A New York Times article from June 30, 1926 describes Mayor Walker's debating the proposed Cabaret Law curfew and providing contemporary color as to "running wild" and "visitors from outside the city" creating disturbances. The contemporaneous account undermines the implied view that the preamble to the enacted law establishes racism.
“3 A.M. Curfew Foes Heckled By Walker”
An opponent described “out-of-town visitors” “running wild”, and the Mayor retorted that out-of-town visitors make the city a cesspool. This section provide color as to the oft-quoted excerpt used as “proof” of racism as suggested at Chevigny – Gigs: Jazz and the Cabaret Laws in New York City.
Chevigny, although an academic is a Professor of Constitutional Law, is not a historian, and provides no support or contemporaneous citation, such as citation to Newspapers and Magazines, for his belief; he provides no citations to contemporary sources and does not meet the academic standards of a historian, although, no doubt, a professional attorneys and law professor.
Report of the Committee on Local Laws in Favor of Adopting a Local Law to Regulate Dance Halls and Cabarets and Providing for Licensing the Same . .
These night clubs or cabarets are simply dance halls, where food is served at exor- bitant prices to the tune of jazz and tabloid entertainments. A very frank opposition was voiced by one of the licensees, on the ground that when strangers came to New York City they wanted to “run wild .” Well, there has been altogether too much running “wild” in some of these might clubs and, in the Judgment of your ·Committee, the wild stranger and the foolish native should have the check-rein applied a little bit. … They are interested in speakeasies and dance halls and return to their native heaths to slander New York.
Your Committee believes that these “wild” people should not be tumbling out of these resorts at six or seven o’clock in the morning to the scandal and annoyance ·of decent residents on their way to daily employment.
