The riots began on August 19, 1991, after two 7 year-old children of Guyanese immigrants were unintentionally struck by a driver running a red light[1][2] while following the motorcade of Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of Chabad, a Jewish religious movement.

Two weeks after the riot, a non-Jewish man was killed by a group of black men; some believed that the victim had been mistaken for a Jew.

Ultimately, black and Jewish leaders developed an outreach program between their communities to help calm and possibly improve racial relations in Crown Heights over the next decade.

[3] At approximately 8:20 p.m. on Monday, August 19, 1991, Yosef Lifsh, 22, was driving a station wagon with three passengers west on President Street, part of the three-car motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement.

[6] The police car and Schneerson's automobile crossed Utica Avenue on a green light and proceeded along President Street at a normal speed, but Lifsh's vehicle had fallen behind.

Seven-year-old Gavin Cato, the son of Guyanese immigrants, who was working on his bicycle chain while on the sidewalk near his apartment on President Street, died instantly.

[10] Members of the Hatzolah EMS unit, who arrived on the scene about three minutes after the crash, said that Lifsh was being beaten and pulled out of the station wagon by three or four men.

[13] Some members of the community were outraged because Lifsh was taken from the scene by a private ambulance service while city emergency workers were still trying to free the children who were pinned under the car.

[18][19] About three hours after the riots began, early on the morning of August 20, a group of approximately 20 young black men, with the incitement of Charles Price, who chanted "Let's go get a Jew," surrounded Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Jewish University of Melbourne student in the United States conducting research for his doctorate.

Following that trial, Australian attorney Norman Rosenbaum[22] became an advocate for his late brother,[23] inspiring protests that included a shutdown of the Brooklyn Bridge[24] and a demonstration at Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence.

[15] An additional 350 police officers were added to the regular duty roster on August 20 and were assigned to Crown Heights in an attempt to quell the rioting.

[6] By the time the three days of rioting ended, 152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured, 27 vehicles were destroyed, seven stores were looted or burned,[34] and 225 cases of robbery and burglary were committed.

[6] On September 5, two weeks after the riot had been controlled, Anthony Graziosi, an Italian sales representative with a white beard dressed in dark business attire, was driving in the neighborhood.

As he stopped at a traffic light at 11 p.m., six blocks away from where Yankel Rosenbaum had been murdered, a group of four black men surrounded his car and one of them shot and killed him.

[37] After the death of Gavin Cato, members of the black community believed that the decision to remove Lifsh from the scene first was racially motivated.

"[40] Based on protesters' statements and actions during the rioting, Butman said, "We were always hoping that after World War II no Jew would ever be killed just for being Jewish, but this is what happened in the city of New York.

Al Sharpton referred to "diamond merchants" and said, "It's an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights.

[8] Edward S. Shapiro, a historian at Seton Hall University, later described the riot as "the most serious anti-Semitic incident in American history" and published a book about it in 2006.

This effort at explanation ... reflected the diverse political, religious, and social circumstances, the differing ideological assumptions, and the divergent understandings of the past by the journalists, sociologists, political activists, and historians who wrote about the riot.A grand jury composed of 10 black, eight white, and five Hispanic jurors found no cause to indict Lifsh.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes explained that under New York law, the single act of "losing control of a car" is not criminal negligence, even if death or injury resulted.

[46] He was attacked by many political adversaries in his reelection bid, including vocal proponents of "Black nationalism, back-to-Africa, economic radicalism, and racial exclusiveness.

"[6] On November 17, 1992, New York Governor Mario Cuomo gave the Director of Criminal Justice Services, Richard H. Girgenti, the authority to investigate the rioting and the Nelson trial.

However, the report found no evidence to support the most severe charge against Dinkins and Brown: that they had purposely delayed the police response in order to allow rioters to "vent" their rage.

[48] The first night of the riot, Dinkins, along with Police Commissioner Brown, both African Americans, went to Crown Heights to talk to the community to dispel the rumors about the circumstances surrounding the crash.

[15] In a 16-minute speech on the Thanksgiving holiday following the riot, Dinkins rebutted allegations that he had prevented police from protecting citizens in Crown Heights.

Michael Stanislawski, Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University, wrote in 1992 that it was "historically inaccurate" to couple "pogrom" with Crown Heights, because the word denoted organized violence against Jews "having some sort of governmental involvement.

[53] Efforts aimed at the improvement of the relations between black people and Jews in Crown Heights began almost immediately following the rioting.

The Coalition, led by Edison O. Jackson, then President of Medgar Evers College, and Rabbi Shea Hecht, chairman of the Board of the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE), operated for ten years as an inter-group forum in which to air neighborhood concerns and work out issues.

[57] The Crown Heights Mediation Center was established in 1998 to help resolve local differences, also a direct outcome of the Coalition.

[58] On August 19, 2001, a street fair was held in memory of Cato and Rosenbaum, and their relatives met and exchanged mementos in hopes of healing in Crown Heights.