Arrest at a demonstration, North Amityville, NY, by Jacobsen Wolfson/Newsday/Associated Press
To Use This Document
With Your Students
Date
July 28, 1966
Description
Black-and-white photograph of young Black woman (possibly Nancy Brown or Connie L. Clinton) being carried by two Suffolk County police officers wearing riot helmets and holding batons, white officer holding both her wrists, Black officer holding both of her ankles, two additional officers and one civilian visible standing in background, photograph taken the night of July 28, 1966 at Associated Foods grocery store parking lot on corner of Albany Avenue and Great Neck Road in Amityville following a rally organized by the Amityville-Copiague-East Farmingdale Community Action Committee to improve community and police relations. The Civil Rights movement on Long Island was certainly in dialogue with the national movement. Even so, protests on Long Island in the mid-1960s had grassroots local energy that went beyond the efforts of large, well-known groups like the NAACP and CORE. This photograph documents one such episode that was set in motion by a community demonstration. On the night of July 28, 1966, an initially peaceful meeting and rally at the intersection of Great Neck Road and Albany Avenue in North Amityville became volatile as a group of 150 Suffolk County police officers moved in to quell and disperse a growing crowd in which some were chanting “black power,” as a small number threw rocks and bottles, damaging an Associated Food Store. Eight young men and women were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. According to several Newsday articles from the next day, the woman in this image may have been Nancy Brown, 18, who told a reporter that as she was walking towards a car, a police officer hit her. “When I asked him why he hit me, he said ‘I’ll hit anyone else causing trouble.’” A federally financed antipoverty center had recently opened in this 90% African American neighborhood that was bounded by Southern State Parkway, Sunrise Highway, and Route 110. It was a community that encountered high levels of daily discrimination and challenging living conditions. North Amityville, Copiague, and East Farmingdale, at the time, faced a lack of equal opportunities in employment, housing, schooling, parks, theaters, and basic necessities such as street lights. Newspaper accounts of that summer indicate that community tensions had been increasing, as residents advocated for better job opportunities, improving community relationships with the police, and more parks and public infrastructure.
Type
Photograph
Region
Long Island
Topic
African Americans, Civil Rights, Women
Repository
Identifier
2024.012.0001
Source
Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY, Gift of Joshua Ruff, 2024
Rights
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