James Powell

James Powell, 15, was shot and killed on East 76th Street in Manhattan on the morning of July 16, 1964, by off-duty NYPD Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan. A building superintendent had sprayed a hose at a group of Black students, including Powell, gathered near a summer school; when Powell followed the superintendent into the building, Gilligan, who was nearby in plainclothes, intervened. Gilligan said Powell lunged at him with a knife and fired three shots, killing him in front of his classmates and roughly a dozen other witnesses; several witnesses said Powell was unarmed, and no knife matching Gilligan's account was recovered at the scene. A grand jury declined to indict Gilligan, who was cleared by the department. The shooting, and the community's outrage over it, set off six consecutive nights of rioting across Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant — one of the first major uprisings of the era.

New York, NY · New York County

• 1964: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• Victim identity, age, and the July 16, 1964 date and circumstances, per extensive contemporaneous and historical reporting.
• NYPD Lieutenant Thomas Gilligan was identified as the shooter; a grand jury declined to indict him, and he was never charged.

• No knife matching Gilligan's account of the encounter was ever recovered.
• Whether Powell posed any actual threat to Gilligan was disputed by eyewitnesses at the time and was never resolved through prosecution.

• Equal Justice Initiative — background reference
• Rutgers University — “Inside the Harlem Uprising of 1964”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs