“In All Our Harlems”: Policing Black Youth and the Case of the Harlem Six

Before the “long, hot summer” of 1964, black Harlemites showed signs of frustration with New York’s law enforcement and their excessive policing practices. Young blacks in Harlem were routine victims of the city’s “new” Stop-and-Frisk laws, and their encounters with police officers often led to confrontations—few, however, to the magnitude of the “little fruit stand riot” and case of the Harlem Six. On April 17, 1964, six young black men were arrested and booked on two charges: assault and malicious mischief. What started as “some children rushing home from school and jostling one another” quickly turned into a “free-for-all” that involved twenty-five policemen “under a barrage of rocks, ash-can covers, and fruit.” The young men were released from jail; however, within a matter of weeks they were back in police custody in connection with the fatal stabbing of a white woman merchant in Harlem. The Six were sentenced to life in prison for murder. Having spent the better part of their youths incarcerated, in 1974 the convictions were overturned and five of the six were released—the other, Robert Rice, continues to serve a life sentence for a forced confession.

Despite its inability to capture national headlines, the case of the Harlem Six belongs in our nation’s record. As part of a long history of Stop-and-Frisk laws in New York City and a broader history of youth encounters with the carceral state, this article looks explicitly at how policing black youth transformed the perception of young people and shaped their attitudes towards punitive forms of authority. Using a wide range of sources, including newspaper articles, court transcripts, oral histories, and archival materials from Columbia University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, this article is the first scholarly examination of the Harlem Six.