Civil Rights: The Flop

It was a wild-eyed, harebrained, crackpot scheme, and in the end it was a total flop. But before the end, it tried the patience of national, state and city officials, wasted taxpayers' money for protective measures, set a city of 8,000,000 on edge, and hurt the cause of civil rights.

The idea was to ruin the opening of the New York World's Fair by stalling cars on the heavily trafficked highways and bridges leading to the Flushing Meadows site. It had a certain demonic appeal — New York is, after all, a city where a single flat tire can ordinarily...

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