The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on Edge with T.J. English

For the first time, the New York Times bestselling author T. J. English reclaims the story of this volatile period in our history through the eyes of three desperate men—an innocent man wrongly accused of murder, a corrupt cop, and a militant Black Panther.  All three men are alive and able to tell their story.

Watch as T.J. English discusses The Savage City

The Savage City begins with a horrifying double murder on the day on which Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and declared “I have a dream.”  Two young white women were murdered in their apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The murders marked the start of a ten-year saga of racial violence and unrest that ravaged the city.

English explores this traumatic decade through the stories of three very different men:

George Whitmore Jr., a 19-year-old black man, half-blind and destitute, who was railroaded for the  Career Girls murders—a living symbol of the inequities of the system.

Bill Phillips, a gleefully corrupt New York City cop who plundered the city through graft, extortion, and brutality—until he was caught and eventually turned state’s evidence in the famous Knapp Commission hearings.

Dhoruba bin Wahad, a founder of New York’s Black Panther Party, whose militant actions against the NYPD made him a target of virtually every local and federal law enforcement body in the city.

Visit Tenement Talks on March 15 at 6:30 PM for The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on Edge with T.J. English