The picture is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘The Death Of Michael Stewart’. Michael Stewart was a graffiti artist from NYC who was arrested on September 15th 1983, was admitted to hospital about half an hour after his arrest in a coma from which he never awoke, dying on September 28th. He was held by eleven transit police officers. Six of those officers eventually faced homicide charges, and were acquitted. They were all white, and the jury were all white. Michael Stewart was a young black man. His death was from cardiac arrest caused by strangulation.
This song came on random this morning and made me remember this story. There’s an extra spoken verse she used to sing live, when she sang this song towards the end of her live set, which isn’t on this album version:-
You see in order to determine that Michael Stewart was strangled to death
The coroner had to use Michael Stewart’s eyeballs, his eyes, as evidence,
So now when I tell you it was Michael Stewart’s eyes that the coroner lost
Do you know what I mean when I say that justice is blind.
