“Skull Trouble”: A Brief History of Police Harassment of Black New Yorkers
By Marcy S. Sacks
As a fresh recruit to the New York City police force at the turn of the twentieth century, Dutch immigrant Cornelius Willemse learned an important lesson from his superior officer about how to treat the black residents on his beat. One day, the novice patrolman encountered a group of black men congregating on a street corner. He attempted to disperse the group. “At my order to move along,” he recalled, “they shuffled off slowly, dragging their feet on the sidewalk, in a way which seemed to say, ‘Feet, we’ll be back as soon as this fool cop is gone.’” Angered by their perceived insolence, Willemse decided that they were “ripe for a lesson.” Without warning, he began beating any black man within reach, “work[ing] with the old nightstick as hard as I could.” In short order, “Negroes were lying all over the sidewalk, some of them half conscious, others bruised and bleeding.” He smugly evaluated his success. “I had made good on my threat of ‘skull trouble.’” He expected no further difficulty from them.
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