Good Americans: The Peekskill riots of 1949

In the late summer of 1949 national attention was riveted on the small town of Peekskill, New York, after two Paul Robeson concerts were marred by violent clashes between local veterans and other residents opposed to Robeson's presence. It was not Robeson's race or artistic career that upset the townspeople, but his politics. Robeson was known as a Communist sympathizer and the concerts, designated benefits for the Civil Rights Congress, were further stigmatized when the United States Attorney General branded the CRC a "subversive" organization. The violent confrontation between groups revealed the still unresolved conflict between contending visions of the American nation and the responsibilities and rights of "good Americans". Research on the Peekskill Riots revealed that the fundamental historical problem lay not in recreating the events of 1949, but in understanding how participants interpreted the political challenge of the moment. Traditional historical methodology with its emphasis on factual findings and dispassionate evaluation sheds little light on the distinct views of the participants. Concertgoers and protesters alike viewed their actions through ideological prisms that were not merely political frameworks of communist or capitalist theory, but shared constellations of values, meanings and life experiences central to individual and communal identity. Tracing these different "points of view" acknowledges the coexistence separate and equally valid narratives. Both concertgoers and protesters considered themselves to be "good Americans" defending their rights during a moment of crisis in American history. This dissertation fills an important gap in American historiography for providing the first recounting of the riots from the perspective of the town, although it proposes more than a community study in conclusion. The only other accounts of the riots (scholarly or popular) are constructed solely from the perspective of the concertgoers who perceived the violence as unwarranted, antisemitic and racially motivated. Although the violence was indeed tragic, this should not challenge the reality of Peekskill's fear of communist infiltration. In fact, given the pervasive culture of anticommunism which prevailed in the United States in 1949, the town's attitude is both understandable and typical of the era.