Bensonhurst Murder Trial: 1990

The case immediately drew national news coverage for its racial overtones. It was clear that Hawkins had been assaulted and killed because he was a black youth. The Bensonhurst neighborhood in which the killing took place was largely Italian-American, and many assumed that the neighborhood itself was on trial. The reluctance of witnesses to testify or to identify all of the members of the gang that confronted Hawkins that night probably contributed to the sense of neighborhood solidarity along racial lines.

Hawkins' parents were incensed that the accused youths were released on bail, rather than held in jail. Furthermore, only a handful of those in the attacking group were ever identified, leaving most of the group free and at large in the community. The press charged that a collective "Bensonhurst amnesia" protected most of the gang.

Moses Stewart, the father of Hawkins, was a member of Louis Farrakhan's wing of the Nation of Islam. He approached Reverand Al Sharpton for assistance and advice. Sharpton helped arrange Hawkins' funeral and mounted several marches to the Bensonhurst neighborhood to protest the failure of the police to bring more of the perpetrators to justice. The demonstrations and marches were met by hostility from local white youths, who jeered at the marchers. A massive police presence prevented small episodes of anger from erupting into violence.

The killing took place during a hot summer, when many youths were on the street and racial tensions ran high. Furthermore, it was an election year in which incumbent white mayor Edward Koch was opposed in the Democratic primary election by David N. Dinkins. Dinkins' victory in the primary election in September 1989 has been partially attributed to the heightened political consciousness in the black community brought about by the Yusuf Hawkins case. Both mayoral candidates attended the funeral and both pleaded for calm. Reverend Jesse Jackson participated in the funeral, as did local black community leaders, contributing to the sense that the case had political overtones.

Media coverage often oversimplified the case, highlighting the racial aspects. Some reports suggested that Hawkins was gunned down simply because he was black in a white neighborhood; largely black crowds chanted, "No justice, no peace!" Even peaceful demonstrators were met by white youths holding up watermelons and shouting insults, episodes caught in newspaper photos and on television. Despite such publicity, it was an exaggeration to suggest that blacks could not walk peacefully through the streets of Bensonhurst, and elitist prejudice against working class Italian-Americans appeared behind many of the criticisms of the neighborhood.

However, the fact that crime against blacks, whether perpetrated by whites or by other African Americans, is rarely given much attention in the press had produced pent-up frustration with the American justice system that this case brought to the surface.