In 1966, for example, riots broke out after the police killed an 11-year-old African-American and the resulting street clashes brought 1,000 police officers to the scene.ĭespite these dire social conditions, 1960s Brooklyn was also a place of vibrant culture and art. Nevertheless, the racial tension underscoring this white flight continued to bubble over within Brooklyn's borders.

This 'white flight' only sped up the process of urban decay in the borough as more and more people left Brooklyn. Manufacturing jobs started to leave the borough, and in 1966, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a source of jobs for 12,000 people and the very symbol of industry in Brooklyn, was closed down.īy the late 1960s, these economic factors, as well as racist views towards the growing African-American population in the borough, led many families in white neighborhoods to leave Brooklyn for the suburban communities of Long Island. In the 1960s, as the booming economy following World War II began to wane, neighborhoods across Brooklyn fell into poverty and violence. While crime had not yet reached the fever pitch that it would in the New York of later decades, 1960s Brooklyn represented the beginning of Brooklyn's long descent - one from which it has only recovered in recent years. At the same time, smaller neighborhood gangs claimed blocks all around Brooklyn. Meanwhile, crime ran rampant as large swathes of Brooklyn were controlled by Italian and Irish criminal organizations. Government workers, from teachers to transit laborers, were striking across the borough. In Brooklyn, as in much of America, the 1960s was a time of tumult. A far cry from the gentrified boomtown that is modern Brooklyn, the old Brooklyn of the 1960s was a gritty place defined by starkly drawn ethnic enclaves, urban decay, and devastating crime waves.

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