Apartheid. USA 1988

September 4, 1987:

Three black teenagers on their way home from work as stock clerks at a Brooklyn supermarket were attacked and beaten by a group of about 20 white youths wielding baseball bats, a pipe and a fluorescent light and shouting racial slurs, the police announced. The authorities said the attack occurred on a quiet commercial strip of Flatlands Avenue in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. It began shortly before 11 pm as the black youths were waiting for two female coworkers, one black, the other white, to buy some bagels in a shop on the corner of East 81st Street. The three victims, Ewan Lawrence (17), David Smiley (19) and Michael Washington (19) were treated for cuts and bruises at Brookdale Hospital and were then released. Mr Lawrence received four stitches in a cut on his head. Mr Lawrence later told the Times, that one white youth had called out, ‘We want to kill these niggers.’ Others had shouted, ‘We're going to kick these niggers' ass.’

The head of the Police Department's Bias Incident Investigating Unit, Inspector Michael Markman said of the attacked blacks, ‘They were hardworking children. These were good kids.’ Mayor Koch called the attack ‘terrible’ and said, ‘all of these are bestial acts and should be perceived that way.’^138.

138. The New York Times, from a report by Todd S Purdum