Frontline is made possible by the financial support of viewers like you, and by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting.
Tonight, when 16-year-old Youssef Hawkins was murdered in a white New York neighborhood
called Bensonhurst, racial tensions exploded.
Tonight on Frontline, race, politics, and seven days in Bensonhurst.
From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York,
WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
This is Frontline with Judy Woodruff.
Good evening.
It has been another ugly week in New York City.
Over the past few years, New York has witnessed a string of violent racial confrontations
that have left it with a reputation as the most polarized city in America.
This week, those divisions seem to have deepened even more.
In a Brooklyn courthouse, juries have been deliberating the fate of two young white men
accused of murdering 16-year-old Youssef Hawkins last summer.
The activist Reverend Al Sharpton has warned that if the jurors do not return verdicts
of murder, that quote, you are lighting a match to the end of a powder keg and telling
us to burn the town down.
What excuse are you going to give us about Youssef if you come back with anything less
than murder?
How much do they expect black people to take in this city?
Meanwhile, a boycott of Korean grocery stores led by black activists protesting the treatment
of black customers entered its 15th week.
On Sunday, the tensions between Asians and blacks appeared to take a violent turn when
a group of black youths clashed with three Vietnamese men, leaving one badly injured.
David Dinkins, New York's first black mayor, confronted the most serious crisis of his
tenure.
I challenge all of the people of this city to reject these calls to bigotry, because
if the bigots succeed in spreading their poison, it's nobody's fault but our own.
Tonight, Frontline examines the anatomy of one racial crisis in New York City, the murder
of Youssef Hawkins.
Our program focuses not on what happened that night, almost a year ago, when Hawkins was
killed, but on the days that followed as the murder engulfed the entire city.
Our program was produced and co-written by Tom Lennon.
The correspondent is Shelby Steele, a professor at San Jose State University, who has written
from a first-person perspective on issues of race.
What follows is an essay, one man's view of the meaning that can be found by revisiting
seven harrowing days in Bensonhurst.
I don't feel like this is the city that I was raised in, that I left and came back to.
It's a city that's out of control.
And for me, it feels more racially tense than any place I've been in the last six years.
I feel it everywhere.
I feel it if I get off the wrong subway stop and I look around and there's nobody black
up with me.
The subways go through all neighborhoods in New York and people, even though they're underground,
know where the boundaries are.
You know that 96th Street is just about the last white middle-class stop in New York.
After that, you're going through enemy territory if you're white middle-class.
You never know when a situation is likely to erupt.
It's a scary way to live, and in my opinion, the city is always on that edge.
On the evening of August 23rd, 1989, four young black men, ages 16 to 18, took the subway
from East New York to look at a used car advertised in the paper.
The address they were going to was unfamiliar.
That trip took them across one of the dividing lines that separate white New York from black.
The incident began Wednesday night at 920 in Bensonhurst.
Four black youths had gone to the neighborhood to buy a car they saw advertised in a newspaper.
The trouble began while they were walking on Bayridge Avenue.
A group of 10 white men wielding baseball bats met up with four youths.
One white man fired four shots.
Two of the shots hit 16-year-old Yusef Hawkins in the chest.
He died a short time later at Maimonides Hospital.
The police bias unit is investigating this.
Carol DeOria, 1010 Wins at the 62nd Precinct in Brooklyn.
Here my son has been tried, found guilty, and executed, all in one day, in less than
an hour's time, for nothing, only because of the color of his skin.
I just want to ask New York and America as well, when is it going to stop?
It was wintertime when we started to make this film, and Yusef Hawkins' murder had long
ago slipped from the front pages.
When I first got the news of Hawkins' murder, for a second I felt that primitive fear I
used to feel as a young black boy growing up in Chicago.
There's the sense of relapse that comes with that kind of news, the sense that an ugly
element of our history has somehow crawled forward into the present and made our belief
in racial progress feel like an illusion.
But when I heard the news of Hawkins' death, I had another reaction that I wasn't going
to deny, an overwhelming sense of racial fatigue.
Each racial tragedy in this country seems to set off a bitter round of accusations and
denials between the races, and as I arrived in New York, I brought with me an uncomfortable
feeling of deja vu.
I had come to New York to look back on Yusef Hawkins' death, but I didn't want to write
yet another news report.
I have long believed that race is a mask through which other human needs manifest themselves.
I think we often make race an issue as a way of not knowing other things about ourselves.
What happened in Bensonhurst was tragic and real, but I think this event also shows us
as Americans much about the uses we put race to, about the fears and urges for power that
we mask with race.
In this sense, the story of Bensonhurst is an allegory.
If most Americans like me are fatigued by racial conflict, we are also threatened by
it, and if Bensonhurst is a tragedy, it is also an opportunity to know.
After Yusef Hawkins' murder, all the strains and hatreds in New York's racial climate were
suddenly in full view.
We're trying our young brothers dying and getting killed for no reason.
We let them walk through our neighborhood, so why can't we walk through theirs?
They don't belong here, and we don't belong in theirs.
You're tearing the whole city up to let some young people-
No, no, no.
You are.
You are.
I'm not tearing anybody up.
No peace!
No justice!
No peace!
No justice!
For days, this murder held the city in its grip, but the crisis of Hawkins' death began
on a much smaller scale in the late hours of the night on August 23rd.
When they finally sat us down at the police station and talked to us, they told me that
they believed that it was a racial incident.
That my son and his three companions were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
That from 25 to 30 young white youths with baseball bats attacked it.
One youth had a gun.
And my son happened to be the one in line to fire in the store.
They found bats in parks.
They found bats at the scene of the crime, you know, so they pretty much knew what was
going on.
Reporters were immediately dispatched to the family home on Hegemon Avenue.
The family at that time, they were in the house and, well, a few of them were out on
the porch, clearly in shock.
And the questions are coming.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Was your son an honor student?
Why was your son in Bensonhurst?
What was he doing there?
What was the two guys doing with them?
Within hours, the police had questioned numbers of suspects and details began to emerge.
There was a young Bensonhurst woman, Gina Feliciano, who dated black and Hispanic men.
There was a feud between her and one of the Bensonhurst youths.
A white mob was outside Gina's house waiting for a group of blacks.
There was debate then, as now, about the exact nature of the crime, but the early details
pointed sharply to race as the motivation for the murder.
My son will never turn this corner again.
Only because of this, the pigment of his skin.
Do you understand that?
This is what America must learn, that we are no longer going to take this.
If we think of the races as competing power groups, it is not hard to see how Yusuf Hawkins'
murder caused a sudden imbalance.
Against America's history of black oppression, this event was not only a murder, but also
an affront to the entire black community.
Real or not, this was the look of things, and it made the incident a stage on which
players of both races quickly began to jockey for position.
Well around 10 a.m. on the 24th of August, the morning after, I received a call at home
from someone who said he was Moses Stewart, and he asked me could I come to the house
immediately of his mother-in-law because he was being harassed by the press and he did
not know what to do.
He and his family had just returned from the morgue from identifying Yusuf's body, and
I immediately agreed, and I immediately went out to East New York.
Reverend Al Sharpton, one of the most controversial figures in New York's racial politics.
Through much of the 80s, Sharpton had been in the headlines, embroiled in the city's
most bitter racial disputes.
I told him, I said, I'm going to tell you now, we've got several situations that you're
going to have to deal with.
One, we're right in the middle of a mayoral primary, so this is going to be very political.
I'm very controversial, and that's going to bring a lot of baggage with my presence.
You've got to decide if this is really what you want to do and how far you want to go
with this.
And that's when they said, no, we want to go all the way.
We want the whole world to know what happened now, son, so it will never happen again.
By the time the media caught up with the story, Reverend Al Sharpton was once again center
stage.
In 1984, Sharpton had marched on Bernard Getz after the gunman shot four black youths in
the subway.
Sharpton was prominent again in Howard Beach when a black man died after being chased onto
the highway by white youths.
Sharpton was also a key advisor in the case of Tawana Brawley, who claimed to have been
raped by Ku Klux Klan's sympathizer.
After a long investigation, a grand jury declared her story to be a fraud.
The Brawley case and Sharpton's role in it had not been forgotten.
Now as the news of Hawkins' murder filtered through the city, many white New Yorkers were
on their guard.
Whenever Al Sharpton is involved with the cause in New York, I think most white New
Yorkers, certainly not all, but most assume it is a phony cause.
There were people who were going to seize on this.
On this opportunity.
Al Sharpton, as soon as Al Sharpton became involved, you knew that all of a sudden this
was going to become some sort of media event.
Because it's almost like Hollywood, this guy, he's orchestrating a happening.
I know from experience that a lot of cases are won and lost in terms of the public perception
in the first 24 hours.
The fact that every five minutes there was another media truck pulling up outside.
So I knew that there was going to be mass media play.
The question is how the media was going to play.
As the media recognized the dimensions of the story, so too did New York's leading
politicians.
The Manhattan borough president doesn't usually visit the home of murder victims in Brooklyn,
but David Dinkins wants to be mayor.
And after a half hour meeting with the dead youth's family and Reverend Al Sharpton, David
Dinkins told how he believes Yusuf Hawkins killing relates to the race for mayor.
I don't blame the mayor or any individual for this circumstance, except to say all of
us, all of us, each one of us bears some responsibility for trying to make a better city.
It was about five o'clock.
Hawkins had been dead for 18 hours.
The city was in the midst of a primary campaign.
Ed Koch, mayor of New York, faced a difficult reelection.
I'm sure that I can do more and I'm going to try to do more, but let no one deceive
you to think that if someone else were in my place, that that incident in Brooklyn would
not have occurred.
It might not have occurred.
Mayor Koch quickly tried to arrange his own condolence visit, but Koch didn't want Sharpton
at the home.
And the family sent the mayor a message not to come.
Ten minutes later, Jesse Jackson calls and then everybody, I mean the NAACP officials
and this council and that congressman, people started a steady stream for the next few hours
into the house, on into the wee hours of the morning.
It was now just 24 hours since Hawkins had been murdered.
The media, the black leadership, the top officials of city and state, all were now drawn in to
the crisis of his death.
Bensonhurst lies across the East River, a small Italian-American neighborhood buried
in southern Brooklyn.
Growing up in Chicago, I knew neighborhoods like this.
They were enemy territory.
As a boy, I often heard blacks say that one of the first words new immigrants learned
was the word nigger.
This word was a means to status in America, a quickly absorbed prejudice that meant one
could be above at least one group.
So for many new immigrants, racism was a means to power, a shortcut to the American dream.
The story of Yusef Hawkins seemed to me a great deal about power.
Whites, especially the least strong, can find power in despising blacks.
But blacks, too, could derive power from Hawkins' death.
I believe the power that comes from having been victimized by whites has been the primary
power blacks have had in this country.
And over time, we have learned to exercise it.
I said, I think what we ought to do is Saturday, I ought to go to Bensonhurst.
I have an organization.
I know I can put 500 people in the streets.
And I think if we go to Bensonhurst, the reaction of the white community will clear all of this
up for the perception of the American public.
Sharpton set out to prove that Bensonhurst was a racist community.
Meanwhile, its residents were busy protesting their innocence.
Is there racial tension in this neighborhood?
No, it ain't racial.
Everybody's supposed to report it.
It's not racism.
No, it's not a racial tension.
It's not.
It's not like we don't look for trouble.
That's right.
You know, like, they weren't looking for trouble either, but they were in the wrong place at
the wrong time, I guess, you know.
These things happen, you know, but don't make a big deal out of it, because now if you make
a big deal and you know what's going to happen, they're going to come down and we're going
to start, they're going to start, and it's going to be a big thing, right?
So if we keep it low and forget about it, you know, maybe it'll just die down.
Now Sharpton planned to march through the heart of Bensonhurst.
I knew that Bensonhurst would clarify whether it was a racial attack or not.
We were told on Friday that there would be a march the next day and that Al Sharpton
would lead the march, and this was a sort of a mythic figure, Sharpton, to the people
of Bensonhurst.
We see hundreds of whites standing there, unbelievable.
I mean, even with my expectations, I didn't expect that kind of crowd.
What do you want to hear, you want to hear hatred and violence, you ain't going to hear
it, because you know it's a bullshit and a lie, Al Sharpton is a bullshit and a lie.
In the beginning, the interest was where's Sharpton, you know, where's the fat guy.
It was almost a joke, you know, it wasn't so much that people were frightened or angry
or anything at that point, it was kind of hand-rubbing glee, you know, great, there's
going to be a fight.
The hatred was there, but I think the fact
that I was so controversial to Bensonhurst helped them forget the cameras with them.
So what I decided to do was I was going to help them, because when I would see a crowd
on the corner going crazy, Al, we're going to get you, I'd start throwing kisses to
the crowd, and they would just go nuts then, that's when they would start jumping over
the barricades, and I would, oh, I love you, you're my greatest friends, and they would
go nuts.
Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home! Go home!
They were unmindful at all in how they would be perceived to the world.
Murder! They killed Joseph Hawkins because of the color of his skin! Murder! Murder!
Do you think this is going to help? Is this going to help? Or is it going to stir more?
Nobody has the right to kill people, nobody, okay? But this is instigation, it's not demonstration.
Get the fuck out!
Get out!
You fucking asshole!
Go fuck your parents!
Look at you, you faggot!
Freedom for your fucking parents!
A faggot!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
When we come back through the gate of the schoolyard to come back to the buses, the
head of security for us was bringing us through and a little white kid, he couldn't have been
no more than 12 years old, peeked through the fence and said, hey mister, and the kid
hauled off and spit in his face.
I went up to one woman and said, where were you today? Where were the adults today? Did
you see, do you have any idea what your kids did out there? And she kind of, oh, she said,
I didn't know there was going to be a march today.
And the other woman kind of said, it's really a shame, it's really a shame because now my
kid is saying the word nigger and he never said that before.
Are you ready?
We would like to say that yesterday showed the open hostility and open racism that existed
in New York. Youssef was a victim of racism, not mistaken identity, not a passion killer.
One only had to walk the streets of Benzler's with us on yesterday to see.
We Americans have achieved a new equality of racial pejoratives. It is now as disturbing
for a white to be called a racist as it is for a black to be called a nigger. Now we
both have the power to put each other on the run with a name. It is easy enough to say
that Bensonhurst is a racist community because of what happened here. But it is also true
that when an accusation of racism is repeated, many people give up trying to fight it and
out of anger act out the very thing they are accused of.
Most people say, I'm not a racist. The second thing that happens is people say, okay yeah
I am a racist. Because that's what happened at the march. Suddenly it was like, okay I'm
going to play this role for everything it's worth.
The day after Sharpton marched through Bensonhurst, a group of prominent black ministers organized
a second march.
We are affirming today that New York City is not going to become Johannesburg, South
Africa.
There are people who are going to be offended by our mere presence here. But I would much
rather for them to be offended by our language and our presence than for us to continue to
have to bury one body after another.
The black demonstrators who marched in Bensonhurst brought with them the memory of a long series
of racial incidents. After shooting four black youths in the subway, Bernard Goetze served
less than a year in jail for violating the gun control laws.
At around the same time, the police killed an elderly black woman, Eleanor Bumpers, in
her own home. The officer who shot her was found not guilty.
Then there was Howard Beach. Three white youths were convicted. But at the time of Hawkins
death, their cases were being appealed, and many believed their convictions might be overturned.
There was the Howard Beach thing, the Griffiths thing, there was the Eleanor Bumpers thing,
you know, and all of these were just heightening the tension. My son, again, was just probably
the tip of what says, this is it.
Now in Bensonhurst, this list of incidents hardened into a litany with which whites could
be accused. But whites brought their own accusations to the streets.
Started off with one guy yelling, what about Central Park? And a young woman, I remember
next to him saying, yeah, shit, it goes both ways. It goes both ways.
Four months before Hawkins death, a white woman jogging in Central Park was brutally
beaten and raped. The suspects in the case were Hispanic and black.
It had become totally tribal, totally black and white, and there was this sense almost
that there was a tug of war about who was the victim, who was the biggest victim, and
who was the aggressor.
This is what you're getting. Oh, well, you killed one of our children. Oh, but you, look
what you did. And this is what you're getting instead of anything getting settled.
In the weeks that followed Yusef's murder, black leaders organized a total of seven marches
through Bensonhurst. Studying these videotapes, one can feel the temperatures rising as the
marches progressed.
It's enough. It's enough. This is what he wants. Go free me, idiot. Don't you understand?
This is what he wants. He's bringing more hatred than anything else. Go home. The epithets
and the screaming and the rage, it was the most vivid exhibition of racial hatred that
I had ever seen.
This kind of racism speaks for itself. Regardless of how it may be explained, it needs to be
recognized and condemned for what it is.
Bensonhurst is a small neighborhood in a massive city, and as the events in this neighborhood
play themselves out, one can almost feel the larger city as a chorus in the background.
All of white New York, and for that matter, white America, stand accused by implication.
Even on Fifth Avenue, Bensonhurst is a stain on white innocence. Here, across this class
boundary, open displays of racism are not an option. Here, the pressure is to dissociate
oneself from the ugliness, to escape the burden of racial guilt by separating oneself from
the whites of Bensonhurst and by drawing closer to their victim.
Larger New York was quick to dissociate itself from the racial confrontation. Those who lived
in Bensonhurst could feel they had become bit players in a much larger drama.
To hear the media always tell you, you know, your neighborhood is racist, your neighborhood
is racist, and pointing the finger at the neighborhood, you know, was a way of exonerating
themselves, you know, exonerating themselves because I believe that racism is all over.
And to point the finger at another is a way of saying, I'm not a racist.
I believe that Hawkins and death was not just a source of power for blacks, but also for
whites. By making a special show of concern for Hawkins, whites could demonstrate their
racial innocence, if for no other reason than to fight off the charge of racism. And so
both black and white politicians were drawn to Youssef's body as though in its lifelessness
it contained a power they all needed. Their role as leaders was to publicly stand in proximity
to this deceased boy and find the tone and the posture that would give them their highest
profile of innocence. In America, where race is concerned, innocence is power.
Do you think that people sensed that there was power in this tragedy?
Sure. I mean, it was. I mean, those who were very ingenuity could see that at the opportune
time, had they could grasp hold of anything, there was a great deal of power. The power
to sway people's thoughts were there. Anyone with any kind of sense could see, you know,
that if I do the right thing, if I can get Mr. Stewart, if I can get the Hawkins family,
if I can get them all, that I have the opportunity to sway people. I have the opportunity to
pull votes. After Hawkins' death, the mayoral candidates
canceled most of their campaign appearances. Effectively, the murder was now the campaign.
The candidacy of David Dinkins gained new strength after Bensonhurst. Dinkins promised
racial harmony and made this promise the centerpiece of his campaign. His visit to the Hawkins
household that first day had been an important chance to drive home his image as a healer.
All the press is outside. We shake hands warmly. I introduce them to the family. We go upstairs.
Everyone went upstairs to the second floor. Your instincts as a reporter comes out and
obviously you're going to walk in naturally. So I did.
And Dave says that I came to express my condolences to the family. I heard some of what you said,
Mr. Stewart on WLIB, and I'm very sorry what happened. In all likelihood, I will be the
next mayor of the city and will try to do what I can that this never happens again.
One of the cousins of Diane says, what do you mean never happen again? What are you
going to do about this now? What so-and-so are you talking about?
You do not take my son's death as a political thing to take potshots at other politicians.
That was not my son's program. He was not involved in politics.
Before we could get used to that, everybody jumps in. We don't need any sympathy. We don't
need anybody posturing. We don't need anybody out here campaigning. We don't even know what
you came here for. If you can't do anything about it, you can get the so-and-so out of
here. I'm sitting in the corner and I'm ducking.
You're not hearing anything out of me. I'm not even breathing. It was clear that if Mr.
Stewart wanted to, or if Reverend Sharpton wanted to, they could have walked outside
to the five to ten cameras out there and said some things that could have really hurt the
campaign of David Dankens. The absence of understanding is what leads
to a disrespect. It's important. Jesse Jackson flew into town to attend the Hawkins
wake. Arrangements were made for him to meet with the family in a private room.
He says, this could have been my son, very concerned. And he says, but you know, there's
good that comes out of bad. And he says, I think Dave Dankens might be the next mayor
of New York because of what they did to that boy laying in there. And Moses immediately
explodes. I don't want any politics. How can y'all deal with this in a political way? This
is not political. I don't care who the mayor is. I want justice.
I had to stop him right there because I did not believe that Reverend Jesse Jackson was
disobeying the wish of the father of the deceased for political campaigning for David Dankens.
And I had explicitly let out, do not use Yusuf in the context of political things.
Both Jackson and Dankens had stumbled in their response to the murder, but behind closed
doors. Mayor Koch's miscalculations were of a more public kind.
I would hope that nobody turned this into a political matter. And the second thing that
I urge is that people not engage in marches into communities. And the reason is the community
thinks it then is the perpetrator of the violence. And I don't think that any community can be
branded that way. Communities ought not to be condemned. Bensonhurst ought not to be
condemned. Howard Beach or any other part of this town.
If Koch thought his defense of Bensonhurst would win white support, he was mistaken.
His remarks provoked disapproval among whites and blacks alike.
He was very concerned about the feelings of the people in Bensonhurst. I mean, he kept
saying that, you know, we don't want to blame this entire community. Well, at the time,
people weren't blaming the entire community. They were protesting against racial violence.
And that was the wrong posture to take. Over the years, Koch had often offended black
New Yorkers. His combative tone with the city's black leaders had made him something of a
hero to many whites. But now Yusuf's body lay in an open coffin, the eyes of the city
on him. Koch needed to be seen in a softer light. He drove to the funeral home to pay
his respects. When he gets out the car, you immediately
knew I'm inside with Moses, who had just finished going through his thing with Jesse. And I
all of a sudden hear sounds like a million voices booing outside. And I said, it's got
to be Ed Koch. All you heard was it was almost like an explosion,
like standing outside of Madison Square Garden. And this man, and you didn't know who, you
knew it was somebody important, just came flying through the door. And he looked and
he did, all he saw was black faces. And he didn't know what to do. So his natural instinct
was, I'll go view the body. After viewing the body, Mayor Koch embraced
Moses Stewart and then was escorted out by a side door.
And all of a sudden I hear, get him, get him, get him. Bottles are smashing. They push him
into the limousine and the limousine takes off backwards, up the block.
He was not leaving in one piece. Everybody has used this incident. Everybody
has used this incident for their own soapbox. They have, they've gone on their own soapbox
and used this incident. Everyone has exploited this boy's death.
It becomes a feeding frenzy. The media is acting like complete nuts and
everybody's competitive. Everybody wants the story that the other guy didn't get.
The Yusef Hawkins story attracted media from all over the country. At times, television
crews and photographers seemed almost as numerous as demonstrators.
Inevitably, the media, too, became part of the story.
They were going to stay there as long as the story was hot. They were taking me to lunch.
I mean, I could have gotten me some Gucci suits had I played it right.
Mr. Hawkins, would you stand at that mic? You're going to call me a racist?
I'm just telling you how sorry I am. And if you don't want my sorrow, then that's fine.
Well, let me ask you this, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Hawkins. When are you going to make it end?
That's right. I always knew that the media could not be
completely trusted, but I have to say that at first I trusted them very much and was
very open and honest. And it was only at the time when Roy Innis came into the neighborhood
to host a vigil service for Yusef Hawkins that I realized the power and the drawing
power that a media figure has. He brought with him Morton Downey, and I saw
a religious vigil service turn into a circus. And I saw that the people loved it because
they could be on the tube for a few minutes. Are these people racist?
These people? No, we're not racist.
Are you folks racist? No!
That's the answer. I have a friend of yours here, a friend of mine,
and a friend of yours. He put his schedule aside to be here with us.
Let him in. Let's hear it for Morton Downey!
That is the moment that Yusef Hawkins ceased to be an individual, ceased to be, you know,
that was the moment there. Because the ground that was hallowed by his
blood became a circus ground. And it was a media figure who did that.
And so at that point, that's when I started to see that media people have an agenda, and
they'll follow it. They'll follow it.
I remember when I was nine years old, Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi.
He was a black teenager from the North who was killed and mutilated for supposedly whistling
at a white woman. I remember sneaking a look at the picture
of Till's disfigured body in Jet magazine, because Mr. Hilton the barber had forbidden
children to see it. But when he caught me looking, he said nothing,
as if he knew the picture communicated things I needed to know.
His silence was the communication of knowledge elders of an oppressed group pass on to the
young. Emmett Till's body was brought back to Chicago.
I remember the buzz of adults talking about him. The men who murdered Till were acquitted
by an all-white jury in Mississippi. But his death was widely publicized, and it
galvanized American opinion. I believe that the whole United States is mourning
with me. And if the death of my son can mean something
to the other unfortunate people all over the world, then for him to have died a hero would
mean more to me than for him just to have died. Most observers agree that Till's murder
in 1955 was an important catalyst to the civil rights movement.
His death was powerful evidence of black victimization that challenged Americans to live up to their
own morality. And the more we were victimized, the more
power we had. The power finally to rewrite this country's
racial laws. But Yusuf Hawkins was killed in a very different
America than Till was. The inequities of this country are no longer so flagrant. Yusuf's
death cannot carry the same power as Till's, cannot inspire a new civil rights movement.
This larger reality seemed to inject an ambivalence into Yusuf's funeral.
Though it was filled with undeniable grief, it also had the feel of a ritual, a ritual
of political mobilization that had lost much of its power because its target was no longer
as clear. There's so much pain and so much hurt in this
atmosphere of violence. It's so reminiscent of Emmett Till being killed on a race sex
motivated lynching in Mississippi in 1955. And now here another race sex motivated act
of terror. In the last days of August, 1989, New Yorkers
gathered in Brooklyn to bury Yusuf Hawkins. Diane Hawkins that day was as any mother would
be, you know, in the same circumstances she had lost her son, who she cherished. And she
was speechless that day. In the chapel itself, I mean, you had thousands of people filing
by the open casket. You had old ladies weeping. You had little kids crying and just wondering
why this happened. So you knew that there was a bond that brought everybody together.
It was something that united all African Americans that day who had come from far and wide to
express their feelings to the family and to express their sense of loss at what had happened
because this was not just a loss for, for the Hawkins family. It was a loss for all
of us. On that Wednesday of the funeral, I got to
my church about nine o'clock that morning only to discover that the crowds were already
gathering and that the police guards were already up. It was amazing to me. Honestly
speaking, I thought the president of the United States was on his way to Glover Memorial
Sunday. Thank you very much.
The
only whites who were at that funeral were politicians, office holders, but there were
no ordinary citizens that I saw who went on their own kind of as a mark of respect or
mourning for this youngster. And that told me a lot about the racial situation in New
York.
The guest list at the funeral read like a who's who of New York politics. As New York's
governor Mario Cuomo made his way into the church, onlookers shouted cries of murderer,
it's your fault. The governor would later describe the booing as appropriate.
It was the white guilt that motivated the governor, the mayor, the candidates for mayor,
the council members, all of them to try to jockey for position to condemn it, say that
I'm not part of it, it wasn't me, I don't feel this way, I'm sorry. And to be the one
that said I'm sorry the loudest, or that it's not my fault, the loudest.
I mean, left to their own devices, I don't think those politicians would have been at
that funeral. On the other hand, there were a lot of blacks who left to their own devices,
would not have been at that funeral either. I mean, many of the people who actually were
inside that church were there for what I think were political, in many cases cynical, and
in some cases exploitative reasons. You were there when Martin Luther King marched
from Selma to Montgomery. You were there when they crucified Malcolm X. You were there when
they crucified Elijah Muhammad, Kwame Ture, H. Rep. Brown. You were always there. And
now we're here again, on the front row, mourning the loss of an innocent life. Never again.
Never again. Never again.
There are those who felt it was being used as something political. I had a different
feeling. My feeling is that I think Bensonhurst should have been the Selma of the 80s. I feel
that strongly. Everyone who was anybody was visible in the 50s and 60s. To me, this was
the same kind of issue. Let freedom ring today. Not only let it ring in New York, but Mr.
Mayor, Mr. Governor, let freedom ring from Howard Beach. Let freedom ring today just
from Bensonhurst, that we're not going to take what we used to take. We want to walk
where we want to walk. We want to talk like we used to talk. We'll stand where we used
to stand. I come to tell you today, God is my refuge. God is my strength. God is my rock
in a weary land. And if you don't respect me, that's all right.
At the wake and at the funeral, the mayor was there, the governor of the state was there,
candidates for the mayoral election were there, many other dignitaries. How many of these
people have contacted you since that time?
None. None. Not a one.
Not a one?
None.
This is East New York, the neighborhood where Yusuf Hawkins lived and where most of the
friends who accompanied him on the night of his death still live. It is a neighborhood
where young black lives are shattered all the time without making the newspapers and
without the notice of national leaders. This kind of neighborhood causes conflicting feelings
in middle class blacks. On the one hand, we are obviously relieved not to live here. Like
the middle class of all races, our impulse is to move away from the poor. But I cannot
come to a neighborhood like this without a feeling of connection and a certain guilt.
But what bothers me more is that all the fireworks of racial politics have no impact on a place
like this. Like the touch of guilt I feel, these politics seem a luxurious indulgence.
I think too often we blacks have confused the struggle against racism with the struggle
for economic development. Yusuf Hawkins' death and the attention it received will hopefully
have the power to make inroads against racism. But it is important for us to know that this
power stops at the door of economic development. The revival of this neighborhood and others
like it will require a very different sort of power, the kind that emerges from a people
who may be victimized but who refuse to think of themselves as victims.
After the funeral, New Yorkers began to turn their back on the Hawkins' affair. There
were more demonstrations in his name, one of which grew violent. But as the summer ended,
the demonstrations grew smaller and less frequent. Gradually, the city went back to its daily
life.
Bensonhurst is painful. We react for 10, 15 minutes, five days, whatever, and then we
go quietly into our corners. We've survived yet another pushing to the brink.
It's made no difference. It's one of those incidents which, in the long run, is going
to add an intangible to the overall picture, but nobody really has it in their mind. Two,
three years from now, when the next black kid is gunned down or a white kid is stabbed,
some newspaper reporter who remembers it is going to say, and remember Bensonhurst a few
years ago, all it proves is that it can't happen again and will happen again.
In America, the racists have long been cast as enemies. For me, one of the worst aspects
of Bensonhurst is that it makes the racists seem to be greater enemies than they actually
are. Bensonhurst pulls forward our long history of hostility and makes it into a lens through
which we now see each other. The danger in this is that whites can feel that race relations
are futile and then slide into cynicism so that postures and insincerity come to define
their relations with blacks. The danger for blacks is that we will gird ourselves for
a bigger fight with racism than the one we actually have and so drain off energy that
we need for development. In this way, the memory of injustice evoked by Bensonhurst
can become its own form of oppression. We have to know that what we remember is not
entirely what we live.
Thank you.
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