John V. Lindsay took office against a backdrop of some of the most dramatic activism that American had seen for more than a generation. He had campaigned as a champion of the rights of the traditionally underserved. But in order to fulfill his promises, he would also have to contend with their expectations.

By the mid 1960s, there was a sense of growing discontent and militancy in New York over racial issues. In 1964, a riot occurred in Harlem in reaction to the shooting death of a black teen by a white police officer. It lasted for more than five days and spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. In the same year, pastor Milton Galamison led a boycott of the city schools, calling for racial integration. By the time Lindsay took office, the nonviolent techniques of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were not the only approach by which minorities sought change. The Black Power movement was also gaining momentum nationally, and the growing sense of frustration could be seen in the riots in 43 cities across the country during the first summer of the Linday administration.

Activism and militancy was also spreading to other groups. The National Organization for Women was founded in June 1966 and began agitating for universal childcare, the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, and abortion rights. In 1970, they protested at McSorley’s Old Ale House, the legendary tavern on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, to force an end to its men-only policy. The Young Lords, a group of militant Latinos, burned garbage in the streets of Spanish Harlem to protest what they considered to be inadequate sanitation services. The gay rights movement in New York mushroomed during Lindsay’s first term, when police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a private gay club in Greenwich Village. Patrons fought back and helped spark a widespread gay movement against discrimination and for equal protection under the law.