Hard Hat Riots The Bloodiest Day in the University's History

Today, despite the occasional ambulance, fire truck, or squad car siren, the neighborhood in which Pace University is located is for the most part a peaceful one. Some people sit in City Hall Park quietly eating their lunch while children stare at the colossal buildings and fountains in amazement. Tourists stroll down the streets, taking snapshots of the beautiful sights, and students, teachers, and businessmen hurry to get to school and work on time. Seldom do students or faculty members walk into Pace University with the fear that they may fall victim to a war protest gone awry.

However, approximately 36 years ago this was most certainly not the case. On May 8, 1970, construction workers stormed Downtown Manhattan, assailing protesters who were campaigning against the Vietnam War. The violence began to percolate on Wall Street, and within a matter of hours it overflowed onto the front steps of City Hall and Pace University, where students and professors alike were beaten and injured by the workers. The skirmishes came to be known as the Hard Hat Riots, and went down as one of the most momentous events in the history of Pace University. 

The Hard Hat Riots were not merely a random occurrence. In fact, they were triggered by an incident that occurred almost a month before the riots even took place. In April 1970, during the Vietnam War, the United States and South Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia in an effort to save American troops in South Vietnam. During one such demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio, four students were killed after the National Guard opened fire on a group of demonstrators.

Robert Cuervo, a political science professor at Pace, says that "in spite of the current polarized condition of America today, with strong political feelings about issues like the Iraq War, the Vietnam War seemed to provoke harsher sentiments among both its supporters and opponents."

The violence was sure to escalate and escalate it did. At 7:30 a.m. on May 8, hundreds of students from  colleges all around New York City assembled at Wall Street to protest against the Kent State University murders and the invasion of Cambodia by the United States. It was a peaceful demonstration that is, until the construction workers arrived. According to The Hard Hat Riots: An Online History Project, three hundred workers came upon the students unexpectedly, attacking them from four different directions. Wearing brown overalls, yellow hardhats and carting American flags, the construction workers pushed past policemen and began to beat the demonstrators using anything from their fists, to hardhats, to metal rods. Businessmen watched from their office windows and from streets nearby as the attack lasted for approximately three hours.

Eventually the Hard Hat Riots poured out of Wall Street and onto the front steps of City Hall. After Mayor John Lindsay ordered all New York City buildings to lower their flags to half-staff in memory of the students lost in Ohio, the workers demanded that the flag of the City Hall building be raised to full-staff, claiming that the lowering of the flag was an insult to the American flag itself. As an anonymous man climbed to the roof of City Hall and raised the flag, the mob of workers cheered and applauded. A few minutes later, however, Sid Davidoff, one of Lindsay's aides, ascended onto the roof and lowered the flag once again.

This time, the construction workers were furious. According to "War Foes Here Attacked by Construction Workers," an article which appeared in The New York Times on May 9, 1970, "workers vaulted the police barricades, surged across the tops of parked cars, and past half a dozen mounted policemen. Fists flailing, they stormed through the policemen guarding the barred front doors." Panicking, police officers asked if the flag could be raised to full-staff once more, and eventually their request was granted. As the flag was being raised, the construction workers began to sing, "The Star-Spangled Banner."

In the mean time, while they were raiding City Hall, several construction workers spotted a banner which called for peace and an end to the war hanging outside of Pace College. The anti-war banner infuriated the workers, and approximately 40 of the workers ran towards the school, attacking the students outside.

Joan Roland, a history professor at Pace, remembers her experience of the riots that day. 

 "I was on campus and watched [the riot] happening through a window. Of course I was very scared as I did not know how far the hard hats would go. I also thought it was particularly ironic that they attacked Pace because the student body was quite conservative at the time more so than the faculty and many supported the government's actions," she said.

Reaffirming Roland's thoughts, Gerard Clock, a Pace history professor explains that politics were never a scandalous topic at Pace.

"In general, Pace was never a very politically active campus, so it was a strange occurrence that the construction workers sought to focus on Pace students," he said. 

 Marilyn Weigold, a history professor at Paces Pleasantville campus, explains that "the workers caught up with the students at Pace Plaza and immediately began beating students, female as well as male, with pipes, bricks, chains, and fists. Students who collapsed on the sidewalk were kicked." 

After tearing down the banner and setting it on fire, students were struggling to find an unlocked door through which they could escape. Eventually the construction workers found their way into the Pace College building and began to vandalize it, attacking even more students in the process. Once in the lobby, the workers threw trash cans around, and broke several large windows using whatever they could get their hands on, including metal pipes, bricks, and even their own two feet. 

"I was actually up in my office at the time and stayed there," says Harold Brown, a philosophy professor at the University. "Although I suppose I should have been heroic enough to run down to help the students."