introduction to his interesting and well-researched book, The Harlem Uprising: Segregation and Inequality in Postwar New York City, which Columbia University Press published (with the “generous support” provided by Stephen H. Case) in 2021, on July 18, 1964 “what would be known as the Harlem Riot” began; and “New York’s unrest was the first of the urban uprisings that would come to define the 1960s.”

Two days previously, on July 16, 1964, a white off-duty New York City police officer named Thomas Gilligan had shot and killed a 15-year-old Black high school student named James Powell (who had worked as a 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom youth organizer the previous summer) near a public school building on East 76th Street in Manhattan; and, after July 18, 1964, “for six days, residents of Harlem and then Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn fought police,” according to The Harlem Uprising book.

Despite the title of the Columbia University Press book, readers have to wait until they reach Chapter 6, however, to learn in a more detailed way what exactly happened during the July 1964 Harlem Uprising, which was provoked by the New York City police officer’s killing of James Powell and the brutal way in which protesting Harlem residents were attacked, two days later, by New York City police officers.

In the 100 pages between page 107 and page 207 which contain the text of Chapters 6 to 12 of The Harlem Uprising book, Hayes provides readers with a lot of historical information about what happened during the Harlem urban rebellion in July 1964 which cannot be easily found in such a detailed way in most other 1960s U.S. history books related to this topic. Chapter 6 is titled “A Death and Protests”. Chapter 7 is titled “Daybreak: Sunday, July 19”. Chapter 8 is titled “Spreading Anxiety: Monday, July 20". Chapter 9 is titled “Day Four: Tuesday, July 21". Chapter 10 is titled “Day Five: Wednesday, July 22". Chapter 11 is titled “Day Six: Thursday, July 23". And Chapter 12 is titled “After”.

Hayes does not base his narrative of what happened during the 1964 Harlem Uprising much on what was published at the time by New York City-based anti-racist leftwing group newspapers like the CPUSA’s Worker, the Workers World Party’s Workers World, The Militant of the Socialist Workers Party [SWP] or the Progressive Labor Party [PLP]’s Challenge newspaper.

But the Columbia University Press-published book does, at least, include a one-paragraph reference to the post-July 1964 Harlem Uprising trial , and later imprisonment, of the now-deceased 1960s Harlem Defense Council head and then-Progressive Labor Party Vice-Chair Bill Epton on page 194; which indicates that Epton “was arrested July 25, 1964, and charged under a turn-of-the-century law with `criminal anarchy’” and “despite appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, Epton’s conviction stood and he served one year at the city’s Riker’s Island jail.”

In the initial 107 pages of the Columbia University Press book, the first 5 chapters highlight how the institutionally racist 1945 to 1964 political situation in New York City and the 1945 to 1964 depth of internal New York City Police Department corruption impacted on Harlem residents; and so, in retrospect, it seems historically inevitable that something like the 1964 urban rebellion was going to happen.

And in the 35 pages of the final 2 chapters, the Columbia University Press book describes how-- despite the incidents of New York City police brutality and police rioting that triggered the 1964 Harlem Uprising—the New York City police officers’ PBA union was able to use a 1966 referendum campaign to then block the New York City government from permanently establishing any kind of Civilian Complaint Review Board; which would have examined New York City citizen complaints about being individually brutalized by New York City police officers during the rest of the decade.

Despite Columbia University’s campus being located in the West Harlem/Morningside Heights section of Harlem, however, Columbia University Press’s book about the Harlem Uprising and segregation and inequality in post-war New York City provides its readers with no information about how Columbia University’s real estate policies affected Harlem’s housing situation during the 1950s and 1960s.

Yet as Amherst College Professor Stefan Bradley noted in his 2009-published University of Illinois Press book, Harlem vs. Columbia University (which is not included on the list of books cited in the bibliography of The Harlem Uprising book that Columbia University Press published in 2021):

“…Between 1950 and 1960, the black population in Morningside Heights [a/k/a West Harlem]…grew by 700 percent, from 470 to 3,133…The university attempted to deal with the problem of the ghetto by taking it over before it overran the Morningside Heights [a/k/a West Harlem] campus…A report of the Columbia College Citizenship Council indicated that the university facilitated the displacement of 9,600 people, approximately 85 percent where black or Puerto Rican. In doing so, the university actually reversed the population trend of the 1960s, thus engineering the racial anatomy of the neighborhood…

“…The university began to evict tenants from SROs [Single-Room Occupancy buildings] that it owned. Between 1957 and 1968 Columbia decreased its number of SROs by nearly 70 percent from 466 to 146 units…On January 4, 1965, the City Commission on Human Rights issued a statement that served notice of the city’s awareness of Columbia’s tactics and motivation for removal. It indicated that whether or not the university intended to do so, it was systematically displacing a majority of minority tenants at an alarming rate…”

And as Emily Jane Goodman recalled in her 1972-published book, The Tenant Survival Book, “Columbia and its chain of associated institutions on Morningside Heights…engaged in surreptitious acquisition of multiple dwellings, housing thousands of poor and middle-income families in the neighborhood;” and “it has been estimated that almost 10,000 apartments of all structurally sound, low-rental and rent-controlled housing were systematically demolished over the years to make room for the Columbia complex.”

So, not surprisingly, the now-deceased former Village Voice writer, James Ridgeway, observed in his 1968-published book, The Closed Corporation:

“It would be difficult to find an institution of higher learning in the country so deeply and justly detested as is Columbia University in New York City…Columbia…affords a commanding view of the sprawling slums of Harlem…Columbia is now working secretly and silently through its real estate subsidiaries, driving north deep into Harlem…”

In an October 19, 2023 email, I asked The Harlem Uprising book author, Rutgers University Professor Christopher Hayes, how he would “explain why the Columbia University Press editor of” his “book apparently didn’t suggest to its writer that an historical book related to the housing situation in Harlem during the 1950s and 1960s also include an examination of the impact that Columbia University’s real estate acquisition policies had on Central Harlem and West Harlem/Morningside heights”?

But (as of November 28, 2023) the author of The Harlem Uprising book provided no response to this email query.

So in a November 8, 2023 email, I asked Columbia University Press Editor Philip Leventhal (“whose support, guidance, advice, revising skills, and insights have been invaluable and made this book what it is,” according to The Harlem Uprising book author's acknowledgement section), “why” he “didn’t suggest to the writer of Columbia University Press’s book, The Harlem Uprising, that it include an examination of the impact that Columbia University’s real estate acquisition policies had on Central Harlem and West Harlem/Morningside Height’s housing situation during the 1950s and 1960s?”

But (as of November 28, 2023) the Columbia University Press editor of The Harlem Uprising book provided no response to this email query.