Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots by Howard Fast

for reports of missing people had come in from all over Westchester—missing people on our side. Also, as we drove out, I saw for the first time the crazy wreckage of smashed cars along the road, and realized that those who had come to the concert and been turned away had not escaped unscathed.)
    It was past midnight when I reached home and put my car in the garage and went into the house. Mrs. M——was still awake; the phone had been ringing all night, with constant inquiries about me—where I was, whether I was alive or dead. Mrs. M—— didn’t say much, only,
    â€œThank God, you’re alive.”
    She didn’t ask me what had happened; through the night the telephone had given her a good idea of what had happened, and the only inquiry she made was about Paul Robeson.
    â€œI think he’s all right,” I said. “I don’t know yet.”
    (It turned out that his car had not been able to come within a mile of the picnic grounds, and that he was safe.)
    Mrs. M——looked at me, at my blood-caked shirt, at the blood on my face and hands. Then she said good-night suddenly and went up to bed. It was not pleasant to be a Negro in the Hudson River Valley that night.
    I poured a drink of whisky but I couldn’t touch it. I sat for a while at the kitchen table, looking at the drink, tried to taste it again but couldn’t. The phone rang.
    It was J—— N——, and I was a little surprised at the relief in his voice when he heard mine. He told me of his own adventures that evening, how he had been with my friend, the Negro whose wife had left the picnic grounds in my car, and how they had gone out to see if they could find the bodies at least, how they had called the hospitals nearby and located eight of our people in hospitals but were unable to get the names of all of them, how they drove past the picnic grounds when the fascists were pouring out—by some prearranged agreement, I suppose, with the authorities —and how since all was dark below, they concluded that we were gone, and how they had gone back once again, after we were out.
    I was still wrapped in the awful isolation of our fight on the road and in the hollow, our separation from the world of reasonable, civilized human beings. I asked him whether people knew of what had happened in Peekskill.
    â€œThe whole world knows,” he answered.
    But still it didn’t seem possible. I went upstairs and looked at the children. The night light was on in my daughter’s room, and she opened her eyes when I came in and smiled at me and said, “Hullo, Daddy,” and then went back to sleep.
    I took my clothes off and got into a steaming hot shower.
    â€œWell, it’s done,” I said to myself, “tonight is over. Whatever else happens, tonight is over, and I’m through with Peekskill. Let them build a bridge over it.”
    I was very tired, and all I wanted was to get to sleep.

Part Three
    Reaction on Sunday
    THE PHONE RANG AT about eight o’clock the following morning, and I listened sleepily while one of the Mohegan Colony survivors of the night before told me that there would be a meeting on the lawn of his home at ten o’clock, and would I be there?
    â€œI’ll be there,” I said.
    Rachel and Johnny were having their breakfast; the sun was shining; all was all right with the world, and what had happened the evening before was a bad dream. Bad dreams fade and become vague and unrecognizable; it was utterly and completely impossible that in this sunny, placid world of pretty houses and pleasant people and gentle summertime such a thing as I had witnessed could have been. It could have been elsewhere; it could have been in Hitler’s Germany; it could not have been here. This was the America I had known and loved and written of with reverence and affection, and even the cuts and a swollen wrist were impossible contradictions in a sunny world of