Civil Rights Film Screening "July '64"

A.N.S.W.E.R. Film Series: “JULY ‘64”

The night of Friday, July 24, 1964 started off normally enough in Rochester, New York, but by the next morning no one would look at race relations in the North the same again. July ‘64 takes a penetrating look at the underlying causes of the urban insurrections that swept through Black communities like wildfires that summer and in years since.

To many whites it must have seemed odd that it started in Rochester. To them Rochester was the ideal small city; it had low unemployment and thousands of high paying jobs in “clean companies” like Kodak, Bausch and Lomb, and the future Xerox. Blacks emigrated from the South looking for these jobs only to be bitterly disappointed to find that the only positions open to them were as janitors and service personnel not skilled technicians. They were confined to ghettos of rundown rat-ridden, housing. Police brutality was a constant aggravation. Rochester’s Black neighborhood was a keg of dynamite waiting for a match.

The film interviews several participants—after 40 years none felt regret at giving vent to their frustration about the situation in Rochester. 2006, 54 min. $5 donation