Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Heather Ann Thompson has explored the links of crime and urban areas in the late 1970s and early 1980s throughout her career. In her latest book, Fear And Fury: The Reagan Eighties, The Bernie Goetz Shootings, And The Rebirth Of White Rage, Thompson looks back at the infamous 1984 New York City subway shooting by Bernie Goetz of four Black teens — Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur — and uses that as an example of the growing white backlash to the progress of the civil rights movement.
On First Draft with Susan J. Demas, Heather Ann Thompson talks about her interest cases like the Dylan Roof shooting at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina or the Trayvon Martin murder and wanting to understand how we got to that moment. This led her back to 1984.
“There’s something about that moment that, in the gritty city of the ‘80s, which it was very much a gritty time in American history. And I thought, let’s unpack it. Let’s go back. What happened? Who did he shoot? Why did he shoot them? Why was he celebrated? And that all led to Fear And Fury.”
Thompson notes that Republicans have successfully stoked white rage as a means to roll back government support for schools, neighborhood programs, and more, while aggressively cutting taxes for the rich.
One unfortunate figure that recurs in this discussion? Donald Trump. In the 80s, Trump wasn’t a political figure, but he was a media staple. And he certainly was reading the tea leaves and “flirting with power,” Thompson says, as he helped to stoke white outrage, with taking out ads against the now exonerated Central Park Five. Decades later, he was demanding President Obama’s birth certificate and running for president. And now his racist policies are at work in ICE’s takeover of Minneapolis.
Check out this conversation between Heather Ann Thompson and Susan J. Demas here on Lincoln Square Media and be sure to get your copy of Thompson’s new book, Fear And Fury: The Reagan Eighties, The Bernie Goetz Shootings, And The Rebirth Of White Rage.
