Mayor David Dinkins asked a city torn by racial strife to come together to fight the common foes of crime, poverty and prejudice.
The city's first black mayor made his plea Tuesday before 6,000 New Yorkers at a city-sponsored rally on the edge of Harlem."When a few shout out words of hate, we can drown them out with acts of hope," Dinkins said.
"And when the instigators seek to turn us against each other, we can respond by turning to each other - and coming together to fight our common foes: crack and crime, poverty, prejudice and pollution."
The most recent irritant to race relations was a pair of verdicts in the Bensonhurst case, the slaying of a black teen-ager by a mob of whites in the mostly white section of Brooklyn in August. One white teen-ager was convicted of murder; a co-defendant was acquitted of murder but convicted of lesser charges.
A black boycott of a Korean-American grocery store and a speech by a City University professor who espouses white supremacy also have heightened tensions.
Dinkins, in announcing the city-sponsored Unity Rally on Monday, said "a silent majority" needed to be heard above the voices of some activists who have been fueling instead of soothing tensions.
Dinkins was joined Tuesday night at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine by Gov. Mario Cuomo and Cardinal John O'Connor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.
"For God's sakes, why are we fighting among ourselves?" Cuomo asked the crowd. "We must save our strength for the real battles - for fighting the closed-minded, the skinheads, the anti-Semites, the racists and gay haters."
The speeches, interrupted by standing ovations and cheers, were broadcast live on local television.
About a dozen blacks picketed the cathedral, holding signs that read: "Let's take our peace, justice and unity rally to Bensonhurst."