In 1988, my family moved to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. While Bensonhurst remained predominantly Italian-American at the start of the 1980s (around 80% Italian), the decade marked the beginning of a significant and noticeable demographic shift.
Travolta is walking down 86th Street in the opening of Saturday Night Fever.
Starting in the late 1980s an influx of new immigrant groups (particularly from China and the former Soviet Union) began to rapidly accelerate. These new residents settled notably along 86th Street and surrounding areas, which is where we lived.
In truth, I moved to Bensonhurst because it had become affordable. The “white flight” had already begun and the local infrastructure was rotting. I wasn’t even 10 years old, but to some natives, I was seen as part of an infection.
Behold! A degenerate of the Global South
Mob Rule
In August 1989, just one mile up the road from my new home, a sixteen-year-old Black teenager named Yusef Hawkins was shot by a white mob who thought he was dating a local girl. This incident was part of a long history of racially-motivated killings in the 1980s.
Bensonhurst had a historical reputation as a predominantly white, ethnically insular neighborhood where Black individuals were often unwelcome. Their presence was perceived as an “incursion” into a defined territory, triggering a violent, racially motivated response by a white mob of armed men.
Back Story: Dark Knights
In 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot 4 black teens in the subway, leaving one paralyzed from the waist down. Goetz, who had been mugged before, claimed self defense and became known as Subway Vigilante. The black young men claimed they asked him or $5.
For many men, Goetz was a hero standing up to would-be muggers. It was compared to a scene in the Charles Bronson film Death Wish (1974).
Taxi Driver(1976) captured a potent, uncomfortable truth: the brewing rage of a disaffected white male, alienated and consumed by a cityscape he perceives as morally rotten.
Travis Bickle’s journey is a descent into violent fantasy fueled by fear and a warped sense of justice. The film accurately showcased how a man, detached from meaningful connection, could project his internal chaos onto the external world, seeking to cleanse it through brutal, misguided acts.
Yet, its subsequent glorification by some inadvertently elevated this pathological response, obscuring the tragic cycle of violence against violence, fear against fear, and injustice against injustice, rather than dismantling it.
To many, Goetz was just a scared man with an unregistered firearm who felt 4 black lives were worth less than $5. Goetz fired 5 bullets, which in 1984 would have cost him about $1, from a pack that would have likely cost less than $10.
City transit officials urged the public to ignore movies and media that were stirring the pot.
Donald Trump Enters The Chat
In April, 1989, just months before Yusef Hawkins was killed, five Black and Latino teenagers (once coincidently also named Yusef) were arrested and later wrongfully convicted for the brutal rape and assault of a white female jogger in Central Park.
The media, led by tabloids and figures like Donald Trump, quickly demonized “The Central Park 5” as a “wolfpack,” fueling a public frenzy for retribution.
The victim had no memory of the attack and the conviction was based on confessions that were coerced and contradictory, while willfully ignoring DNA evidence and logic.
For years, these men languished in prison, symbols of a justice system willing to sacrifice young Black and brown bodies on the altar of public outrage and racial panic.
Their eventual exoneration in 2002, thanks to DNA and the confession of a serial rapist, exposed a catastrophic failure of the state, proving them victims not of their own malice, but of a machine rigged by systemic racism and unchecked power.
The victim (the jogger) has since accepted the truth, but Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge his role in the wrongful conviction.
Back Story: What About Willie?
In 1982, Black MTA worker and Army veteran Willie Turks was beaten to death by a gang of 15-20 white in what is considered the earliest cases of racially-motivated mob violence in the 1980s.
Turks and 2 other black MTA workers were buying bagels when they were attacked for being black in a white neighborhood. Two of the black men escaped but Turks was pulled from his car and pummeled to death. Five men were brought to stand trail, including Gino Bova and Paul Mormando.
At sentencing, Justice Sybil Hart Kooper delivered the maximum penalty to Bova, declaring:
“It was a lynch mob on Avenue X that night. The only thing missing was a rope and a tree.”
Bova was sentenced to 5-15 years for second degree manslaughter and violation of Turks’ civil rights. He served 8 years and was paroled in ‘91.
Paul Mormando, who admitted he pulled Turks from his car, was initially charged with murder but was cleared of all charges due to lack of evidence. He got away on minor misdemeanor charges and served no jail time. After sentencing, one of the two survivors of the attack, MTA worker Dennis Dixon was in tears.
‘They paid a lot of money. They had everything in their favor,’ said Dixon.
Paul Mormando may have gone on to become a b-movie martial arts actor. Although there is no indication these are the same men, both would have been 17-year old Gravesend residents in 1982. Paul the actor does mention getting into a street fight in his youth, one that inspired him to open his first business in 1983.
The rare name Mormando may be linked with the infamous gay hitman Robert Mormando, which might suggest some mob-related influence in the outcome of the trial. But there is no evidence to suggest any relationship between any of these three men. There are many Brooklyn families that carry that name.
In the 40 years since the death of Willie Turks, there has not been a single follow-up article written about the incident. No interviews with victims, no substantial retrospective to dive deeper into the events of that evening. If they were published, they have since been removed.
Unlike other black victims of this era, there isn’t even a photo of 34 year old Turks. His life was taken unjustly and the event was swept under the rug.
Sharpton Enters the Chat
Not long ago, I asked my stepfather what his reaction to Yusef Hawkins’ death was at the time. He primarily remembers Al Sharpton being stabbed.
Rev. Al Sharpton, a community leader and minister (who also had a career in the music industry working with James Brown) became a voice for victims of these hate crimes by demanding a retrial of the assailants acquitted of the murder of transit worker Willie Turks way back in 1983.
Al Sharpton also spoke out on behalf of Michael Griffith, who in 1986 was attacked by a white mob in Howard Beach (along with two other black men) for the crime of having a broken down car in the wrong neighborhood.
Griffith tried to escape by running onto the Belt Parkway but was struck and killed. Police treated the victims like suspects. It would be 30 years before justice was finally served.
Sharpton made headlines again in 1987 when he spoke out in defense of Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old who iwas found in a plastic bag in Wappingers Falls, NY, covered in feces and racial slurs. She claimed she had been abducted and raped by a group of white men, including police officers.
A grand jury determined Tawana made the whole story up, possibly to avoid punishment from her father for staying out late. The “Tawana Brawley Hoax” struck a deep blow to Sharpton’s credibility and by the time Yusef Hawkins was shot, his presence was becoming a liability.
In the weeks and months after Hawkins’ death, Sharpton spearheaded numerous protest marches through Bensonhurst, demanding justice for the slain Black teenager.
These marches were often met with hostile counter-protests from overwhelmingly white neighborhood residents, who fat-shamed him and displayed racist symbols like watermelons.
In January 1991, just before another planned march, Sharpton was stabbed in the chest by a neighborhood resident, Michael Riccardi. He survived the attack and, remarkably, later requested leniency for his assailant, though the judge denied the request.
My stepfather reflected on Sharpton’s stabbing with mild amusement. He was not a fan. He saw Sharpton as a clownish figure using a young man’s death to grab the spotlight and inflame racial tensions, a very common public perception at the time.
Back Story: The Broken Artist
In the autumn of 1983, a nascent artist, Michael Stewart was arrested in a 14th Street subway station for writing on a wall with a felt-tip marker. He resisted arrest and was violently restrained and beaten by 6 police officers.
Michael was emulating his hero Keith Haring, who was well known at the time for his subway art. Stewart had just spent the night talking with a friend about Haring’s birthday party and his plans for his own art show.
But police were cracking down on minor offenses, seeing them as symptoms of decay that needed to be strictly policed so that they don’t lead to worse offenses.
The “Broken Windows” theory, a pivotal concept that would reshape American policing, had just been introduced by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in The Atlantic Monthly in 1982.
It posited a direct link between unchecked minor disorder (a broken window left unrepaired, graffiti uncleaned) and the escalation to serious crime.
Within an hour of being approached by the officers, Michael Stewart was in Bellevue Hospital. He had no pulse or blood pressure. Revived but comatose, he died 13 days later.
Rob Zombie recounts on his first night in NYC, witnessing “a murder” and seeing police beating Stewart until he was unconscious. Listen to he and Joe Rogan talk about the public perception of New York City in the 1980s, from the perspective of two white middle class men who didn’t live there.
The official narrative twisted under scrutiny. Chief Medical Examiner Elliot Gross initially cited cardiac arrest, dismissing facial bruising and wrist abrasions. A month later, he pointed to a spinal cord injury. Two years after that, Gross concluded he had no opinion on how Stewart died.
Massachusetts’ Chief Medical Examiner, reviewing records, testified Stewart died of asphyxia from neck force. A prosecution witness claimed to see an officer use a nightstick in a chokehold.
After seven days, an all-white jury found all officers not guilty. The official story closed, but the questions, etched deep into the fabric of the city’s racial conscience, remained.
Elon Green covers this murder comprehensively in his book “The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York”.
Do The White Thing
Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing premiered in June 1989, thoughtfully encapsulating some of the tensions between Italian-Americans and African-Americans in Brooklyn in the late 1980s.
Spike Lee has stated that the film was inspired by the death of Michael Griffith in Howard Beach. If you look closely at the walls in the film, you’ll also see the phrase "Tawana Told the Truth" spray-painted in the background. It paints a picture of broken trust and a neighborhood on edge.
The film is ultimately pacifying as it lays the contrasting ideologies of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X across generations; personified by the Uncle Tom “Da Mayor” and activist "Buggin’ Out”, with the former being portrayed as ultimately the most heroic.
While Mookie’s decision to throw the trash can through Sal’s window, sparking the riot, is presented not as clear-cut “wrong.” He was trying to save Sal’s life by directing the crowd’s rage toward the property instead of Sal and his sons.
In the end, the tragic death of Radio Raheem at the hands of the police (through a chokehold) is a visceral commentary on the truth of police brutality against Black men. The message is that systemic injustice and police brutality eventually reach a boiling point where peace feels impossible.
