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Water Under The Bridge:
New Yorkers Remember The Jamaica Bay Hurricane, Part 2
by Chris Oakley

(adapted from material previously posted at TIAH.co.uk)

  

Summary: In the first chapter of this series we charted the path of the Jamaica Bay hurricane, a.k.a. Hurricane Cleo, across New York Cityand heard the personal recollections of a former NYPD sergeant who wasassigned to Queens at the time of the hurricane as well as commentary by a Columbia University professor renowned as an expert regarding Cleo’seffects on New York’s subway and bus systems. In this installment, we’llget a longtime Harlem resident’s personal perspective on Martin LutherLuther King’s legendary “Do Not Forget Harlem” speech in the aftermathof the hurricane and meet an NYU political science scholar whose three-volume book series on John Lindsay’s political career has garnered hima Pulitzer Prize nomination.

 

In the aftermath of the Jamaica Bay hurricane there was a strong perception within New York City’s black community that Harlem was being overlooked when it came to apportioning federal disaster relief funds. It was in an attempt to correct this state of affairs that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King gave what is now generally considered to be one of the finest speeches of his career, the eloquent “Do Not Forget Harlem” address delivered from the pulpit of the city’s oldest African- American church. Victor Morton was an eight-year-old schoolboy when he first heard Dr. King’s stirring rhetoric; now in his early sixties, he himself commands the ears of millions of listeners throughout the five boroughs as host of a public affairs show on the city’s largest black- owned radio station. There are only two times during the year when you don’t hear his booming baritone over the airwaves; Christmas Day and the anniversary of the hurricane, when he gives his time slot over to a 90- minute tribute to the New Yorkers who were victims of Hurricane Cleo’s wrath.

     “My family lost half of what they owned in the hurricane.” Morton says, holding court in the wood-paneled studio from which he broadcasts his show. They weren’t alone; in the days and weeks immediately after the hurricane, insurance companies were inundated with damage claims by families all over the Northeast, with the highest number of such claims coming from the metropolitan New York area. “Ten minutes after the radio announced the storm had hit, my father was rushing around trying to get all of us kids and Mom into the car and make it to higher ground before the floodwaters hit. Back on the Gulf Coast, where my family originally came from, people were used to that kind of thing...but in New York? We thought maybe it was the end of the world.” Certainly it turned out to be the beginning of the end of Morton’s father’s world; less than two months after Cleo struck New York City, the senior Morton would succumb to heart failure at a Long Island hospital, leaving Victor and his three brothers fatherless.

     As days turned into weeks and weeks into months, black New Yorkers grew increasingly frustrated with the federal government’s failure to get post-disaster aid to their neighborhoods in a timely fashion. Morton saw this frustration every day on his walks to and from school and in his own home-- and felt some of it himself. “I honestly felt as if my family was being left out in the cold.” Morton recalls. By late September, nearly a third of all the Harlem neighborhoods struck by Hurricane Cleo were still waiting for reconstruction funds and black protestors were demonstrating outside Gracie Mansion on a daily basis. Certain black militants were even broaching sinister conspiracy theories alleging these neighborhoods were being deliberately left to rot away so that the city would have an excuse to demolish them and replace them with luxury apartment buildings for the city’s richest white residents. Whether or not one subscribed to any such theories-- which Morton doesn’t --there was certainly good reason to be exasperated with the way the administration of then-mayor Robert Wagner was bungling the task of repairing the damage which Cleo inflicted on the homes and businesses of Harlem. In fact, New Yorkers of all ethnic stripes were getting fed up with Wagner’s inability to effectively co-ordinate the city government’s post-hurricane recovery effort; shortly before Dr. King’s historic speech the New York Post blasted the incumbent mayor in a no-holds- barred editorial bluntly titled “Wagner Must Go”.

    On October 1st, 1960 New York City’s oldest African-American church was filled to capacity to hear Dr. King deliver his now-legendary “Do Not Forget Harlem” sermon; Morton vividly recalls sitting just three rows away from the pulpit. “He was talking fairly softly, but there was so much power stored up in that voice you could actually feel the floor vibrating.” Morton chuckles. “The reverend definitely knew how to get folks’ attention.” And it was more than just the ears of the churchgoers that Dr. King’s sermon reached: in the two weeks immediately following King’s New York visit the Red Cross reported a 50 percent spike in donations to charities and organizations which served Harlem.

    Morton himself remembers saving up pennies for weeks so that he could give something to people who were even worse off than himself. “My dad and my grandparents taught me the importance of helping others.” he explains in a modest tone. That lesson remains a fundamental part of his moral code to this day: not only is he extensively involved with charity work in the New York area, but he is also a proud member of more than two dozen nationwide charitable organizations.

******

     Jonathan Brinkley is a political history professor at NYU whose main specialty is late 20th-century New York civic affairs. Besides being one of the most respected political scholars in American academia today, Brinkley is also a highly successful author; his three-volume series on the life and career of John Lindsay has earned him millions of dollars in royalties and a Pulitzer Prize nomination in the historical literature category. In light of the extensive research the professor has devoted to Lindsay’s life, it’s only natural that people would turn to him for his take on the speech which started Lindsay on the road to Gracie Mansion. In fact, you might be interested to know that Brinkley owns a rare copy of the New York Times published the day after Lindsay’s now-famous Capitol Hill speech which criticized the federal government’s inefficiency in getting aid to the survivors of the Jamaica Bay hurricane. As the professor explains it, what Lindsay said about the Eisenhower-Nixon administration during his address generated a storm almost as big as the hurricane itself.

     “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Lindsay’s post- Hurricane Cleo speech to Congress basically punched his ticket to a higher level of national prominence.” Professor Brinkley asserts as he drains the last of a hazelnut coffee. “Next to Martin Luther King’s Harlem sermon, Lindsay’s address is probably the most famous speech in America in regards to the hurricane.” While Lindsay wasn’t shy about criticizing incumbent New York mayor Robert Wagner’s response to Cleo, the main targets of his wrath when he took the floor on September 3rd, 1960 were outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower and Eisenhower’s vice- president, Richard Nixon.

     “Lindsay let Ike and Nixon have it but good.” Professor Brinkley says, jabbing the air with a fountain pen to illustrate his point. “He called them every name except ‘child of God’ before he left the podium. Twice he nearly got himself censured by (then-Speaker of the House)Sam Rayburn for intemperate language, and at least once there was actually booing from the House floor...Lindsay said things about the Eisenhower Administration even Ike’s harshest Democratic critics hadn’t accused him of.” Interestingly, none of the boos hurled at Lindsay came from the New York Congressional delegation; as a New York Daily News political writer would later observe, Lindsay was saying in public what many of his fellow New Yorkers had been privately thinking for weeks. The moment that Lindsay finally stepped down from the podium, the rest of New York’s U.S. House of Representatives delegation gave him a standing ovation which lasted seven full minutes.

    Indeed, within days of Lindsay’s blast at Eisenhower and Nixon the future mayor of New York City became a modern folk hero to the residents of the five boroughs. Two weeks after his speech to Congress the magazine The New Yorker put a black and white cartoon on its front cover depicting Lindsay as Superman standing astride the top of the Empire State Building. With Robert Wagner faced with increasing pressure to resign as mayor and rumors flying that a special election would shortly be called to choose his replacement, a grass roots drive to draft Lindsay as a mayoral candidate set up shop in Brooklyn and within less than a week had spread throughout the rest of New York City; by the end of September this movement had grown into a political juggernaut that had its own Park Avenue offices and drew support from every social, ethnic, financial, and party group in the city.

    “The ‘Draft Lindsay’ movement was one of the most diverse political coalitions this city has ever seen.” At this point in the interview the professor holds up a lapel button given to him as a Christmas gift last year by a fellow professor whose grandparents were both volunteers with the ‘Draft Lindsay’ organization; reading “Lindsay For Mayor”, the button represents thousands of others like it that were a common sight on the streets of New York in the weeks following Lindsay’s tirade against the Eisenhower Administration. “Hasidics from Brooklyn, Irish Catholics from the West Side, Harlem shopkeepers and Cuban refugees, Wall Street tycoons and beatniks from Greenwich Village, immigrants from eastern Europe....” Brinkley then lets out a laugh that can be distinctly heard from at least two rooms away. “About the only place they didn’t have a branch was in the lions’ cage at the city zoo.”

     In a more serious tone the professor adds: “The groundswell of support Lindsay got after his speech was incredible...it says a lot about the depth of respect he’d gained and the frustration people felt with Mayor Wagner’s utter inability to manage the aftermath of Hurricane Cleo that so many were willing to vote for a Republican candidate in one of America’s most heavily Democratic cities.” Lindsay’s still-unofficial mayoral campaign got a major boost when on October 3rd, two days after Dr. King’s “Do Not Forget Harlem” sermon, Wagner officially tendered his resignation as mayor; as many of the city’s political pundits had suggested would happen, a special election was set for the second Tuesday in January and Lindsay was immediately tabbed as the odds-on favorite to win the GOP primary on December 6th.

      Vice-President Nixon, still incensed at what he was convinced was an intentional and unforgivable personal affront on Lindsay’s part, mounted a secret offensive to sabotage the Lindsay campaign only to have his devious machinations backfire when the congressman won the GOP mayoral primary by a landslide. It was an omen of the bitter petty-mindedness that would clinch Nixon’s political demise twelve years later when, during his reckless last- gasp bid for the presidency, he was caught using campaign funds to conduct an illegal undercover operation to obtain damaging information on potential Democratic opponents.

******         

The January 1961 special election to choose New York City’s next mayor was one of the biggest political events in the Big Apple’s history. More than three-quarters of the city’s eligible voters braved a typically ice-cold East Coast winter to cast their ballots for either Lindsay or one of his challengers; interim mayor Abe Stark, the former Brooklyn borough president who had been appointed to temporarily run New York when Robert Wagner resigned, had decided against being one of those challengers after one of his closest confidants told him he wouldn’t stand much of a chance of defeating the wildly popular Lindsay. His instincts proved to be right: Lindsay won with 87 percent of the vote, with his biggest triumph coming in storm-ravaged Queens.

      “Lindsay’s victory in the ’61 special election was the closest thing this country has ever had to a unanimous vote for high office.” Professor Brinkley says, pointing at a blow-up of a now-legendary New York Daily News black and white photo showing Lindsay in the midst of his victory speech. “He carried every one of the five boroughs without a struggle...to give an idea just how decisive his win was, the Democratic candidate begin to write his concession speech just 90 minutes after the polls closed in Manhattan.” A popular joke that circulated around New York in the days immediately after Lindsay’s victory claimed that his votes in the special election weren’t counted, they were weighed. And there was a considerable grain of truth in that jest: in each of New York City’s five boroughs records were set for voter turnout in a mayoral election that still stand more than half a century later. Even the 2013 race to choose a successor to three-term mayor Michael Bloomberg hasn’t generated as much passion as the ’61 special election did.

       “Nixon went berserk when Lindsay won the special election.” says Professor Brinkley. “He was already upset about losing the presidential election to JFK...but to have Lindsay, his archenemy, become mayor of New York on top of that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as he was concerned. He wanted to hang Lindsay from the top of the Empire State Building.” But like his presidential aspirations, Nixon’s hopes of derailing Lindsay’s political career were destined to remain unfulfilled.

 

 

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