Angry Residents Jeer as Marchers Parade Near N.Y. Scene of Black Youth’s Slaying

Chanting “Yusuf! Yusuf!” and carrying black nationalist banners, about 250 marchers flanked by solid walls of helmeted police paraded through Brooklyn’s troubled Bensonhurst neighborhood Saturday to protest the murder there last week of a black teen-ager by a white gang.

The march, the third staged in the largely Italian-American Bensonhurst section since 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins’ death, was led by the flamboyant black militant leader Al Sharpton and Hawkins’ father, Moses Stewart.

Hundreds of angry Bensonhurst residents lined the streets along the 12-block-long parade route, jeering the marchers with shouts of “Go home, you blackies!” and “Go home, crack heads!” and making obscene gestures.

“It’s amazing that these people have so much hatred for me, my son, Al Sharpton and black people in general,” Stewart told reporters after the march, during which the crowd of marchers held up signs with such slogans as “Bensonhurst--Savages Still Rule.”

“We’re not animals. We’re civilized. They’re the animals,” one Bensonhurst counter-protestor told a reporter.

No Violence

Despite the furor and fiercely heated exchanges between marchers and counterdemonstrators, there were no incidents of violence. Order was maintained by about 800 police officers in riot gear during the hourlong march along 20th Avenue, one of Bensonhurst’s main commercial strips.

But the march was another sign of the deep-seated animosities and racial divisiveness that exist in New York and that have been inflamed by Hawkins’ slaying. Hawkins was shot to death in a case of mistaken identity as he and three companions were visiting Bensonhurst the evening of Aug. 23 to look at a used car.

Police said the four black youths were mistaken for friends of a Bensonhurst young woman who had previously jilted one of the attackers and reportedly announced her intention to date black and Latino men. The woman was celebrating her birthday at a party when the young black men happened into the neighborhood.

The massive police presence was in dramatic contrast to a demonstration earlier this week when 7,500 protesters attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and march on City Hall to vent their anger against Hawkins’ slaying.

Police managed to block the marchers at one end of the bridge, but were pelted by bricks and bottles. Forty-four officers were injured in the melee.

In Full Force

Learning from that lesson, police showed up in full force in Bensonhurst on Saturday. A temporary police headquarters was set up in a local schoolyard, which was filled with scores of motorcycles, vans, detectives’ cars and horses before the march began.

The demonstrators, who were mostly young and overwhelmingly black, arrived for the march at 3 in the afternoon in four bright yellow school buses, heavily escorted by police. As they emerged from the buses, they were shepherded between twin rows of helmeted officers and taken to the main parade route.

As the marchers stepped on to 20th Avenue, they were met by a resounding chorus of boos and jeers, punctuated by gestures from the throngs of residents filling both sides of the street.

New York’s heated Democratic primary for mayor intruded into the demonstration as it has in the entire Hawkins’ affair. The political race is fiercely contested between incumbent Mayor Edward I. Koch, who is seeking an unprecedented fourth term, and Manhattan Borough President David N. Dinkins, who is trying to become New York’s first black mayor.

Held Up Signs

“Defend Friends. Keep Koch Mayor. Back Bensonhurst,” a sign held by a group of residents urged. In the crowd of marchers was a sign saying: “Democrats, Impeach Mayor Koch.”

Joseph Famah, the 18-year-old Bensonhurst youth accused of killing Hawkins, was arraigned Friday on charges of murder and held without bail.

Bensonhurst, which is in the southern portion of Brooklyn, is a mostly working-class enclave of 152,000 residents, who largely live in one- and two-family houses and two-story apartment buildings on quiet, tree-lined streets.

It is an insulated neighborhood that jealously guards its turf from “outsiders.” “Blacks know what neighborhood they belong to and we know what neighborhood we belong to,” said Tony Torrese, 23, who described himself as “100% Italian.” “It comes down to boundary lines. You’re always going to have racism wherever you go.”

But not everybody in the crowds of Bensonhurst residents at Saturday’s march preached separatism.

Gina Shaughnessy, wearing a red tank top and standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, held up a big, hand-lettered cardboard sign that read: “We Are All God’s Children. Death Hurts All.”

Asked why she had made the sign, she replied: “Just to remind everybody, I mean everybody, there isn’t hatred in all our hearts.”