[2] The unrest began on the evening of August 28 after a black woman named Odessa Bradford got into an argument with two police officers, one black, Robert Wells, and the other white, John Hoff, because Bradford stopped the car while arguing with her boyfriend and refused to move out of the intersection at 23rd Street and Columbia Avenue.
Rumors then spread throughout North Philadelphia that a pregnant black woman had been beaten to death by white police officers.
Later that evening, and throughout the next two days, angry mobs looted and burned mostly white-owned businesses in North Philadelphia, mainly along Columbia Avenue.
The riots also helped to facilitate the political rise to power of Frank Rizzo,[6] who favored more punitive approaches to crime.
A fictionalized version of the events of the Philadelphia riots of 1964 are depicted in the first season finale of the NBC television series American Dreams.