The Black Avenger

Crawford likes to say his life is made up of little stories. The DWP will be a long, ugly chapter. “You would think, after having a black mayor for 20 years and a couple of black police chiefs, that life in this town would not be so blatantly along race lines,” he says wearily. “To think that racism is so embedded in our institutions, and to flaunt the notion there’s nothing we can do about it, is offensive.” Yet that’s not entirely true, he realizes, perking up at the thought of all the grievance hearings he won before the Civil Service Commission — many against superiors in the City Attorney’s Office. “I had the rules memorized,” he recalls. “And I had read the opinions of Justice Thurgood Marshall. See, I know our history.”