28 Days of Black Liberation 2025 series
Banks and real estate & insurance companies had so influenced the political power in the city of Chicago (as elsewhere) that David Coleman, despite merely being a small landlord with no connections to the big bourgeoise, benefited from the system set up to protect real estate capital and he was finally only fined a total of $600 for code violations and nothing else, “the equivalent of $150 for each of the lives of the Hickman children”
After the fire and petty fine slapped on Coleman, James Hickman sank into a deep depression, rarely eating, constantly talking about his dead children, and becoming increasingly agitated with overwhelming grief. “‘Paper was made to burn, coal and rags,’ James told his son Willis. ‘Not people. People wasn’t made to burn.’” Over and over he replayed in his head the threat that Coleman had made to burn Hickman and his family out over a $100 deposit.
James finally decided to go to a sporting goods store and buy a gun, a .32-caliber pistol. After days of deliberation, he went out to find Coleman and shot him 3 times, leaving Coleman in critical condition. Unlike after the deaths of the 4 Hickman children, the cops were swift to arrest, taking Hickman into custody the same day.
Mike Myer and Mike Bartell began formulating a defense campaign for James Hickman. They encouraged him to interview with the Chicago Defender newspaper. On the day the interview came out, Coleman was announced dead at the hospital. When police officer John A Nevelle told the events of the day of the shooting, he neglected to mention that Hickman’s 4 children had died in a fire of a property of which Coleman was the landlord, instead framing the motivation as a dispute over the $100 deposit.
Just as the courts work in service of landlords and other capitalists, so too do the police as on the ground enforcers of evictions and upholders of this racist system of capital and private property. So it is today just as it was then.
Bartell and his comrades’ efforts culminated in a highly energetic rally at which there was an announcement that the murder trial had been postponed until November.