Witness to History: Grandma’s 90th Birthday, July 19, 1964

Harlem Race Riot of 1964 - Protestors marching in Harlem, New York, July 1964; the demonstration took place after a white off-duty police officer fatally shot an African American teenager. Dick De Marsico - New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper / Photo Credit: Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

My paternal grandmother immigrated from Finland to New York City at the beginning of the 20th century. My grandfather, a diamond cutter, built a three-story house in the Bronx, but the guilds that governed diamond cutters would not admit him because he wasn’t part of their group. He couldn’t get steady work and eventually had to sell the house. They moved to a seven-room railroad apartment in Harlem, which was more affordable, while my grandmother worked for wealthy families as their cleaning lady, scrubbing floors.

My grandfather became an alcoholic and often violent. When my father was 13, he kicked his father out of the house and helped his mother set up the apartment as a boarding place for Finnish and Norwegian sailors who came to New York to work on barges along the Hudson River.

My grandmother ran it all by herself and managed to make it work. She never really learned English but was also forgetting proper Finnish. When a nephew stayed with her for a while, he kept calling my father to translate what she was saying.

My brother and I would visit her every Sunday, taking the IRT up to 125th Street after Sunday school. There was a gospel church next door to her building, and we would stand outside listening to the joyful singing and music. Sometimes someone would invite us in, and we were tempted, but we knew we’d be in trouble if we were late to Grandma’s.

The streets in Harlem were always peaceful on Sundays, and everyone was dressed in what we used to call “their Sunday best.” It was very cheerful — the men in their spiffy suits, the women in their bright dresses — the air full of laughter and smiles. I loved the rhythm of their voices. It felt as though Sunday was a community party everyone looked forward to.

Grandma’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a walk-up, which kept her physically active. The neighborhood changed over the decades as plantation workers from the South moved north and settled in Harlem, along with Puerto Rican families. But she stayed and was accepted as part of the community.

My father and uncle tried to get her to move out, but she had lived there so long it was her home, and no one was going to move her out. My father called her daily to make sure she was okay, and if she didn’t answer, he figured she was out shopping. One day she didn’t answer, so he called again the next morning — still no answer. He went right away to her place and found her on the floor, where she had been for several hours. She was taken to Welfare Hospital, on what is now Roosevelt Island.

The doctors told my father they didn’t think she would make it. But she did. Then they said she would never walk again. But she did. Then they said she couldn’t stay living on the fourth floor of a walk-up. But she did — and lived four more years.

We had planned a birthday gathering for her 90th at my uncle’s house in western New Jersey, near the Delaware Water Gap. The night before the celebration, the Harlem racial riots broke out after an off-duty white policeman shot and killed a teenage boy — and was not punished or removed from duty.

Grandma was safe because her neighbors treated her as one of their own. I was seven months pregnant then, sitting in the back seat, seeing all the people with that expression — the distress of wanting to do something to make sure the world knew about what happened and the incredible injustice of the city’s response. I felt the intensity of their anger and knew we shouldn’t take too long picking up Grandma in such a volatile atmosphere, knowing we might be seen as the enemy by understandably angry people. My mother, however, was reacting to the SWAT police on the rooftops, not the people in the streets.

“Mom,” I said, “we need to get Grandma as quickly as possible and get out of here.”

My grandmother wasn’t afraid. She came down with my father, got in the car, and we drove slowly through the intense crowd. She was very calm. My mother’s obliviousness made me nervous. I couldn’t fathom why she was so focused on the SWAT teams — perhaps it reminded her of when she was in Europe during Hitler’s rise in the 1930s.

All I could feel was the intense anger at the injustice of it all. The anger spread like wildfire to other parts of the city and country — reactions to injustices that had long been noticed but never addressed, finally boiling up to the surface.

I didn’t go back to Grandma’s place after her birthday. She stayed with my uncle for a few days and returned home once things calmed down. Dad spoke to a neighbor who knew her well and asked if he would check on her and call if there was ever a problem. The neighbor started helping her with shopping.

My daughter was born at the end of August. I thought I would bring her by so Grandma could see her first great-grandchild. By then, Grandma was no longer going out and was getting weaker. She was taken to the hospital and passed away peacefully two weeks later.

The street Grandma lived on no longer exists. Everything — all the buildings, the gospel church my brother and I wanted to go into — is gone. That block of 127th Street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue doesn’t exist anymore.