Terror on the Trains

Nicholas Philippides, 54, a bespectacled little Greek immigrant who runs a restaurant in Brooklyn, wearily boarded an IND subway train at the Stilwell Avenue stop near Coney Island amusement park. It was 2 a.m., and Nick was there because he had been helping a friend run a hot-dog stand at the park.

The train pulled out, and over the rumble of wheels Philippides heard scuffling and shouting as a score of Negro boys ran from car to car, smashing lights, roughing up passengers. Nick sat tight. One young marauder gashed a leg while kicking out a window, and his pals tended to the wound as he lay in the aisle near Nick Philippides. Through Nick's mind flashed the advice his fa ther gave him in Greece years ago: "If someone wants to eat with you, sit down and eat with them. But if someone wants to fight with you, move away." But Nick didn't dare move. He sat paralyzed with fear. Only when the train slowed for his stop at Kings Highway station did he get up. And then, before the car doors opened, the gang began beating him, knocking off and splintering his glasses. They finally left him on the station platform with his wallet, containing $97, missing, his trousers nearly ripped off, his shirt covered with blood, his face a pulpy, puffy mass of blood and bruises.

At the station, the gang raged on, beat up another man, slugged 16-year-old Howard Weiner unconscious with a bottle, then pummeled him unmerci fully. Suddenly a young Negro bystander shouted, "The police are coming!" The boy who shouted, an 18-year-old Mississippian newly arrived in New York and identified by police only as "Larry," was simply trying to help Weiner by scaring away the gang. Later Lar ry said bitterly: "I'm scared of my life up here in New York. It's safer in Mississippi." In any event, his ruse worked and the gang fled. A dozen of them were arrested afterward and charged with crimes ranging from malicious mis chief to assault and robbery.

Nightmarish though it was, the experience of Nick Philippides and How ard Weiner took on its real significance as part of a bigger pattern--a wave of terrorism on the trains. Within 96 hours of the Kings Highway station outbreak, these incidents also took place:

> Five Negroes crowded around Michael Sadev, 17, on a Manhattan express train, demanded his money, insisted he play his transistor radio for them. When Sadev refused, one punk stabbed him in the shoulder while doz ens of other commuters watched--apparently afraid to intervene. All of the Negroes were arrested, but they were released in custody of their parents because they were juveniles and Sadev refused to press charges.

> Four young Negroes, one swinging a meat cleaver, ranged through the cars, terrorizing passengers on a Brooklyn train. Finally, one yanked open the door of Motorman George Dauenheimer's cab, held the cleaver at his neck and snarled, "Are you black or white?" Dauenheimer said, "I'm white." The Negro shouted, "I'm just going to cut your head off." But when Dauenheimer stopped the train, the hoodlums jumped off. When they tried to break into a change booth, they were arrested and jailed by subway police.

> A Negro walked up to Ismael Velez, 42, in a Manhattan subway station, plunged a knife into Velez' chest and left without a word. Velez lived, but could not identify his assailant.

As the subway savagery mounted, New Yorkers--millions of them totally dependent on subways for transportation --began to feel desperate. Adding to their fear was a chilling slogan--"White Man, Your Time Is Up"--scrawled on subway station walls. Civil rights leaders and police insisted it was not a campaign organized by racist Negroes. N.A.A.C.P. President Roy Wilkins declared that subway terrorists did not attack from "purely racial motivations," but he added: "Part of the context in which these Negro delinquents are bred is indeed bitterness and frustration, which all Negroes feel at the continued denial of equal opportunity everywhere and at the unpunished beatings and killings of Negroes, which continue to feature the civil rights theme in the Deep South." At midweek, New York's Mayor Robert Wagner said grimly, "I am determined that we're going to have law and order in our subways." He announced that 200 Transit Authority policemen would go on daily overtime duty in subways, another 500 regular New York cops would do the same on the streets above, and all of the city's 20,000 patrolmen--most of whom travel to and from work on subways--would commute armed and in uniform from now on.

Just hours after Wagner's beefed-up subway force went on duty, a Negro pulled a knife and slashed it across the face of Cab Driver Henry Feist, 64, as he rode a Brooklyn train. The man was arrested and held on assault charges. But Nick Philippides, his face still swollen and battered, now spoke for a whole city when he said: "Of course I'll have to take the subway. I have no car, and I have to work for a living. But I'll be afraid."

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