ARC BOOK REVIEW: The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death and Art in Michael Stewart's New York by Elon Green
REVIEW:
Thank you to Celadon books for a free copy of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily and all opinions are my own.
Michael Stewart was an up and coming young artist in the 1980's in New York City. Where Keith Haring and Warhol were all the rage, graffiti was criminalized, and Madonna was getting her start. Unfortunately a common occurrence happened. Michael was detained by the transit police, brutally held down, choked with a baton and made to wait for medical attention until it was too late.
Before the BLM movement, black men were still dying at the hands of police. There were many people who had heard his cries for help, his pleas for them to stop for someone, anyone to help him. Unfortunately there were no cell phones back then to film the attack. No proof that could be given to show the brutality.
The men and women who murdered Michael were never convicted but Michael was more than his death and this book taps into the people whose lives he touched in his short life. Spike Lee's movie Do The Right Thing used some of Michaels case in the movie. His paintings are still being shown and his name should be remembered alongside of those of Till, Floyd, Ferguson, Thomas and all the others who were victims of the systemic racism and police misconduct in the US.
Fantastic book that sheds light on a life as well as a death.
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Publisher: Celadon Books
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At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall.
Witnesses reported officers beating him with Billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city's history. The Man Nobody Killed recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart’s life and death.
The Stewart case quickly catalyzed movements across multiple communities. It became a rallying cry, taken up by artists and singers including Madonna, Keith Haring, Spike Lee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, tabloid legends such as Jimmy Breslin and Murray Kempton, and the pioneering local news reporter, Gabe Pressman. The Stewart family and the downtown arts community of 1980s New York demanded justice for Michael, leading to multiple investigations into the circumstances of his wrongful death.
Elon Green, the Edgar Award-winning author of Last Call, presents the first comprehensive narrative account of Michael Stewart's life and killing, the subsequent court proceedings,
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