LaShawn Harris — Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City - with Dr. Sharita Thompson

On October 29, 1984, 66-year-old beloved Black disabled grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was murdered in her own home. A public housing tenant 4 months behind on rent, Ms. Bumpurs was facing eviction when white NYPD officer Stephen Sullivan shot her twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. LaShawn Harris, 10 years old at the time, felt the aftershocks of the tragedy in her community well beyond the four walls of her home across the street.Now an award-winning historian, Harris uses eyewitness accounts, legal documents, civil rights pamphlets, and more to look through the lens of her childhood neighbor's life and death. She renders in a new light the history of anti-Black police violence and of the watershed anti-policing movement Eleanor Bumpurs's murder birthed.So many Black women's lives have been stolen since--Deborah Danner, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Sonya Massey--and still more are on the line. This deeply researched, intimate portrait of Eleanor Bumpurs's life and legacy highlights how one Black grandmother's brutal police murder galvanized an entire city. It also shows how possible and critical it is to stand together against racist policing now.PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780807011966?ic_referral=0DEHSSsKGjvvjEimia5tLEVT6cMsVIBVLY3gw6bDTQ4wM6I304CwNNkCgQCCYRXiO6nobXv5YZLvaScQtmgfzKAxlf0C0cc5SD90geZNHEZmdLEV785DNoRYuSWwPKXiobAYsQQLaShawn Harris is an associate professor of history at Michigan State University, the former managing and book review editor for the Journal of African American History (JAAH), and a scholar of African American and Black women's histories. Her first book, Se x Workers, Psychics, and Number Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy, won the Organization of American Historians' (OAH) Darlene Clark Hine Award for best book in African American women's and gender history and the Philip Taft Labor Prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA). Harris's work has been featured in several outlets, including TV-One, Glamour, Huffington Post, Vice, and the History Channel. Follow her on X @madameclair08.Harris is in conversation with Sharita Jacobs Thompson, a Professor in the Social Sciences Department at Prince George’s Community College where she teaches courses in United States and African American History. She is a former Assistant Professor of Civil War Era Studies and Africana Studies at Gettysburg College. Her research focuses on Black Marylanders and their experiences during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. Thompson has presented her work at national conferences such as the Organization of American Historians, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Black Studies Conference, and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She appeared on the CSPAN3 series Lectures in American History and provided commentary for the History Channel documentary, Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War. Thompson appeared in an episode of CNN's This is Life with Lisa Ling. She has published book chapters, essays, and book reviews. Thompson recently completed a chapter included in an edited volume titled The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered and she is working on a monograph that will chronicle the experiences of Black Marylanders during the Civil War and Reconstruction.