Larry Davis: A Modern Day Anti-Hero
There is not one big Black nigger alive who has confronted law enforcement and lived to talk about it. Wait a minute now. There once lived an unlikely folk hero named Larry Davis from the boogie down Bronx who not only confronted but shot six White cops on a frigid Nov. 19, 1986 evening. Davis was out of control, and also out of his mind. But to us, he was a bona fide “revolutionary”-in-training. We do not often get to pick our heroes most of whom are deeply flawed, complex and, often, conflicted characters that nonetheless manage by a quirk of fate to become an agent of change, catalyst for revolution, at an exact moment in time. Like El Hajj Malik El Shabazz better known as Malcolm X, Davis who changed his name to Adam Abdul-Hakeem in 1989, was a gun toting, drug dealing, high school dropout. By all objective accounts, Davis’ drug trade was supplied by crooked cops who stole, beat, shot and set up other dealers. There is no honor among thieves, tho...