Hard Hat Riot

On April 29, 1970, President Nixon ordered American troops into Cambodia to track Viet Cong forces. The Vietnam War was already deeply unpopular and dividing America, but Nixon had run on a campaign of ending the war with honor. He asked Americans for patience in a famous November 1969 speech urging the “silent majority” of Americans who were not out protesting to stand by him. Now he was expanding the war, “leaving Vietnam through Cambodia” as the comedian George Carlin put it.

In front of Federal Hall and under the statue of George Washington, construction workers stormed a student protest against the Vietnam War and chased both students and bystanders through the streets, beating and kicking them. Known as the Hard Hat Riots, it sparked two weeks of protests, counter protests and marches. Historians and journalists have debated the meaning of the incident ever since.

The Hard Hat Riot occurred in NYC, when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970. The students were protesting the May 4 Kent State shootings and the Vietnam War, following the April 30 announcement by President Richard Nixon of the U.S. invasion of neutral Cambodia. Some construction workers carried U.S. flags and chanted, "USA, All the way" and "America, love it or leave it." Anti-war protesters shouted, “Peace now."

The riot, first breaking out near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, led to a mob scene with more than 20,000 people in the streets, eventually leading to a siege of New York City Hall, an attack on the conservative Pace University and lasted more than three hours. Around 100 people, including seven policemen, were injured on what became known as Bloody Friday. Six people were arrested, but only one of them was a construction worker associated with the rioters. Nixon invited the hardhat leaders to Washington, D.C., and accepted a hardhat from them.