Razzle Dazzle: Sonny Would've Been Proud

Razzle Dazzle
Sonny Would've Been Proud

By RICHARD STEIER

The City Council's Parks and Recreation Committee had just voted April 18 to remove the proposed renaming of a Bedford-Stuyvesant street in memory of the late racial arsonist Sonny Carson from a bill allowing for 51 other renamings when a half-dozen of Mr. Carson's supporters stepped to the front of the Council Chamber and began unfurling a banner.

  Council security moved in to prevent them from doing so, and several of the men resisted, leading police officers to also respond.

As they scuffled, Parks Committee Chair Helen Foster, who moments earlier had taken exception to the claim by one of her colleagues that Mr. Carson, while admired by some blacks, had been a polarizing force in other communities of the city, called to his torch-bearers, "Gentlemen, you're falling right into what they want you to do! You're doing what they expect you to do!"

A Blast From His Past

A couple of minutes later, order was restored on the Council floor and the men, some of them characterizing what was happening as "white supremacy," were escorted out. And the feeling was inescapable that if Mr. Carson, who left us in 2002, was looking on from wherever he has gone, he would have been proud.

Council Member Al Vann, who remained close with Mr. Carson even after he reined in his militancy of the 1960s for the trappings of elected office, argued for the bill he had sponsored by saying, "Sonny Abubadika Carson is dead. Whether you believe he was a saint or a devil, whether you believe he was a hero or a villain, he is dead."

Within Community Board 3, Mr. Vann continued, Mr. Carson - who tried to instill pride in black people and crusaded against drugs in the community - was viewed in a positive light, however controversial he may have been.

"On balance," he said, "his contributions were significant and we think we want to remember him."

The problem was, too many people remembered Mr. Carson and his roles in the boycott of a Korean grocery in Flatbush in 1990 and the Crown Heights riots the following year. No street renaming would change Mr. Carson's far more striking legacy: nobody did more to ensure that David Dinkins became a one-term Mayor.

After Mr. Dinkins's painfully slow responses to the Korean boycott and the violence in Crown Heights, his support outside the black community ebbed precipitously. One of his aides at the time sought to combat the perception among City Hall reporters that Mr. Dinkins faced an uphill battle for re-election, pointing out repeatedly that every city in the United States that had elected a black Mayor had given that person a second term.

None of those other Mayors, however, had to overcome a force as pernicious as Mr. Carson, and so they were not wounded by a failure to reassure their constituents that they would respond appropriately to lawlessness no matter who engaged in or encouraged it.

Even before Mr. Dinkins was elected New York's first black Mayor in 1989, Mr. Carson became a political liability to him. In the heat of the campaign, white thugs in Bensonhurst had chased down and murdered Yusuf Hawkins, a black teenager who had come to the neighborhood seeking to buy a used car. A few days later, protesters led by the Rev. Al Sharpton were greeted by some of Bensonhurst's dimmer lights, who taunted the marchers with racial epithets and watermelons.

Battled Cops At Brooklyn Bridge

Mr. Carson, who never seemed comfortable occupying the higher ground in a racial dispute, a

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang STILL STIRRING EMOTIONS, PRO AND CON: Sonny Carson, who once responded to a question about whether he was anti-Semitic by saying, 'Just don't limit me to a little group of people. I am anti-white,' continues to provoke strong feelings nearly five years after his death. While Manhattan Council Member Alan Gerson (right) decried Mr. Carson's role in the Korean grocery boycott and numerous actions that earned him enmity in the Jewish community, Brooklyn Council Member Charles Barron made clear his displeasure with the disparagement of a man some blacks remember fondly for his militancy and his crusade against drugs. few days later led a march of his own through downtown Brooklyn, with the protesters chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets! What's coming? War!" When they reached the Brooklyn Bridge, they sought to block traffic and fought with the cops who tried to restrain them; 44 police officers and numerous demonstrators were injured.

In mid-October, it was revealed that the Dinkins campaign had subsequently made payments totaling $9,500 to Mr. Carson. It went under the heading of "street money," covering the expenses entailed by any political group trying to get out the vote, but there was some suspicion that the allocation was primarily intended to ensure that Mr. Carson would hold no further demonstrations.

Mr. Dinkins was elected in no small measure because he was viewed as someone whose past suggested he could ease the racial tensions that had festered under then-Mayor Ed Koch. Mr. Carson, on the other hand, had little use for healing; when questioned about his reputation as an anti-Semite that fall, he responded, "I am not anti-Semitic. Just don't limit me to a little group of people. I am anti-white."

Shortly after Mr. Dinkins narrowly defeated Rudy Giuliani but before he took office, Mr. Carson again made clear that he would not tone down his act in deference to the city's first African-American Mayor. He did it, ironically enough, at a City Council hearing on a street renaming.

In that instance, the person being honored was Edward Byrne, a young cop who the previous year had been murdered while he sat in his patrol car on a Jamaica street guarding the home of a man who was due to testify against a local drug gang.

Besmirched By a Lie

Mr. Carson sat in the audience in the City Council Committee Room, pounding a staff against the floor to express his approval of the remarks made by one of his followers, Linda Daidzie, in protest of honoring Officer Byrne. She contended that the young cop, protecting a witness at a time when the neighborhood was being subjected to a kind of urban genocide by crack dealers like Lorenzo "Fat Cat" Nichols and Howard "Pappy" Mason, had not contributed anything to the community that warranted having a street named for him. She actually alleged that Officer Byrne had been asleep in his patrol car, notwithstanding the statement by one of his killers that he had noticed his bright blue eyes just before pulling the trigger.

The words came from Ms. Daidzie, but there was no question she was speaking for the staff-thumping Mr. Carson.

His defenders have argued that he matured after serving time in prison more than 30 years ago for the attempted murder and kidnapping of a man who had stolen valuable African artifacts from his headquarters - Mr. Carson was acquitted of the murder of another of the thieves - but he never lost the appetite for confrontation and intimidation that first brought him to public consciousness in the mid-1960s.

'Thuggism and Politics'

He was given some legitimacy when Sen. Bobby Kennedy appointed him to a seat on the then-new Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. But one former reporter who began covering him during the late 1960s said of Mr. Carson, "He mixed thuggism and politics together," and respectability would never stick to him for long.

In the spring of 1967, Mr. Carson led a takeover of the United Federation of Teachers' offices. Then, after inviting UFT President Albert Shanker to a Bedford-Stuyvesant school to talk over their differences, Mr. Carson and his supporters prevented him from leaving the building for several hours. When school resumed that September, Mr. Carson's associates entered several buildings to harangue and "fire" white Teachers, in at least one case declaring, "The Germans did not do a good-enough job with you Jews."

Mr. Carson later explained his modus operandi to journalist Tamar Jacoby: "cause some pain and get some attention."

He got his autobiography, "The Education of Sonny Carson," published, resulting in a movie deal, around the same time in the mid-1970s that he went to prison. During the mid-1980s, he formed "Black Men Against Crack," but he was also accused of being the driving force behind an organization, said to be led by one of his sons, that went to job sites demanding jobs for black construction workers and starting fights unless they were accommodated or payoffs were delivered for them to leave quietly.

The Boycott Furor

In January 1990, shortly after Mr. Dinkins became Mayor, an incident involving a black customer and a Korean grocery owner in Flatbush provoked a furor because of charges that the owner treated black shoppers with suspicion. It wasn't clear how a store in a primarily black area maintained a client base if shoppers were treated so badly, but Mr. Carson came into the neighborhood and organized a boycott.

Whatever legitimate grievances existed soon paled, however, before the racist tint that the boycott took. Protesters taunted the store's owner and employees as "yellow monkeys" and carried picket signs stating, "Don't buy from people who don't look like you."

"You can't hold somebody responsible for a picket sign," Brooklyn Council Member Charles Barron, a close ally of Mr. Carson's, argued during last week's hearing.

He might have a case if it had been a single sign at a single protest, but the sentiment was a constant one, both chanted by the protesters and on signs they carried, for a period of nearly eight months.

Court Order Ignored

When the store's owners, arguing that their business was being ruined, obtained a court order requiring that demonstrators stay at least 100 feet from the store, the Dinkins administration failed to enforce it. It was a disturbing and ominous way for Mr. Dinkins to begin his mayoralty, apparently afraid of the political fallout in the black community if cops enforced the order and Mr. Carson and his minions resisted.

Initially, the boycott and the racist character it quickly acquired got little media coverage except in the New York Post, but the Mayor's inaction on the court order began to draw criticism in other papers as well. Finally, in late September, Mr. Dinkins visited the grocery and bought a few items. Abruptly the boycott collapsed, as it would have months earlier if he had given some indication that whatever justification there had initially been for a boycott had long since ceased to exist.

If that had been the only time that Mr. Carson made himself a major player during Mr. Dinkins's mayoralty, it might have been written off as a misstep by an administration that was just getting its bearings. But then on a Monday night in mid-August of 1991, a driver who was part of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's caravan ran a red light, lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a 7-year-old black boy named Gavin Cato, killing him.

A Mob's Revenge

A crowd gathered at the scene, and old anger about the favorable treatment that Orthodox Jews in the area sometimes got from city government bubbled to the surface. A posse of young black men formed, intent on revenge, and a few hours later came upon Yankel Rosenbaum, a Yeshiva student who was visiting from Australia. Amid cries of "Get the Jew," they set upon him, and a teenager named Lemrick Nelson fatally stabbed him.

Some Mayors would have concluded that black anger with the Hasidim had already been carried too far and looked to flood the area with police intent on preventing any further violence. Mr. Dinkins did not take that step, however, and the following day groups of youths ran through the streets, harassing Jews in the neighborhood and throwing rocks and bottles at store windows. Two Community Assistance Unit officials who were in Crown Heights Tuesday evening were concerned enough by what they saw that they urged Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch to recommend strong action to restore order.

Mr. Lynch, the top political adviser to Mr. Dinkins as well as his prime liaison to the black community, did not act on their pleas, however. Wednesday afternoon, he went to the neighborhood, and early that evening, Mr. Dinkins came to visit the Cato family, only to find bottles hurtling towards him from the street as he climbed the steps to their home. That, finally, convinced the Mayor he could not merely wait for the violence to subside. The next day, cops under the command of First Deputy Police Commissioner Ray Kelly finally asserted themselves forcefully and the vandalism abruptly ended.

'Proud' of His Disciples

Mr. Carson, interviewed on WLIB about the black youths who had run wild in the streets, spoke directly to them, saying, "They want me to criticize you, but I'm proud of you."

It was widely believed that he had proprietary reasons for that pride: many of the offenders were said to have been imported from his own operation.

When Mr. Dinkins was opposed for re-election by Mr. Giuliani two years later, he no longer had the support of many white voters who had been disillusioned by his responses to the Flatbush boycott and Crown Heights. And where Mr. Giuliani's support among white conservatives in Staten Island became particularly pronounced because of a ballot referendum giving residents the option of seceding from the city, black voters in central Brooklyn - Mr. Carson's territory - did not turn out in the numbers they had in 1989.

When Mr. Dinkins was asked, two days prior to the hearing, what he thought about naming a street in memory of Mr. Carson, his response was telling: "Let's just say I have no particular view on it."

'Can't Dictate Our Heroes'

One of the speakers, Bryant Williams, told the Council committee, "We will not allow anyone to define us or to determine who our heroes will or will not be. It's racist to its core to single out Sonny among all of these names" for exclusion from the street-renaming bill. "It's coming from people outside the black community who have no respect at all for the black community."

Yet the one black Council Member from Brooklyn who was entitled to vote as a committee member (Mr. Vann and Mr. Barron are not) on the motion to exclude him - Letitia James, whose district includes Crown Heights - chose to abstain.

Mr. Vann noted that the Council had a long tradition of deferring to the wishes of the members in the districts involved when it came to street names. He recalled being asked earlier last week by New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman how he would feel if a Councilman representing Howard Beach said his constituents wanted to name a street in memory of John Gotti and said, "I would not be in favor of that ... but that does not negate the right of the community to do that. No matter how abominable I thought it was."

'Jefferson Did Worse'

Council Member Foster argued that human beings with greater flaws had been honored in similar fashion. "We have things named after Thomas Jefferson, who sold his own children into slavery. Many of the things Sonny Carson stood up against - police brutality - Sean Bell, we're dealing with it now."

But Council Member Alan Jay Gerson, who represents the lower East Side, said that while Mr. Carson "did a lot of good in his life," his sins argued powerfully against naming a street after him. He contended that such an honor had to be looked at in a wider context than an individual community if the person involved stirred deep antipathy in other city residents.

"I could not explain to the Asian community I represent" why he would vote to honor the architect of the Korean boycott, Mr. Gerson said, any more than he could convince Jews that Mr. Carson's role in Crown Heights and his statements over the years should be disregarded.

"We must uphold the standard that unifies this city, that brings people together across all lines," Mr. Gerson said.

'He Didn't Start Division'

Ms. Foster accused him of ignoring "the historical context in which Sonny Carson was thrust into the media. It's not Sonny Carson that divided [the city along racial lines]. It happened way before him, and it's still happening now."

Mr. Vann added, "We were denied access to education, to employment," at the time that Mr. Carson developed his menacing aura. "There's a certain way we're going to ask you to get up off our neck?"

Council Member Barron accused Mr. Gerson of serving as a messenger for Speaker Christine Quinn, "because you haven't the spine" to take such action independently.

When Council Member Foster cautioned him against personal attacks, Mr. Barron resumed, "I believe the Speaker is reflecting the desire of the Mayor."

Noting that the Council not long ago named a street after Al Jolson, the Jazz Age singer who used to perform in blackface, Mr. Barron asserted, "If street signs are good for 'Mammy,' they're good for Sonny."

Then the vote was held and Mr. Carson's supporters disrupted the meeting to unfurl their banner and struggle with security, finally leaving before any real damage was done.

Vann's Rationalization

Mr. Vann called their actions "unfortunate but understandable. They were very close allies of Sonny Carson. They went through a lot of struggles with him."

Ms. Foster, asked about her clear dismay at the tension-fraught confrontation - in a chamber where less than four years ago Council Member James Davis had been assassinated by a mentally disturbed constituent - said, "I think it goes to the frustration that blacks in this country feel that our heroes are not respected." The problem, of course, is that many people, regardless of race, have trouble seeing heroism in someone who was a convicted kidnapper, an admitted racist who reveled in stirring the pot, and a reputed shakedown artist who believed that power was obtained through force rather than persuasion. Mr. Carson was so poisoned by hatred of the police that even his own professed revulsion at what crack did to the black community 20 years ago was not enough to dissuade him from egging on a stooge as she libeled a young cop murdered on the orders of a drug dealer.

It was pointed out to Mr. Barron that Mr. Carson's supporters could have gotten attention for their cause without provoking a melee if they had merely taken their banner downstairs and stood on the steps of City Hall, the way most groups choose to get their message out.

'Need Creative Tension'

"That would have been nice and neat," he responded, "and that's not what they intended, obviously. Sometimes you need creative tension to get a point across when you're being violated."

He was asked whether the prime argument made against the committee excluding Mr. Carson from the street-naming bill - that it should not overrule the will of the community involved - wasn't similar to the opinion expressed 10 days earlier in Alabama by Rudy Giuliani that individual states should decide whether they fly the Confederate flag in their capitols.

Mr. Barron sidestepped the question with a joke about the ex-Mayor's belief in that flag. He then argued that there was no parallel between the two matters, even though both pivot on the issue of whether a locality's desires should be indulged even if they deeply offend the sensibility and sensitivities of a larger group.

Again he insisted that honoring Sonny Carson and flying the Confederate flag were two unrelated issues. "It is a question of democracy," Council Member Barron said.

The sad thing was that he may actually have believed his words.