Police lead women to patrol cars in the Harlem area of New York, Aug. 2, 1943, during clashes with police following the shooting of a policeman and six civilians. The clashes were sparked by the shooting of a black soldier by a white policeman. (AP Photo)
NEW YORK (AP) — Long before George Floyd, there was Robert Bandy.
Bandy was a black Army soldier shot and wounded in New York City by a white police officer in 1943. Amid rumors that Bandy had been killed, Harlem erupted.
There were violent protests, pilfering and a curfew imposed – much like what’s happening in the city, and across the country, today following the May 25 death of Flood, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes.
The racially charged tension between police and protesters isn’t new to the city. Helmeted officers roughing up protesters in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and during riots in 1991 in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn when a young black child was hit and killed by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew.
More discord came in 2014 after another black man, Eric Garner, was heard on video saying his last words —“I can’t breathe” — while in a police chokehold.
Floyd too said, “I can’t breathe” before his death, a scene that put protesters on another collision course with police on the streets of New York. Columbia University students and New York City police clash during continued anti-war protests, April 25, 1972, in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, in New York. (AP Photo/Jim Wells)
A crowd of anti-Communist demonstrators faces a line of New York City police on Oct. 12, 1979, as they demonstrate outside the United Nations against the visit of Cuban President Fidel Castro. A heavy security force guarded the Cuban leader. (AP Photo/David Karp)A workman shovels shattered show window glass in front of a Harlem pawn shop in New York City, July 19, 1964, which was attacked by rioters during night-long disturbance on July 18. Police with steel helmets patrol to prevent further looting. Riots developed from a rally to protest the killing of black boy by a white policeman in Yorkville on July 16. (AP Photo)Anti-nuclear demonstrators are dragged away from a blockade of the British Mission to the United Nations by New York City police on June 14, 1982. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)New York City police carry a sit-down demonstrator from the entrance to the downstate medical center, Brooklyn on July 19, 1963. Sixteen demonstrators were arrested. Demonstrators staged a sit-down attempting to block trucks from entering the medical center which is under construction. Demonstrators represented the Congress of Racial Equality seeking employment of more African American and Puerto Rican workers on the construction project and others. (AP Photo)Police drag away one person from a store after he smashed a window in New York’s Times Square on April 5, 1968, as disturbances spread over many sections of New York City in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. King was shot in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4. (AP Photo)New York City police take into custody some of the demonstrators arrested on Monday, May 1, 1989, on Wall Street as part of a May Day protest in New York. The demonstrators, who called themselves “Resist to Exist,” were arrested at Wall Street and Broadway at about 9 a.m., according to the police. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)New York City police grapple with anti-war protesters outside a hotel in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 6, 1991, where President George Bush was addressing the Economic Club of New York. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)New York City police officers drag a protester during an abortion-rights demonstration in front of New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dec. 10, 1989. About a thousand people voiced their opinion against the Catholic church’s stand on abortion and AIDS. (AP Photo/Frankie Ziths)New York City police arrest a demonstrator during an Earth Day protest in morning, Monday, April 23, 1990, in New York in the Wall Street district. Police closed part of Wall Street to traffic and most pedestrians and arrested more than 170 demonstrators who staged a protest aimed at disrupting business in the financial center. (AP Photo/Osamu Honda)New York police officers wear steel helmets and carry nightsticks as they patrol a street in the Harlem neighborhood of New York to prevent further rioting, Aug. 2, 1943. During the night of Aug. 1 and morning of Aug. 2, six people were killed following unrest sparked by the shooting of a black soldier by a white policeman. (AP Photo)New York City police officers scuffle with a protester during a march through the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, Aug. 21, 1991. Confrontations between police and protesters marked the third day of violence sparked by a car accident Monday night that left a 7-year-old black child dead and a Hasidic man stabbed to death in the melee that followed. (AP Photo/Joe Major)New York City police officers subdue a protester near 14th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan on Friday, May 1, 1992, as several hundred protesters move though the city after a peaceful demonstration in Time Square in reaction to the Rodney King verdict. Sporadic incidents of violence erupted around the city on Friday after a day of largely peaceful protests. (AP Photo/Lara Cerri)New York City police, including mounted officers, face a crowd of union protesters on Fifth Avenue, Tuesday, June 30, 1998, in New York. A large, noisy demonstration by thousands of construction workers tied up midtown Manhattan and disrupted business during the morning rush Tuesday. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)A loud but mostly nonviolent group of demonstrators are stopped by police in the Bronx section of New York on Friday, Feb. 25, 2000, as they tried to march around the block that Amadou Diallo lived on. Four New York City police officers were acquitted earlier Friday of all charges in the shooting death of Diallo in February 1999. (AP Photo/Steve Chernin)Demonstrators participate in a rally against a grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, in New York. A grand jury cleared a white New York City police officer Wednesday in the videotaped chokehold death of Garner, an unarmed black man, who had been stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)A protester is arrested by New York City Police officers during the Republican National Convention in New York, Aug. 31, 2004. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)New York City police confront protesters on May 1, 1992, after a demonstration in reaction to the Rodney King verdict. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Actor Martin Sheen is arrested by New York City police at a non-violent civil disobedience at the Riverside Research Institute on Friday, April 5, 1996, in New York. Sheen, along with a group of participants from the Way of the Cross Walk, staged the civil disobedience to bring attention to the struggle for a world free of nuclear weapons. (AP Photo/Anders Krusberg)
Great photos. Thank you.