The New York Daily News once called it “The death that won’t die.”
On September 14, 1983, Michael Stewart, a 25-year-old artist and DJ, was taken into custody by a transit officer who claimed Stewart was graffitiing a subway wall. Half an hour after his arrest, Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hogtied, severely bruised, not breathing, and with no pulse. He died 13 days later, setting in motion a case that made headlines for the next three years and inspired tributes from artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It also made a lasting impact on filmmaker Spike Lee, who used Stewart as the inspiration for Radio Raheem, the character whose killing serves as the pivotal incident in his 1989 film, Do the Right Thing. (Lee went on to dedicate the film to Stewart and other victims of police violence.)
Stewart is the subject of Elon Green’s new book, The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York.
The circumstances surrounding Stewart’s death sparked protests and raised questions about police brutality, particularly with regard to people of color. “Usually, cases like that didn’t go anywhere, you know?” says Green, speaking by phone from his home in New York. “If they went to a grand jury, they usually didn’t result in an indictment … the fact that there was even as much fallout from it, I think contributed to the reason that it was occasionally national news—because the idea of the police, even the prospect of the police facing some kind of penalty for this, was highly unusual.”
Stewart was assaulted in the subway and again in Union Square—the police claimed he had attempted to run away. Eleven officers surrounded Stewart and “in full view of dozens of freshmen at the Parsons School of Design, he’s beaten into a coma,” Green says.
In the early 1980s, Stewart had been a familiar figure around New York’s Lower East Side, frequenting nightspots like The Roxy Hotel, Danceteria, and the Pyramid Club, where he had worked. He modeled for avant-garde designer Dianne Brill and collaborated with stylist/producer Maripol. He can clearly be seen as one of the dancers in Madonna’s first video, “Everybody.”
“He was getting somewhere, he was known,” says Green. “He was someone with a great deal of potential.”
Stewart originally came to Green’s attention unexpectedly around 2022. “I hate to say this, but it was really stumbling on this Wikipedia entry,” Green says. The entry was filled with so many famous names, he thought there must be books written about Stewart. “And then I was super shocked to find out that there hadn’t been,” says Green.
The author’s research began with calls to some of the student witnesses. “They all said some version of, like, ‘What took so long?’” Green says. “I would find out that everybody who had some involvement in the case, whether as a witness, or an attorney, or even the judge … they’d been waiting almost 40 years for someone to ask them. And that’s a very lucky position for a journalist to be in.”
Elon Green will discuss The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York on March 22 as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book.
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