CITIES: Fear in Forest Hills

• Share

(2 of 2)

The project's opponents sharply denied that they objected to blacks moving into their neighborhood (of the 38,000 residents closest to the site, only about 1% are black). They spoke instead about their fears of overcrowded schools, rising crime and deterioration of the neighborhood, pointing out that this had happened in the communities many of them had moved away from. New York Conservative-Republican Senator James Buckley, carrying his protest to George Romney, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, also argued that soil conditions on the site were so bad that construction costs would soar, and that the lack of air conditioning in the plans meant that airplane noise from nearby La Guardia Airport would be intolerable for the residents. After hearing Buckley, Romney agreed that he would review the project, even though his department had already approved the necessary financing.

No Knish Now. The controversy had some of the overtones of New York's acrimonious school conflict of 1968, in which relations between blacks and Jews were strained in arguments over the control of neighborhood schools. Again Lindsay was assailed for seeming to side with the blacks. "Mayor Lindsay has shown he is not interested in the Jewish population of his constituency," charged the Queens Jewish Community Council. "It will not be enough for him this year to put a yarmulke on his head and eat a knish."

Undaunted, Lindsay denounced the protest tactics as "deplorable," and said the city must decide "whether we will guide ourselves by rationality and truth or whether we shall permit ourselves to be misled by misunderstanding and fear." Liberal Democratic Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal, who represents parts of Forest Hills, joined Buckley in opposing the project, but conceded: "A thing like this makes us all act in a fashion that both the community and I are not proud of—it brings out the inherent prejudice in all of us."