Tompkins Square Park riot - January 13, 1874

On this day in 1874, a riot started in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan after police overran a demonstration of thousands of unemployed people. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello everyone, I'm Eves. Welcome to This Day
in History Class, where we take a tiny bite of
history every day. Today's January. The day was January eighteen

(00:28):
seventy four. A riot started in Tompkins Square Park in
Manhattan after police overran a demonstration of thousands of unemployed people.
Tompkins Square Park was constructed in the eighteen thirties in
the neighborhood now called East Village. It was built to
encourage urban development in the area. The city and local

(00:49):
landowners thought that surrounding districts would expand with the construction
of the attraction, but a financial crisis hit the United
States that spurred a recession, and the area did not
become a hay been for grand homes as the city imagined.
Thousands of people, many immigrants moved into Manhattan, and the
East Side became home to many working class people. By

(01:11):
eighteen sixty, improvements had been made to the park, including walkways, trees,
and fences, but beyond its use as a place of recreation,
Tompkins Square Park was also an important place of assembly.
In eighteen forty nine, the Astor Place riots made their
way to Tompkins Square. In eighteen fifty seven, workers gathered

(01:31):
in the park to protest their poor living conditions and
the lack of relief from promised public works projects. The
demonstrations at Tompkins Square Park were not an anomaly. As
a population grew and cultural groups clashed in New York City,
riots and demonstrations became more violent. The park was also
a site for military drills, musicals, literary events, and organizational

(01:54):
meetings throughout the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies, but protests
in the park continue. You'd the Tompkins Square Park riot
took place in the wake of the Panic of eighteen
seventy three financial crisis that triggered an economic depression. The
working class people in the city were unemployed in facing hardships.
They needed jobs, and they said that the charity programs

(02:16):
they were offered were not enough. They wanted extensive public
works programs, so they formed the Committee of Safety in
New York City and tried to arrange meetings with city officials.
But their attempts were unsuccessful, so they decided to organize
a march from Tompkins Square Park to City Hall. There
they would demand the Mayor to establish a public works program,

(02:39):
but in the end, the committee decided to just have
a meeting in the park. But the night before the meeting,
at the request of the police, the Department of Parks
revoked their permit to as symbol Still, more than seven
thousand workers showed up at the park on January eighteen
seventy four. Police on horseback stationed at the site charged

(03:00):
into the demonstration, beating the protesters with their nightsticks. Many
of the demonstrators fought back the rest of the day.
Rumors about the riot spread across New York. One, for example,
was that immigrants were planning to burn down schools, so
some were placed under police protection. Dozens of people were

(03:21):
arrested for their involvement in the riot, and the unemployment
movement lost steam, though the paper The New York Sun
published stories on the unjust treatment by the police in
City Hall, the New York police continue to maintain a
tight watch on progressive political organizations. I'm Eve Jeff Coo,
and hopefully you know a little more about history today

(03:43):
than you did yesterday. If you know you already spend
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at this day at i heart media dot com. Thanks

(04:04):
for going on this trip through history with us. We'll
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