NEW YORK - In 1989, after a white mob attacked and killed a black teenager in Brooklyn, the Rev. Al Sharpton led black demonstrators down streets where angry whites confronted them, yelling obscenities and throwing bricks and watermelons their way.
Yesterday, 20 years later, Sharpton joined the slain teenager’s family and friends at the Brooklyn cemetery where Yusuf Hawkins is now buried.
Sharpton led the procession of about 40 people, on a gently winding dirt road, past hundreds of crypts and tombstones until they arrived at Hawkins’s grave, under the shade of a tall tree.
“People talk about the civil movement in the South but there was a significant movement in the North,’’ Sharpton said yesterday. “It started in 1989 with Yusuf Hawkins.’’
Hawkins was just 16 years old when he was shot twice in the chest on Aug. 23, 1989, in the mostly white Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst. He and three black friends were there to look at a used car that was for sale.
About 30 whites, armed with at least one gun, bats, and golf clubs, chased the four and surrounded them.
Sharpton thanked supporters for their bravery and strength through the years but said that the fight against violence and racism is far from over.
Eight people were tried for the attack; five were convicted but only three were sentenced to prison time. Attention centered on Joseph Fama, then 18, and Keith Mondello, then 19, who were said to have been the leaders of the mob.
