Editor’s note: I had to bump this drop back up to the top after learning that Trayvon Martin was talking on his cellphone with his girlfriend before he was lynched. The police ain’t even use the phone to contact his folks. WTF?!?
This reminded me of the story of how Yusuf Hawkins was first encountered by the Bensonhurst mob while talking on a payphone with his girlfriend…
We’ve reminisced on a good number of stories about the New York City of my youth but I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about the tragic story of YUSUF HAWKINS. He was a Brooklyn teenager who was brutally murdered by a mob of boys in the neighborhood of Bensonhurst. The exo-skeleton of this story seeks to blame one youth from the mob for the murder when the reality is that Hawkins was bludgeoned mercilessly with baseball bats before he was finally shot to death.
JOSEPH FAMA is the boy who would serve the most time for the murder while his confederates would mostly remain nameless and ultimately blameless. The racism in this story isn’t really at the ground level. The mob that murdered Hawkins was predominantly white, not totally however. Some of the assailants were Latino. The racism contained in the YUSUF HAWKINS debacle belonged to the district attorneys and the police who shielded the children of fellow police officers and firemen from prosecution.
Remember that the mob that assaulted HAWKINS was reported to be thirty deep. The mob was all working class boys. HAWKINS was from a middle-class family and he visited the neighborhood with some frequency since he had classmates that lived in the area. HAWKINS was actually in the neighborhood that particular night to look at a used car he wanted his parents to help him buy as his graduation-going away to college present.
YUSUF HAWKINS was “one of the good ones” but his case was being handled as though he were a street kid who arguably deserved this horrible fate. In steps AL SHARPTON, C. VERNON MASON and ALTON MADDOX. These dudes were odd but effective at attracting attention. The only problem was that AL SHARPTON’s grandstanding only focused on the assailants when the real racism and injustice was being committed by the D.A.’S office. I’m not trying to say the lynch mob wasn’t culpable for the murder but it was the district attorney’s responsibility to bring them all to justice.
Poor people, irrespective of their so-called race will always mistreat each other. Limited resources and miseducation insures that better than AIG ever could. The real tragedy of YUSUF HAWKINS life was that even the negro with middle-class aspirations is denied the protection and equity of the law that his parent’s belief in the system had indoctrinated into him.
When HENRY LOUIS GATES received the nigger treatment this summer he was shocked and appalled. He didn’t realize that he wasn’t part of the equation of justice. He never was. God please rest YUSUF HAWKINS for reminding us.
