To Mourn in Anger: The Funeral of Timothy Thomas

Timothy Thomas was buried on Saturday, April 13, 2001. But the memory of his killing survives, catalyzing a mass movement calling for justice the likes of which the city of Cincinnati has never seen.

Thomas, the 19-year-old father of an infant son, was unarmed when a Cincinnati police officer gunned him down on April 7. The pursuit began over Thomas's 14 outstanding warrants for misdemeanor traffic violations and ended in a dead end alley with the fatal shot fired by officer Steve Roach, who is now on administrative leave pending the results of an FBI investigation.

"This is not something that just started a year or two ago," said Devore Brown, a cab driver who grew up in the area where Thomas was shot. "This has been going on for a very long time. So just like the riots after King's death in the 1960s, this was just waiting to happen." Fifteen black men have been shot and killed by Cincinnati police officers since 1995, including four since last November, although police officers are quick to mention that 13 of the 15 men were armed.

Unlike past shootings, Thomas's death sparked widespread local anger. The city's residents took to the streets in fiery riots that resulted in about $1 million in damage to downtown Cincinnati and the neighboring historic black community, Over-the-Rhine, and more than 700 arrests. The riots also led Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken to impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew (lifted on Monday, April 16).

Cincinnati has a long history of black settlement, and its share of racial conflict. In slavery days, this Midwestern city was free land, an Underground Railroad destination just across the Ohio River from slaveholding Kentucky, and countless African Americans are said to have swum their way to freedom there. During the late 19th century, there was mixed reaction from whites to the growing numbers of blacks settling in the city. Some whites supported black flight from the South, while others regularly attacked and killed black newcomers or forced them to pay a $500 bond required of free blacks. Other whites advocated sending free African Americans to live in Africa.

As the city's black population has grown, African Americans have become more influential in local politics, electing three black mayors in recent years. But a majority of the city's blacks remain poor, their neighborhoods rundown and neglected until gentrification comes and they are displaced. And, as the Thomas case underlines and as has become true in many urban centers nationwide, disproportionately unemployed black youth have increasingly found themselves at odds with the police -- often with lethal results.

Throughout the week after the Thomas shooting, community activists held nightlong church services while others blatantly violated the curfew. But contrary to the image presented in much of the press, there has been more ordered protest and outrage than violent rebellion. And the faces of the protesters, many of whom have stressed the need for healing, are multiracial.

Just before Thomas's funeral, thousands of well-wishers and protestors, some crying, others solemnly silent, filed into New Prospect Baptist Church to view the body. Some of Thomas's friends came to the funeral dressed in T-shirts with Thomas's picture on the front. One young man placed a memento in the casket and stood crying over it for a moment before being escorted out by a group of his friends. Meanwhile, gospel groups and a pianist sang and played hymns as the mourners made their way around the chrome-colored casket.

Outside the church, protestors filled the block and were kept orderly by NAACP volunteers, who also directed traffic and kept the media at bay. In a small park directly across the street, young children unable to fully comprehend the day's events played on swings, while their older siblings wrote R.I.P. messages to Thomas on white sheets pinned to the artificial turf.

There were members of the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, the Cincinnati Black United Front, several anti-police brutality and college organizations, and many other groups, including the Crips and the Bloods. Members of the Vineyard Community Church, a white church with a strong social agenda, arrived on a school bus escorted by police. In a genuine show of support from the white community, they served over 3000 boxed lunches of sandwiches, chips, cookies and drinks to many of the protestors.

Meanwhile, on the inside, the funeral service was by turns angry and mournful.

"Stand up, black man. Stand up, black woman. Stand up for justice. Stand up against oppression…till justice is served you need to stand up," exhorted Rev. Damon Lynch III, to rousing applause and an ovation from the audience. "For those willing to stand up with us -- stand up, white woman, stand up, white man, because until the black man is free, America is not free."

Mayor Luken was present at the funeral, along with the governor of Ohio and members of the city council. "I ask that today be a catalyst for a new Cincinnati," he said, before a voice interrupted from the pews: "Don't just say it, do something about it."

Luken continued, "Racial justice, economic justice, is a long, long way from reality here. I proclaim tomorrow a day of prayer, because without prayer we can't do the job we have to do. I pledge to you that our city will be better one day."

Lynch's tempered words were followed by more heated speeches by NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, New Black Panther Party Leader Malik Shabazz, Nation of Islam spokesperson Jamil Muhammad and Martin Luther King III. The Rev. Al Sharpton cut short a trip to Africa to travel to Cincinnati but did not attend the service.

"To Monique [Thomas's girlfriend], to this baby whose eyes I had to look in, and who will never see his father, we at the NAACP stand with you now and we will stand with you when the lights are out and the doors are closed and nobody else is around," said Mfume.

"Tim's death is not in vain," said Jamil Muhammad. "Because his death serves as life. The enemies of freedom, justice and equality thought that they killed our brother and in so doing they thought they snuffed out the spirit in us to unite as one. They thought they killed one but they gave life to hundreds."

Muhammad said the rioting should not be highlighted at the expense of the real issue -- Thomas's murder. "There is always a small microscopic element that comes along and leeches and siphons off the legitimacy of a cause with their illegitimate behavior. But we're going to purge ourselves of that element because the issue is not the rioting. Don't shift the blame. It is about the life of our brother. If you're angry, be angry to love your black brother. Don't get angry and tear up your city, get angry and register to vote."

The family's response, however, and those of Thomas's closest friends, seemed even more deep-seated, if a bit more subdued.

"God has a bigger plan," said Eric Leisure, Thomas's stepfather, in a poem he composed in memory of his slain stepson. "I did not know you all my life but I knew your love. You did not always make the best of decisions in all your situations but God only knows you because you were his creation. Let those without sin cast the first stone." Thomas's mother, Angela Leisure, sat in the front pew, crying softly while her husband read.

Dr. Osborne Richards, pastor of the New Life Outreach Church that Angela Leisure attends, commended the bereaved mother on her strength, noting that she had made it to church and even sang in the choir on the Sunday morning following her son's death.

Thomas's death has had a devastating impact on all of his family members. Before the funeral, Thomas's cousin mopped up the family's apartment while Thomas's sister and brothers talked and took turns holding Tywon, Thomas's baby. "I'm just tired of talking about it," said Thomas's sister Brande "Smiley" Bagby. "We're all just tired."

Outside the family's apartment building, Marshall "Casper" Berry, one of Thomas's closest friends, was somber, recalling how he and Thomas regularly played NFL Blitz together on Nintendo 64. "In a way I'm kinda glad for the riots," he said. "Black people getting killed by these officers -- you can only take so much, you know."