ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It all started so innocently: a block party in the Seventh Ward to raise money for a playground.

But the arrest of a man for public intoxication was the spark that ignited an inferno on July 24, 1964.

That was the first day of riots that shaped change for a generation. That change was bought with the wounds of a city forced to acknowledge the realities of racism.

On this, the 60th anniversary, News10NBC takes a look back.

“Riots are the language of the unheard.” The words of Dr. Martin Luther King so aptly describe what happened on that warm July day. Rochester’s streets erupted with the suppressed rage of those who’d fled the south looking for prosperity and were met with hostility.

In just over a decade, Rochester’s Black population grew from just over 7,800 to more than 32,000 in 1964. Blacks faced rampant housing discrimination, forcing them into slums in the Third and Seventh Ward.

Corporate giants Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb refused to acknowledge the discrimination in their ranks – until the riots and the rage. And a city that believed itself a beacon of tolerance was forced to look inward.

Following the riots, local Civil Rights leader Rev. Franklin Florence formed F.I.G.H.T., which stands for “Freedom, Independence, God, Honor, Today.” He urged corporate leaders to knock down the racial divide and diversify its ranks.

Joe Wilson, the CEO of Xerox, did just that, vowing to provide jobs and training for Blacks. Eventually, Kodak followed suit.

And F.I.G.H.T. Village was born, providing affordable housing, education, and job training. But not all change was good change. Whites fled to the suburbs, widening the gulf between Blacks and white neighborhoods. Today, the same Black neighborhoods plagued by poverty six decades ago are still held in its grip.

July 24, 1964: a day that inspired change … while some things remain.

Today, half of all children in Rochester live in poverty, and most of those children are Black and brown: evidence, city leaders say, that some problems of the past must be addressed in the present.