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The life and 1984 murder of a beloved Black grandmother that changed community activism forever—and sparked the ongoing movement against racist policing and brutality
#SayHerName: The story of Eleanor Bumpurs, told for the first time by decorated historian and Bumpurs’s former neighbor LaShawn Harris
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.
“LaShawn Harris has given us a great gift. She has taken Eleanor Bumpurs from a poignant image on a poster and given us a rich sense of Bumpurs’s life and family experiences, a crucial analysis of the 1980s economic and police violence that killed her, and a moving history of her family’s and community’s fight for justice. A must-read and an extraordinary piece of research.”
—Jeanne Theoharis, author of King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South
“Some of the most powerful people in New York City tried to convince the world that Eleanor Bumpurs’s life did not matter. Brilliant historian LaShawn Harris has corrected the record with a beautiful and heartbreaking account of a beloved matriarch who fell victim to the unforgiving forces of poverty, housing insecurity, and police violence. An excellent study of the 1980s that captures the heart and soul of the social movements that foreshadowed calls to ‘Say her name.’ A timely and necessary book.”
—Marcia Chatelain, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
“Harris’s Tell Her Story, a powerful and poignant rescuing of the life and tragic murder of Eleanor Bumpurs, will both haunt and inspire. Told against the backdrop of the vicious 1980s, her searing narrative reminds us that this nation’s too-regular and brutal police killings of Black women have always been met by extraordinary family and community mobilization, and the demand for justice. As it also makes clear, it is long past time for America to deliver on that demand.”
—Heather Ann Thompson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
“Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City is a remarkable and captivating history of the intersection of policing, public policy, power, class, and more in 1980s New York City. Beyond the 1984 police killing of Eleanor Bumpurs, LaShawn Harris explores the conditions of America’s largest city during an era that witnessed a national turn toward the economic neglect of cities, deindustrialization, and spiraling demands for public services that were met with increasingly austerity. This is a powerful and illuminating history that weaves rich commentary on policies related to treatment of the elderly and those with mental illness, as well as humanizing the central figure of this narrative.”
—Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, author of America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy
“As state violence grows ever more unchecked, the story of Eleanor Bumpurs remains a stark reminder of the particular vulnerability of Black women. Beautifully written, deeply researched, and deeply felt, this powerful and groundbreaking narrative carefully traces Bumpurs’s life, the aftermath of her killing, and the community response that helped ignite the early police abolition movement. A galvanizing history of resistance, reckoning, and our ongoing demand for justice. Harris’s care shines through every page.”
—Blair L. M. Kelley, author of Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class
“The name Eleanor Bumpurs has come to symbolize intensifying police violence during the cruel 1980s. But LaShawn Harris’s poignant account lifts the veil of symbolism to reveal a life—complex, intimate, and often tragic—and a history of bureaucratic, state-sanctioned, and interpersonal violence, to which she was subjected her entire life. If we wish to dismantle the structures of racism, sexism, ableism, and capitalism that killed Eleanor Bumpurs and continue to take Black lives, we need to read this book and tell her story.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“This is the book we have waited so long for. Tell Her Story narrates one of the most important yet underreported stories of the 1980s: the brutal murder of Eleanor Bumpurs by New York City police. Bumpurs’s killing animated the political and cultural landscape of Black New York, emphasizing the ways that poverty and social marginalization could make all Black people vulnerable to the violence of police. Tell Her Story demonstrates powerful storytelling along with a gripping historical rendition of the tumultuous transition between the hope of the civil rights era to the misguided projections of a presumed post-racial Obama era. The book also sheds new light and understanding about Reagan’s regressive 1980s and its impact on Black women and their families. It is an absolute must-read.”
—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
“Tell Her Story is a precious tribute and gift from the preeminent expert on Eleanor Bumpurs to all of us who have been saying her name since she was brutally murdered in her New York City home and heeding Angela Y. Davis’s 1986 call to feminists to take seriously the violence of policing that killed her. With meticulous detail, through original research and firsthand accounts from the people who loved her, and with the utmost care, creativity, and compassion, Harris skillfully transforms Eleanor’s presence in the public consciousness from a name and a horrifying moment in time to a beloved life in context. Eleanor’s story should prompt all of us to ask how our movements against police violence would shift and expand if they placed the experiences of women like Eleanor at the center—particularly in a time when violent evictions of Black women are on the rise and every form of housing, healthcare, and support for disabled people and elders is under attack. A magnificent manifestation of Black feminist storytelling and praxis.”
—Andrea J. Ritchie, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color and founder of the In Our Names Network