When patrolman Paul Persigo’s funeral was held Tuesday afternoon, a helicopter hovered over the church and two sharp shooters watched from the roof of a building across the street. Inside, Archbishop Philip Hannan eulogized Persigo as a man who gave his life “the day he joined the police force.” Persigo had died on his wife’s birthday, and the archbishop mentioned the uncut cake and the present lying unopened on a table. A crescent-shaped wreath of red roses decorated the coffin. There was a reason for the flowers; when he died at the age of thirty-three, Persigo was the youngest accredited judge of roses in the United States.
On Wednesday, hundreds of white-gloved policemen shivered in the freezing rain as they followed Louis Sirgo’s hearse from Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church to Greenwood Cemetery. They had come from all over the country, from New York, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington. The night before, over one thousand persons visited the Jacob Schoen & Son Funeral Home on Canal Street to pay their last respects.
At the graveside, Mrs. Joyce Sirgo clung tightly to her fifteen year-old daughter, Lisa, as they buried the husband and father, who had been eulogized as a “father policemen.”
Later that afternoon, officer Philip Coleman was buried in the same cemetery. The rain beat hard on the canopy that sheltered the silver casket. When it was time to lower the body into the crypt, Joseph Coleman, the father, put his hand on the cold metal. “Good-by, Phil,” he cried. He stepped back, bent forward, and wept, “Oh God, Phil.”
So ended two days of funerals. There would be others for the Steagalls, for Frank Schneider, and for Walter Collins, who died from his wounds a few weeks later. Then in early March, officer Edwin Hosli died. Hosli, who had been shot New Year’s Eve, was promoted to sergeant in a beside ceremony after twelve men yielded their places to him on the promotion list; he was unable to speak and acknowledged the congratulations by feeble gestures and a smile.
In San Diego, on the day Persigo was buried, the Navy held a press conference. Two white persons who had known Essex were produced for reporters; both said they were shocked when they learned the identity of the New Orleans sniper. “I haven’t any idea what happened to him,” said Dentalman Paul Valdez. “He was a happy guy, usually smiling, and he never griped about anything. I can’t imagine him gunning down anyone.” Mrs. Alma Montano, a civilian assistant at the clinic, said, “He was an attractive, happy-go-lucky young man who did more than his share of work, had a high performance rating here, and got along well with his white coworkers.” However, Mrs. Montano also mentioned “a very noticeable change” she had observed in Essex after his twenty-first birth day. “He became withdrawn,” she said. “His ready smile disappeared, and it became quite difficult to talk with him.” He began to associate with some black sailors “some of whom I think were rather bad companions for him.”
A markedly different view was offered by Mr. and Mrs. Essex when they talked with reporters from the Associated Press and CBS Wednesday evening. “My Jimmy wasn’t himself when he did this,” Mrs. Essex said softly. “But he never showed any signs of imbalance. I have sympathy for those people (rela tives of the dead) and empathy. I am in the same situation and I know what they are going through.”
“Mrs. Essex, why do you think he did it?” a reporter asked.
“He was mistreated in the Navy,” she said. “It was prejudice. I don’t know if the Navy is doing it deliberately, but they are doing it. I have talked to other young men, white men, and they confirm what Jimmy told me. Young blacks are not going to accept the white racist society.”
“If he had not been mistreated in the Navy, he wouldn’t have been gullible or easily influenced by outside influences,” Mr. Essex said in a flat, low voice. “And he’d be here now.”
“It’s a clear signal,” Mrs. Essex said loudly. “A clear signal for white America to get off the seat of its pants and do something.”
There was a moment’s silence; then, almost defiantly, Mrs. Essex continued. “I don’t want my son to have died in vain,” she said. “If this terrible thing will awaken white America to the injustices that blacks suffer, then some good will have come of it.”
“We must cease provoking people to the point that they must seek revenge to get even with society,” her husband said. “I blame society.”
“My Jimmy did not hate the white man,” Mrs. Essex said. “He hated what the white man stood for, the white system. . . . It was just these little things on top of one another that made Jimmy do what he did.”
“It was society,” Mr. Essex repeated with that same flat voice. “I blame society.”
“When Jimmy went into the Navy, he really saw what life, the world was all about,” said a sister, Penny Fox, who sat near here mother. “He saw that white people control the world, and blacks were being oppressed by the white man. He didn’t like society the way it is. He wanted to change things. The Navy to Jimmy was his own private hell.”
“Mrs. Essex, there are reports that some young blacks consider your son as a martyr, even a hero,” said one of the reporters. “Would you mind commenting on that.”
Mrs. Essex shook her head. “Jimmy wasn’t doing this to be a martyr,” she said. “He didn’t want to be a hero. He just wanted to change things . . . Jimmy wanted to be a man. That was his philosophy: He wanted to be a man.”7
Much later, Mrs. Essex spoke with a journalist in front of her house on Cottonwood Avenue. She was bitter and sharptongued; her grief seemed without remorse. “Do you know how many times my son was shot?” she asked with blunt suddenness. “I talked to them about that, asked them why they shot him so many times. [An officer who examined Essex’s body in the morgue counted at least two hundred bullet holes; the gall bladder was the only organ not destroyed by the rifle fire.] There was no reason for them to do that to my boy. I’ll tell you this, though; they’re going to remember him. The same old discrimination that made my son do what he did is just as strong as it ever was, and it will drive others to violence just like it did Jimmy. It can’t be helped. I’m sorry.”8
The body arrived in Wichita by commercial jetliner on Thursday and was transferred to a white hearse for the seventy-five-mile journey to Emporia. The funeral was held Saturday morning at St. James Baptist Church. The black coffin was covered with roses and wreathes; on one of the satin banners was written, “Jimmy,” and on another, “Power to the people.” The small chapel was filled and a crowd gathered outside on the steps and sidewalk. There were many reporters and television cameras. It was snowing.
The Reverend W.A. Chambers delivered the eulogy. Speaking primarily to the young, he said, “Don’t listen to them who seek to persuade you the world’s ills can be cured with their philosophy. It just can’t be done, particularly when these men try to teach you violence and hatred. The God I know teaches love. . . . Before we can point a finger of scorn at this young man, we need to examine ourselves. This world in which we live, this society . . . needs to make an adjustment so that the future may be brighter for all of us — black and white. This nation is on its way to total destruction until we learn to live together the way God meant us to. . . . I’m satisfied that Jimmy knew Jesus. He not only talked it, he lived it as long as he was in this church. What happened out yonder, I’m not going to say. Only God knows. We come here to show our Christian love. We come to bid farewell to a brother. . . .” In conclusion, he said, “The meek shall inherit the earth and will delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” (The minister was harshly criticized by militants who believed he should have applauded Essex’s actions. “I wrestled with myself on how to handle it, but I felt I owed more to the young people than to the family or anyone else. I felt it was important to tell them that violence is not the way.”)
During the slow procession to the hearse, one of the pallbearers raised his clenched fist and shouted, “Up go our arms, for today we have found freedom from our bonds.” At the graveside in Maplewood Cemetery, someone looped a redblack-and-green scarf through the handles of the coffin, and another youth placed a sash of the same color on the lid. Then, after a few short prayers, the black national anthem was sung, the casket lowered into the ground.
The afternoon of the funeral, the Cleaver faction of the Black Panther Party in New York sent the Essexes a telegram. It read: “We the Black Panther Party take this opportunity to extend our profound condolences. The loss of your son was a loss to the revolutionary ranks and the black revolutionary struggle as a whole. Mark Essex was a black man, warrior and revolutionary. He will never really die as long as the will to struggle is alive in the hearts and souls of Black Americans. All power to the people.”
The Panthers had planned to send two representatives to the funeral but were unable to raise the airfare; consequently, two days later, a memorial service was held at the Mount Morris Park Amphitheater in the Bronx. Attendance was sparse, and although many reporters were invited, none attended.
That same week, Stokely Carmichael praised Essex in Newark, New Jersey. Speaking to a black audience at the Weequahic High School, Carmichael, the former chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, said, “We should study and learn from the actions of Brother Mark Essex. We should understand that Brother Essex carried our struggle to its next quantitative level, the level of science.”9
The wind rushed cold over the hills in the cemetery. There was nothing to brake it; the trees were too widely spaced and so the wind blew clouds of dust and straw from the mounds of earth that lay fallow beside the freshly dug graves. Into one of these mounds, two shovels had been thrust. A green canopy that shaded the open grave snapped loudly in the wind. A mud-covered pickup truck rolled slowly across a gravel road that cut the loaf-shaped cemetery in half. It stopped near the grave and the driver got out and threw the shovels into the rear of the truck.
“Wouldn’t do to have them out when the cortege arrives,” he said, noticing the journalist. “A shovel sticking up like that can hit pretty hard. Sometimes folks don’t really understand they’ve lost someone until they see the shovels.”
“I’m looking for someone,” the journalist said. “Perhaps you could help. . . . “
“Only if he’s dead,” the man said dryly. He wore a cap and a leather jacket with frayed elbows. He removed a folded map from his pocket and a gust of wind almost tore it from his hands. “Every grave is plotted,” he said as he carefully opened the map in the wind.
“I’m trying to find the grave of Mark Essex.”
The man looked up at once.
“In that case, I don’t need this,” he said, refolding the map and returning it to his pocket. “It’s right over here.”
They walked along the gravel road for a few yards and stopped.
“That’s where he lies,” he said, pointing.
There was no tombstone and the uneven outline of the grave was barely visible under a thin covering of dead weed and sunyellowed grass.
“I guess you’re wondering why there’s no headstone for the boy,” the man said. “Well, it’s because the parents don’t want one, I guess. Maybe they figure they don’t want people coming out here and trampling around on him.”
“Does that happen often?”
The man nodded.
“They’re young folks mainly. They come and stand by the grave. I’ll tell you one thing. It sure makes you think.”