Horrific race riots erupt when New York City starts to draft soldiers into the Civil War. A mob of white people, who resent fighting for emancipation, direct their rage at the Black community as well as the police… and all hell breaks loose. The NYPD pushes for more firearms – but will they use them to protect New York’s most vulnerable, or subdue them?

From Wondery, Crooked Media and PushBlack.

Empire City is made with a commitment to ensure the stories of those who were and are still impacted by the NYPD are always part of the stories we tell ourselves about the police, about America, and about democracy.

Voices & References:
Ed O’Donnell https://edwardtodonnell.com/
Kamau Ware https://kamauware.com/
Kevin McGruder https://antiochcollege.edu/team-members/kevin-mcgruder/
Daniel Czitrom https://www.mtholyoke.edu/directory/emeriti-retired-faculty/daniel-czitrom
Black Gotham https://blackgotham.com/

TRANSCRIPT

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Hey y’all. Just want to let you know this episode contains explicit depictions of violence do what you need to do to take care of yourself. [music plays] I’ve had my share of run ins with the police since I was a kid. But it wasn’t until I was making this series that I had one that truly showed me what the NYPD has become. It happened on a late spring day in 2024, and my daughter, Eniola’s running across a plaza on the NYU campus where I teach. She’s breaking down some slick four year old dance moves. She’s singing and she’s lifting her voice so that folks can hear what she has to say. [singing] Eniola’s standing with me and her mom on the grounds of a protest encampment at NYU, a two minute walk from where we live, right after watching the catastrophic, horrific and consistent attacks on Palestinians. We’re here to demand that my university disclose and divest from Israel. [Eniola singing] I watch her skip off past tents and food past hundreds of folks with green, red and white Palestinian flags, cepheus and hijabs and passed banners saying Never give up until Palestine is free. She was surrounded by students, faculty and other members of our community whose signs and chants call for an end to genocidal war. We see Jewish and Muslim students protecting each other’s right to safely express their faith as humble but fierce resistance. [clip of protest] But as the sun goes down and Muslim students kneel for prayer, that sense of safety is shattered. An explosion of sirens pierces through this prayerful moment, and blue and red lights bounce off the faces of everyone around us just as an NYPD bus rumbles through the crowd. Panic and fear shoot through my body as I raced to get to my family. I see Eniola run to her mother and grab her leg. My wife picks her up and we exchange a knowing look before they disappear into the already scattering crowd. And I stay behind with my students. I lock arms with about 20 other faculty members, and together we form a wall with our bodies between our students and the NYPD. Scores of police in riot gear. The strategic response team started lining up on the plaza. They’re wearing helmets, vests and guns, all funded by Mayor Adams new police budget. Bunches of white zip tie handcuffs and tear gas canisters are dangling from their belts as they march toward us. A loud electronic voice assaults our ears from the sky. The only word I can make out is trespassing. A young white cop grabs me, forcing my arms apart, pushing me away from my students and zip tying my hands behind my back. He tightens it until the plastic cuts into my wrists. I watch as an officer tackles a Lebanese student, snatches her by her hair and drags her down the street as she screams. Another cop recklessly pepper sprays into the crowd, a student journalists head jerks back as a projectile blast of mace sets his eyes on fire. It’s barely half an hour since Eniola’s left the plaza. I’ve been arrested and 136 of us are being carted away by NYPD busses to one Police Plaza. I sit for hours on a cold metal bench, in a cell, watching through a scuffed up dirty glass window. As my colleagues, students and other fellow New Yorkers are each dragged in and processed. All of us are outraged, but we’re also energized. Some protesters are still chanting and singing to drown out any fear inside of us and to keep what’s happening to families in Gaza in the forefront of our minds. And as I sat there unable to contact my family, I couldn’t help but wonder what my daughter might have seen that night. What is she thinking? Is she still awake in her bed, waiting for me to come home. When the NYPD showed up that night, what I felt was the opposite of safety. It felt like a naked savage drive. Spectacular and military had been unleashed on us, and it had nothing to do with protecting us and everything to do with violent disciplinary power. And even though New Yorkers are getting used to seeing our neighborhood police in riot gear on the news, the public gatherings and on our campuses, the NYPD wasn’t always a force beefed up with tactical units, shields and tear gas. So when did that change and what was the threat that was so dangerous that it pushed the NYPD to ramp up their capacity and willingness to forcefully subdue masses of people even when they’re peaceful. From Wondery and Crooked Media. I’m Chenjerai Kumanyika, and this is Empire City. Episode four. They’ve Got Weapons. After New York’s two police forces beat the shit out of each other on the steps of City Hall, the Metropolitan Police take over as the official NYPD and partially because of the riot. A lot of folks view this new police as another uniformed gang with nightsticks. And on day one, they have a problem. Huge parts of the city that the new police have to patrol are immigrant communities loyal to Fernando Wood and Tammany Hall. And by day two, tensions are already at a breaking point. It’s Independence Day and a cop goes to break up a huge fight between street gangs. But as he walks through the crowd, a guy knocks him down. The gangs attack him, rip off his uniform and beat him with his own nightstick. When he finally gets away, he runs back to the police headquarters in his boxers. He tells his squad what happens and passes out. Of course, this kind of thing is a real problem for any police force, and these kinds of skirmishes went on for years. So the NYPD writes a request to city leaders basically saying, hey, can we have half $1 million, create a riot squad with horses, short swords and revolvers? Most of the city leaders are like, hell no. That’s too much like a standing army. If that worry about the police sounds familiar, it’s because it is. When someone first said, hey, can we have like a thousand police instead of 200 folks said nah, man, that sounds too much like a standing army. But then later, some rich folks said, Well, actually, as long as you leave us alone, that’s okay. Then when someone suggested, let’s give the police uniforms, people said, Men in uniform patrolling our neighborhoods? Never. But then Matsell just put them in uniforms and folks said, okay, maybe not that bad. Now, the police were asking for guns and people were like, this is too far. But there’s one city leader that has the cops back. His name is John Kennedy. No relation to those Kennedys. Since no one is budging on guns, Kennedy says, At least give us the horses or lassos something. We can’t have gangs beating up the police, and we need some way to put these rowdy folks in the city down. So the city leaders agree to horses. But what none of those city leaders knew is that in just a few years, the country would find itself smack in the middle of a bloody civil war with no end in sight. It’s 1863. And that guy, John Kennedy, is the newest NYPD police superintendent, and he’s tasked with overseeing America’s first military draft in New York. And white folks are pissed about it. Now up here in the north in New York. A lot of folks like to puff out their chests because we were on the right side, the Abraham Lincoln side. Right. But Kennedy is probably tuned into folks who feel a whole different way, because if you ask a lot of white folks in New York around that time.

Ed O’Donnell: Your worst nightmare is the liberation of the Black man.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Historian Ed O’Donnell says that even though New York is a free state, a lot of New Yorkers are enraged at the possibility that 4 million enslaved people might be emancipated.

Ed O’Donnell: Because if you think you’re poor now, you think you have trouble putting food on the table now. Just wait. If emancipation comes, you are going to have your jobs taken, your women taken.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And the fact that there are now formerly enslaved Black folks fighting in the Civil War made this fear seem even more real. Plus, there’s one caveat that most white New Yorkers really ain’t feeling.

Ed O’Donnell: They had an exemption for wealthy people. If you could pay $300, you could buy your way out of the draft. And lots of people did. So famous people like Andrew Carnegie did it. Theodore Roosevelt’s father did it.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So essentially rich people can spend their afternoons watching bougie British actors in Macbeth while poor people die on the battlefield.

Ed O’Donnell: A rich man’s war in a poor man’s fight.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: One person who doesn’t fear Black emancipation is Superintendent John Kennedy. When Kennedy hears that a bunch of Black union troops might be traveling through the city, he fears that white New Yorkers are going to attack them and that his police are going to have to protect them. He picks up his pen again, writes to the governor and asks if he can send them on a different route. Kennedy succeeds in re routing the Black regiment, but the anger he’s worried about is real and it’s rising in the city. Going into the first day of the draft, Kennedy is nervous that the city might explode. Francis MacDonald You know, in bingo, there’s a big cage filled with lottery balls and someone spinning the cage and calling out numbers one by one. Believe it or not, that’s how the draft is carried out. Except if your name gets called, you don’t fill out a spot on your bingo board. You have to fight in the Civil War. On the first day of the draft, there’s some skirmishes in other cities, but the Kennedy surprise is the draft. Officials continue to announce the numbers in New York. Nothing happens. French The draft begins on Saturday, July 11th, 1863, without a hitch. This puts a lot of folks at ease, including Kennedy, who breathes a big sigh of relief. So he heads home, assuming that Monday will go just as peacefully. But not everyone feels so sure. One person who still worried is Captain George Washington Walling. Walling understood first hand how quickly a mob of angry New Yorkers can spiral out of control. He had been through the Astor Place riot and the police riot. So unlike his boss, Captain Walling fears that even though the first day of the draft went okay, shit is going to turn up when they start calling out numbers again on Monday. But Walling is just one police officer. He doesn’t have the authority to mobilize the whole department, so he spends Sunday night hunkered down in the precinct, preparing himself for any commotion that might surface when the draft resumes. And it turns out he’s right. Early on Monday morning. A group forms at the base of Central Park. It is the most dangerous kind of group. White people filled with anger and resentment. They were enraged about the draft and being sent off to a war. And as the crowd swells, they feed off each other. They start marching downtown, hell bent on destruction. Eventually, they set off what’s called the New York City draft riots, one of the biggest and deadliest urban riots in the history of America.

Kamau Ware: So where we’re standing right here is where things flipped.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I’m standing with Kamau Ware, a Black historian, artist and tour guide. He’s walking me through the events of the riots. We start at the bottom of Central Park. And this location is important. Six years before the draft riots began, the thriving Black community of Seneca Village was destroyed to build this park.

Kamau Ware: And so it’s metaphorical that you had white mobs gathering here who also were just belligerent toward the presence of Black people in the city at all is almost like an intentional place to gather. Let’s go to the place where Black folks got displaced, and let’s gather here to protest the draft.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Standing here today, it feels calm. Tourists are taking pictures. People are eating overpriced falafels. But on that Monday morning, back in 1863, folks were gathering to protest. And the crowd starts to march toward the draft office. Another large crowd of irritated folks gets together downtown at the ninth police precinct with a draft is about to resume as draft officials pick up where they left off on Saturday, pulling out names one by one. The crowd there gets angrier and angrier. Finally, some firefighters can’t take it anymore.

Kamau Ware: They’re the ones who kind of, you know, like the match and say, you know what? We ain’t here for this. You’re not going to tell us to go fight in this war. We’re already serving this city. And then everybody else is kind of like sparked by their anger. And then they just went ahead, broke glass, attacked the spot, and the cops ran.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Kamau emphasizes this point. When the cops saw this huge mob, they ran away.

Kamau Ware: I want people to understand and appreciate the volume of people and the amount of threat that was displayed that made cops be like we’re not dying today over this.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Decided cops running gives the mob confidence.

Kamau Ware: There’s this moment of, oh, I think we’re in charge.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Now that they’ve gotten their first taste of how easy it is to overwhelm the authorities. The growing throng starts hitting somewhere where they can get guns.

Kamau Ware: Then they go in and they sack the armory, and now they have got weapons. It’s safe to expect that folks have been drinking too.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The superintendent Kennedy reads telegraphs about outbreaks of police violence and large crowds gathering around police stations. He hops in his buggy and heads out to see what’s going on. Kennedy spots a large crowd of folks surrounding the ninth District police station. He leaves his buggy a few blocks away so he’s less conspicuous, starts walking up to the station. At this point, Kennedy has civilian clothes on, but there’s a former cop in the crowd who recognizes him and yells out. Here comes that son of a bitch, Kennedy. Let’s finish him. The mob is merciless. Irish New Yorkers finally have the chance to take their vengeance on the NYPD official who’s enforcing this draft, helping to send them off to die for a cause they don’t believe in. He’s walking just kind of. And then like, boom, he gets hit.

Kamau Ware: Yeah, we could use it as three terms.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Hell, yeah. You already know, bro.

Kamau Ware: Yeah yeah. He gets. He gets stole.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yeah. Somebody stole it. Somebody stole the police superintendent. The former cop hypes up the crowd as they descend on Kennedy saying, Stick together and we can lick all the damn police in the city.

Kamau Ware: He’s beaten to a pulp, and then they’re trying to drown him in a puddle. So, like, I mean, just imagine, like a commissioner of New York’s police department getting his ass beat on the block.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Fortunately for Kennedy, a guy runs into the melee and convinces everyone that he’s already dead. After the mob moves on, Kennedy is secretly taken back to the police precinct. Doctors count 17 knife wounds. By now. There’s skirmishes and violence erupting all over the city, Walling heads into the street a few blocks away. With his club in hand and a small group of police at his side, they must look like a strong arm squads from a decade ago. But this time they’re up against more than a small gang. Walling’s crew are confronted by a mob of 2000 enraged rioters, he temporarily deputized his brother and hands them a club as they head into the brawl. He tells his men, Kill every man with the club. A small group of men versus 2000 armed rioters probably sounds heroic, but the truth is that Walling and his men barely make it out of that confrontation alive. When you think about a mob, you might think of an irrational horde consuming everything in its path. But this mob was selective. They ignore a lot of what they pass. They don’t seek out the politicians who actually led them into war. Instead, they focus on destroying places they see as symbols of their pain. They attack an office of a pro-war newspaper and they even attack a Brooks Brothers store because it’s a symbol of rich folks. But as the day goes on, a palpable shift takes place. The crowd moves from attacking symbols to people. And this time, it’s not just the police.

Kamau Ware: They got weapons, they’re more agitated. They’ve got bigger numbers. And now they’re attacking Black folks, taking them off stagecoaches, pulling out of restaurants, tearing down neighborhoods.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Now, the riots aren’t just about the draft.

Kamau Ware: And at that point in time, the agenda is to harm Black people.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Kamau says that this is something a lot of folks have really gotten wrong about this riot.

Kamau Ware: There are people who are academics and writers have gone along with this positioning of this as a riot that had these egalitarian reasons of like, you know, people sticking up for themselves.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: He says that version of the draft riot hides the fact that the media and politicians had convinced these rioters the Black freedom was their biggest threat. Which is why the focus of the riot transforms before the first day was over.

Kamau Ware: And that’s why I think it’s a misnomer to call it a draft riot, because the draft riot lasted about five hours. The race riot lasted about four days.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And the mob is just getting started. Now they’re going to set their sights on a place that represents everything they hate. The colored orphan asylum is run by Black women. It provides shelter and care to homeless Black children. Before institutions like this, homeless Black kids would be sent to prison, according to historian Ed O’Donnell. For some white New Yorkers, this large, stately Black run building is kind of a sore spot.

Ed O’Donnell: It’s a Black institution. So the writers aren’t really concerned about what kind of Black institution. It’s a Black institution. And so they propose to set it on fire and shout, Kill the inhabitants and so forth.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The mob surrounds the building, pulling up cobblestones and throwing them through windows, tearing down the door with pickaxes before torching the whole thing.

Ed O’Donnell: The rioters pour into there, smash the furniture begins setting on fire.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The police are vastly outnumbered, and it looks like they may not be able to stop the mob and save the children. But fortunately, the Black women running the asylum aren’t waiting around for the cops. These women are about to do what they do best protect their own. [music plays] The enraged mob of white rioters rushed in to the colored orphan’s asylum.

Ed O’Donnell: Within just minutes, you know, it’s completely ablaze.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The Black matrons hear the mob coming and quickly mobilized to get the children out the back door. As the asylums consumed by flames, over 200 Black children escaped unnoticed by the mob.

Ed O’Donnell: Children are scampering away under protection of some local folks that are helping out, plus also a few police officers. And they all manage to get away.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Walling says the police escorted the children right to his precinct, and he describes them as being crazed with terror. And as the riots got worse, they were forced to hide there for the rest of the week.

Ed O’Donnell: Miraculously, none of the children are killed in this incident.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: O’Donnell makes the point that many police did step up to protect targets of the mob.

Ed O’Donnell: And so police do, in many cases, step in and provide at least a little bit of cover, a little bit of delay so that the person can escape. Many policemen pay a heavy price for intervening on behalf of Black victims.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But at the same time.

Ed O’Donnell: Some police, however, don’t do anything. And there’s at least a couple of documented cases where African American refugees fleeing the mob show up at the door of a police station and a policeman, despite orders to do so to let people in, refuses them entry.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to have to rely on the police to beg them to give you shelter from a bloodthirsty mob and to have the so-called protectors turn you away. I’ve seen documents in books where police brag about how they defended the city during these race riots, but they never talk about this part. What they didn’t do, they also don’t talk about the fact that when they tried to help, there just wasn’t much that they could do. Because for the most part, Black New Yorkers were left to defend themselves. Abolitionist William Wells Brown tells the story of stumbling into a room on Thompson Street filled with the thick, choking smoke. He sees eight Black women standing around a stove, pouring soap and ashes into tins filled with boiling water. The women are armed with ladles ready to fling the hot liquid they call the king of pain at any rioters who may come in the door. When Brown asked if they can throw the liquid without injuring each other. One of them responds, yes, honey, we’ve been practicing all day. Further uptown on 30th Street, the legendary abolitionist Reverend Henry Highland Garnett, is also holed up in a room.

Kevin McGruder: They were looking for certain leaders, churches, facilities affiliated with Black people.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Historian Kevin McGruder says that in Garnett’s younger days, he earned a reputation as a rabble rouser, preaching fiery sermons and promoting radical strategies for Black liberation. He reads an example of one of Garnett’s most incendiary pieces of writing.

Kevin McGruder: Let your motto be. Resistance. Resistance. Resistance. That’s how he ends it. And so he’s he’s basically calling for a slave rebellion.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Armed slave rebellion.

Kevin McGruder: He doesn’t say that. But you know [laughter] what? What kind of rebellion would it be without them?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: This public image as a radical makes Garnett a target. And with no police protection. Garnett and a group of friends squeeze into his home. They wait with bated breath as the carnage unfolds outside.

Kevin McGruder: They were looking for him.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The mob is going up and down the street ready to burst into his home as soon as they can identify.

Kevin McGruder: It seems like the mob didn’t have his exact address, but they knew probably maybe knew that he lived on the street and trying to figure out which building and they’re not going to attack all of them.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And then Garnett’s daughter makes a courageous and smart move.

Kevin McGruder: He had a nameplate on his house and his daughter removes that. But if she hadn’t, who knows? They might have figured out that that’s where he lived.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And on Wednesday evening, three days into the riot, Garnett makes a dangerous decision. He opens the door to his house and starts looking for the mob. 13 years earlier, New York police might have taken Garnett back into slavery, but in the middle of this riot, Garnett might have actually been hoping to see a police officer because at that moment, he’s especially vulnerable.

Kevin McGruder: He had a peg leg lower portion one of his legs was amputated. Okay. You have a peg leg. How fast are you going to be able to run if you need to?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: But as a prominent Black leader, Garnett feels called to see the violence for himself.

Kevin McGruder: He feels he needs to be a witness of what has happened because people are going to expect him to respond.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And eventually he witnesses a scene that strikes terror into his heart. A mob of white people has hanged a Black person by the neck right there on the street in front of him. And when they’re finished, even the sight of a dangling flinching Black body isn’t enough to satisfy the mob’s bloodlust.

Kevin McGruder: Then the. People take a knife and the person with the knife says, who wants a piece of N meat. And then people in the crowd are saying, I do. I do.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: When we imagined white New Yorkers savagely and gleefully carving out the flesh of a Black body that they just hanged, We should be clear this wasn’t a moment of drunken, irrational violence that the perpetrators wanted to distance themselves from later.

Kevin McGruder: It’s kind of reminiscent of those lynching postcards where. You’ve got this crowd around somebody and that’s it’s that same kind of this is a trophy and we’re going to take an artifact.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The police are nowhere to be found. So Garnett stays in the shadows. The mob moves on and he slowly, quietly makes it back to safety. When Elizabeth Jennings Graham hears about the riots, she’s at home with her husband and their baby, Thomas nine years earlier. Jennings Graham successfully sued a New York streetcar company for discrimination. But in the middle of the draft riots, she knows there’s only one thing she can do. She’s one of hundreds of Black folks who escape across the East River to communities like Weeksville and Flatbush in Brooklyn. Try to imagine the scene if you’re holed up in your apartment with your family as the city goes up in flames. You know you’re not safe. Phones haven’t been invented yet, so you can’t call 911 and you know, you can’t stay here. So under cover of darkness, you and your husband bundle up your son and head out into the night. You hurry past the wreckage of charred buildings and torn up streets. A jolt of fear runs through you every time you hear voices or any sounds that might be the mob. Finally, you make it to the East River and step onto a boat that will ferry you to Brooklyn to safety. And as you set off from the shore of Manhattan and finally breathe a sigh of relief, you look down at your infant son cradled in your arms. But Jennings, Graham’s son, Thomas, was already a sickly child during the journey. He falls into convulsions and dies a few days later. He was one year old. Unable to return home, Jennings Graham buries her son in Brooklyn. Reflecting with Kamau with everything that happened. It kind of overwhelms me. I can’t front it makes me a little emotional. Like even when we was back at the statue. And I saw a brother there, he had his kids there. And I was thinking, what would it mean to be out here with your kids and to sort of and know you can’t protect them.

Kamau Ware: Yeah. I mean, I also think that we’ve been walking from the same location where the mob gathered. And what are they what are they screaming and chanting. What’s the sonics of that? Do you hear the mob come and do you hear screaming and shouting?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: After four days of rioting, the city commissioner calls in thousands of troops from the Union Army to support the police. Many of them had just fought in the Battle of Gettysburg, with federal troops occupying the city. The draft riots finally end. During the riots, white mobs had stolen and burned property belonging to Black New Yorkers. Leaders like Henry Highland Garnet pushed the city to establish a committee of merchants for the relief of colored people suffering from the late riots. But the money they raise is barely enough to scratch the surface of the collective suffering.

Kamau Ware: How many folks left New York and took that trauma with them? How many folks stayed here and had that trauma triggered when they saw some of the same people in the mob who did not go to jail for a day for killing Black folk?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Some of the Black residents who survived flee the city. New York’s Black population drops from 11,000 to 9000.

Kamau Ware: Imagine seeing a bunch of like, watch like 13, 15 year olds grow up. And you know that one of those kids, you know, chased you out of your home with a bunch of other kids and whistling for other folks to come in and get involved in the violence.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Kamau points to another major historical massacre, the Tulsa race riot, in 2001. The city of Tulsa formed a whole commission to investigate the riot and make it part of the historical record. But there’s been no such effort when it comes to the draft riots in New York, not in the moment or in the years since. One of the biggest challenges is that so many of the records come from the police themselves. Historian Kevin McGruder says the people who ran boarding houses, small businesses and churches all pitched in in big and small ways. But the NYPD heroic stories about cops don’t capture that.

Kevin McGruder: I’m not denying that the police did what they did, but I know there’s a broader record that that we don’t have.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The New York police have focused on moments of victory where they temporarily beat back the mob to save someone from being attacked. And even in the days after the riot, as the smoke still rose in the air from buildings across the city, as people search for and mourn their dead relatives and Black folks began to seek reparations. The press made the police the focus of their coverage. James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald gives the cops a glowing review. In not a single instance has assistance been required by the police when it has not been promptly rendered. Historian Ed O’Donnell says the police loved their coverage.

Ed O’Donnell: It’s a golden opportunity for the police department of New York City to kind of rebrand themselves to New York and to the nation as this great force that will protect the populace from the dangerous classes.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: The truth is, the mob could leave New York to waste and the police couldn’t stop it. But as the carnage unfolded and the body count rose, politicians and New York’s business leaders were hiding in their homes, praying the mob wouldn’t come crashing through their doors.

Ed O’Donnell: And many people say, well, I’m still a little leery of the police. I’m still a little leery of their political connections and the corruption. But, man, we sure did need them. And we are going to need them.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Because what they fear, even more than the violent and racist mobs of the draft riots, is the growing mass of organized, determined working class New Yorkers. So they said, you know what? Maybe we will be safer if we have more police. And that decision is about to get tested. In 1849, when New Yorkers had rioted about Macbeth. A guy named Abraham Duryea led the military regiment that protected the city by well, by shooting and killing more than 20 people. Then in 1857, after the police riot kicked off citywide fighting, Duryea was there again restoring the peace by shooting people. I could keep going. But you get my point. For ever since the Astor Place riots, the police had been forced to call in the military to shoot unruly protesters and restore order. And one of the guys that kept getting called is Abraham Duryea. He’s tall and cocky. Think Vince Vaughn in uniform with mutton chops. He makes a name for himself in the Civil War. And when he comes back, he trades in his military gear to become a New York City police commissioner. By 1873. He’s leading a force that has grown exponentially since the draft riots. And he wants them armed. He reaches out first to the mayor and then to the governor. And he says, look, I’m tired of the New York police having to call the military every time they want to put down a mob. Let’s create a brigade, kind of like a 19th century Swat team and let’s give them guns. Duryea requests that the New York police should have 800 rifles, 100 revolvers, 150 swords. And most terrifying of all, ten bugles. Duryea reminds everybody of the draft rights. He says if we had something like this police brigade back then, we could have saved $1 million in protected property. He didn’t say they could have saved lives, but, you know, I’m sure he meant that. But New York’s governor says, wait. So you want me to sign off on a permanent mini army that’s under the control of the mayor? No, I don’t think so. So Duryea and police chief still go forward with the brigade. But instead of rifles, revolvers and bugles, they’re forced to use the same batons they already had in this new brigade. Inside the New York police was just in time for another threat. The previous year, a wave of business and bank failures sends America into a depression.

Ed O’Donnell: Imagine you’re a working class person. Life was hard in the city. There is no unemployment insurance. There is no Social Security. There is no Medicare. There is no minimum wage. There is no welfare as we know it today.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Historian Daniel Czitrom is an expert on the police in New York during the Gilded Age. And he says that the majority of working people can’t afford clothes, rent or oil to heat their homes. 90,000 people are evicted and cast into the streets.

Daniel Czitrom: And so the question becomes, if you’re out of work for six months, if you don’t have enough coal for the winter, if you have a fire and you’re forced out of your tenement apartment, what the hell are you going to do?

Chenjerai Kumanyika: In the streets, the police, patrol tailors, cigar makers, streetcar drivers and other working class people start getting ideas in their heads about exactly what is to be done. The railroad tycoons and oil magnates of New York hobnob with one another and attend glittering balls dressed to the nines. This new wave of poverty makes them terrified about how it could all come crashing down. These elites are seeing a huge uptick in support for organized labor. Local and national unions are formed, and for the first time you start to see strikes and other radical labor actions on a larger scale. Thousands of working people in New York see a way to stand with each other and change their working conditions and their lives. They see a way to make America live up to what they hoped it would be. But when wealthy New Yorkers see these changes, historian Ed O’Donnell says they thought back to the draft riots. They saw a mob of poor people who wanted blood.

Ed O’Donnell: That idea of the masses rising up never gets out of the elite mind. In the Gilded Age, it’s talked about incessantly. What’s going to keep you from allowing you to sleep at night is having a large, increasingly heavily armed, eventually professionally trained police force.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So New York’s business community turns to the police as their enforcers.

Ed O’Donnell: The Chamber of Commerce types, the real estate people, the banking people, the people own the big theaters and big hotels in the Tenderloin and other neighborhoods. You know, many of them, they worship the police department. They thought the cops were the only thing standing between them and anarchy.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Starving workers, labor leaders in an organization called the Committee of Safety meet to plan a rally.

Ed O’Donnell: In their plan is to petition the mayor and the city council to say, please provide us, at the very least with a moratorium on evictions, but also some kind of aid so we can feed our families.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Labor activist Samuel Gompers describes this organizing push as a folk movement a primitive need. This is nothing like the violence and racial terror of the draft riots. Those riots were led by mobs of racist, pro-slavery white people. This rally is a peaceful gathering of working people fighting for their basic human rights. But to those in power, the difference is irrelevant. It’s another mob of people that needs to be put down. And Gompers warns something about a marching folk group rouses dread. Those in authority do not rest comfortably. The police chief and other leaders meet at city hall in what newspapers called a council of war. On January 13th, 1874, over 7000 people gather in Tompkins Square Park. But unlike during the draft riots, the police are now well prepared for the crowds. 1600 cops are mobilized between the park and city hall. Fully two thirds of the entire force mounted squads are at the ready. And at the front of the line is Police Commissioner Abraham Duryea, with his newly formed mounted police brigade armed with clubs and ready to crack skulls. As the crowd peacefully and passionately demand that the city address their poverty. The police chief orders these horse cops into the fray. And with that, shit off.

Ed O’Donnell: Out of nowhere. Mounted policemen and scores of other police on foot just assault the crowd. There’s no order to disperse. It’s just a full on assault breaking heads, stomping people, trampling people.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: By the afternoon, the park is cleared. 46 workers sit in jail, most of them immigrants from Europe. Justice Schwab, a young German anarchist, is attacked and arrested for wearing a red flag around his waist. Another German, a painter named Christian Mayor, is arrested for allegedly attempting to defend himself by striking a police sergeant with a hammer. The newspaper describes it this way, Men tumbled over each other into the gutter. The horsemen beat the air with their batons, and many persons were laid low. Commissioner Duryea was thrilled about the NYPD response. He writes, It was the most glorious sight I ever saw. The way the police broke and drove the crowd, their order was perfect as they charged with their clubs uplifted. And with that, the NYPD becomes the national model for what a police force looks like, what it’s equipped with, and what it’s meant to accomplish.

Ed O’Donnell: The people there are very well known that come out of that labor activists, labor editors and so forth. They just say that was the moment for me. That’s when I became fully aware of what they would say an emerging class conflict or class warfare, and that the police are now the instrument of oppressing the working class.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Over time, the police are armed with even more advanced military equipment, and within 25 years, revolvers have become standard issue. And these increasingly militarized police continue to come out in full force to protest whether they’re against poverty and exploitation, racial discrimination, climate change or genocide of war. It doesn’t matter when masses of ordinary people take to the streets to fight for the conditions they need to survive America. Then why is the NPD is there to beat them, shoot them, handcuff them, and take them away to maintain order. After a long day, I’m sitting on my daughter’s bed with my wife winding down and reading to her right before I took her in. And with no warning, she starts talking about the police. So I quickly grabbed my phone.

Eniola Kumanyika: I told you.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: What did you tell me?

Eniola Kumanyika: I told you, I don’t want to go to jail.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I told you that I don’t want to go to jail. My heart drops and fear floods my chest. And you all is looking me right in the face, waiting for my response. A year ago in Central Park, when Enola told me that she thought the police keep people safe, I panicked. I wanted her to understand the parts the police won’t tell you. But now that she’s directly telling me about her fears of jail. I feel like everything’s moving too fast. What made you. What made you think about jail?

Eniola Kumanyika: When we were eating our cookies. You had. You had. You had something on your phone.

Ed O’Donnell: What did I have on there?

Eniola Kumanyika: You. You just had something scary on it. I didn’t like it.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Earlier that week when we thought she wasn’t paying attention. Eniola  saw us  watching a video on my phone of police grabbing and handcuffing protesters.

Eniola Kumanyika: They were saying free, free Palestine. That’s what they were saying.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: What Eniola didn’t say explicitly was that she had been saying those same words while she danced right before the police showed up. How did that make you feel?

Eniola Kumanyika: Sad.

Chenjerai Kumanyika: At age four. My daughter is starting to understand that people resisting were the ones that got thrown in jail. I finally get Eniola to bed. But for the rest of that night, I feel the weight of this conversation. As a parent, I always want to protect her. I hold her hand when she’s crossing the street. I turn off a violent or explicit scene on the television. But I worry that what I think of as protection might actually be disempowering or hurting her ability to build the awareness she needs to protect herself. That’s the paradox of protection while she’s four, it feels right to protect my daughter’s body and mind from the things that can hurt her. But for most of her life, she’ll need the agency to navigate those dangers herself. Because when powerful men or the police or politicians say they’re doing things to protect our minds and bodies, we would all be wise to ask, what are they really protecting? And what are they unleashing? That’s next time when Empire City. Empire City is a production of Wondery and Crooked Media. I’m your host and executive producer Chenjerai Kumanyika. For Crooked Media. Our senior producer is Peter Bresnan. Our managing producer is Leo Duran. Our senior story editor is Diane Hodson. Our producer is Sam Riddell. Boen Wang and Sydney Rapp are our associate producers. Sound design, mixing and original score by Axel Kacoutié. Our historical consultant and fact, checker is History Studios. Our voice actor is Demetrius Noble for Wondery. Our senior producer is Mandi Gorenstein. Our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Our coordinating producer is Myrriah Gossett. The executive producer of PushBlack is Lilly Workneh. Executive producers at Crooked Media are Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, Tommy Vietor and Diane Hodson. Executive producers at Wondery are N’Jeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Lewy, and Jen Sargent.