Jimmy Breslin of the Herald Tribune.
The telephone jolts me awake. It's not yet 7 a.m. and I'm in my room at the Theresa Hotel on Seventh Avenue just off 125th Street, in the heart of Harlem. I didn't get to sleep until about 4 a.m.; riot duty keeps a reporter up late. I'm in no mood for the early morning call, but before I utter a word, I recognize the voice barking at me.
It's Dick Dougherty, my city editor at the Democrat and Chronicle, calling from Rochester. "Where in the hell have you been?" he's demanding. I bolt upright in the bed.
Drowsily I ask, "What's going on?"
"All hell is breaking loose up here," he tells me. "We've got a full-blown riot on our hands, that's what's going on." Dougherty's voice takes on even greater urgency. "It's really bad," he says. "We need you back here now. Get to the airport; get on a plane."
By the time I get to Rochester, National Guard troops are patrolling streets in both the Seventh and Third wards. Governor Nelson Rockefeller called them out during the night. As soon as I walk into the city room, Red Vaag spies me. He is the managing editor. He stops dead in his tracks, stares me down, and proclaims in a voice loud enough for all to hear, "Look who's back! Wrong-way Caldwell." He laughs. I shrug it off and go to work.
Coming right on the heels of the Harlem riot, a horde of reporters converged on Rochester. The riot hit as a stunning surprise. If any city in upstate New York was to erupt, it figured to be Buffalo. The jobs in the steel mills and automobile plants there attracted a lot of blacks. Rochester was so different. It was quiet, conservative and stable. Rochester didn't have mills and plants that attracted migrant labor. Rochester was blue chips like Kodak and Xerox. Now editors wanted to know where this explosion of black rage headed. And what was it that so suddenly propelled blacks by the thousands into the streets in frenzied mobs, burning, looting, screaming, grabbing and beating the few whites unlucky enough to find themselves in the ghetto?
I'd been in Harlem asking many of the very same questions. And I could still see the faces of black people – men and women – staring back at me, impatient and angry that I'd had the temerity to ask such questions.
"You're black. You know why we're out here in the streets," I was told. "You're a reporter. Why don't you go back to your newspaper and write the truth?"
Once that was said, there would be other answers. But of all the people I spoke with in Harlem, nobody said anything that I had not heard before in Rochester, in the Seventh Ward. I had seen the anger there and had written of how it was building. Often, I could feel the way young blacks wanted to strike out. But to riot? It had not been possible to foresee that, not then. After Harlem exploded, everything was different. Harlem had standing as a capital of black America. Harlem could make a statement. And that's what happened. Harlem started something.
On the day I get back to the D&C newsroom, I see this stocky white guy sitting at the desk next to mine, his shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled to the elbow, furiously pounding away at a typewriter. Another reporter whispers to me, "That's Breslin, Jimmy Breslin of the Herald Tribune."
In the world of newspaper journalism at that time, there was nobody that I admired more than Breslin. And the Herald Tribune was my favorite newspaper. The Trib, as it was called, valued good writing, and no paper was better at providing a vehicle for reporters to show off their talent. And of the Trib's stars, Breslin was the king of the hill in my eyes. Suddenly, here he is in the city room at my newspaper, working at the desk right next to mine.
From that moment until he leaves for the airport a few days later, every step Breslin makes, I am right there with him. He has a style that is something to marvel at. The next day Rockefeller comes to Rochester. I'm with Breslin at a park when the governor's motorcade arrives. But it doesn't stop; it keeps going. Breslin just jumps in front of one of cars. To keep from hitting him, the driver jams on the brakes. Breslin grabs the rear door and jumps into the car. "Jimmy Breslin, New York City press" is all he says.
Later at the courthouse, hundreds of rioters are being processed in a special session. A guard has the door blocked. Breslin peers in through a small window. Then, he spins away from the door and heads down a hallway to another entrance he has noticed. He just shoves the door open and before the guard can react, Breslin is past him, flashing his press card behind him, telling the guard, "Breslin, New York City press." The guard slams the door in my face.
Breslin and I go everywhere. My editor says, "Who you working for now – Jimmy Breslin?"
One night, Breslin says, "Take me to the roughest black bar in Rochester." I know the place. It is in the Seventh Ward, a hangout for a lot of the militants. I remember the many times they had me hemmed in there, giving me fits over what they saw as faults of the newspaper. I consider it unwise to show up there with Breslin. But he's insisting. I warn him that the place can be rough. "Never mind that, let's just get going," Breslin says. A showdown is avoided. The city has closed all the places selling liquor in the Third and Seventh wards.
Whenever Breslin finishes a column, he hands it to me. "What do think? And don't give me any bull; tell me the truth," he says. His column is full of information, and the detail and his use of quotes is masterful. "It's great," I tell him.
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Editor David Laventhol |
Breslin also looks over my shoulder to scrutinize my work. "Where do you want to go in this business, kid?" he asks me. Astonished, I tell him, "To the New York Herald Tribune." On a piece of paper, he scribbles the name and phone number of David Laventhol. "He's the city editor. Tell him that I told you to call." Getting to New York doesn't happen overnight. In fact, it takes 18 months. But I do make it to the Herald Tribune.
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