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Abstract
This article recovers the life of Bronx resident Eleanor Bumpurs from historical obscurity, moving beyond her tragic death and departing from disability and legal studies that primarily focus on her killing and New York Police Department officer Stephen Sullivan’s 1987 bench trial.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Mary Helen Bumpurs, Reverend Herbert Daughtry, Maria Hammack, Sharita Thompson, Robert Thompson, Pero Dagbovie, Tiffany Gill, Shannon King, Mary Phillips, Kali Gross, Sarah Haley, Ula Taylor, Keona Ervin, David Stein, Dayo Gore, Kellie Carter Jackson, Priscilla Ocen, Prudence Cumberbatch, and Treva Ellison for their insightful feedback and comments.
Notes
1 Peter Noel, “Group Decries ‘Sham’ Bumpurs Murder Trial,” New York Amsterdam News, January 31, 1987, 10.
2 “The People of the State of New York against Stephen Sullivan,” New York Court of Appeals Records and Brief, 68 NY2D 495, Appellants Appendix, part 4 (Bronx County Indictment No. 394/1985), 820, https://books.google.com/books?id=_u9Mi3ZDHXMC (accessed February 22, 2017).
3 “Victor Botnick to Edward Koch,” November 9, 1984, box 0000033, folder 21, Edward Koch Papers (La Guardia and Wagner Archives, La Guardia Community College).
4 Anna Mollow “Unvictimizable: Toward a Fat Black Disability Studies,” African American Review, 50, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 105–21.
5 Camille Nelson, “Racializing Disability, Disabling Race: Policing Race and Mental Status,” Berkley Journal of Criminal Law 15, no. 1 (2010): 13–17; Andrea J. Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence against Black Women and Women of Color (New York: Beacon Press, 2017), 91
6 Stuart Marques, “Tracking the Tragedy,” New York Daily News, February 1, 1985, 5; “The People of the State of New York against Stephen Sullivan,” New York Court of Appeals Records and Brief, 68 NY2D 495, appellants appendix, part 4; “Memo From Police Commissioner Ward,” City Sun, November 29–December 4, 1984, 5–6.
7 Angela Y. Davis, Violence against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism (Latham, NY: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1985), 12.
8 Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (Latham, NY: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1986), 411.
9 “Eyewitness: ‘It Was Like A War,’” City Sun, November 7–13, 1984, 7.
10 Bench trial is a jury by judge. Stephen Sullivan’s trial opened on January 12, 1987, and closed in February 1987.
11 Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 17; Sarah Haley, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 14.
12 Kidada E. Williams, “Regarding the Aftermaths of Lynching,” Journal of American History 101, no. 3 (2014): 856.
13 Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America (New York: Random Publishing Group, 2011).
14 “Elna Gray Williams,” Register of Deeds, North Carolina Birth Indexes, North Carolina State Archives; “Marriages,” North Carolina County Registers of Deeds, microfilm, Record Group 048 (North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC), available at Ancestry.com.
15 “Mary Bumpurs: “They’re Not Going to Get Away with What They Did,” Workers Vanguard, October 4, 1985, p. 7.
16 Karen Kruse Thomas, Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil Rights and American Health Policy, 1935–1954 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 12–13; “Fannie Bell Williamson,” certificate of death #162 (November 1929) (microfilm: rolls 19-242, 280, 1040–1297) (North Carolina State Archives).
17 Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2014).
18 Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1931); Robert A. Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950 (Chicago: 1994), 10–11.
19 Mary Bumpurs, unrecorded interview by LaShawn Harris, July 27 and August 3, 2017, New York, NY.
20 “Wilborn and Boyd 8 Months,” Franklin (nc) Times, May 8, 1942, 1.
21 “Racism is ‘American as Apple Pie’: Ward” New York Daily News, November 17, 1984, 2.
22 State of North Carolina, Department of Correction, Division of Prisons, “Policy and Procedures,” November 14, 2011, 1–2, http://www.doc.state.nc.us/dop/policy_procedure_manual/d0600.pdf (accessed March 15, 2017).
23 “Earnest Hayes,” U. S. WWII Draft Cards, Young Men, 1940–1947, available at Ancestry.com (accessed March 15, 2017); “Elenor Gray Williamson,” Social Security Applications and Claims, 1936–2007, 28b, 1940 United States Census, Louisburg, Franklin, North Carolina, enumeration district 35–25 (microfilm; roll M-t0627-02912), available at Ancestry.com.
24 Haley, No Mercy Here, 216, 219–20.
25 Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
26 Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and The Black Working Class (New York: Free Press 1994), 36.
27 “Mary Bumpers,” birth certificate 28091, New York, NY, birth index, available at Ancestry.com; “Deborah Bumpurs,” birth certificate 16826, New York, NY, birth index, available at Ancestry.com; “Keenie Bumpurs,” birth certificate 39039, New York, NY, birth index, available at Ancestry.com; “Terry Bumpurs,” birth certificate 44229, New York, NY, birth index, available at Ancestry.com. I was unable to locate vital statistics for Bumpurs’s two sons.
28 Psyche Williams-Forson, Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 110, 113.
29 Bumpurs interview.
30 Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 305–06.
31 Bumpurs interview.
32 Ibid.; Bumpurs, “They’re Not Going to Get away with What They Did,” 7.
33 Alex S. Vitale, City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics (New York: New York University Press, 2008); Themis Chronopoulos and Jonathan Soffer, “After the Urban Crisis: New York and The Rise of Inequality,” Journal of Urban History, 43, no. 6 (2017).
34 Vitale, City of Disorder, 126.
35 Mary Breasted, “Grand Jury to Get Report on Police Killing of Boy,” New York Times, September 17, 1974, 1; “‘Defensive’ Police Shots Kill a Girl, 16,” New York Times, January 28, 1973, 13.
36 “Eleanor Bumpurs,” Arrest and Complaint Report, Case # 526303 (November 1, 1973) Police Department Legal Bureau—FOIL Unit (New York City Police Department, New York, NY). The City of New York.
37 Suzanne Golubski and David Medina, “Bumpurs’ Past was Violent One,” New York Daily News, December 1, 1984, 4; “Anatomy of A Tragedy: A Troubled History,” New York Daily News, December 2, 1984, 19.
38 Frank Prial, “Daughter Cites Bumpurs’s Stay in State Hospital,” New York Times, January 28, 1987, B6.
39 Jonathan Soffer, Ed Koch and The Rebuilding of New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 280–81, 291, 296.
40 Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, “Guns and Butter: The Welfare State, the Carceral State, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Postwar United States,” Journal of American History 102, no. 1 (June 2015): 91.
41 Christopher LeBron, The Making of Black Lives Matters: A Brief History of An Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 68.
42 “Bumpurs Kin Lied to Hospitalize Her,” New York Post, January 26, 1987, 4.
43 Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2015), 23.
44 Golubski and Medina, “Bumpurs’ Past was Violent One.”
45 “Housing Authority Application,” box 0000033, folder 21, Edward I. Koch Collection (LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, LaGuardia Community College, New York, NY).
46 Bumpurs: “They’re Not Going to Get away with What They Did,” 7.
47 “Housing Authority Application,” box 0000033, folder 21, Koch Collection.
48 David Medina, “Says Bumpurs Could’ve Been Locked Outside,” New York Daily News, December 5, 1984, p. 7.
49 Jimmy Breslin, “Shot Down Like A Lynx,” New York Daily News, November 4, 1984, 3, 8.
50 Jimmy Breslin, “Double-Barreled Double-Talk,” New York Daily News, 8.
51 Lisa Levenstein, “Myth #11: “Tenants Did Not Invest in Public Housing,” in Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy, ed. Fritz Umbacj and Lawrence J. Vale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 64–90.
52 “David Medina, “Bumpurs’ Kin at Death Apt,” New York Daily News, November 28, 1984, 3; “Find Bumpurs Finger in Apt.,” New York Amsterdam News, December 1, 1984, 1.
53 “The People of the State of New York against Stephen Sullivan,” New York Court of Appeals Records and Brief, 68 NY2D 495, Appellants Appendix, part 1, People v. Sullivan (June 1986), 7, https://books.google.com/books?id=_u9Mi3ZDHXMC (accessed December 18, 2016).
54 Ibid.
55 John Ehrman and Michael Flamm, Debating the Reagan Presidency (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 50–51.
56 Bayard Rustin, “Three Years Later, the Poor Get Poorer,” New Pittsburgh Courier, September 15, 1984, 4.
57 David Vidal, “Crowd of 100 Gathers Outside Police Station for Protest on Slaying,” New York Times, August 20, 1979, 20; “Flatbush Woman, 35, Slain During Eviction, Had Rent Ultimatum,” New York Times, August 31, 1979.
58 “The Eleanor Bumpurs Case,” New York Amsterdam News, September 20, 1986, 14.
59 Noel, “Group Decries “Sham’ Bumpurs Murder Trial,” 1; “Attica Inmates Demand Justice in Bumpurs’ Slaying,” Daily Challenge, February 12, 1987, 2.
60 “A Petition to Stop Police Brutality and Violence Now,” Brooklyn City Sun, November 7–13, 1984, 11; Wayne Dawkins, City Son: Andrew W. Cooper’s Impact on Modern-Day Brooklyn (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012).
61 Annie Evans’s son Randolph Evans was shot by police in 1976. In 1999, police officers shot and killed Kadiatou Diallo’s son Amadou Diallo. Pranay Gupte, “2,000 Mourn Randolph Evans at Emotional Funeral,” New York Times, December 1, 1976, 39.
62 Don Singleton, “Bumpurs’ Kin Sue City For 10M,” New York Daily News, December 21, 1984, 8; Anatomy of a Tragedy, New York Daily News, December 2, 1984, 31.
63 “Howard Beach: Black Victim on Trials,” Workers Vanguard, January 23, 1987, 1, 5; Rhonda Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
64 Alexander Reid, “Thousands of Officers Protest Indictment of Colleague in Bumpurs Shooting,” New York Times, February 8, 1985, B1.
65 Sol Stern “PBA for The Defense,” Village Voice, January 1, 1985, 15; Phil Caruso, “Why the Police Have Had to Buy Ads,” New York Times, January 9, 1985, A2.
66 Gross, Colored Amazons, 25.
67 Leigh Raiford, Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and The African American Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 62–63.
68 Bumpurs, “They’re Not Going to Get away with What They Did,” 7.
69 “Bumpurs Program,” New York Amsterdam News, October 26, 1985, 35.
70 Katherine Bindley, “Still Dreaming the Dream,” New York Times, February 13, 2009; “Rev. Not the Lord’s Will,” Brooklyn City Sun, November 7–13, 1984, 6.
71 Herbert Daughtry, No Monopoly on Suffering: Blacks and Jews in Crown Heights (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1997).
72 Utrice C. Leid, “15 Years Is Not Enough,” Brooklyn City Sun, February 6–12, 1985, 8.
73 Rhon Manigualt-Bryant, “A ‘Club’ No Black Woman Wants to Join: Confronting the Aftermath of Black Death,” Black Perspectives, last modified July 19, 2016, http://www.aaihs.org/confronting-the-aftermath-of-black-death/ (accessed July 22, 2016).
74 Harvey Klehr, Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988), 71–72.
75 “Vote Spartacist!,” Workers Vanguard, November 1, 1985, 11.
76 Bumpurs: “They’re Not Going to Get Away with What They Did,” 7; Veronica Perry, “We Will Not Stand for KKK in Blue Uniforms,” Workers Vanguard, October 4, 1985, 7.
77 “Koch Visits Kin of Victim in Eviction,” New York Daily News, November 23, 1984, 7.
78 “Stewart Committee Marches for Justice,” New York Amsterdam News, April 5, 1986, 9.
79 J. Zamba Browne, “Outcry over $200,000 Court Settlement in Bumpurs Case,” New York Amsterdam News, April 6, 1991, 4.
80 Andrea Mcardle and Tanya Erzen, Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City (New York: Fast Track Books, 2001), 74.
81 Stephanie Pagones, “NYPD Shooting of Mentally Ill Woman Invokes Memory of Eleanor Bumpurs,” New York Post, October 20, 2016, http://nypost.com/2016/10/20/nypd-shooting-of-mentally-ill-woman-invokes-memory-of-eleanor-bumpurs/ (accessed November 10, 2016).
82 “Rites for Woman Police Killed,” New York Times, November 4, 1984, 53; Rueben Rosario, “Peace, At Last,” New York Daily News, November 4, 1984, 3.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
LaShawn Harris
LaShawn Harris is an Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University. Her scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of Social History and Journal of Urban History. She is the author of Sex Workers, Psychics, and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (University of Illinois Press, 2016).