| Hard Hat Riot | |
|---|---|
| Part of thestudent strike of 1970 | |
 Hard hats on cabinet table after Nixon meeting with and supporting construction trades group less than three weeks after the New York City Hard Hat Riot | |
| Location | New York City Hall,New York,New York, US |
| Date | May 8, 1970; 55 years ago (1970-05-08) 11:55 a.m. (Eastern Time Zone) |
| Deaths | 0 |
| Injured | 100+ |
| Perpetrators | NYC union trade/construction workers |
TheHard Hat Riot occurred inNew York City on May 8, 1970, when around 400construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with thestudent strike of 1970. The students were protesting the May 4Kent State shootings and theVietnam War, following the April 30 announcement byPresidentRichard Nixon of theUS invasion of neutral Cambodia. Some construction workers carried US flags and chanted "USA all the way" and "America, love it or leave it". Anti-war protesters shouted "Peace now".
The riot, first breaking out near the intersection ofWall Street andBroad Street inLower Manhattan, led to a mob scene with more than 20,000 people in the streets, eventually leading to a siege ofNew York City Hall, an attack on theconservativePace University and lasted more than three hours. Around 100 people, including seven policemen, were injured on what became known asBloody Friday. Six people were arrested, but only one of them was a construction worker associated with the rioters.[1][2][3][4] Nixon invited the hardhat leaders toWashington, D.C., and accepted a hardhat from them.
On May 4, 1970,thirteen students were shot, four of them fatally, atKent State University inOhio byNational Guardsmen as they demonstrated against theUS involvement in the Vietnam War andUS incursions into neutral Cambodia. One of the dead was Jeffrey Glenn Miller, who was from aNew York City suburb onLong Island, which led to funeral proceedings inManhattan and Long Island and in turn helped fuel local activism. In the days before the riot, there were anti-war protests onWall Street and smaller clashes between construction workers and anti-war demonstrators. As a show of sympathy for the dead students,New York MayorJohn Lindsay, aRepublican, ordered all flags atNew York City Hall to be flown athalf-staff on May 8, the day of the riot.[5][6]
The USlabor movement was deeply divided over support forPresidentRichard Nixon's war policy.AFL–CIO presidentGeorge Meany and most US labor leaders were vehementlyanti-communist and thus strongly supported military involvement inSoutheast Asia.Peter J. Brennan, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, was a strong supporter of Nixon's policy ofVietnamization and ending US involvement in the war.[7] He was also president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York, the statewide umbrella group for constructionunions, and the vice president of the New York City Central Labor Council and the New York State AFL–CIO, umbrella groups for all labor unions in these respective areas.[8][9] Brennan was a registeredDemocrat who had lobbied strongly for that party through the 1950s and 1960s, but increasingly supported Republican candidates as support for skilled labor unions decreased.[8]
New York City's building and construction unions were overwhelmingly white,Catholic,blue-collar and male. Although blue-collar whites were not generally more pro-war than upscale whites, the anti-war movement was particularly unpopular among blue collar whites.[10] According toDavid Paul Kuhn, in response toflag desecration within the anti-war movement and perceived rejection of returning veterans, a disproportionate majority of whom were blue-collar, blue-collar whites came to oppose the anti-war demonstrators, who tended to be college-educated, a group which were disproportionately non-veterans.[11]
At 7:30 a.m. on May 8, several-hundred anti-war protesters, mostly college students, began picketing theNew York Stock Exchange, and later held a protest and memorial atFederal Hall for the four dead students at Kent State. By late morning, after some high school students, teachers and others joined, more than a thousand protesters were gathered in the street in front of Federal Hall and on the steps aroundGeorge Washington's statue. FutureNew York City Council memberPaul O'Dwyer was among the speakers.[12][3] The protesters demanded an end to the war, the release ofpolitical prisoners in the United States such asBlack Panther Party leadersHuey Newton andBobby Seale and an end to military-related research on all university campuses.[13][14]
Shortly before noon, more than 400 construction workers, many of whom were building theWorld Trade Center, converged on the student protest from four directions. Some construction workers carried US flags and chanted, "USA all the way" and "America, love it or leave it". Anti-war protesters shouted "Peace now". More than 800 office workers soon joined the construction workers' ranks. Hundreds more construction workers arrived around noon, as the lunchtime crowd and onlookers in the streets exceeded 20,000.[1] A thin and inadequate line ofNYPD police officers, who were largely sympathetic to the workers' position, formed to separate them from the protesters. Construction workers then broke through the police lines and began chasing students through the streets. Workers attacked those who looked like hippies and beat them with their hard hats and other weapons, including tools and steel-toe boots. Victims and onlookers reported that the police stood by and did little.[15]
Hundreds of construction workers and counter-protesters moved upBroadway, making their way to City Hall. They pushed their way to the top of the front steps as some chanted "Hey, hey, whattya say? We support the USA", while others held American flags. The workers attempted to gain entrance, demanding the flag above City Hall be raised to whole staff. Police on duty at City Hall, and reinforcements, were able to stop them from getting inside. A few workers were asked to enter the building to calm tensions. One postal worker, who was already inside, went to the roof and raised the US flag there to full mast. When one mayoral aide lowered the flag back down to half-mast, hundreds of construction workers stormed the area around City Hall, leading to a melee similar to the one on Wall Street the hour prior. Deputy Mayor Richard Aurelio, fearing the building would be overrun by the mob, ordered city workers to raise the flag back to full mast.[16]
Rioting construction workers, many of them Catholic "white ethnics", also attacked buildings near City Hall. Several workmen ripped theRed Cross flag down at nearbyTrinity Church, because the flag was associated with the anti-war protestors, though it was planted to signal afirst aid haven. Several groups of construction workers stormed the newly-built main building atPace University, smashing lobby windows and beating up students and professors, including with tools. Ironically, Pace was aconservative, business-oriented school where the most popular major wasaccounting—hardly a hotbed of activism. More than 100 people were injured, including seven policemen. Most of the injured required hospital treatment. The most common victim was a "22-year-old white male collegian" and the worst injuries were to the "half-dozen young men beaten unconscious," but about one in four of the injured were women. Six people were arrested, but only one construction worker was arrested by police.[17]
During a press conference that evening, President Nixon tried to defuse the situation before tens of thousands of students arrived inWashington, D.C. for a scheduled protest rally the next day.Before dawn, the next morning, Nixon told some protesters that, "I understand just how you feel" and defended the recent troop movements into Cambodia as aiding their goal of peace.[18][19][14][20]
Mayor Lindsay severely criticized the NYPD for their lack of action.[21] NYPD leaders later accused Lindsay of "undermining the confidence of the public in its police department" by his statements,[22] and blamed their inaction on inadequate preparations and "inconsistent directives" in the past from the mayor's office.[23]
The following week, Brennan claimed that "the unions had nothing to do with" the riot and that workers were allegedly "fed up" with violence andflag desecration by anti-war demonstrators. He also denied that anything except fists had been used against the demonstrators, though police records showed tools and some iron pipes were used.[24] Brennan claimed telephone calls and letters to the unions were 20 to 1 in favor of the workers.[25] One man, Edward Shufro, of the brokerage firm Rose and Ehrman, saw two men wearing grey suits directing the workers.[26] The NYPD "buried most records of police malfeasance", according to Kuhn'sThe Hardhat Riot, and in August 1970 the NYPD published a report that largely acquitted itself of any collusion with the construction workers though its own records were decades later shown to undercut that report.[27] The construction workers and police were both mostly "white ethnics", lived in the same neighborhoods, and socialized in similar establishments; many were also veterans ofWorld War II andKorea, and both were also disproportionately likely to have family and friends in Vietnam.[28]
National Security AdvisorHenry Kissinger later wrote, "The incident shocked some into the realization that a breakdown of civil order could backfire dangerously against the demonstrators." On Sunday, May 10,White House Chief of StaffH. R. Haldeman wrote in his diary, "The college demonstrators have overplayed their hands, evidence is the blue-collar group rising up against them, and [the] president can mobilize them".[29]
Several thousand construction workers,longshoremen andwhite-collar workers protested against Lindsay on May 11, holding signs reading, "Impeach the Red Mayor"[30] and chanting "Lindsay is a bum".[31] They held another rally May 16, carrying signs calling Lindsay a "rat", "commie rat" and "traitor".[32] Mayor Lindsay described the mood of the city as "taut".[31] The rallies culminated in a large rally on May 20 in which an estimated 150,000 construction workers, longshoremen and others rallied outside City Hall. When the workers later marched down Broadway, many office workers in surrounding buildings showed their support byshowering the marchers with ticker tape. One magazine coined the day, "Workers'Woodstock".[33]
On May 26, Brennan led a delegation of 22 union leaders, who represented more than 300,000 tradesmen, to meet with Nixon at theWhite House and presented him with several ceremonial hardhats and a flag pin. Nixon said he sought to honor those “labor leaders and people from Middle America who still have character and guts and a bit of patriotism.” Nixon'sgeneral counsel,Charles Colson, who organized the meeting and was later in charge of developing a strategy to win union support for Nixon in the1972 presidential election, identified Brennan as a friendly labor leader due to his role in organizing the counter-protests in the weeks after the riot.[34]
Brennan later organized significant union political support for Nixon in the 1972 election. Nixon appointed Brennan as hislabor secretary afterward as a reward for his support and he was retained by PresidentGerald Ford into 1975, following Nixon's resignation.[35][36] The bookThe Hardhat Riot wrote of the riot that it was the day when the Old Left attacked theNew Left, because "twoliberalisms collided that day, presaging the long Democratic civil war ahead", and that the riot and demonstrations after captured the "era whenFDR’s everyman first turned against the liberalism that once had championed him" and Nixon "moved the Republican Party from blue bloods to blue collars". In their reviews ofThe Hardhat Riot, theNew York Daily News wrote that the riot "changed American politics, perhaps forever" and, inThe New York Times,Clyde Haberman characterized the riot as "a blue-collar rampage whose effects still ripple, not the least of them beingDonald Trump’s improbable ascension to the presidency".[37][38][39]
"[U]pscale whites were slightly more in favor of escalating the war in Cambodia, compared to downscale whites"—and like most Americans in 1970, blue-collar whites also saw the war as a "mistake", but the "anti-war movement was less popular than the Vietnam War" among all Americans, and particularly blue-collar whites by 1970.
