Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City

by LaShawn Harris

The life and 1984 murder of a beloved Black grandmother that changed community activism forever—and sparked the ongoing movement against racist policing and brutality

# The story of Eleanor Bumpurs, told for the first time by decorated historian and Bumpurs's former neighbor LaShawn Harris

On October 29, 1984, 66-year-old beloved Black disabled grandmother Eleanor Bumpurs was murdered in her own home. A public housing tenant 4 months behind on rent, Ms. Bumpurs was facing eviction when white NYPD officer Stephen Sullivan shot her twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. LaShawn Harris, 10 years old at the time, felt the aftershocks of the tragedy in her community well beyond the four walls of her home across the street.

Now an award-winning historian, Harris uses eyewitness accounts, legal documents, civil rights pamphlets, and more to look through the lens of her childhood neighbor's life and death. She renders in a new light the history of anti-Black police violence and of the watershed anti-policing movement Eleanor Bumpurs's murder birthed.

So many Black women's lives have been stolen since—Deborah Danner, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Sonya Massey—and still more are on the line. This deeply researched, intimate portrait of Eleanor Bumpurs's life and legacy highlights how one Black grandmother’s brutal police murder galvanized an entire city. It also shows how possible and critical it is to stand together against racist policing now.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Crime, True Crime

352 pages, Hardcover

First published August 26, 2025

Reviews

[Tamela Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really blew me away. I grew up in New York, always knowing the name Eleanor Bumpurs but never knowing who she was as a person. Like many victims of police murder, she was memorialized in her death not her life. “Tell Her Story” feels like a homecoming for Bumpurs, as it provides a full biography of her life, from birth. A life that’s reflective of the Black experience in America in the mid-to-late 20th Century, touching on the Great Migration, Jim Crow in the north, the New York City Housing Authority, and the dangers of being “in the system.”

LaShawn Harris did a phenomenal job of telling the story of not only Eleanor, but the Bumpurs as well as many disenfranchised Black and Latino New Yorkers. “Tell Her Story” should be mandatory reading for every New York institution that claims to work “for the people.”

[Brandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow! this was a story I haven't heard. gives me so much to chew over. realizing that making life better isn't as easy as my mindset has led me to believe. I have been able to make changes in my life and make decisions that allowed me to become a better human along with making a better life for myself.

knowing that theres more to housing than I ever knew in the low income houses/apartments. this was eye opening on so many levels for me.

I've been talking about it with anyone who'd listen. the brutality people endure and the way our judicial system isn't always as blind or as open to weighing all evidence and making the correct decisions.

Mary went through leaps and bounds to fight for her mother's rights. why wouldn't we want to have someone who was in need of hospital help get the support needed?

what a life full of twists and turns and eagerness to make a better life for her family. Ms. Eleanor did her best with what she had.

[Caroleem Raines · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving and unflinching history that transforms a tragedy into a call for justice, reminding us why voices against police violence can never go silent

[Sean S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, heartbreaking, and unflinching, this account ensures Eleanor Bumpurs’s story is not forgotten while exposing the roots of a struggle that still rages today.