A few days after Yusef Hawkins was lynched on August 23, 1989 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn NY, my curiosity got the better of my common sense (as it often did back then) and I decided to walk alone and unannounced through Bensonhurst to the place where he was killed to say a silent prayer in his memory and to get an up close look at the type of neighborhood and people who'd killed. I didn't tell anyone I was going there that day because they would have said I was nuts and probably rightfully so but my experience with the Ku Klux Klan in Cummings GA two years earlier had made me damn near fearless.
As I rode the D train on its elevated tracks to my destination whatever concern I may have had about the possibility of being seriously hurt evaporated and I found myself being filled with rage over Hawkins death since his was the third such lynching in the Greater New York area in the past seven years with Willie Turks having been slain in Brooklyn in 1982 and Michael Griffith in Queens in 1982. Now the first two had been roughly my age but Hawkins was somewhat younger with myself being 24 at the time and him just 16 when he was killed. I was not prepared to swallow this craziness without protest; I'm still. Now I knew Reverend Sharpton was planning a major demonstration in Bensonhurst in protest of Hawkins death around the same time I made my venture into the area but I was neither sure of when or where.
So I got off the train, descended the stairs to the street, and began to make my way to the site of the shooting. Even though this was a Saturday, the area was strangely deserted; it was too quiet in fact and that raised my antenna because something didn't seem right. All of a sudden mobs of young white men appeared out of nowhere running past me with baseball bats & lead pipes screaming their heads off. I thought some sort of attack was imminent. They just ran past me with their pipes and their bats in the air as though I was not there and it wasn't like I wasn't conspicuous because from what I could tell there wasn't another person of color for miles.
In the midst of all this I saw a catholic priest standing in front of his church watching the passing mob and being suddenly unsure of the exact location of where Hawkins had been shot I walked up to him to ask for directions. Seeing me approach he yelled "take your hands out of your pockets!" He actually thought that I was literally coming there to rob him in broad daylight in the midst of all that craziness. When he realized that I wasn't there to harm him he asked me if I was looking for the staging area of the impending demonstration. Again I hadn't really thought about it to be honest; I was more interested in seeing where Hawkins had died than to march at that point.
Well he said that the gathering place was just a blocks up the street in the direction I was going. I thanked him and he said "you really don't intend to make your way there in the midst of all this, do you?!" he said while pointing to that huge bat & pipe wielding mob rushing past us. I just shrugged my shoulders and said "I really don't think I have a choice."
With that this priest shook his head and proceeded to give me the Last Rites of the Roman Catholic Church right there in the street in front of his church. We shook hands and he said "be safe son" at which point I disappeared into the mob.
Approaching the area where the police had gathered I came across a cop in full riot gear. His jaw damn near dropped to the street when he saw me, this scrawny ass black guy emerge unscathed through a mob of raging white men to ask him to point me towards the staging area. Without saying a word he raised his nightstick and pointed to where I needed to go. Moments later I joined the procession which marched up the same street from which I'd come. Those same jokers who'd rushed past me moments earlier were now screaming racial epithets at me & my fellow marchers at the top of their lungs.
There were throwing everything at us. I mean I had to do some serious ducking that day, let me tell you, but that didn't phase me because I expected it and of course been through that type of experience before. No, what got to me, and what has stayed with me ever since was what I saw moments. In the midst of this crowd and standing with his "white" friends was a black man as dark as coal giving us the finger and screaming "N*****s go back to Africa!" I kid you not, this really happened.
Making eye contact with him I yelled "Dude, have you lost your goddamned mind?" He just laughed with his "white" friends, gave me the middle finger with both hands and yelled "Hey n****r! YOU go back to Africa and take yo' black momma with you!" So if by chance you all happen to see a black man or woman at these Teabagger rally waving a Confederate flag and calling President Obama an ape don't be surprised. Sadly, there are a few of them out there; something I learned to my eternal amazement on that day in Bensonhurst so many years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment