The photographer who captured people occupying subway tracks for a Black man killed in the 1980s says history came 'full circle' after protesters did the same for Jordan Neely

• In 1987 Ricky Flores captured protesters in a subway tunnel after the death of an unarmed Black man.
• On Saturday, people did the same for Jordan Neely, a Black man who was killed on a subway car.

Picture this: it's December 21, 1987, and crowds of protesters have gathered in the New York City subway to protest the unjust death of a 23-year-old Black man named Michael Griffith, who died in Howard Beach, Queens, after a group of white men violently beat him and his friends.

In a highly unusual move, the group climbs down into the Jay Street/Borough Hall station tracks to disrupt operations. The moment is memorialized in a photograph.

Over 35 years later, a similar moment occurred: On Saturday, protesters in New York City hopped on a subway track, chanting "no justice, no peace" to protest the death of Jordan Neely, who was choked by a 24-year-old Marine vet named Daniel Penny on Monday.

Ricky Flores, who captured the historic 1987 photo, told Insider that when a fellow photojournalist showed him the photos of Saturday's protest, it felt like history was coming "full circle."

"There was a sense of those two events crashing together," Flores told Insider.

Protesters entered the tracks around 6 p.m. at the Lexington/63rd Street subway station. The action resulted in train operations being halted for nearly an hour.

"Jumping on tracks is dangerous, reckless and can be life-threatening," NYC Transit President Richard Davey said in a statement obtained by Insider. "While peaceful protest has always been part of American fabric, endangering transit workers and other responders, while also delaying New Yorkers just trying to get where they need to go, by deliberately risking contact with an electrified third rail, is unacceptable."

A spokesperson for the NYPD said arrests were made but could not provide any more details about the protest action. The New York Post reported at least seven arrests were made, according to law enforcement sources.

'Nobody knew they were gonna do that'

Flores, a longtime photojournalist who has captured many important events in New York City, told Insider he rarely sees people occupying the rails themselves. Still, the subway is often used as a place to protest — even back in the day.

Around the time he took his photograph, Flores said many people were organizing to call into question police tactics used against Black and Latino communities.

On the day of the Howard Beach protest, led by Reverend Al Sharpton and multiple high-profile civil rights leaders, 500 people marched the streets of Brooklyn, and 150 of them made their way to the subway tunnel, according to a UPI article from the time. After occupying the rails, four subway lines had to be shut down.

Before hopping down to the rails, protesters yelled, "No Peace! No Peace!" UPI reported. A police officer also warned protesters through a bullhorn that the power was still running on the tracks, to which Sharpton replied: "The power is still on in our community."

Flores told Insider that the protesters split into three highly organized groups on that day. He decided to follow the one he knew was most radical. This was the group that ended up jumping onto the tracks.

"Nobody knew they were gonna do that," Flores said. "And it was clearly planned and well thought out because they had to organize their people. It was a radical approach to protesting we hadn't seen before."

Fast forward to 2023, and Flores says it's striking that the same types of conversations — on racism, policing, homelessness, and the policy that shapes it all — continue to dominate national politics. And that New York City is once again the epicenter of these conversations.

On Saturday morning, Sharpton took to the podium at an event for the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Sharpton, to urge that Penny, the man who choked Neely, be charged for his death.

"You're not going to choke this young man to death and not let us stand up and raise our voices," Sharpton said, according to the New York Daily News. "From a civil rights point of view, we are petitioning the choker and the two folks helping him are all brought before a grand jury."

Flores said that despite it appearing like history is repeating itself, he's seen a tonal shift — especially in the media — as to how people view Neely's death versus how many people reacted to the death of Griffith. Flores pointed out, for example, that there were more white people at today's protest than he was used to seeing in the '80s.

Flores said he hopes protesters will see real change this time around.

"It's just a crazy, crazy, crazy feeling to experience that again," Flores said. "And a lot of these problems we should have been done with. Opioids, addiction, we shouldn't have this problem. This problem was dealt with effectively back in the '60s and '70s and '80s. And here we are back full circle again."

Representatives for Sharpton did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.