"The Bronx is a Bomb, and It's Ready to Explode!" The White Castle Protests and the Civil Rights Movement in New York City, Summer 1963 Brian Purnell, Research Director of The Bronx African American History Project, delivers the annual, public Gouvernor Morris Lecture of the Bronx County Historical Society Monday, May 2, 2005, 6-8 PM Interview with Brian Purnell from Fordham Conversations on WFUV (90.7 FM and WFUV.ORG) Listen Now!(requires Windows Media Player) During the summer of 1963, non-violent protests against racial discrimination in New York City job markets reached a flash point. Several campaigns, such as picket lines outside a Bronx White Castle on Boston Rd. and Allerton Ave. and at the Downstate Medical Center construction site in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, became violent in ways that reminded people of the South. In the Bronx, the US Nationalist Party organized counter demonstrations against the White Castle picket lines. Over the course of four days, hundreds of young white men from the surrounding area, most of whom probably had nothing to do with the Nationalist Party, paraded with Confederate flags, spat upon, shot at, and hurled rocks and racial epithets at the interracial picket line. The scene climaxed when police uncovered a cache of arms and explosives in the home of a neo-Nazi and arrested him and seven others for plans to incite a riot at the demonstration. Shortly after, in the midst of intensifying demonstrations throughout the city, officials at White Castle agreed to hire more black and Puerto Rican employees. The demonstration ended in a victory, but for a time, it seemed that it would end in a bloodbath. How and why did this happen? Using newspaper articles, records from the Congress for Racial Equality, and oral histories from the Bronx African American History Project, the lecture places the White Castle story in the larger context of the city's civil rights movement and the Bronx's own activist legacy. For more information about this lecture, call Brian Purnell at (718) 817-3830 or Dr. Mark Naison at (718) 817-03748.  Directions: D train to Fordham Rd. in the Bronx. Walk 5 blocks north to main entrance gate to Fordham's Bronx campus. You will enter near the library. Follow the paved road to McGinley Student Center, about a 10:00 walk. Or, take Metro North to Fordham Station, which puts you right near the entrance gate. Follow the same paved road to the Student Center (718-817-4339, phone).