Hunter’s Point Riot

I grew up in a part of the burbs that was so white, only the streets were black. In fact, they had aged quite a bit by the time I came on the scene, so they were actually grey, but you get the idea. As I recall, there was one black kid in my neighbourhood, so it was nearly impossible for him not to stand out. The minorities were mostly eastern Europeans – just other white folks with a different language and an unusual love of garlic. It’s funny how the colour of someone’s skin matters so much, isn’t it? The eastern bloc kids were just as different culturally as the Asians or Africans I got to know at school, but somehow they were more acceptable, more safe.

Of course I never really thought much about any of this as a kid, but after I left home and moved from my old neighbourhood and into the city, I began to wonder how much my pale upbringing had “sheltered” me, or otherwise affected my worldview.

In my new life I was living and working with people of various races, religions and ethnicity. My new neighbourhood was still largely white, but it was also a landing pad for new immigrants who came from every corner of the world, but especially Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. As I got to know more and more non-white people, I had to face the fact that most of the ideas I had absorbed about minorities while growing up had come from a fear-based media that was controlled by ignorant white people.

I started to wonder if I was a racist. The mere idea scares most white folks just enough that they probably don’t ponder the question for too long, but I was smart enough to know that racism isn’t necessarily based in hatred. One can hold a belief that their culture and/or race is superior to others without being overtly conscious of it. I have met my share of overtly racist white folks, so I can make this distinction.

After a few years in my new “hood”, I got involved with a local community group that was trying to revive its failing resource centre in a largely black neighbourhood. The centre was moved into a store front that was previously a bank – one that was robbed so many times that it relocated. The business next door was a Caribbean restaurant that was also about to close due to a recent gun fight in the parking lot. The owner showed me bullet holes in his front door. He told me how his daughter was in the line of fire. It was just too much for him to take.

The media played the sensational race angle every time a new “incident” came up. Everything got blown way out of proportion. Most of the violence was isolated to a few blocks and was probably being perpetrated by less than a dozen people, but if you lived outside of this neighbourhood, you would have believed that it was rife with crime and lawlessness. When I travelled there, all I saw was another clean, well-kept neighbourhood with schools, churches, houses and businesses. Just like anywhere else, it was filled with hard-working people who wanted to live peaceful lives. It just so happened that most of them were black.

Funny then how another more violent part of the city was characterized in a totally different manner. When violence happened, it was reported to exist entirely within a specific geographic location – namely a certain intersection. The larger part of the area is white and affluent. Any news reports indicating a widespread problem would certainly have negative effects on the price of real estate and would not be tolerated.

There was no Black History Month in my childhood. There was barely any telling of black history at all, save for a few footnotes on Canada’s involvement in the Underground Railroad. This history was related to me as something I could be proud of, as if Canadians were somehow creating a safe-haven for fleeing slaves. That may have been true in some places, but in reality, many African Americans experienced the same overt racism in Canada as they did in the United States.

For instance, the Charter of the City of Saint John, New Brunswick (incorporated on 30 April 1785) placed a number of restrictions aimed at newly arriving blacks. If you were black you could not become freemen of the city, which limited your activities. You could not practise a trade or sell goods in the city. You could not fish in the Saint John harbour. You could not even live in Saint John proper unless you worked as a menial labourer or servant. Many blacks even remained in bondage and were bought and sold.

But hey, we finally have hope for real change, right? Whatever hasn’t been solved in the last 200 years can certainly be sorted out in the next 4-8 years of Obamamania!

While 18th century Canada may not have been as progressive as my history teachers led me to believe, we did manage to produce one of the most sought after funk albums of the 20th century: Hunter’s Point Riot.

Recorded at Can-Base Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1973, the album was produced by Michael A. Flicker for the Concept Records label. Despite several attempts to uncover details about the band and the recording session, this LP remains one of the most mysterious in my entire collection. The band (known as H.P. Riot) was named after its San Francisco home neighbourhood that was marred by race riots in 1966. The band has often been confused as being Canadian because they spent much of their time touring western Canada. Concept Records was based in Regina, Saskatchewan – not exactly a funk music hotbed. It almost appears like this band signed a record deal while on tour.

Kenneth House (tenor sax, bass voice, and rhythm guitar) actually lived in Edmonton, Alberta for four years after his stint in H.P. Riot. He is now involved in several projects, including Victor Sila and the AfroFunk Experience, Wade Love and RKO. Keyboardist Dewayne Sweet went on to play with The Whispers. Michael Baird became one the most successful session drummers in Los Angeles, working with Journey, the Moody Blues, Bob Dylan, Celine Dion, Al Green, Larry Carlton, Kenny Loggins, Hall & Oates, Michael Jackson, George Benson, Cher, Three Dog Night, Burt Bacharach, Randy Bachman, Stevie Wonder, Michael McDonald, David Foster, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, and Frank Sinatra.

Other than that, there isn’t much I can tell you, except that this LP is a true gem in the lost album department. If you ever find a copy, be sure to snatch it while you have the chance. In the meantime, you can download it here. Enjoy!

Hunter’s Point Riot

1) In The Middle of Love – 3:45
2) Naturally – 3:56
3) Just Look Around The Corner – 4:08
4) Gotta Go (The Chant) – 4:29
5) I Need You – 3:45
6) Good Time (Party) – 3:27
7) Help Me (Get it on) – 3:53
8) I Have Changed – 5:30
9) Love The Way You Love Me – 3:51
10) The Dollar Sign – 4:51
11) Blame It On The Sun – 3:20

Personnel:

Dwayne Sweet – Keyboards
Michael Baird – Drums
Roosevelt Prout – Lead Singer & Congos
Annthony Wright – Baritone Sax, Baritone Vocals
Elias Aczon – Trumpet, Brass instruments, Vocalist
William (Butch) Seals – Bass
Gregory Prout (Little Prout) – Alto Sax, Piano, Violin
Kenneth House – Tenor Sax, Bass voice, Rhythm Guitar
Willie Dean Thompson – Trombone, Vocalist
Roland H. Terry – Guitar Rhythm And Lead

Recorded at Can-Base Studios, Vancouver, Canada. Engineered by Keith Stein, Mike Flicker, and Rolf Henneman.

The 1966 Riots at Hunter’s Point, San Francisco, California:

The following account of the Hunter’s Point Riot was taken from an e-zine on African American history in San Francisco, as part of the ongoing multimedia project: Shaping San Francisco.

On 27 September 1966 a riot broke out in San Francisco’s Hunters Point, a black neighborhood, when a white police officer shot and killed a sixteen-year-old black as he fled the scene of a stolen car. Arthur Hippler wrote a book called Hunters Point: A Black Ghetto in which, among other things, he attempts to debunk the police account of the riot (which was published as a pamphlet called “128 Hours”). This account closely follows his:

For two hours after the shooting, a large, angry crowd milled about the site along Navy Road. The police, meanwhile, were hurrying the blacks on the city’s Human Rights Commission over to the scene.

A meeting was held between these middle-class blacks and some of the angry young men at the nearby Economic Opportunity Center. The rioters pressed their demands that the cop be charged with murder, a key demand that was incomprehensible to the assembled authorities. The police switched to the head of Youth for Service, a sputtering group of ex-gang members, but he made no impression on the young men, who were for the most part outside any gang structure.

By the time Mayor Shelley promised a crowd at 3rd near the Bayview Community Center that Patrolman Johnson had been suspended, it was too late. The lone black supervisor, Terry Francois, known as a NAACP and civil rights defense lawyer, was jeered and pelted with rocks when he appeared. Hippler quotes a young man:

“That cocksucker forget he’s black, but when we put them fuckers on the run, they sure let him know at City Hall right away. Shit, man, who the fuck he think he’s fooling?”

That night saw sporadic looting, rock-throwing and petty arson. “Community leaders” tried to calm the situation the next day, but the cops issued an ultimatum: calm by noon Wednesday or massive force would be introduced. The leaders, mostly part of the middle-aged matriarchy and/or their ministerial allies, had nothing to offer the rioters and their pleas for calm went unheeded.

Around six in the evening, a few hours after calling in the National Guard and Highway Patrol, the police responded to alleged gunfire by opening up on the Bayview Community Center and surrounding buildings. After riddling it with hundreds of bullets the police found no gunmen or weapons but only several pre-teen kids huddling in the corner.

This broke the “holiday mood” and the riot became a simple race confrontation, as the community had every reason to assume the police were trying to kill them, and the police could no longer distinguish friend from foe except on racial terms. The long suppressed anger over the abysmal status imposed on black Americans was uncontainable, but even still the riot was for the most part not terribly violent.

“The next three days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, September 29th – October 1st saw the “riot” continue with a decreasing incidence of violence, and then it finally petered out. The property damage (several hundred thousand dollars) compared with riots in comparably sized cities was minimal, as were the casualties (ten civilians reported victims of gunshot wounds, no casualties among the police or other anti-riot personnel). Like its counterparts in Watts, it consisted with few exceptions of attacks on the property of whites (but also of non-whites), shows of bravado calculated to frighten and cow police, and enough running around and breaking windows to give the participants a feeling of real potency while actually not confronting white power in any significant way.

“Perhaps the best indication of both the essentially passive character of the response of black males in Hunters Point and the unreasonable magnitude of white fears is the fact that, aside from long-range brick throwing, less than a half dozen assaults by blacks against whites were recorded in the course of five days of rioting… Also, the fact that the riots took part in all parts of the city with sizeable black populations (the Mission district, the Potrero Hill area, the huge Fillmore district) and yet resulted in so few injuries indicates the presence of some restraining factor other than the police. I suggest it was the black rioters internalized fear of whites, so difficult to break down, coupled with a holiday mood. [emphasis added]”

The police had until the early sixties dealt with black youth from Hunters Point by isolating them there. One officer is quoted by Hippler on his technique: “Get back upon the hill where you belong, nigger. If I see your black ass down here again, I’ll shoot it off!”

At the outbreaks of the riots, in spite of their being citywide, the same tactic was used. Blacks, no matter who they were or what their reason for being in the area of Third Street, were either arrested or herded back up the “hill.” Hippler claims that it was commonly held, even among more mainstream middle class blacks in the area, that they were being herded onto the hill to be bombarded by Navy vessels in the Bay!

As has proven common in San Francisco riots, the police rank-and-file assumed a war footing, heavily framed by their essentially racist outlook. While the brass made various mediation attempts, the cops on the street saw an undifferentiated mass of hostile enemies and behaved accordingly.

Immediately after the riot, many Hunters Point residents hoped that it would lead to greater solidarity among community groups. Actually the opposite occurred: greater community disintegration resulted. The general belief that “nobody cares” and “it’s too late to do anything” became widespread. Some came to see the apparent opening to white society as another case of white hypocrisy and double-dealing. Automatic weapons, portable artillery, and federal troops, i.e. military occupation, offered a vivid demonstration of to what lengths society would go in the attempt to contain black rage. Very few community organizations continued functioning in Hunters Point immediately after the riots, though they began to re-emerge in the following years. Meanwhile, the riot itself has disappeared down the memory hole and few remember it and fewer discuss it as a meaningful event in the history of San Francisco.