Пикскилльские беспорядки: расовая ненависть и антикоммунистическая истерия 1949 года.

1949 anti communist race riots against African Americans and Jews
The Peekskill riots took place at Cortlandt Manor, New York in 1949. The catalyst for the rioting was an announced concert by black singer Paul Robeson, who was well known for his strong pro trade union stance, civil rights activism, communist affiliations, and anti colonialism. The concert, organized as a benefit for the Civil Rights Congress, was scheduled to take place on August 27 in Lakeland Acres, just north of Peekskill.

The concert, organized as a benefit for the Civil Rights Congress, was scheduled to take place on August 27 in Lakeland Acres, just north of Peekskill. Before Robeson arrived, a mob of locals attacked concert goers with baseball bats and rocks. The local police arrived hours later and did little to intervene. Thirteen people were seriously injured, Robeson was lynched in effigy, and a cross was seen burning on an adjacent hillside. The concert was then postponed until September 4. Following the concert, request for Klan memberships from the Peekskill area numbered 748 persons. Robeson's longtime friend and Peekskill resident, Helen Rosen, who had agreed to collect Robeson at the train station, had heard on the radio that protesters were massing at the concert grounds. Robeson drove with Rosen and two others to the concert site and saw marauding groups of youngsters, a burning cross on a nearby hill and a jeering crowd throwing rocks and chanting "Dirty Commie" and "Dirty Kikes." Robeson made more than one attempt to get out of the car and confront the mob but was restrained by his friends. The media were flooded with reactions and charges. The Joint Veterans Council of Peekskill refused to admit any involvement, describing its activities as a "protest parade held without disorder and perfectly disbanded." Peekskill police officials said the picnic grounds had been outside their jurisdiction;

Following the riots, more than 300 people went to Albany, New York to express their indignation to Governor Thomas Dewey, who refused to meet with them, blaming communists for provoking the violence. Twenty seven plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Westchester County and two veterans' groups. The charges were dismissed three years later.

Following the Peekskill riots, Democratic House Representative John E. Rankin of Mississippi condemned Robeson on the house floor. When New York Congressman Jacob Javits, a liberal Republican, spoke to the United States House of Representatives, deploring the Peekskill riots as a violation of constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and free assembly, Rankin replied angrily: "It was not surprising to hear the gentlemen from New York defend the Communist enclave." Rankin said that he wanted it known that the American people are not in sympathy "with that Nigger Communist and that bunch of Reds who went up there." Speaker Rayburn then defended Rankin, ruling that "the gentlemen from Mississippi is not subject to a point of order referred to the Negro race and they should not be afraid of that designation." Then Democratic Representative Edward E. Cox of Georgia denounced Robeson on the House floor as a "Communist agent provocateur."

The Peekskill riots appear in E. L. Doctorow's novel The Book of Daniel. Paul Isaacson (a fictionalized version of Julius Rosenberg) leaves the bus to reason with the mob, and is beaten up by them. The riots figure prominently in T. C. Boyle's World's End. The protagonist's adoptive parents serve as local, assistant organizers of the concert (alias of "Peterskill" riots within the book). In George Mandel's Flee the Angry Strangers, published in 1952, there is brief mention of the riots. In Ring Lardner Jr.'s The Ecstasy of Owen Muir (1954), there is an extensive segment concerning the incidents at Peekskill.