6 Jan 1991 Jahr - The Crown Heights riot of 1991

Beschreibung:

On August 19, 1991, a driver in the motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, accidentally hit two black children with his car, killing one of them, the 7-year-old Gavin Cato, and severely injuring his 7-year-old cousin, Angela Cato. Tensions erupted in the Crown Heights neighborhood, which was home to both black and Jewish residents, and anti-Jewish riots broke out for several days, culminating in hundreds of robberies and injuries to both police officers and residents. On August 20, about 20 black men surrounded and fatally stabbed a 29-year-old Australian Jewish student, Yankel Rosenbaum. The press coverage of the riots often portrayed them as a scene of mutual clashing between the black and Jewish communities. But one reporter, who covered the violence for The New York Times, later criticized the paper for suggesting that Jews were attacking their black neighbors when he’d seen no evidence of such attacks.