Remembering Peekskill

http://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/06/peekskill-riots-woody-guthrie-paul-robeson-anticommunism
Date Written:  2017-06-22
Publisher:  Jacobin
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21102

The Peekskill Riots in 1949 remind us of a period of postwar rebellion and reaction that set the stage for the rest of the century.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt: With the help of police, the counter-protesters maimed more than a hundred concertgoers. The violence extended back into the city. By many accounts, the riot followed buses returning home, and reactionaries threw rocks through windows "clear down to 210th Street and Broadway."

The Peekskill Riots tell the story of postwar reaction. They document the conservative impulse and structural readjustment programs that blocked the American left’s ability to establish a social-democratic United States following World War II, but they also tell the story of resistance to homegrown fascism: a resistance the reemerged in the 1960s and is rising again today.