Berkowitz watched the tape and shook his head. “I can’t, I’m sorry but I just can’t do it,” he said.
Berkowitz’s Son of Samhain pamphlet ends with:
I believe we are now living in... the “last days”... Society is seeing an increase in demonic activity at this time. Tens of thousands of people are under intense pressure. Life in America has never been harder... We are a nation in chaos and crisis.
Berkowitz first came up for parole in 2002. He refused to attend the hearing, admitting he deserved to be in jail until his death. In 2004, he was denied parole and this year will be the same. Berkowitz will only leave prison in a coffin.
In 2005, Berkowitz wrote a book titled, Son of Hope. It is all about his conversion to Christianity and how Jesus is now his savior. Christian organizations push the book and the proceeds go to the needy. It seems that David just can’t quit writing.
When Berkowitz was arrested on August 10, 1977, the Post ran his picture with the headline: CAUGHT. Berkowitz’s eyes are unnaturally bright and he has the smallest smile on his face. Like he knows something that he’s never going to tell.
Son of Sam was bumped from the headlines that August thirty years ago after one week. The reason: the death of Elvis Presley.
He’s never gone away, either.
Slaves in Brooklyn
by Kim Sykes
Weeksville
With land you have food, drink, and shelter,” Olga said in a lilting Caribbean accent. Her rusty eyes peeked over her mirrored sunglasses to register my reaction. “They created eminent domain while we were sleeping, you see. And all those shops over on Fulton Street are there to distract us.”
We were a few blocks from the Fulton Street Mall, standing in front of a row of Civil War — era buildings on Duffield Street that had been declared “blighted” by the city, in order to build a parking lot for a new hotel. The owners fought back, claiming the nineteenth-century buildings were part of the Underground Railroad, that they were the homes of abolitionists who harbored fugitive slaves on their way to freedom.
Signs that read Eminent Domain Abuse, the words circled and crossed out in red, were plastered on the windows and doors. Remnants of their historic past were still visible in the architecture of the small brick buildings, but over the years burglar bars and shoddy repairs had scarred what was left of any beauty. It would take millions of dollars to restore them to what they once were, but that was not going to happen. Using outside consultants, the city commissioned a study and found no conclusive evidence of Underground Railroad activity. The construction of the hotel had begun. Directly across the street from the homes, a bulldozer emitted a loud beeping sound as if it were counting the days until their destruction.
Olga had seen me taking pictures and came over to check me out. I could tell she wasn’t sure whose side I was on. I introduced myself but she would only give me her first name. “They make us slaves by taking away our land. You know, all these people going off to get their master’s degrees. I call them Master’s Degree. Because that’s who it is for. They get Master’s Degree to become highly qualified slaves.” Olga walked with me toward the Fulton Street Mall. She wanted to know what I was doing on Duffield Street. I told her that I was researching the city’s connections to the Underground Railroad for a play I was going to be reading in the fall. I’m not sure if she believed me.
The play is about Elizabeth Keckly, a seamstress who bought herself out of slavery and became the dressmaker to Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd. After writing her autobiography, Keckly moved to 14 Carroll Place in New York and I wanted to see it, but first I had to find it. Originally I assumed Carroll Place was in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, but there was no such street on the local map. I decided to go anyway, and after several hours of walking the neighborhood and asking around, I gave up. At home on the computer I discovered a Carroll Place on Staten Island, but I told myself Keckly was sophisticated, and a seamstress to the elite. It didn’t seem possible that she would live all the way out on Staten Island. There had to be another Carroll Place that Google Maps hadn’t heard of. One that had been lost or renamed in subsequent years. But the old maps in Manhattan’s Midtown library pointed to the New Brighton district on Staten Island, which in the 1860s was a fashionable summer resort. A place where the rich would bring their seamstresses and hairdressers to have on hand. It had been staring me in the face, I just didn’t like what I saw.
The librarian scolded me. “See, this is why we have to be wary when reading history. We have to ask who wrote it and what their motives were. You can’t change history because you don’t like what you find.”
Of course he was right, but I was not going to Staten Island. The building where Keckly lived had been torn down, and it wasn’t going to help me to look at what I was sure by now was an office building or a parking lot.
Researching the everyday lives of African Americans in the nineteenth century and earlier is like putting together a puzzle with almost all of the pieces missing. You get accustomed to seeing words and phrases such as, “most likely happened,” “probably,” and “no conclusive evidence.” Keckly’s memoir made it a bit easier. As a slave, she had learned how to read and write, and she freed herself and her son by paying off her owners. She achieved some fame as a seamstress and a companion to Mary Todd Lincoln. Even then, what was written in her book, Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, seemed to me to have been composed mostly for white consumption during a time when few African Americans could read, or even purchase a book. I wanted to know about the daily life of a black woman in the 1860s, which was how I ended up at the library going through government and police records and reading old newspapers. But whenever I do something like this, I inevitably find myself taken in a completely different direction than where I started. That’s what happened when I began with 14 Carroll Place and ended up at the Underground Railroad homes on Duffield Street.
Olga was carrying heavy bags, so we walked slowly past the wig and pawn shops and the Rastafarians selling incense on rickety card tables. Without any regard to aesthetics, storefronts selling everything from french fries to sneakers were jammed next to each other. As we walked, a young woman raced by us talking on her cell phone. She was beautiful and she knew it. Her tight pants showed off her perfect figure and I marveled at her ability to walk in such pointy-toed, highheeled shoes. Everyone within twenty feet of her could hear her conversation. “Yo, meet me on Fulton by the Duane Reade!... Fulton Street!” It is hard to imagine that this Fulton Street was once a dirt road on which Harriet Tubman led escaped slaves to safe houses. The crowd around us was dense. Olga stopped to make sure I took it all in. Once again, she peeked at me over her shades. Downtown Brooklyn was undergoing major reconstruction. It was only a matter of time before even this stretch of consumer distraction became gentrified. I was going to ask what she thought about that, but we had arrived at the corner of Fulton and Flatbush.
In 2005, the city conamed this section of Fulton Street Harriet Ross Tubman Avenue in honor of the African American abolitionist who ferried slaves from the South to freedom in the North. Olga followed my gaze up at the signage. I was sure she was going to comment on the fact that Ms. Tubman had to share billing. I wondered about that myself since Robert Fulton, the steamboat inventor, also had streets named for him in Manhattan and elsewhere. She set her bags on the sidewalk without taking her eyes off the signs. Her red-and-white striped hat covered all of her hair except for fuzzy gray and black curls poking out at the sides.