A LOOK BACK INTO  BUFFALO’S HISTORY: THE RIOTS OF 1967

The sixties were a turbulent decade where our nation   saw many changes and challenges to the American psyche, with the Civil Rights Movement in full force, the war in Vietnam, the assassination of leaders, and many race riots defining the decade. Buffalo was the site of one of these race riots which spread throughout the city for several days in late June and early July of 1967. Although it can be argued that the Riots of 1967 were not an actual race riot, the political landscape present in Buffalo created an environment on the East Side which culminates with the breakout of violence and uproar that summer.

The start of the riots can be traced to acts of vandalism pointed at a group of black teenagers who busted car windows and storefronts throughout the William Street and Jefferson Avenue business district on the afternoon of June 27th. Not long after the group of youths started destroying private property, they were joined by other groups of people who continued to destroy whatever they could. As a response to the massive amounts of property damage caused, the Buffalo Police sent in over 150 riot police to quell and put a stop to the disturbance however the presence of so many police officers further enraged and angered the crowds which gathered. After a few hours, through the use of tear gas fired into the rioters, the crowds were quickly dispersed, and three police officers and one fireman were injured.

The next morning, the outbreak of violence, arson, and looting would continue as buildings were set ablaze and broken glass covered the landscape. In the book, City on the Lake: The Challenge of Change in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1990, author Mark Goldman describes the riots through the eyes of Floyd Edwards, the Buffalo Police Department’s first black lieutenant. Of what Edwards saw, Goldman wrote, Edwards had been on the East Side his whole life and had seen all the changes, from the mixed neighborhood that it once was to the black ghetto it had become. Edwards knew it inside and out and wasn’t surprised by the outbreak of violence that June.

The morning after the riots, Edwards was put back in uniform. With a battalion of police officers under his command, he went back onto the streets. The ghetto was still smoldering. Fires still burned at William and Jefferson, Maple and Carlton, and Peckham and Monroe Streets. Plate glass windows all along Broadway and Sycamore had been smashed, and the streets were sprinkled with glass, empty cartons of shotgun shells, tear gas canisters, broken eyeglasses, and bricks. Many of the store windows were boarded up, covered with large pieces of plywood bearing the glowing red and white lettering of the Macaluso Emergency Enclosure Company. Small groups of black teenage boys clustered on the corners, taunting the passing police cars from a distance. As the day wore on the situation grew worse. Beginning at about 4:30 P.M. buses passing through the neighborhood were stoned.

As night fell the gangs grew larger and more menacing, and still more windows were broken (even those store owners, some white, others black, who had written “Soul Brother” on their windows were not spared). — to be continued.