Twenty Years After the Riot, Crown Heights’ Blacks and Jews Have Built a Network of Relationships

Home Brooklyn Life Twenty Years After the Riot, Crown Heights’ Blacks and Jews Have Built a Network of Relationships
A fence surrounds the sidewalk where Gavin Cato was fatally struck and killed in 1991. (Photo by Gillian Mohney)

On a rainy May afternoon in 2008, more than 300 Hasidic residents of Crown Heights marched down Eastern Parkway, blocking traffic along the main thoroughfare into the neighborhood. Carrying signs that read “Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap” and “N.Y.P.D. Ignoring our Community,” the protesters were out expressing their anger at the recent robbery and assault of 16-year-old Alon Sherman by two African-American teenagers.

 

Compounding their anger was a decision by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. In another recent incident, Hynes had decided to convene a grand jury to investigate the alleged assault of Andrew Charles, a 20-year-old African-American college student, by a member of the local Jewish patrol Shmira.

 

Seventeen years after the Crown Heights riots, violence appeared to once again be flaring up between the Jewish and African-American communities. The New York Times reported a case of African-American children throwing rocks at a yeshiva’s school bus. By late May of 2008 the Times reported that the Crown Heights neighborhood was “simmering” with racial tension.

 

Raising the tension yet another notch, a month later an arrest warrant was issued for Yitzak Shuchat for allegedly assaulting Charles. By that time, the 26-year-old Shuchat had departed the country, leaving a racially charged situation unresolved just as the summer rolled in. But even as the temperature rose in Crown Heights, violence did not. The great fear—a recurrence of rioting—never came about.

 

What was not covered in the reporting of the Andrew Charles and Alon Sherman incidents was the change in how community leaders responded to these potentially flammable events. In the years since Crown Heights was violently divided along racial lines during the 1991 riots, community leaders from Jewish, African-American, Caribbean-American groups had worked together to maintain an open discourse between previously separated communities.

 

The process has continued right up to this week’s 20th anniversary of the disturbances, which is being marked in part by joint social, recreational and educational events aimed at demonstrating the peaceful coexistence of Crown Height’s varied residents.

 

In the immediate aftermath of the riots, a host of programs were set up to bring together Jews and African-Americans, and as the community evolved so did the programs. Projects as varied as inter-faith basketball tournaments, a Crown Heights oral history project, and a cookbook featuring recipes by local residents have all been a part of opening a dialogue among ordinary residents in a formerly fractured neighborhood.

 

At the Crown Heights Mediation Center, prints from their Crown Heights is Cookin' Cookbook adorn the walls. (Photo by Gillian Mohney)

A culmination of these efforts can be seen in the Crown Heights Leadership Council, in which leaders from different city, religious, and non-profit groups meet regularly to discuss neighborhood issues. These community leaders have made it a priority to have access and communication with one another to avoid the spread of misinformation, which helped to exacerbate the riots. As City Council member Letitia James recently said, “We want to be on the ground in the community and be the eyes and ears. We’re first responders.”

 

The council has its roots in the tensions of 2008. Following the Charles assault, a group of 15 influential community members, including elected representatives and religious leaders, held a conference call with officials from the two police precincts that cover the Crown Heights area. The conference call was organized by the Project CARE initiative, a precursor to the Crown Heights Leadership Council. The phone call was a simple but necessary device, which allowed community leaders on both sides of the racial and religious line to get the same information and discuss any doubts or issues among themselves before going to the public.

 

This ability to communicate and cross-reference facts with one another was missing in 1991. While violence cannot be predicted and hate crimes cannot always be stopped, the residents and community leaders of Crown Heights continue to work to create a framework that halts the escalation of violence.

 

Two decades after the riots, the sunny corner where the violence initially sparked looks indistinguishable from any other on Utica Avenue. A bicycle is chained near the corner where Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old Guyanese child, was riding his own bicycle in 1991 when he was struck and killed by a car from the motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidim. After the attending Jewish Hatzalah ambulance was ordered to care for the Jewish driver first, violence erupted at the site of the accident. A few hours later Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew visiting from Australia, was stabbed by a group of African-American youths as they reportedly yelled, “Let’s get the Jew!” Rosenbaum died hours later from his wounds. For the next two days and nights, Crown Heights became a symbol of racial strife with more than 180 people suffering injuries and dozens of homes and businesses suffering damage.

 

One of the first community responses to the riots was meetings between African-American and Jewish youths organized by Richard Green of the Crown Heights Youth Collective and David “Dr. Laz” Lazerson, a liaison for the Jewish community appointed by the Crown Heights National Committee. The goal of these initial meetings was simply to get the Jewish and African-American youth talking.

 

“What struck me was how little we knew about each other,” Lazerson recalled recently. “Back then, we were two ships passing in the night.” In the tense months after the riot, Lazerson said, these initial meetings and subsequent inter-faith basketball games were necessary “door openers” for more substantial change.

 

One of the most famous programs to come out of the riots was Mothers-To-Mothers, which ended shortly after the ten-year anniversary of the riots. In that program, more than 20 mothers from Jewish, African-American and Caribbean-American backgrounds met to discuss their concerns regarding the neighborhood.

 

For Ife Charles, a participant of Mothers-to-Mothers and now the deputy director of the Crown Heights Mediation Center, the end of Mothers-to-Mothers did not signify a failing in community relations but rather an evolution of the community past the initial trauma of the riots.  “I call it that rehabilitation period for us,” said Charles. “I think we’re at a place where we didn’t need to be at that rehabilitation process anymore. It did its part.”

 

Charles emphasizes that in the complex and ever-changing neighborhood of Crown Heights, programs like Mother-to-Mothers are not always a picture perfect ending to a violent story, but a means of starting on the road to better communication. “We just want to live in a community where we can get along,” said Charles. “We don’t have to be friends, but co-exist and respect each other.”

 

While Mothers-to-Mothers and other early programs focused on getting ordinary Crown Heights residents to interact with one another, the creation of Project CARE in 1998, helped to formalize relations between the different religious and elected officials of Crown Heights.

 

The need for open communication between leaders and a clear dissemination of information was a key lesson learned the riots. Rebbe Schneerson, the late leader of the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Crown Heights, did not publicly speak or acknowledge the death of Gavin Cato or the ensuing riot directly. Members of the African-American community took his silence as a slight. During the three violent days in 1991, virulent rumors took hold in the community including rumors that the Jewish driver was drunk, that the attending ambulance had ignored Cato, and that rioters were bused in from elsewhere. These rumors, all unfounded, not only aggravated the violence in 1991 but are still occasionally repeated by residents in the area today.

 

With the creation of Project CARE, dozens of Crown Heights community leaders were able to have a forum in which to sit and discuss issues within the community. The original members included officials from the Crown Heights Jewish Community Center, the Crown Heights Mediation Center, the Crown Heights Youth Collective, and representatives from the two community boards that encompass the area.

 

This forum allowed community leaders the ability to sidestep rumors during the Charles and Sherman incidents in 2008. By conducting a conference call with the police department, the 15 Crown Heights community leaders were able to be sources of information and clarification among their individual constituents in Crown Heights. City Council member Letitia James says these calls allowed leaders to “share information and separate fact from fiction,” to “ “stop the rumor mill.” Ten days after the assault, members of Project CARE held a press conference to urge calm.  Among the participants were State Senator Eric Adams, Tzvi Lang, the chairman of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, and Councilmember James.

 

In addition to the coordinated response, members of Project CARE were able to respond on their own. James held a press conference with Borough President Marty Markowitz to call for unity. The National Public Radio show, News and Notes, had a joint interview with Richard Green, co-founder of Project Care and founder of the Crown Heights Youth Collective, and Yossi Stern, the head of the Shmira patrol. The debate between Green and Stern did not show a completely unified front, but did allow Green and Stern to voice concerns and argue civilly before committing to needing to work together as a community. “Now, there’s a willingness on the part of the community now to get this thing out in the open, have emotions,” said Green on News and Notes. “And then move on to better things that we want to do.”

 

As the initial threat of violence passed in the summer of 2008, Project CARE evolved into the Crown Heights Leadership Council. Led by the Crown Heights Jewish Community Center and the Crown Heights Mediation Center, the council’s first large scale project is coordinating a “Summer of Celebration” in preparation of the 20th anniversary of the Crown Heights riots. Along with leaders from the Jewish and African-American communities, representatives for local officials and the local precincts attend every meeting. This summer the council has organized block parties, outdoor concerts, dance festivals and even nutritional seminars.

 

While the council’s current projects are not as polarizing as managing the fallout of the Charles and Sherman incidents, its monthly meetings show a determined effort at unity. In meeting notes, everything from talking points to community outreach is discussed in order to make sure members are on the same page.

 

In an email, Richard Green, an honoree at the council’s reception for the 20th anniversary for the riots, summed up his neighborhood by quoting a phrase by a police commander. “In this neighborhood are Blacks, Blues and Jews,” wrote Green. “Each sharing with the other to strive for the best so we all can emerge and spend a peaceful quiet time with our friends and loved ones.”

 

 

 

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