Chapter 8: A Tale of Two Cities

They didn't have names. They were known only as wards. One was the Third; the other, the Seventh. They were like two separate cities, and in Rochester they constituted the places where almost all of the black people lived.

They were not out of the way, hidden from scrutiny. Both sat on the fringes of downtown, the sprawling Third Ward on one side and the more compact Seventh Ward on another.

What tied the two wards together was race. In almost every other aspect, the two communities were entirely different.

The mostly middle-class Third had promise. To a large degree, it was a stable community whose residents owned homes and had good jobs. The Third Ward was not all black. Some whites lived there; others visited, attracted by places like the Pythod Club, one of the best jazz spots in town. The club had a lot of tables jammed together, but whites crowded in alongside blacks and everybody felt comfortable. Nearby was a restaurant called Smitty's, whose barbecue was so much in demand that customers had to stand on line to await service. To sit down to eat, you took any chair available. In that New York deli-style setting, strangers black and white ate together and swapped stories of Smitty's barbecue sauce.

The Third Ward was also Connie Mitchell, the most prominent black elected official in Rochester. She and her husband were host to a steady stream of well-known visitors, black and white. Connie Mitchell had standing as a political leader who was on the way up. She gave her ward a voice so dynamic that all of Rochester listened when she spoke.

The Seventh Ward was entirely different. Its leaders were mostly young, raw and inexperienced. It had more than its share of poor people. Housing projects were its defining buildings. The neighborhoods were tough and hostile to outsiders. White people seldom went to the Seventh Ward for anything, knowing that they would probably be challenged with a "What are you doing here?" remark.

By early 1964, the two wards viewed America in sharply conflicting ways. The Johnson administration's War on Poverty, the journey toward passage of the Civil Rights Act, and "the movement" in the South were all seen as positive developments in the Third Ward. The organizing there was around strategies to take advantage of new federal initiatives. The hope seen in the Third Ward was almost nonexistent in the Seventh, which was overwhelmed with problems such as teen gangs, bad housing, police brutality, poor schools and a lack of job training.

In the Third Ward, there was nothing I asked for that I did not get as a reporter. The leadership had ideas and a vision it wanted to share. The signals were very different in the Seventh Ward. Those identified as "the militants" were intent on striking out at everything. Including me. They saw me as an agent of the newspaper, and the paper as a part of what they called the white power structure. They were so angry and frustrated, they felt the need to make a violent statement.

This wasn't happening just in Rochester. In cities across the country, black communities were splitting into the haves and the have-nots, the hopeful and the hopeless. The haves believed they could change the system; the hopeless knew the system was against them.

What happened next should have been expected. On a hot night in Harlem in July 1964, the explosion came. After a white cop had shot and killed a black youth, riots erupted in the black neighborhoods – a portent of what was to come.

At the Democrat and Chronicle, the city editor called me to his desk. "We want you to go down to Harlem," he said. Although I had visited New York, I'd never been to Harlem. I grabbed a notebook and a few clothes and headed for the airport, hoping that my experience in Rochester had prepared me for the challenge ahead in the Big Apple.