“I’m a lot older than many of the young people now protesting in the streets,” reflects Pat Moore, 67, who chairs the Quality of Life Committee on Community Board 1. “And my father, who died last January, was a police officer at a time when there were very few black men on the NYPD. So I have a slightly more complicated perspective about all this.”
“I was born in 1953, and my family is from Louisiana,” she recalls, “so I’m old enough to remember traveling to the South as a little girl, and sitting at the back of the bus, or visiting the public pool, where nobody who looked like me was allowed to go in.”
“My grandmother once took my sister and myself on a segregated street car to Maison Blanche, which was the big department store on Canal Street in New Orleans, to buy us Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls,” she says. “I noticed the difference right away. Once we were inside, she acted differently — became meeker and quieter. She suddenly wasn’t the same person, because she felt she had to change her behavior in that environment.”
“We would also go to the amusement park, where my grandfather explained that we could watch, but not go on the rides,” Ms. Moore remembers. “‘Those aren’t for us,’ he would explain quietly. “This seemed like a different planet from Brooklyn, where I was growing up. I kept arguing that in New York, we went on the rides at Coney Island all the time.”
“During the summer, my father would come from a four-to-midnight shift at the precinct, and wake us up,” she recounts. “Then he would drive us down to Coney Island. We’d eat at Nathan’s, which was open all night, and we’d go on the rides, overlooking the ocean.”
“All my father’s partners were white,” she says, “but police officers depend on each other for their lives, so they became close friends. They had us over to their homes and they were guests in ours.”
“I can remember the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” she notes, “and these were clearly a big deal, but they didn’t result in immediate reforms, especially in the South. We didn’t start having those Kumbaya moments right away.”
“When I was a teenager, my family moved out of Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was then a thriving, mixed-race, working-class neighborhood, to Queens,” she remembers. “I guess that was supposed to be our ‘Raisin in the Sun’ moment. But I hated Queens, in part because it was so segregated.”
After college, Ms. Moore moved to Texas. “I was out late one night with friends. We were on the beach in Galveston, and as the sun came up, I was sitting next to a man I worked with. And as a pickup truck rolled by, the driver shouted, “hey, ni–er, what are you doing with that white boy?’”
“In Houston, I was stopped twice by police late at night, by myself, and I was terrified,” she admits. “Both times, I ended up not having any problem, but that may have been because I’m not a black man.”
In 1977, she returned to New York, settling in Lower Manhattan. “Downtown wasn’t a residential district then. I rented an apartment in a commercial building on Cedar Street that had been vacant for five years. It was mostly artists who moved in at the same time that I did.”
She recalls a summer outing with her then-boyfriend: “We visited friends in Howard Beach one Fourth of July in the 1970s. And we had a lovely time, swimming in their pool and barbecuing. The day came and went without any problem. But our hosts called us, a few days later, and explained they got a knock on their door from a neighbor, who said he had been nominated by the community. His job was to ask our friends never to have us back. I’m still not sure if they were looking for us to say this was okay. But we gave them a pass, and never went back.”
“I met my future husband, Andrew, because he lived on the third floor, while I lived on the tenth,” she notes. “So I moved down seven flights.” Ms. Moore and Andrew were married for 34 years, until his death in 2011. “We had an unobstructed view of the Colgate Clock in Jersey City,” she muses fondly. “It was a lovely place to live in those days.”
“We were a mixed-race couple,” she remembers, “and in those day there weren’t many black and white couples, even in New York. Race didn’t seem like an issue, however — at least not in the blatant way it had been in the South. But there were moments when it became apparent, even here.”
“I can’t tell you how many times my husband and I would try to get a cab together, and they wouldn’t stop,” Ms. Moore says. “So we’d go to separate corners, and the cabs would pass me by, but stop for him. Then we’d get in together, and I’d go crazy on the driver.”
“That’s the kind of episode that is hard to imagine happening today,” she observes. “And being older, I fear that some protestors don’t understand that we have come a long way. It’s not true to say that nothing has changed — lots of things have.”
“Young people would tell me I haven’t had their experiences and they’re right,” she acknowledges. “But I know how much has changed and that not all cops are bad. I would tell young protestors to be hopeful and know that all police are not the enemy.”
“That said,” she admits, “police forces do need reform. I don’t believe in defunding the police entirely, but I do believe in reallocating funds, especially when government has to cut budgets. Another important conversation to have is that you don’t need a gun to respond to every call.”
“I’m happy this dialog is happening,” she reflects, “but I’m sorry that it took so long and so many people had to die, and especially sorry that George Floyd had to be the sacrificial lamb.”
“It’s good to see that these marches include so many young white people,” she continues. “They have seen enough to know that there is something really fundamentally wrong. The reason we’ve had all these problems for so long is there are so many poor whites who feel like they are just one rung above the bottom. Dividing the poor from one another by race is how demagogues keep people from uniting and taking over. If everybody recognized that we’re in this together, we could accomplish so much more than we do when everybody is focused on getting as much as they can for themselves. So these problems are fundamentally about poverty and greed as much as they are about race.”
“I just hope this movement doesn’t peter out,” she cautions. “In the 1960s and 70s, we’d make one move forward, and then slip two or three backward. But there’s a chance to build a better world, if we seize it.”
“The primary things that needs to change are the same for all poor folks — not just black people,” she offers. “The top priorities are housing, healthcare, education, and jobs. All of these fall under the heading of opportunity, which needs to be equalized.”
“Even something as basic as internet access becomes a cause of inequality, and shuts people out of opportunity,” she notes. “Today, many jobs can’t be done without web access. And during a pandemic, kids can’t even participate in school. So why isn’t this free, like water?”
“Obviously, not everybody is equal in every respect,” she allows. “But people should have equal access to the opportunity to achieve as much as they can. Ten years ago, I worked for the census and would go into New York City Housing Authority [NYCHA] projects. I would be hit with the overpowering smell of urine as soon as I walked past the front door. And then I would find that the elevators didn’t work.”
“We’re not all going to be millionaires or celebrities, but we need to give people decent lives,” Ms. Moore insists. “No, we can’t all have mansions. But nobody should be living in the conditions that NYCHA offers — or worse, be homeless. So people should be given the chance to begin at the same starting line, even if they won’t necessarily cross the finish line at the same time.”
Matthew Fenton
