NYC remembers dark chapter of Crown Heights race riot
Twenty-five years after race riots scarred a Brooklyn neighborhood, residents of Crown Heights gathered Sunday to mark the quarter-century anniversary with a memorial service, march and street festival that organizers said showed how far the community had come. Critics, however, condemned the events as insensitive.
About three dozen people gathered for a series of commemorative events, held as part of “One Crown Heights,” which organizers said was a way to bring children of different backgrounds together and acknowledge years of efforts to foster better communication and relations between ethnic groups in the neighborhood.
In August 1991, a riot broke out in the area after 7-year-old Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a car in a rabbi’s motorcade. Hours later, a Jewish doctoral student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death. Four days of violence followed.
“We will not allow ourselves to be defined by what happened 25 years ago,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said to the predominantly white crowd at a memorial service Sunday morning to remember Cato and Rosenbaum. Elected officials joined Cato’s father and African-American and Jewish community leaders for the service.