07/16/2013
TIMELINE: How the 1991 Crown Heights riots unfolded
A station wagon driven by Yosef Lifsh, hit another car and careened onto the sidewalk at 8:21 p.m. Monday, August 19, 1991.
Lifsh was part of a three-car motorcade carrying the now-deceased spiritual leader of the Lubavitcher Hasidic community, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, home from a weekly police-escorted visit family at their Queens gravesites.
The station wagon crushed two black children, 7-year-old cousins Gavin and Angela Cato.
Within minutes, an ambulance from the Hasidic-run Hatzolah ambulance service and two from the city's Emergency Medical Service arrived.
An angry crowd gathered. Cops radioed for backup, reporting that the station wagon driver and passengers were being assaulted. Officer Nona Capace ordered the Hatzolah ambulance to remove the Hasidic men from the scene.
The children went by separate city ambulances to Kings County Hospital. Gavin Cato was pronounced dead; his cousin survived. A rumor quickly spread that the Hatzolah ambulance crew had ignored the dying black child in favor of treating the Jewish men.
Ignited by the false story, resentments exploded into violence. Groups of young black men threw rocks, bottles and debris at police, residents and homes.
Five blocks away from the crash scene, at 11:20 p.m, 29-year-old Australian scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was attacked by a dozen or more black youths. He was stabbed four times. Cops quickly collared Lemrick Nelson, 16, who was identified by Rosenbaum as his attacker.
Rosenbaum was expected to recover. Mayor David Dinkins, New York's first black mayor, visited the hospital bed. But by 2:30 Tuesday morning, the Australian was dead because the Kings County staff overlooked one of the knife wounds.
Street violence raged for three days. On Thursday, cops finally restored order. Ultimately, 43 civilians and 152 police officers were injured.
After several trials, Lemrick Nelson was eventually convicted of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Despite living side by side, Hasidic Jews, African Americans, and people from the Caribbean in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York, rarely socialized before 1991. The groups occupied separate cultural worlds, and a climate of mutual suspicion and tension prevailed. On 19 August 1991, after a Jewish driver tragically killed a young black child, Gavin Cato, anti-Semitic violence erupted, and African Americans attacked Jews, Jewish property, and city police. Later that evening a mob of about fifteen African Americans shouting "Kill the Jew" attacked Yankel Rosenbaum, a native of Australia. Bearded and wearing a yarmulke, Rosen-baum was beaten and stabbed, but before he bled to death he identified his assassin as sixteen-year-old Lemrick Nelson. Three more days of rioting ensued.
Nelson was acquitted of murder in a state court in 1992, and he later celebrated his acquittal with some of the jurors. In 1994 the federal government charged Nelson and Charles Price, who was accused of inciting the attack, with violating Rosenbaum's civil rights. Convicted as an adult, an unrepentant Nelson received 235 months in prison, while Price received 260 months. New York City then settled a lawsuit by several Crown Heights residents for $1.1 million.
The official state report on the riots criticized New York City Mayor David Dinkins for his inaction during the riots; Dinkins later lost his 1993 reelection bid to Rudolph Giuliani. Community leaders, a community mediation center, and numerous community groups subsequently sponsored integrated activities in efforts to reduce cultural divisions in Crown Heights.
Bibliography
Conaway, Carol B. "Crown Heights: Politics and Press Coverage of the Race War That Wasn't." Polity 32 (Fall 1999): 93118.
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