May 1959

Perhaps I'm not the right person to talk about this case, but I see it so deeply and so closely that I will not rest until somebody pays for the death of Al Garrett.

I’m angry about a number of things. Not only Edward Silverman, the district attorney of this county, who has thus far failed to arrest the policeman who shot him to death, but I’m angry with a lot of my negro brethren who don’t even get angry, about the fact that a poor man lies dead in his grave tonight.

I can’t understand, I can’t understand, ladies and gentlemen, how anybody could be so heartless as to worry about the district attorney of this county, and not Al Garrett.

This defies all kinds of imagination.

He was killed as the result of a policeman’s bullet, fired at him, while he was in custody, in the 79th precinct on Gates Avenue.

This man, who had not even committed any crime, he failed to put a bottle or trash in a can, and this trigger happy cop took him in, marched him into the police station, and there is some testimony that as Al Garrett was being marched to the police station, he suddenly put up his hands and said, ‘oh you’re not going to do that to me,’ and marched holding his hand up all the way to the police station.

Anybody who’s been a negro for long, known what that means.

Any man, here in this room knows what you do, why you do a thing like that.