The Crown Heights Riot Of 1991 Essay

Robert S. Wistrich defined antisemitism as hostility and/or prejudice against the Jewish people or their religion of Judaism. Many people in today’s world instinctively associate antisemitism with Nazi Germany because of the mass genocide that took place. Hostility towards the Jewish people dates back thousands of years ago when the Roman Empire forced them away from their homeland that is now known as Israel. With the Jewish population forced from their homes they began to spread out all over the world and so did the prejudice against them. The Judaism religion was looked down upon in many parts of the world and people felt like it was their duty to treat the Jewish people with inequality. Antisemitism took a different turn when statesmen begin to use it in their campaign to gain the citizens support.

On August 19, 1991, a terrible accident happened, and riots were rampant in Crown Height, Brooklyn. The Crown Height riots of 1991 brought racial and religious clashes between the African-American and Orthodox Lubavitcher Jewish community.

Racial antisemitism was born in the Nineteenth Century when laws were passed in many European countries posing the Jewish people as second-class citizens, not receiving the same rights as others in society. While they had reached a level of religious emancipation in some countries, Judaism had become recognized as an ethnicity as well, and this ethnic difference from the Aryans therefore made them “inferior.” Pogroms began across Eastern Europe in the late 1800’s which resulted in

In our society, there are a handful of people who believe that anti-Semitism is a matter of the past, and do not realize that it still exists today. Countless of Jews face it more than once in their lifetime, whether it may be an

Many different researchers have tried to investigate why the riot happened, but none of their reasons are convincing enough. However one thing that is known is that the underlying causes of the riot, were not because of the Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosebaum incidents. It was much more complicated than that. Some researchers say the reason the riot happened was because of the tension between the Blacks and Jews. For the most part, they had tension because of the differences between them in regards to race, religion, socioeconomic class, cultures, and lifestyles. However, this reason isn’t convincing enough because even before the 1991 riot, there had been years of uneasy coexistence and violent attacks between them. The question then to ask those researchers is “If they always had tension, then why did it specifically happen in August 1991?” That question cannot be answered mainly because the riot itself was unpredictable. Therefore the statement that the riot was mainly caused because of tension, cannot be the sole reason for the violence because they already had tension years before, yet no riot occurred then. Other researchers think the riot might have been caused due to Black anti-Semitism. Jews are not new to anti-Semitism since they have been dealing with it for decades before. However, the 1991 riot was so bad that it had been compared to the Holocaust. The Blacks would shout anti-Semitic remarks at the Jews and hold up pro-Hitler signs. Before the riot had started, several black activists had made anti-Semitic remarks in public. On July 20, 1991, Leonard Jeffries, a black anti-Semite, gave a two hour speech, on why he didn’t like the Jews. While lots of people gave him negative feedback, black activists, such as Al Sharpton, rushed to his defense and agreed with all that he had said. This speech heightened the Black anti-Semitism that had already been present in Crown Heights leading to

Just as one small spark can start a blazing wildfire, one simple bomb on the fateful day at Haymarket Square triggered an explosion in the labor movement that no one had expected. With tension growing exponentially in the workers’ rights area of United States reform in the 1800s, scattered riots inevitably broke out among restless workers, but no previous outbreak could compare to the impact of the notorious Haymarket Riot. The explosion in the crowd of workers battling police officers on that spring day in Chicago mirrored the explosion that occurred for laborers across the nation, with a combination of both beneficial and harmful outcomes to last the rest of history.

What happened during the riots, it is something that won’t be easily forgotten. For African Americans, Koreans and Caucasians as well, this was a tough experience where they all were involved and affected. For some of them the peace came to their minds, but for others, the hatred remained in their lives. There is always a chance that the Riots may happen again. Considering the disparities of thoughts among people and cultures, it may come a moment where these can turn the lasting ashes into flames. However, there are some strategies all communities can do in order to prevent the riots.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said “The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.” Marquette Frye was a 21 year old African American man who was arrested on Wednesday August, 11th, 1965 bye an unspecified member of the Las Angeles police department at approximately noon for being suspected of drunk driving.

The 1960s was a very turbulent time in American history. Cities across the country saw hundreds of incidents of racial violence. Various federal and state commissions were assembled to investigate the causes of these riots. Each individual riot had its own specific immediate precipitating incidents--"among them the Chicago riots of 1965 which erupted after a Negro woman was accidentally killed by a fire engine and the Daytona riots of 1966, which broke out after a Negro man was deliberately gunned down from a passing car" (Fogelson 217). Although race riots did occur, in part, because of the incidents, these were not the true causes. These events were only the catalyses that pushed people over the edge and caused them to go

As I head to the streets of downtown Los Angeles in hopes of finding Ricardo Flores Magón among the sea of protestors, I practice all the questions I have written down for our interview. The presidential election is a week away so I thought what better way than to sit down with the social activist himself and get his life story. After walking through the protest for what seems like hours I finally spot Magón passing out copies of his newspaper to everyone passing by. After the crowd settles and the streets empty we find a nice quiet coffee shop to get the interview started. I begin by getting down right to the beginning and finding out just where he came from.

Anti-Semitism, or the hatred of the Jewish people, has been prominent throughout history, even long before the Holocaust during World War II. Stemming from biblical times, the Jews were often ridiculed for wanting to remain a separate religion, refusing to adopt the belief system of the non-Jewish community (ADL.org). Not only that, the early Christians, both Catholic and Protestant believed that the Jews were single-handedly responsible for the death of Jesus Christ (“Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred”).

In the 1930s and 1940s Anti Semitism was wide spread in Germany under the Nazi Government. The treatment of Jews in Germany during this time was extremely brutal and harrowing. The human rights abuses against Jewish people in Nazi Germany during the world war two periods are extremely well documented. Anti Semitism ranged from the outlawing of marriage between Jews and gentiles, the Nazi regime sanctioned destruction of Jewish homes and synagogue and of course the holocaust. The holocaust is one of the darkest moments in modern history where approximately six million Jews were killed in extermination camps in Poland which was occupied by Nazi Germany at the time. Anti-Semitism was deeply engrained in the policies, ideology and dogma of the Nazi party in Germany during world war two. Anti-Semitism was no new phenomena in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. Anti-Semitism in both a religious and racial sense has existed and developed for over 2000 years across

The Jewish people are amongst one of the most hated group of people in history. Anti Semitism has existed much longer before the horrors of the Holocaust. The Jews have been hated amongst many religions like Christianity and Islam for reasons that are still debated on til this day. Anti-Semitism did not become so popular until the killing of Jesus. People center the idea of antisemitism with the Holocaust and Hitler's influence to make it happen but hatred towards the Jewish people has existed since the middle ages.

In the late 19th century the Populist party had antisemitism engrained within its ideology. They blamed the various issues, mainly financial, that certain members of this party were facing. Roughly thirty years after the height of this party’s anti-Semitic rhetoric, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan took place. This group was at the forefront of racist ideologies and instilled fear in millions, including those of Jewish descent. Prominent and powerful figures also carried anti-Semitic views. One of the most notable that we discussed in class was Henry Ford. His views were so extreme that he even wrote a newspaper in one of his automobile factories, which blamed the Jewish people for the issues occurring during this time and the degradation of American tradition. Ford’s mindset and actions were not without consequence though. The German leader Adolf Hitler used these magazines to fuel his own ideas and propaganda. He is of course the mastermind behind the largest and arguably the most appalling form of antisemitism, the Holocaust. During World War II, Hitler enacted a plan to exterminate the Jewish people within Europe. By the time the war was over millions of Jewish people had sadly died and repercussions are still being felt today. I want to note that in our current state of political affairs that there has been a rise in antisemitism. We need to address the acts regarding this hateful mindset soon before there is any chance of growth within this

Aside from the March on Washington, in Birmingham, Alabama a bombing took place, causing many hardships. Four black schoolgirls were walking on their way to Sunday school, when a bomb near their church, dreadfully killed them. The bomb was targeted to the church (225). Similar to the church bombing, a disaster occurred in the hotel Dr. King was staying at, and also at the home of his brother (Anderson, 64). Many Southerners grew tired of the pointless brutality, and decided it was enough (McKissack, 226).