Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Introduction
COL3.
EPH1.7-9
EPH3.14-19
1989 the number another summer
Sound of the funky drummer
Music hitting your heart 'cause I know you got soul
(Brothers and sisters!)
Y’all know where those lyrics come from?
The year was 1989.
Public Enemy was a regular rhythm on my radio.
The movie that was grabbing my affection was Do The Right Thing.
I loved me some Radio Raheem!
The particular day and place I want to tell you about is September 1 in Brooklyn, NY.
It was the day before my 21st birthday, and I was mad as hell.
I gathered with some of the brothers from my organization, the Sons of Africa, at Grand Army Plaza where we were to join in the Day of Outrage protest march.
A common description of NYC at the time was as “a melting pot.”
But think that Mayor David Dinkins was right in his corrective word when he said that NYC wasn’t a melting pot, it was quilt.
It was a patchwork of different neighborhoods with different racial and socio-economic dynamics.
And on August 23, 1989, 16-year old black teenager was in the wrong patch of the quilt.
He and three of his friends traveled from his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood to Bensonhurst, a predominately Italian neighborhood.
He was going there that night to inquire about a used car for sale.
Little did he know that an angry mob of white men were on the lookout for Black and Latino youth who they suspected were trying to date a girl in their neighborhood.
Ignorant of this situation, Yusef found himself on the block where this mob had set up for their ambush.
Not only did they bring bats to execute their devilish desires.
They had guns too.
They attacked Yusef Hawkins and they shot him dead.
We were tired of Black men being killed at the hands of whites in NYC.
There had been too many incidents of racial violence in the 1980’s.
In 1986 three Black men were attacked by a group of white men in Howard Beach, Queens after their car broke down in the neighborhood.
“Kill the niggers,” the mob yelled.
One of the Black men, 23-year old Jean Griffith, in his attempt to escape the mob ran onto the Belt Parkway, and was struck by a car and died.
It was dangerous to be Black and traverse certain neighborhoods in NYC.
And the murder of Yusef Hawkins was a tipping point.
Sonny Carson, Al Sharpton, the New Black Panther Party called for a protest march.
I was all too ready to join in.
We assembled at Grand Army Plaza in the late afternoon, began our march down Flatbush Ave.
As we marched, the numbers swelled to about 7,500 people.
Flatbush Ave leads straight to the Manhattan Bridge.
Police formed a barrier to direct us towards Tillary Street and away from the Manhattan Bridge.
However, following Tillary Street will lead you to the Brooklyn Bridge.
However, the police formed a line to block our marching across the bridge.
The crowd began to shout, “Take the bridge!”
Now the Brooklyn Bridge has a walkway for pedestrians, but the shout, “Take the bridge!” was a call to take the roadway and shut down the bridge.
That’s when the march turned violent.
The police were not going to let us shut down the bridge.
Objects began to be hurled at the police.
The police responded by swinging billy clubs in our direction.
I remember grabbing the rail to climb the wall from the roadway to the walkway to avoid being being struck by a bottle or a billy club.
Dirty and dusty, pants ripped from getting caught on that rail as I climbed, I was full of exuberance as the march dispersed.
I remember saying to an elder in our group, “Things are going to be different now.
There’s real energy for change.”
In my naivety I believed that event would be a demarcation point in the ending of racial violence against Black people in NYC.
We were on our way.
And let me tell you something else about myself on that day.
I hated the Christian faith.
I was hostile towards Jesus.
I liked Dr. King, but I didn’t like his God.
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