SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Sixty Years Ago In New York

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Sixty years ago, the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair opened. “Like a giant playground,” was the headline last month in Newsday in a five-page spread, the cover story of its “LI Life” section, based on a quote from a fair-goer describing it.

I was there on opening day to do a story about members of the Suffolk County chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality joining in a major protest about discrimination in hiring at the fair. My story was ultimately headlined: “Jail Pavilion for Suffolk CORE.” For it was not a “playground” but more like a battleground that day.

Because of the article I was fired from my first reporting job by the company headed by entrepreneurs from New York City who had come to Suffolk County to develop a newspaper-radio-TV media empire here and acquired the newspaper that I had worked at for two years. As Wilson Stringer, the vice president of Sunrise Press, told me the day after my article appeared: “Mr. Moses called and is very upset with you. You’re fired.”

The “Mr. Moses” was New York public works czar Robert Moses who was president of the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. I spent 1962 and 1963 on my first “big story” as a journalist, challenging Moses’s plan to build a four-lane highway the length of Fire Island. I pointed to an alternative, a Fire Island National Seashore that would preserve the exquisite nature and 17 roadless communities on this barrier beach. The succession of articles I wrote began when I started at the Babylon Town Leader.

As Robert Caro of East Hampton, a former Newsday reporter, related in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Moses, “The Power Broker,” Moses had the press of the New York Metropolitan Area in his pocket.

But not the Babylon Town Leader. It regularly challenged projects of Moses, who lived in Babylon. However, in January 1964 Sunrise Press bought The Leader and when I went to cover the protest at his World’s Fair, the change of ownership left me with no protection from him. 

At The Leader, I shone a spotlight on the Fire Island highway issue but also on the African-American communities in Babylon Town and civil rights struggles in Suffolk in the 1960s, many of them in which people from those communities were involved.

On April 22, 1964, World’s Fair opening day, I jumped into the back seat of the car of Irwin and Delores Quintyne of North Amityville. (Irwin, a World War II Navy veteran, and Delores, had originally sought to live in Levittown, but because Levittown wouldn’t allow Blacks to purchase homes, the Quintynes settled in North Amityville in Babylon Town.) Delores was chair of the Suffolk chapter of CORE on that opening day. Irwin succeeded her as chair in 1967 and remained so for two decades. Both were deeply involved in the civil rights struggles in Suffolk County throughout their lives.

When they and other CORE people—including CORE co-founder and national director James Farmer—arrived at the World’s Fair site, their signs were placed under clothing. They walked through the gates, unfolded the signs and demonstrated. 

Many of the 3,000 Pinkerton private security firm employees who were World’s Fair guards descended on them. And it wasn’t like being in Queens but more like a scene in Mississippi at that time. My story about it and photos were published in The Leader and other Sunrise Press newspapers.

To hear directly from Delores (she died in 2022) about her arrest at it, the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook has an interview online in which she begins by telling of how “they dragged me from the back of my coat…” It’s posted with a heading: “Remembering Long Island’s Civil Rights Movement” at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=4517952118232773 

Farmer, considered one of the top leaders in the civil rights struggle in the United States in the 1960s, was also arrested—as were hundreds of others. 

A few months later, on September 11, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating the Fire Island National Seashore. It was the successful conclusion of, as Suffolk County Community College Professor Christopher Verga titled his book, Saving Fire Island from Robert Moses: The Fight for a National Seashore. But with the change of ownership at The Leader, Moses “got me” after my World’s Fair opening day story. I placed ads starting: “Reporter fired because of Robert Moses.” Subsequently I was hired as a reporter at the daily Long Island Press. 

Thereafter, Sunrise Press sold off its media in Suffolk County and dissolved. 

More on racism and Moses: Caro in The Power Broker relates how overpasses on Southern State and Northern State Parkways—highways constructed by Moses—were built low to prevent buses carrying people of color from New York City getting through to his Jones Beach State Park. Caro, who interviewed Moses at length, has described him as “the most racist human being I have ever really encountered.” And New York State Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell of Manhattan (raised in Commack and the brother of actress, comedian and author Rosie O’Donnell) in 2019 introduced legislation to change the name of Robert Moses State Park because of the racial bias of Moses citing, among other things, the overpass issue. His office told me last week that the measure is still “in committee,” the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.