Howard Fast - Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots

Peekskill USA

Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots

Howard Fast

To Paul Robeson

Preface

FROM AUGUST 24 TO SEPTEMBER 4, 1949, I took part in a very strange and somewhat terrible incident, which has already become an important part of the postwar history of the United States. For many generations to come, the Peeskill Affair will be recalled and discussed, and it will remain for historians, with their broader and more complete point of view, to decide the final import and significance of this incident.

For myself, close as I am to it, I still see it in somewhat subjective terms. It was the first great open manifestation of American fascism; but whether it was part of some preconceived plan or test, or simply the culmination of events in preparation for the times we live in, I do not know. Only time can answer this and many other questions connected with Peekskill.

My own personal participation was something of an accident initially, although far from an accident as the series of events around the incident unfolded. It is not often the good fortuneor fateof a writer to be so closely involved with events which must be written about. When it does happen, if the writer is a trained observer, the possibility of good prose description does exist, and this can be most valuable. Because I believe this, I offer this account of the eight days of Peekskill. I do not, however, put it forth either as a social study of the incident or as a complete factual itemization. For the most part, I tell only what happened immediately around mewhat I saw with my own eyes. Where I go beyond that, I do so for the sake of continuity in dramatic terms, and where I draw conclusions, they are my own conclusions, based for the most part on my own experience.

I would like to state that I am most interested in presenting a truthful pictureagain, within the limits of my observation and information. We live in times when any statement of the left is greeted with suspicion if not with outright condemnation by the forces of the right; and since the bulk of the sources of public information are firmly in the hands of American reaction, it can hardly be expected that this account will be welcomed by them as an objective statement of what happened at Peekskill. As a matter of fact, I have never pretended to any sort of Olympian objectivity. My position, for many years, has been a partisan one, and I have never made any secret of that. At Peekskill, I could hardly be objective; objectivity is not for those who are fighting for their lives. I was partisan then; I am still partisan.

Yet I think that partisanship does not hinder, but rather helps toward the truth. An enormous body of written matter already exists on the Peekskill Affair; this is available to scholars, and it is not my intention to present a collation of this material. It is my intention to tell the story as I saw it.

In answer to those who may wonder why I waited so long before sitting down to this job, I can only answer that some degree of perspective is necessary to a coherent account of such a matter as this. Also, I was occupied with other writing tasks, and then interrupted by the Federal Government, which decided that I had to serve a three month prison sentenceas a lesson and a warning to others who might consider a police state an intolerable condition of things.

It was while I was in prison that I heard that the Westchester County Grand Jury, which had been sitting on the Peekskill case for many months, had finally brought in two indictments; and I recall tense days of waiting to hear whetheras it had been rumored Paul Robeson and I would be the subject of these indictments. When I learned that we would not, I was both relieved and puzzled, for frameup, or, as the lawyers call it, entrapment, had been the pattern of this Peekskill business from beginning to end. At the same time, I do not delude myself into thinking that the last chapter to the Peekskill Affair has been written.

Part One

The Quiet Beginning

IT HAPPENED THAT IN AUGUST of 1949, both my wife and I had much-needed vacations. She went to Europe; I rented a house in Croton-on-Hudsonsome six miles from Peekskillfor myself, my two children, and their nurse. I was then engaged in writing an essay on the relation of literature to reality, and I felt that a month devoted to my work and the childrenand away from the political turmoil which occupied so much of my lifewas not only overdue but would be very good for me in every way.

In this I was not wrong. That August was a placid, cool month, with many sunny days and many pleasant hours, and for me a most welcome change. The house we had rented was a comfortable, rambling affair, set among the trees on the hillside, with a glimpse of the Hudson River from the upper windows. Mornings, I worked on my essay while the children played on the lawn. Afternoons, I was with them, and usually we spent the time swimming at a nearby pond. We had our evening meal together, and after the children were asleep I spent every night there in the house, reading or very occasionally talking with some friends who dropped in. It was, as I said, a very quiet and rewarding few weeks; my reading progressed and the essay began to near completion.

It was in the middle of this month that the phone rang one day, and when I answered it a young ladys voice asked whether I was Howard Fast, and when I said that I was, went on to ask whether I would be chairman of a concert to be given in the neighborhood in a few weeks.

What kind of a concert? I wanted to know.

We give it each year.

Who is we? I asked her.

Peoples Artists, I mean. And Pete Seeger will be there, and Paul Robeson. Do you know about Peoples Artists?

I knew a good deal about Peoples Artists, and liked them as individuals and respected what they were trying to do as a group. Young people, by and large, they had dug up a tremendous lot of the folk song and folk tradition of America, and armed with their guitars, they were bringing it to the people everywhere, to trade unions and public meetings, to neighborhoods and settlement houses and summer resorts. They wrote new words to old melodies, and they made a continuity of the best musical tradition of America, from the time of the Revolution to the present day. It would be very hard to say no to a concert they were giving, but against that I had my absolute determination to live this month in isolated peace and quiet.

I do know about Peoples Artists, I said. But I really cant

Look, she said, I know your little girl loves to hear Paul Robeson sing, and it will be out in a lovely meadow on the picnic grounds, and it will be just like a picnic and all over by ten oclock and why dont you come? Wont you, please?

There was more of this kind of thing, and finally I said that I would. She promised to write me a letter containing all details pertinent to my role at the concert, and then she hung up. It occurred to me afterwards that I had not even asked her name. A few days later the promised letter arrived, telling me that the concert would be held at Lakeland Acres Picnic Grounds a few miles north of Peekskill proper, and that I would do well to arrive at seven oclock so that there would be time to talk over the program. The letter also noted that this would be the fourth concert given by Paul Robeson in this vicinity. The first had been held in 1946 at Mohegan Colony, a summer resort of individual home owners nearby; the second had taken place a year later at the Peekskill Stadium; and the third was held in 1948 at Crompond, another village in the immediate area.