Meet the American who invented the hard hat, a proud symbol of our How the Kent State massacre marked the start of America's polarization In 1972, Nixon ran for a second term against George McGovern, a Democratic Senator from South Dakota. Construction workers assaulting people in front of City Hall, May 8, 1970. "The Hardhat Riot, by David Paul Kuhn, vividly evokes . A postal worker who had joined the fray managed to climb onto the roof and raise the stars and stripes to its proper, prideful position. The Hard Hat Riots, May 8, 1970 - NYC Department of Records One of the workers, upon reaching the top, delivered a vicious right hook to a demonstrator, dropping him to his knees, just below the statue of George Washington. They sought to show the rest of the world (and themselves) that they werent alonethat millions of people agreed the war must end, and that the administration of President Richard Nixon be held accountable. Historians and journalists have debated the meaning of the incident ever since. Student injured in riots, May 8, 1970. The ranks of the hard hats grew from hundreds to thousands, and sympathetic office workers joined their midday marches. Nixons use of this intersection of class- and race-based animus for political gain arguably marked the first volley in Americas culture wars. It would be easy to look at these marches the same way we look at the Charlottesville march or other recent outpourings of right-wing intolerance, but its not that simple. It was unthinkable one generation before: FDR's "forgotten man" siding with the party of Big Business and, ultimately, paving the way for . Flyer for student strikes, week of May 8, 1970. City Hall/NYPD relations were already strained, just a week earlier, Lindsay had established the Knapp Commission in response to Detective Frank Serpicos tales of widespread police corruption. The Hardhat Riot Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution David Paul Kuhn. The student demonstrators were protesting the Vietnam War and the deadly shooting of four student activists at Kent State University that occurred just days before. The Hard Hat Riots On, 40 Years On - PJ Media Back then, it looked like proof of something John Lindsay, New Yorks mayor, had said earlier that week: The country is virtually on the edge of a spiritual and perhaps even a physical breakdown.. Mostly, they stood aside while the hard hats ran amok; examples of their nonfeasance abound. Marching down Broadway on May 20, 1970, in a demonstration that drew tens of thousands. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Most of the injured required hospital treatment. Hard Hats demonstrate for Nixon and the Vietnam War, near City Hall Park, May 15, 1970. The Hard Hat Riot: A Forgotten Flashpoint in America's Culture 1970: Hard Hat Riot - A Look Inside the History of Wall Street Protests Following in Nixons path, todays Republican Party continues to frame itself as the party of the working class, even while opposing pro-worker policies like paid leave, raising the minimum wage and protecting the right to organize. Clyde Haberman, United States Army 1968-70, is the former "NYC" columnist for The Times. "The Hard Hat Riot was the prelude to the divide we now live with in America." David Paul Kuhn. Nixon invited union leaders, some of whom were involved in the riot, to the White House. A tribal tension had infused downtown, Kuhn observes. By the time of Brennans death in 1996, obituary writers presented it as a given fact that he had personally helped orchestrate the melee. That was all before noon! The NYPD responded by accusing Lindsay of undermining public confidence in the police. Mayor Lindsay demanded an investigation into the May 8th incident. 3 After Bloody Friday, New York Wonders if Wall Street is Becoming a Battle Ground. Penny Lewis, professor of sociology at the City University of New York, argues that the event that would come to be known as the Hard Hat riot came to symbolize the hippie versus longhair debate in popular culture. A key moment leading to the culture wars now ripping through American politics came on May 8, 1970, in New York City. Fearing the mob would break in, a person from the mayors staff raised the flag. As the ground of white working-class identity shifted from economics to culture, it appeared that the new class war would be waged not against the old corporate robber barons but the impudent snobs of the cultural elite. A national panel is recommending changes to a key poverty measurement. Brennan, a staunch anti-communist, had clashed with Mayor Lindsay for several years over many issues, including efforts to integrate the building construction trades. those great landslides were in rebellion against the intellectual aristocracy and liberal elite who now set the course of their party., Six days after the rally, Nixon hosted the leaders of the building trades at the White House. Hard Hat demonstration in favor of Nixon and the Vietnam War, May 20, 1970. The backlash began soon after. Pummeling anyone in their way, the workers kicked and beat demonstrators, battering them with their hard hats. Amid the turmoil, the non-shouters of Nixons silent majority thundered to life. The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Known as the Hard Hat Riots, it sparked two weeks of protests, counter protests and marches. But to leave it there, Lewis writes, is to miss that the Hard Hat Riot was more than just the straightforward narrative of construction worker versus longhair. It was a convergence of genuine pro-Nixon sentiment, an administration eager to capitalize on a nation in crisis, and the dawn of a political realignment that would shape the nation's direction for generations. 1 https://prospect.org/article/then-one-democrat-anymore/, 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20150921181507/http://www.publicopinionpros.norc.org/ features/2006/jun/hugick_supp1p1.asp. Construction workers raising American flag on the steps of Federal Hall, May 8, 1970. He has written fourteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." The "Hard Hat Riot," as it came to be known, created new visibility and possibilities for a right-wing populism that shaped American politics for decades to come. It was unthinkable one generation before: FDR's "forgotten man" siding with the party of Big Business and, ultimately . When a group of hard hats moved menacingly toward a Wall Street plaza, a patrolman shouted: Give em hell, boys. Why? The 'Hard Hat Riot' Was a Preview of Today's Political Divisions For all of its drama, however, the hard hat revolt was not a wholesale shift in working class identity. The events of May 8 were followed by regular marches. The sight of soldiers firing on unarmed college students shook the nation, but it also elicited sentiments that the students got what was coming to them. The galvanizing effect on the anti-war movement was immediate, and on Tuesday May 5th students across the nation staged more walk-outs and strikes. Dispatches from the Urban Heartland, Part 2: Rebooting Crow Hill, Brooklyn, Dispatches from the Urban Heartland, Part 1: Welcome, Doomed Guests: Faisal II, The Boy King Of Iraq, The Surprises Waiting in 40,000 Vacant Lots, The Dutch & the English, Part 3: Construction of the Wall (1653-1663), The Dutch & the English, Part 2: A Wall by Any Other Name, The Dutch & the English, Part 1: Good Fences, a History of Wall Street, Hall of Records: Where Brilliancy Is Necessary. The event became known as the Hard Hat Riot.CreditNeal Boenzi/The New York Times. Fearing the mob would break in, city officials raised the flag. It started around noon when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attack. A total of 43 people were killed. The Hard Hat Riot had immediate political consequences. The police did little, and only six were arrested. On May 6, protesting students at City College met resistance from a small group of construction workers, some of whom self-identified themselves as Vietnam veterans, a preview of what would come later that week. I witnessed this when I was secretary of labor during the Clinton Administration. 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Patrick Buchanan, then a Nixon aide, said of blue-collar Americans in a memo to the boss, These, quite candidly, are our people now. He wasnt wrong. It damn near put a lump in your throat, said Joe Kelly, an elevator builder who was working on the World Trade Center. Journalist being pushed off of a ledge by workers, May 8, 1970. who noted on the morning of May 8 that the hard hats were "out for blood today." As Kuhn shows, Lindsay, a Republican who, two years later, "was the most liberal candidate in the Democratic race," failed to fully grasp the combustible nature of the conflicting actors. Still, there were consequences. Mayor John Lindsay condemned the violence and criticized the police for failing to stop it. As David Paul Kuhn reports in The Hardhat Riot, the police did little to stop the mayhem. Seven police officers were also hurt. Kuhn quotes the estimable Pete Hamill as observing back then that the workingman feels trapped and, even worse, in a society that purports to be democratic, ignored. One could go further. A Mrs. Tuohey called to give the name of the biggest communist in the CountryJohn LindsayGracie Mansion.. NYPD Intelligence Records, series III, NYC Municipal Archives. Peter Brennan, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, addressing the May 20 rally. The log for the day describes the Special Events Squad responding to: 300 students at Queens College trying to block the Long Island Expressway, 300 marchers on West 184th Street and Jerome Avenue, 150 people marchingto Union Square, 100 Young Lords and Black Panthers demonstrating in front of 100 Centre Street, 100 picketers at John Adams HS in Queens, 300 people marching on Queens Boulevard, a protest in front of the United Nations, a large disorderly crowd at St. Francis College and a protest blockingBroadway and 96th Street. In a scene eerily foreshadowing the January 6th Capitol Riots, they pushed their way towards the building. Write CSS OR LESS and hit save. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? NYPD Intelligence Records, Photograph Files, NYC Municipal Archives. ", The best response to plummeting test scores would be hard to institute, To make sure babies get their bottles, the U.S. needs a new formula, Putins humiliation means new dangers for Russia and the world. Until now. 1970 NYC Hard Hat Workers vs. Students - The Long Sixties: Clash of Seventy people were injured and only six arrests were made. Hard Hat Riot - YouTube But in reality, the administration, in concert with New York labor leaders, had helped coordinate the counterprotest and several more that would take place throughout May. Less a complete rightward transformation of the working class, the hard hat protests represented its political fragmentation into smaller and more resentful pieces. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story of when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. It was about fundamentally realigning the constituencies of the Republican and Democratic parties. Some of the images on this site may be subject to third-party rights such as copyright and/or rights of privacy/publicity. Some 1,700 stores were looted and nearly . Cliff Sloane, a student interviewed later that month by The New York Times, felt differently. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story-how chaotic it was, when it began, when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. NYPD Intelligence Records, Photograph Files, NYC Municipal Archives. NYPD Intelligence Records, Photograph Files, NYC Municipal Archives. Nixons strategy to use the Hard Hat Riot to appeal to blue collar voters paid off. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story of when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. They sneered back, especially at the patrician New York mayor. Hard Hat protesters and counter-protesters face off near City Hall, May 11, 1970. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. The economic needs of working Americans dont differ dramatically across racial lines. The last thing it needed in 1970 was more open fighting in the streets. This was something genuinely new, and raw. Belknap told police he was under the impression that Mr. Muglia was not all there. Upon returning to the scene, Belknap pleaded with construction workers to stop beating a student, at which point he was branded a commie lawyer and savagely beaten in the face. In a way, Vietnam continues to cast its shadow. Brennan, as one of New York Citys most prominent labor leaders, often clashed with Mayor Lindsays administration. Pete Brennans people were with us when some of the elitist crowd were running away from us, he said. The Nixon administration likewise framed the counter-protest as a genuine, and organic, expression of support for the war. The Hardhat Riot Quotes by David Paul Kuhn - Goodreads The class and race based tensions that Nixon exploited would worsen over the next half century. The invasion of Cambodia inflamed anti-war protesters. Upon handing it to the president, Brennan predicted what it would come to mean: The hard hat will stand as a symbol, he declared, along with our great flag, for freedom and patriotism to our beloved country.". Within moments, the construction workers broke through the police barricades, punched him in the face and started their rampage. Glory at the Garden: When the Knicks Won it All - Museum of the City of Give em hell, boys. Cookie Policy The way many of them referred to Lindsay, youd have thought his first name was not John but, rather, an all-too-familiar obscenity. Hardhat Riot Introduction The "Hard Hat Riot," as it came to be known, ushered in an era of cynical fear-mongering aimed at dividing the nation. The student demonstrators were protesting the Vietnam War and the deadly shooting of four student activists at Kent State University that occurred just days before. Six people were reportedly arrested, but only one construction worker. Most victims were White male college students in their early 20s, though a quarter were women. In 1970, hundreds of construction workers pummeled around 1,000 student demonstrators in New York City including two of my friends. The 'Hard Hat Riot' of 1970 Pitted - Smithsonian Magazine Other eye-witnesses to the riots described seeing men in gray suits with union patches directing the assaults. These tensions would worsen over the next half-century as White Americans without college degrees began falling further behind economically. Local shop stewards, according to sources who spoke out years later, specifically encouraged workers to counter-protest the May 8 demonstration, in some cases even offering them cash bonuses to do so. The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White They also fielded many calls and letters supporting and opposing the construction workers. Many union officials, including Brennan, saw this as an overreach on Lindsays part, and rank-and-file union members, who were overwhelmingly white, resisted integration. The same has been true about the shameful hard-hat riot of 1970. The Day the White Working Class Turned Republican Many in America looked at events like these and began to wonder if America had, as 63% of them told a pollster for the Nixon campaign, seriously gotten off on the wrong track.2. A poll released weeks after the hard-hat incident showed that Americans thought campus unrest was a bigger problem than the Vietnam War. I spent much of my time in the Midwest and other parts of the country where blue-collar workers felt abandoned in an economy dominated by Wall Street. Because the mayor's staff had lowered the American flag in honor of the Kent State dead. Were the fellas who build the hospitals when they need em, when they get sick. While not all of the them actively supported the war, they collectively saw themselves as patriots, and they saw antiwar demonstrators who sometimes, if rarely, set fire to the American flag at their protests as anti-American. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story of when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. On Thursday, July 27, order was finally restored. Conservative Counterrevolution: Hard Hat Riots and Attica Watch on New York has some ugly riots in its history. In 1970, hundreds of. Working men like Cooke felt silenced in the noise of the 60s. The Dutch & the English Part 4: Invasion? They produced a blue-collar rampage whose effects still ripple, not the least of them being Donald Trumps improbable ascension to the presidency. It might sound technical, but the stakes are high. Hard Hat Riot - Wikipedia That said, they were just what some conservative strategists were looking for. Then, chaos descended on the peaceful scene, as nearly 200 construction workers arrived at the protest bearing patriotic signs and, according to a New York Times report on the incident, chants of All The Way, U.S.A. and Love It or Leave It.. Antiwar demonstrators had massed at Federal Hall and other Lower Manhattan locations, only to be set upon brutally, and cravenly, by hundreds of steamfitters, ironworkers, plumbers and other laborers from nearby construction sites like the nascent World Trade Center. Republicans have since catered as ever to the rich but they have also curried favor with working-class whites, while Democrats seem more focused on others: racial minorities, gays, immigrants. Some 70 people were injured, and six were reportedly arrested. The New York County Supreme Court Insolvency Assignments Records, A Conversation between Barbara Hibbert, Reference Room Director and Ken Cobb, Assistant Commissioner, January 17, 2018, New York Holds a Soft Spot for the Holidays, Milk, Midwives and Medical Quackery: Records of the Commissioners of the New York City Health Department, This Is No Clam Bake: Mayor La Guardia and the Office of Civilian Defense, Celebrate the anniversary of Womens Suffrage by expanding access to the ballot in New York State, NEIGHBORHOOD STORIES: A community history pilot project by Sunset Park High School and the NYC Municipal Archives. All morning the protesters listened to speakers from the steps of Federal Hall calling for an end to the war and social injustices at home, watched over by a small line of police. Advertising Notice Multiple small protests were staged throughout the City. There was a lot more going on below the surface though. On May 11, several thousand construction workers, dockworkers and white-collar workers rallied against the mayor, calling him a commie rat and worse. NYPD Film Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. As Cooke put it, Protest is the only thing that works today.. Construction workers breaking through police lines, May 8, 1970. While Nixon did not explicitly reference the riot, he praised the labor leaders and people from Middle America who still have character and guts and a bit of patriotism, and made references to his own fathers various blue-collar jobs. NYPD Intelligence Records, Photograph Files, NYC Municipal Archives. For reasons still unclear, a sergeant fired live ammunition into the crowd, sparking a volley of 67 rounds. The nation could have responded, but it did not. At Trinity Church on Broadway, a makeshift hospital for the students was attacked by the mob and the flag of the Episcopal Church was torn from the building. who noted on the morning of May 8 that the hard hats were "out for blood today." As Kuhn shows, Lindsay, a Republican who, two years later, "was the most liberal candidate in the Democratic race," failed to fully grasp the combustible nature of . The construction workers then marched toward a barely-protected City Hall. Two days later, hundreds of local students gathered in the morning for a memorial demonstration in Lower Manhattan, eventually moving towards Federal Hall, the historic site where George Washington first took the oath of office as President. If you liked this article, please donate $5 to keep NationofChange online through November. Your Privacy Rights The workers who attacked them carried American flags and chanted, USA, All the way, and America, love it or leave it. They chased the students through the streets attacking those who looked like hippies with their hard hats and steel-toed boots. Workers all seek living wages, safe working conditions and affordable health care. Take, for example, the 1970 "Hard Hat riot," when mostly white construction workers violently stormed a peaceful anti-Vietnam War demonstration in Lower Manhattan, mere days after the National . The building trades were among the most conservative unions, and even though the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Young people opposed to the seemingly endless and ever-escalating war responded with protests on college campuses. What happened next was unclear, but eye witnesses said a man spit on a flag, blew his nose on it, and taunted the workers. Friday, May 8, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the uglier incidents in New Yorks history, in a year that was one of the most tumultuous in recent US history. Brennan took a not-small amount of credit for building political bloc of blue-collar social conservatives that would come to be known collectively as Reagan Democrats. In the days after May 4, 1970, the date the Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam War, anti-war activists were galvanized. The construction workers marched on through the narrow streets of the Financial District towards City Hall, where they sang the Star-Spangled Banner and demanded that Mayor Lindsay raise the flags to full-mast; they eventually got their way. specifically encouraged workers to counter-protest the May 8 demonstration, Oldest Known Neanderthal Engravings Were Sealed in a Cave for 57,000 Years, Our Human Relatives Butchered and Ate Each Other 1.45 Million Years Ago, This Ancient Maya City Was Hidden in the Jungle for More Than 1,000 Years, An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb, New Study Identifies Mysterious Boats Painted in Australian Cave. Book review of The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of Lessons learned from 'hardhat riots' - New York Daily News Climbing a streetlight near Federal Hall on May 8, 1970. I spent much of my time in the Midwest and other parts of the country where blue-collar workers felt abandoned in an economy dominated by Wall Street. Missing from most history books is a key moment leading to the culture wars now ripping through American politics. Many Democrats, whether they will admit it or not, have not done enough to respond as Republicans have destroyed unions, exacerbated economic inequality through trickle-down nonsense, tried to gut just about every social safety net we have and stood in the way of practically every effort to use the power of government to help working people.