By Chanina Sperlin and Eli Cohen – NY Daily News
The coverage of the 1991 Crown Heights riots, which began 25 years ago today, might be one of the most distorted stories that the U.S. media has ever told.
If we ever hope to move forward, we have to correct the dangerously revisionist record.
Even as it was happening, the newspapers and TV news of the time attempted to create a “balanced story” where none existed. But rather than correcting those misperceptions, the coverage looking back from the vantage point of history has further developed several agenda-driven themes.
We are asked to believe: that somehow, 1991 was a race war between two opposing factions; that Al Sharpton was not culpable in inciting violence and racism; that former Police Commissioner Lee Brown did not fail in his management of the crisis; and that Mayor David Dinkins was an innocent scapegoat for the failure of his administration.
All of these narratives are false.
First, the truth: In the summer of 1991, the Jewish residents of Crown Heights were the targets, not the perpetrators, of four days and three nights of unrelenting violence. One community member was murdered (as was another white man who, weeks later, was mistaken for being Jewish); several people were injured; property was looted and destroyed; and hundreds of men, women and children were living in terror and afraid to leave their homes for days on end.
At the height of the violence, bands of roaming hooligans sought out people who looked Jewish to attack. Several angry marches threatened the central Lubavitch synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway, where Hasidic residents were forced to form a human shield to compel the police to intervene. The officers stood by understanding that their orders were to let the protesters vent. Outside agitators brought in by Sonny Carson and Sharpton further inflamed the tensions.
The full record of the four days is laid out in the Girgenti Report commissioned by Gov. Mario Cuomo at that time, and there is no record of any attacks by Hasidim on anyone, nor of any bodily or property damage incurred by anyone as a result of violence by any Jewish resident.
The press of that time wanted to tell a different story. Ari Goldman, who covered the riots for The New York Times, later wrote that the article that appeared in the paper was simply not the story he had reported, and that the story led with “Hasidim and blacks clashed” when that was just not what he saw on the streets. His editors had framed the story the way they wanted to tell it, regardless of the facts.
Now, a quarter century later, some of the key players desperately want to retell the story to protect their own legacies. Sharpton, who never saw a crisis he could not exploit, has sought to divert the issue to whether he began his incitement and call to violence before or after the stabbing and murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. But regardless of the answer to that question, the fact remains that he incited violence against Jews, and people were hurt. For that he has never apologized or admitted his culpability.
Brown, and by extension Dinkins, can point to no accomplishment other than that the unrest did not spread to other parts of the city. What is clear is that the police commissioner did nothing to stop innocent people from being hurt, until, on the fourth day of the rioting, then-First Deputy Commissioner Ray Kelly took charge and actually had his officers stop people from breaking the law.
Thank G-d, through the efforts of our Project Care, which brings together all the residents of Crown Heights, we have been able to work with a new generation of progressive black leaders to build valuable and meaningful relationships. But in order to move forward, we must have a clear understanding of the past.
Sperlin and Cohen are, respectively, the executive vice president for governmental affairs and the executive director of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council.
we will never forgive and we’ll never forget!
He said “Let them vent”.
What really happened was that the life of the chasidic driver was in danger due to the crowd getting violent and out of control, so the police ordered hatzalah to get him the heck out of there asap, and the EMS (Emergency Medical Services – they used to provide the ambulances before the Fire Department took it over) ambulances were to treat the two injured children.
Rabbi Sperlin,
I for one, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your intervention when my husband has had very serious issues with a African American in the neighborhood.
If not for you, and the Chesed the Eibershter showed us, we would have been embodied in years of litigation and Agmans Nefesh.
Mrs. G
The biggest lie and most enduring is that hatzala only treated the driver at the scene and refused to treat the boy. That narrative has been proven false but is still found in some records of the riot. Hatzala was forced off the scene for their own safety by an angry mob.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_riot
A CBS newscast yesterday morning, in its opening statement, referred to the cause of the CH riots as “the deaths of two people from extremely different cultures” (not a precise quote, but the gist of it). What — Yankel Rosenbaum’s murder caused the riots?!!! A few sentences later they specified correctly that the initial event that sparked the riots was the accidental killing of Gavin Cato. I contacted the news station to correct its egregious error but don’t know whether or not they did. Thank you for doing what you could to set the record straight — a significant accomplishment.… Read more »
I’m glad chanina is coming around.
Where was he when he and his colleagues signed an agreement with the city to get a few million dollars in a settlement, it was a bad deal. Never mind how the money was spent.
The city abandoned us, we had pepole killed. We had no police protection not fire protection and many other services stoped during that time. We didn’t even get mail those days.
In this city a Ganov get chased by police and trips while runing brakes his foot gets more money then the whole of crown height setlled for.
Children of America!
LIE! LIE! LIE!
Your leaders and sages L I E !
So when you parents say, “It’s not nice to lie!” Tell them our leaders lie…so why can’t we!
“Dear parents: Keep Your Big Lying Mouths SHUT!’
Americans L I E ! Why, it’s part of our culture. It’s historical.
( I was hit in the head by a brick, scalp wound. I collected $15,000 six years later. Money was gone in 6 mos. 6 kids at home.)
America is on a downward spiral…societal decay.
Watch This! Particularly go to 11:00 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2ghdM66U4Y
Everyone else is allowed to decide how they define their own suffering, except the Jews.
You said what I was thinking.
Politicians are not leaders. Where was the black clergy in all of this? where are they now?
Can someone shed some light on what happened? Some ‘media’ outlets want to make it look that hatzala didn’t want to help the blacks. What really happened?
In The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park there is an exhibit of Kristallnacht, the ugly incident that really began WWII. As a docent of the museum, I ask my group members if an incident of this type could happen here in US and they shake their heads and say surely not. Then I discuss the Crown Heights Riots, referred to on Google as a pogrom, imagine that, a pogrom here in this country. It was a frightening time and we, the residents of Crown Heights, felt deserted. The Jews of the other boroughs did not seem to voice… Read more »
As the writers said, the CH riots was nothing more than an excuse to attack Jews. The new generation of hipster writers are just continuing the false narrative.
Very well said.