The Hard Hat Riot: 40 years later, new photographs emerge

Every year around May 8, I commemorate the Hard Hat Riot, the weirdest “sixties” event you’ve never heard of.

This year, Toronto photographer Henry Gordillo contacted me.

As a young Communist with a camera, he’d been on Wall Street that day and captured the event on film.

Photographs of the Hard Hat Riot are particularly rare; for years I’ve relied on the same three grainy pix.

Henry kindly offered me the chance to publish a couple of his rarely seen photos.

I’ve posted two HERE (along with the one seen left) but there are quite a few more — contact Henry Gordillo if you are interested in learning more. (He has a whole portfolio documenting the New Left, as he experienced it.)

I asked him to record his recollections of what happened that day. His response is HERE.

Thanks to Henry Gordillo for shedding new light on this forgotten chapter of American history — an event that is more relevant today than ever before.