Podcast: David Dinkins reflects, Part One

During the dog days of summer in August of 1991, violent protests erupted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, the result of long-simmering tensions between the neighborhood’s Jewish and black communities.

The riots stemmed from a car crash in which a Jewish driver in a rabbi’s motorcade struck and killed a 7-year old Guayanese boy. The resulting chaos garnered widespread media attention, and the NYPD – and, by extension, then-Mayor David Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor – were heavily criticized for letting the situation reach its boiling point.

Fast forward 25 years and Dinkins, now 89 but still nattily dressed and sharp as ever, is still trying to rewrite the enduring narrative that the riots were indicative of dysfunction at City Hall. Dinkins sharply rebuffs the perception pushed by his opponents that the mayor’s office directed the NYPD to stand down and let the largely black and Caribbean American protesters riot.

“It was particularly painful to me, because I saw myself as a friend to the Jewish community and Israel,” Dinkins said, pointing to the fact that he and Percy Sutton formed the Black Americans to Support Israel Committee and his public denouncement of Minister Louis Farrakhan’s degradation of the Jewish religion.

In part one of an expansive discussion with Dinkins, the former mayor touched on the fallout from the riots, which arguably cost him his re-election, and a number of other topics, including the legacy of the “Gang of Four” and the fractured relationship between current Mayor Bill de Blasio – a former Dinkins aide at City Hall – and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

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