By Tangerine Clarke
Yusuf Hawkins, a Black teenager
from East New York who
was shot and killed by a white
mob in Bensonhurst in 1989,
will be honored 32 years after
his death with the co-naming
of the important site in abolitionist
history at 227 Duffield
Street as a landmark step to
honor and preserve Brooklyn’s
history.
Thanks to Brooklyn Borough
President Eric Adams,
Council Member Brad Lander
and Council Member Robert
Cornegy, who announced the
street co-naming, enacted by
Council on Jan. 17.
Yusuf Kirriem Hawkins was
born in the East New York,
Brooklyn on March 19, 1973.
According to the release,
Hawkins’ name became a
national rallying cry after he
was shot and killed at the age
of 16 while visiting with three
of his friends in the Brooklyn
neighborhood of Bensonhurst,
where they were set upon by
a white mob. In the wake of
his killing, which came in
the same year as the racially
charged, Central Park Five
case, racial tensions erupted
between Black and white New
Yorkers.
The Reverend Al Sharpton
led a series of marches through
Bensonhurst demanding justice
for Hawkins. Five convictions
were handed down for
the men involved in Hawkins’
killing. Though Hawkins did
not live to see the beginning of
the Black Lives Matter movement,
which sprung up in the
wake of the police killing of
Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri, many see his tragic
murder and the wave of activism
it catalyzed, which brought
greater awareness about racist
violence against people of
color, as a precursor to the
movement, said the statement.
The measure also honored
Pete Hamil, a legendary newspaper
Caribbean L 24 ife, FEB. 26-MAR. 4, 2021
columnist, born in the
Park Slope neighborhood of
Brooklyn on June 24, 1935, the
son of Irish immigrants. He
dropped out of high school at
15 to work as a sheet metal
worker at the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, and joined the US Navy
before returning to New York
in 1957. After spending three
years as a graphic designer, he
got an opportunity to write for
the New York Post despite having
no journalistic experience.
He spent the next several
decades working in journalism
in a variety of roles at the
New York Post, New York Daily
News, and Newsday. In addition,
he was a celebrated and
prolific author of fiction, nonfiction,
essays, and screenplays.
Hamill received numerous
accolades for his writing,
including a Grammy Award
in 1976 for his notes on Bob
Dylan’s album “Blood on the
Tracks” and a George Polk
Career Award. He died at the
age of 85 in Brooklyn in August
of last year.
According to reports, the conaming
ceremonies will take
place in the coming weeks.
Moses Stewart, left, and the Rev. Al Sharpton pray after
placing a wreath of fl owers at the site where Stewart’s
16-year-old son Yusuf Hawkins was slain by a white mob 10
years ago, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 1999, in the Brooklyn borough
of New York. Hawkins’ death sparked several rallies in the
predominantly white Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst.
Associated Press/Suzanne Plunkett, fi le
Brooklyn street co-naming
planned for Yusuf Hawkins
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