A Tribute to Edmund Perry ’85

By DANIEL ZHANG
Editor

On June 2, 1985, Black student Edmund Perry graduated from the Academy with honors. He was described by the Associate Dean of Student at the time, George Tucker, as “a very good and popular student—a solid citizen.'' Perry was a spirited resident of McConnell, and his dorm head and Spanish teacher Aldo J. Baggia said Perry was “a very gregarious type and had a lot of drive… He had a good sense of humor in the way he bantered with people… When you got to know him, he was a very sensitive and endearing person.”

Ten days later, 35 years ago, Perry was shot dead in Morningside Park, New York by police officer Lee Van Houten. Perry was unarmed, according to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Houten alleged that Perry, and his brother Jonah Perry, a scholarship engineering student at Cornell, attempted to mug him and that Perry was shot out of self-defense. His allegations were scrutinized due to the New York Police Department’s failure to provide pertinent evidence and apparent contradictions in his argument. 

The Times condemned the incident as “another terrifying example of police brutality.” The Times noted that Van Houten’s backup team did not intervene or move from their position during the entire duration of the alleged attack, casting doubt on the official police narrative. The Times also called attention to the lack of motive for Perry, who had just received his acceptance to Stanford University with a full scholarship and was beginning a summer internship with a Wall Street brokerage firm. 

“Why would a young Black man, a young man clearly on his way up, on his way in the fall to his choice of three of the fittest colleges in each country, attempt to rob anyone?” the Perry family lawyer, C. Vernon Mason, said. 

“But if he did,” Mason continued. “Why was deadly force used to stop a 17-year-old with no criminal record and no weapon?”

According to The Exonian’s cover story on Sep. 21, many from the Academy, including the president of the Trustees at the time, Michael V. Forrestal, were in attendance at his funeral. A memorial service was held for Perry on Sep. 14 in Phillips Church. Then-Principal Stephen G. Kurtz said that he felt a “sick sense of waste.” 

“[Perry had a] potential for a useful life, a real potential for growth,” Kurtz said.

Many years later, he is still mourned by friends and family. “The first time he played Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Live! for me he gave me a commentary on each song with an extra ten minutes on ‘No Woman, No Cry,’” Arminda Thomas ’89 recalled. “The thing that I most loved about him was the thing I most hated: He always asked, ‘Why, why, why?’ And sometimes I was too lazy to ask, ‘Why?’”

“He was a big, bold thinker who wanted to use his smarts to change the world,” J. Perry said. “It’s the values we were raised with. We didn’t just go to private school and work hard in school to get A’s and attend Ivy League colleges so that we could make money and become famous—for us, it was about helping our family and the Black community move forward.”

Many Academy Black students showed an outpouring of support for the Perry family, compelled to share their own stories of race at the Academy. One anonymous graduate described the harsh transitions from her home in Harlem to the uptight environment of the Academy as leading her to contemplate suicide many times. Another commented: “The cocky, self-assured attitudes that will get you elected class president at Exeter could get you killed in Harlem.”

Chris Fuller ’95 noted the “tough dichotomy” of Perry’s life: “the duopoly of life, beyond what he had experienced: single mom, living in Harlem, white rich kids in white school in New Hampshire.”

Allegations of drug distribution and poor behavior, however, appeared in Best Intentions by Robert Sam Anson. Such allegations have not been independently verified.

Current trustee Jacqueline J. Hayes ‘85 spoke to the Washington Post on Perry a few months after the shooting. “[H]e had an attitude problem. Eddie didn't try to mold himself into the model Exonian. . . He maintained his identity as a black kid from New York."

Veronica Perry, Perry’s mother, mourned him at a press conference: “I’m here because of the injustice done to my son, who had such a bright and shining future. White men hated to see his success. Because he was so good. That’s the only way I can figure it, they wanted to wipe him out.”

“A 24-year-old office who is trained and skilled in apprehending people felt it necessary to kill a 17-year-old unarmed youth,” V. Perry said. “A white officer felt that way about my Black child.”

Perry left his senior quote in the Academy’s yearbook as a letter to the Academy’s future, more pertinent than ever: “It’s a pity we part on less than a friendly basis. Work to adjust yourself to a changing world, as will I.”