By Marissa Wright, Prism
Author Elon Green’s second book, “The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York,” tells the tragic story of Michael Stewart, a young Black artist and model who was killed by New York City Transit Police in 1983. At just 25 years old, Stewart was an aspiring figure in the city’s downtown art scene when police beat him for allegedly tagging a subway station. His death sparked widespread outrage and became a symbol of police brutality across the city.
The book, released today, chronicles Stewart’s life, the aftermath of his death, and his case’s cultural and social impact. A blend of history and biography, the narrative follows the botched investigation and trial surrounding the incident and the broader effects of systemic injustice in 1980s New York. What perhaps stands out most about Stewart’s story is that it could have happened yesterday, highlighting ongoing systemic problems within the American criminal legal system.
A longtime journalist and editor, Green is redefining true crime nonfiction. His first book, “Last Call,” published in 2021, explores the lives of the victims of a serial killer who preyed on gay men in 1990s New York. In doing so, he brought long-overdue attention to the victims and a community whose struggles were ignored by the broader society. In both “Last Call” and “The Man Nobody Killed,” Green challenges typical conventions of true crime by telling the stories of people historically situated as perpetrators, or, at the very least who were viewed with little sympathy in mainstream culture and media. Long past due, Green’s efforts are an important addition to a genre that is too often tainted by implicit biases and police-friendly narratives.
In this interview with Prism, Green spoke about the systemic failures that led to Stewart’s death, uncovering overlooked stories of marginalized victims, and the role of art in preserving collective memory. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Marisa Wright: In an interview about your first book, “Last Call,” you said part of your attraction to that story was that there was nothing particularly extraordinary about the victims because that allowed you to explore systemic issues. Michael Stewart is quite different. How did you first come across his story?
Elon Green: I first came across it in a Wikipedia entry—and even that version seemed really quite extraordinary. I assumed there would have already been one or two books written about it, but there hadn’t been. Some of my early calls were to the student witnesses, and I realized nobody had called them in almost 40 years. They all said some version of “What took you so long?”
What attracted me to Michael was the little that I originally knew about him, but also the people around him and the larger story. What happened to him would allow me to tell the story of the East Village during that period, the art world, the music scene, but also, more importantly, the systemic forces that were pushing against him and other Black people in New York with police brutality.
Wright: The title “The Man Nobody Killed” really captures the array of issues with the criminal legal system you explore in the book. Can you give an overview of some of the ways it failed Stewart?
Green: The point of the book is really about systemic failure at the state level, the city level, the judicial level, and with law enforcement. I write extensively about the aftermath of the fiscal crisis and near-bankruptcy in New York. It affected every inch of the city and, in some sense, made Michael’s killing—or killings like his—inevitable because you have an underfunded police force, poorly lit parks, and just a city that’s falling apart. And when cities are falling apart, people suffer.
One way of looking at what had happened to him is that on the one hand, what happened to him was extraordinary because of the people around him who cared about him and made a stink about his beating and then his death. On the other, what happened to him was not notable at all because police were beating Black men all the time, and it was a fluke of proximity that this case became notable.
“The Man Nobody Killed” is the first comprehensive book about Michael Stewart, a young Black artist and model who was killed by police in 1983. Courtesy of Celadon Books
Wright: In many ways, Stewart’s case laid the groundwork for our understanding of more recent cases of police brutality. For example, you write that his case was one of the first attempts to hold law enforcement liable for failing to exercise the necessary duty of care for individuals in custody, which is similar to the charges brought against the officers in the murder of George Floyd. Was there anything instructive in comparing the parallels between these kinds of events?
Green: I hesitate to push this analogy too far, but I think there were a lot of people who thought that the aftermath of George Floyd being killed would lead to some systemic change. And pretty clearly, it hasn’t. [Stewart’s] case probably cost the chief medical examiner his job, and I have to believe it was another nail in the coffin of the Transit Police, which eventually merged with the [New York Police Department]. But I don’t think it really changed anything because most things don’t change anything, and in that sense, this is a more universal story. [The connection] is kind of interesting, but it’s not something I push in the book. I’m happy to let the reader draw those connections. I think that anybody who followed the Floyd case will draw those connections.
Wright: In an essay about the overwhelming whiteness of true crime, you wrote, “Think about what it means to have white writers tell the world about crime that, most often, affects Black people—or that white editors get to choose what crime is worth a book, a feature, a podcast. Think about how this skews some people’s perception of what even constitutes a crime.” How does “The Man Nobody Killed” challenge or push back against that trend?
Green: Well, in one sense, it doesn’t because I’m a white person telling the story of a crime committed against a Black person. While this book is not as focused on Michael’s life as in my previous book—because, quite frankly, when you’re killed at 25, you haven’t lived a lot—I think it is as close an examination of his life as was possible. The book is less about what was done to him specifically and more about the systemic factors that allowed and encouraged it to happen, so while it doesn’t exactly push back against what I wrote in that essay, I hope the book is not just your standard true-crime fare. Whether it is or isn’t is up to others to decide.
Wright: While Michael Stewart’s story is at the heart of your book, you also weave in the stories of other victims from around the same time, like the victims of Bernhard Goetz and the story of Eleanor Bumpurs, a 67-year-old Black woman who was killed by police while being evicted from her home. Why were these stories important to Stewart’s story?
Green: Both of those incidents were wrapped up in the larger story of the Stewart case and were repeatedly cited in the same breath by police because they were considered headaches for Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney. They were actually organically part of the story. The case of Eleanor Bumpurs is about what happens when police are unrestrained during an eviction, which ends up with an elderly Black woman being gunned down. They’re different contemporaneous stories, but they were all very much a part of the larger picture. There were other stories going on, but those two stories were such bombshells in New York at the time. They were just as big, if not bigger, than the Stewart case.
Wright: At the end of the book, you catalog all the ways Michael Stewart’s death influenced pop culture, including Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing” and Toni Morrison’s novel “Song of Solomon.” What do you think this suggests about the power of art in shaping collective memory and as an extension of activism?
Green: I think in the case of Michael Stewart, it enables people to remember something that they might not otherwise. There were tons of police brutality cases in New York, but only one of them provided fodder for a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat and “Do the Right Thing.” I don’t know that you could really draw much of a through-line between all that work without knowing what it was about Michael Stewart’s life and death that interested the artists.
I don’t think art is necessarily a huge catalyst for change, but it plays an important role in people remembering the atrocities. Although I guess remembrance itself is necessary for change, so maybe it’s all part and parcel.
This editorial was originally published in Prism. “Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.”
