In 1984, Bernhard Goetz, a white man, shot four Black teenagers on a New York City subway train after one of them approached him asking for money. He permanently paralyzed one of the teens and admitted during his interrogation that he wanted to “kill them all.”
Nearly 40 years later, in the same setting, Daniel Penny, a white man, killed Jordan Neely, a Black man, with a chokehold after Neely was experiencing a mental health crisis.
Despite the facts, both Goetz and Penny were cleared of murder charges.
Recently on the ALOUD stage at the Los Angeles Central Library, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson joined ACLU of Southern California’s criminal justice director Summer Lacey for a conversation on the grip of white rage on our criminal legal system and the court of public opinion, and how we fight back and redefine justice.
In her book, Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage, Thompson sheds new light on the social and political conditions which set the stage for the infamous New York subway shooting of 1984 and masterfully explores a throughline that connects Goetz to “the America of President Donald Trump.” This comprehensive telling of historical events provides another perspective as we consider the issues gripping our nation today.