A00080 - Uric St. Clair Haynes, Ambassador to Algeria Who Helped to Free Hostages Held by Iran

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Ulric St. Clair Haynes

Courtesy Harvard Business School Archives

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Contact

Nickname

• Rick

Family

Amherst Relatives

• Yolande Haynes W'52

Personal

About Me

• My professional career has included service in the NY State Department of Commerce, the United Nations European Office, The Ford Foundation Overseas Development Program, US Foreign Service, National Security Council staff, Executive Recruitment and Management Consulting, Vice President of the Cummins Engine Company, American Ambassador to Algeria, President of AFS Intercultural Program, Acting President of the SUNY College at Old Westbury, Dean of Zarb School of Business at Hofstra University, Executive Dean for International Relations at Hofstra University, Adjunct Professor at Rollins College, Adjunct Professor and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Central Florida, and higher education consultant. At the May 2012 Amherst commencement, I received an honorary doctor of laws degree.

Interests

• My interests include, but are not limited to, US foreign policy, international relations, Middle Eastern and Iranian affairs, Caribbean and Latin American affairs, US civil rights, higher education, French language and culture, etc.

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Amherst

Reunion Class

• 1952

Graduation Year

• 1952

Major(s)

• Political Science

Other Academic

No data available

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The sole child of immigrants from the Barbados, Ulric St. Clair Haynes Jr. was born June 8, 1931 in Brooklyn, New York. Haynes attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, graduating cum laude in 1952, and then earned a law degree at Yale University four years later.  Haynes worked briefly as an executive assistant with the New York State Department of Commerce, and from 1956 to 1959 he was an administrative officer with the United Nations’ European Office in Geneva, Switzerland, assigned to recruit military and police officers for the UN’s Palestine peacekeeping missions and attend to UN concerns in the newly independent Republic of Guinea.

A hallmark of Haynes’ professional life was his alternating private sector and public service employment. From 1960 to 1963 he was the Ford Foundation’s Assistant Regional Director for West Africa. In 1964 he was the U.S. State Department’s desk officer for Southwest Africa, and from 1964 to 1966 he monitored politics in Africa for the National Security Council under McGeorge Bundy. While working as a management consultant from 1966 to 1972, Haynes also taught as an adjunct business professor at Harvard University. Hired in 1972 as Vice President of Management Development for Cummins Engine Company, located in Columbus, Indiana, two years later he became the company’s Vice President for the Middle East and African Affairs and was relocated in Tehran, Iran from 1975 to 1977.

Made aware of his varied experiences in Africa and the Middle East, in 1977 President Jimmy Carter nominated Haynes as U.S. Ambassador to Algeria.  Starting November 4, 1979, Americans were riveted by reports out of Iran concerning 66 persons taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Because of his experience in the Iranian capital and familiarity with the Middle East and North Africa, Haynes helped negotiate the release of the hostages.  On January 20, 1981 Haynes stood beside Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher to greet the liberated hostages upon their arrival in Algiers, Algeria.  Fluent in five languages, Haynes was credited with having significantly improved American-Algerian relations prior to the crisis and Algeria in turn proved the crucial intermediary in negotiations to free the hostages.

Haynes’ tenure as ambassador ended in 1981. He returned to Cummins Engine Company as Vice President for International Business and was welcomed back by the city of Columbus, Indiana.  To show its appreciation for Haynes’ efforts in resolving the 444-day hostage drama, Columbus designated February 6, 1981 as “Ulric Haynes Day.”  After quitting Cummins Engine Company, Haynes became a senior vice president at the human resources consulting firm of Drake Beam Morin, Inc. in New York City. From 1985 to 1986 Haynes was Acting President of the Old Westbury campus of State University of New York, and in 1991 he was appointed Dean of the Frank G. Zarb School of Business at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, retiring there in 2003.

In retirement Haynes, a collector of fine African art, continued lecturing on foreign affairs, maintained his ties to professional associations, businesses, nonprofits, and artistic and cultural groups.  He is the recipient of numerous recognitions including seven honorary doctorates. Haynes married Haitian-born Yolanda Toussaint in 1969, and they have two children, Gregory and Alexandra.

About the Author

Robert Fikes

Robert Fikes, Jr., a 1970 graduate of Tuskegee University, earned graduate degrees in modern European history and library science at the University of Minnesota. Retired since 2017, he worked as a reference librarian at San Diego State University where he was also a subject bibliographer for Africana Studies, European, American, Middle Eastern, and African history. Fikes has published numerous journal articles, essays, encyclopedia entries, newspaper and magazine contributions, bibliographies, and several print and online books pertaining to history, art, and literature.

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In Memory

Rick Haynes told a civil rights panel at our 40th reunion that he had a Yale law degree and a distinguished career, including a U.S. ambassadorship, “but I can’t get a taxi in New York.” I remember it well. Some said he should have been more grateful for opportunities and achievements. I thought otherwise and still do.

Attention must be paid, even at this late date. Rick died Aug. 21 at 89. 

Rick’s parents came from Barbados and settled first in Brooklyn’s not-yet-segregated Bed-Stuy neighborhood. His father clerked for Socony oil, run then by Amherst’s Pratt family. Fred Pratt ’30, learning that Rick was finishing high school, determined that he must attend Amherst, where he won a full scholarship.

Shunned by fraternities, he shunned them back and joined Lord Jeff. His roommate was the other member of the racial quota of two, Ken Brown ’52. When a white classmate wanted to room with them, the dean required written permission from his parents. “Ironically,” Rick later noted, “no one in the Amherst administration felt it was necessary to contact my parents for permission to room with a white student.” Ken soon was yanked to service by his uncharitable home draft board but was able to return and complete his pre-med studies. 

Rick sang in the glee club, played Hamlet’s ghostly father as a Masquer, fenced, was class choregus. After Yale Law School, he was politely rejected by dozens of leading law firms but managed to get an executive post with New York Governor Averill Harriman, who later boosted his major diplomatic mission, ambassador to Algeria from 1977-81. There, his experience and French fluency were instrumental to the team that negotiated the release of American hostages in Iran. 

Racial slights and insults punctuated his professional successes, which included service on LBJ’s National Security Council staff; the Ford Foundation; posts in Nigeria, Tunisia, Iran and in U.S. corporate positions. He taught law and commerce, was dean of Hofstra University’s business school, settled in Florida and taught at three colleges there. 

So, Rick had many victories against racial headwinds, all too plentiful for this space. Amherst awarded him an honorary degree in 2012, one of only four 1952’s so honored. His wife, Yolande; his daughter, Alexandra, and son Gregory survive him. He was bitter, charming and able. 

Rest well, Rick.

Jack MacKenzie ’52

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ULRIC S. HAYNES, JR. (1931-2020)

Ulric “Rick” S. Haynes, Jr., a former Trustee of Deep Springs and Withrow lecturer, died of COVID-19 in August at the age of 89. He had retired to Florida after a long career as a diplomat, public servant, businessman, educator, and advisor and friend to people of all ages. He served on the National Security Council staff during the Johnson administration; taught in a Freedom School in Mississippi during the Civil Rights movement; represented the Cummins Engine Company in Tehran under the Shah; and was the United States Ambassador to Algeria from 1977 to 1981. In the last capacity he was on the team that negotiated the freedom of American hostages in Tehran. (Algeria mediated the negotiations.)

Rick spent the back half of his career in education, as president of SUNY-Old  Westbury and later dean at Hofstra. His transition to academia was a stroke of luck for many young people with whom he interacted without pretense or condescension. If you wanted to know about the world but knew nothing of it, meeting Rick could yield reading suggestions, introductions, jokes, anecdotes, frank assessments of politicians foreign and domestic, and the friendship of a man whose generosity was overwhelming and instinctive. A conversation with Rick could end with his arranging your meeting with the leader of the resistance to French rule in the Casbah of Algiers, or telling you how the Black Panther fundraiser in Tom Wolfe’s essay “Radical Chic” (1970) really went down. (Rick was there, and Wolfe quoted him pungently.)

Rick came to Deep Springs in April 1998 as a guest speaker, at the introduction of his friends William vanden Heuvel DS4TK, Robert F. Gatje, DS4TK, and Ed Wisely, DS4TK. He lectured in Algeria and foreign relations to a student body (SB) that was — like many SBs before it — not previously engaged in discussion of international affairs, at least not of the modern era. (The Peloponnesian War, maybe, bot not the policies of the Carter administration.) He connected students with opportunities abroad and introduced them to acquaintances who could nurture their interests. The Trustees invited him, with student encouragement, to join the board, and he accepted. He served until 2004, devoting himself to the internationalization and diversification of the SB.

His contributions to Deep Springs came 50 years late. That was not his fault. Rick had wanted to apply as a student in 1948, but he was black, and Deep Springs did not admit black students. His contributions are noted with affection, and with sadness and embarrassment that they could not have come earlier.    —Graeme Wood, DS97

Rick Haynes pronounced my name — ‘Christian Von Nicholson?’ — with a voice for radio and a diplomat’s formality. When I first heard him over the receiver in a phone booth at the San Francisco Zen Center, I thought I was in trouble. It was actually the opposite of trouble. Rick was a Dickensian benefactor ex machina, and he had taken an interest in me.

I had dropped out of Deep Springs after my first year and spent the next two years clinically depressed. When the call came through in September 1998, I was wearing dark sweats and flip flops, a kind of pre-monk studying meditation and considering a career as a bodhisattva. Rick was a Deep Springs trustee, and he had a way of rescuing strays.

For several years he played a crucial part in my life, leading me from the Zen Center through Guatemala to the American University of Paris, where he had ties as a Hofstra dean. He did the same, using different paths, for many others.

There were few places where Rick did not know someone.

His network extended to Bangladesh, where I had gone to study microfinance at Grameen Bank and was traveling from village to village to see its system of social pressure and support in action. Rick wanted to open my eyes to the possibilities of the place, and suggested I meet an old friend. This friend led a group that sang ragas late into the night, sitting on the floor of a small room with white-washed walls. They invited singers from the Indian state of West Bengal to come back and teach Bangladeshis their techniques, since many musicians in east Bengal had been killed in the war of independence.

Rick had a high tolerance for that mixture of ambition, curiosity and naïveté that marks a certain type of Deep Springer in their 20s. He listened well, and made you feel like you were in on whatever joke he was weaving.

His stories made subtle points — about how the world works, or could be made to work, when things fall apart and the skills of diplomats are tested. They were parables of particular interest to Deep Springers, who train in acrimony during SB meetings, and to whom Rick could offer lessons in resolution.

When Rick was ambassador in Algiers, he and his wife turned the canteen of the US Embassy into the place to gather, even as his deft, welcoming manner made him a magnet for human intelligence. During that time, the US had no official ties to the PLO. But Rick maintained contact by attending diplomatic soirees. He and an accomplice would face one another in conversation, while drifting toward a pair of Palestinian officials doing the same dance, until finally he and his counterpart could speak directly back to back, while seeming to speak with someone else entirely. His goal was to break an impasse with a group that mattered to US interests, and he did so with suave flexibility toward the rules.

With his death, the country has lost a public servant, Deep Springs a friend, and younger generations a mentor. He will be sorely missed. —Chris Nicholson DS95

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Ulric St. Clair Haynes Jr. (June 8, 1931 – August 21, 2020) was an American diplomat,lawyer, and university professor. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Algeria from 1977 to 1981,^[1] and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy, Council of American Ambassadors and Council on Foreign Relations.

Biography

Haynes, the son of West Indian immigrants to the United States, was one of the first two black campers to be invited to attend Camp Rising Sun, an international, full-scholarship summer camp in 1947.^[2]

Haynes graduated from Amherst College in 1952, from Yale Law School in 1956, and attended the Harvard Business Schools six-week Advanced Management Program.^[3]

Public service and business career

Haynes served with the New York State Department of Commerce, the United States Department of State from 1956 to 1959.^[4]

He was on the staff of the National Security Council and served as an administrative officer with the United Nations European Office in Geneva in 1965 and 1966.^[4][5]

From 1960 to 1962, Haynes was assistant to the representative for West Africa of the Ford Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria. Following that, he was assistant to the Foundation's representative for North Africa in Tunis, Tunisia, from 1962 to 1963. From there, he went to work at the State Department, where he was assistant officer in charge of Moroccan affairs from 1963 to 1964. In 1964 and 1965, Haynes became the officer in charge of High Commission Territories and South West Africa. From 1965 to 1966, he served on the staff of the National Security Council at the White House, specializing in African affairs.^[4]

From 1966 to 1970, Haynes was the president of Management Formation, Inc. From 1972 to 1974, he was a vice president at Cummins Engine Company. He was appointed to be the American ambassador to Algeria by President Jimmy Carter on April 27, 1977,^[4] and served from 1977 to 1981. He was one of the negotiators during the Iran hostage crisis at American embassy in Iran.^[2][5]

Haynes was a partner at Spencer Stuart and Associates and He has also served on the boards of directors of the ABC Broadcasting Companies, Rohm & Haas, HSBC Bank USA, ING Reliastar Insurance Company of NY, INNCOM, and Pall Corporation.^[5]

Academia

Haynes was a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Business School from 1968 to 1972.^[4] He has also lectured at Stanford Business School. He was the president of the State University of New York College at Old Westbury.^[5] He was dean of the Frank G. Zarb School of Business and the executive dean of university international relations at Hofstra University from 1996 till his retirement in 2003.^[6] He is an adjunct professor of international relations at Rollins College and the University of Central Florida. Haynes says that "contact with students" is what he likes most about teaching.^[5]

He holds honorary doctorates from Indiana University, Butler University, John Jay College, Fisk University, Alabama State University, Mercy College, and Amherst College.^[5]

Haynes is also a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.^[7]

Personal life and death

Haynes was married to the former Yolande Toussaint and had two children.^[2]

He died from COVID-19 on August 21, 2020, at the age of 89.^[8][9]

References

1.  "The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR ULRIC HAYNES JR" (PDF). Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. 20 April 2011. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 July 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2024.
2.  Ulric Haynes Jr., "A Mixed Bag of Memories of CRS from Some Sixty Years Ago" Archived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine (PDF) Sundial (December 2007). Retrieved June 29, 2010
3.  Ulric Haynes profile Retrieved June 29, 2010
4.  President Jimmy Carter, "United States Ambassador to Algeria - Nomination of Ulric S. Haynes, Jr" The American Presidency Project, official website. (April 27, 1977) Retrieved June 29, 2010
5.  Jean Bernard Chery, "Holt Spotlight Interview: Professor of Political Science, Ambassador Ulric Haynes, Jr." Archived 2011-07-25 at the Wayback Machine The Sandspur, "The Oldest College Newspaper in Florida - Founded 1894". (October 7, 2005) Retrieved June 29, 2010
6.  Ulric S. Haynes profile^{[dead link]} Forbes Retrieved June 29, 2010
7.  "Ulric Haynes". The American Academy of Diplomacy. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
8.  "ULRIC S. HAYNES, JR. (1931-2020)". April 13, 2021.
9.  "Ulric St. C. Haynes Jr. '52 | 1952 | Amherst College".

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A00079 - Joyce Brown, Homeless 'Woman Who Successfully Challenged Her Commitment to Bellevue Hospital

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Brown being released from Bellevue in 1988.,

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Joyce Patricia Brown (September 7, 1947 – November 29, 2005),^[1] also known as Billie Boggs, was a homeless woman who was forcibly hospitalized in New York City in 1987. She was the first person hospitalized under a Mayor Ed Koch administration program which expanded the city's ability to forcibly commit homeless New Yorkers to psychiatric hospitals. Between 1987 and 1988, Brown worked with the New York Civil Liberties Union to challenge her hospitalization in a case which attracted significant media attention. During the ensuing trial, her lawyers argued that her behaviors were not in line with social expectations but did not rise to the level of posing a danger to herself or others. Brown took the stand, and her clarity while testifying became part of the public conversation. The trial ended in her favor, and while the city won on appeal she was ultimately released after a subsequent case determined that the city could not forcibly medicate her. Following her release, she made several television appearances and spoke about homelessness at Harvard Law School, but came to avoid the press. Her case sparked national conversations about how best to care for the people with mental illnesses.

Background

The 1975 Supreme Court decision O'Connor v. Donaldson limited involuntary psychiatric hospitalization to those who posed a danger to themselves or others. Many states passed legislation following the ruling, including New York, which passed its Mental Hygiene Law in 1978, allowing involuntary hospitalization of people with mental illness if they were considered a danger to themselves or others.^[2][3][4] The case was one part of a larger trend of deinstitutionalization in the United States, which began in the late 1950s and resulted in the release of hundreds of thousands of people from psychiatric hospitals. These changes, along with inadequate social programs, housing policies, and broader economic conditions contributed to an increase in homelessness in parts of the United States.^[5][6][7]

New York City Mayor Ed Koch in 1988

In New York City, Mayor Ed Koch established Project HELP (Homeless Emergency Liaison Project) in 1982 to provide food, clothing, medical, and psychiatric services to homeless people in Manhattan.^[8][9] Sometimes staff would bring people to psychiatric hospitals but most were not admitted because they did not fit the legal requirements.^[10] Koch was frustrated that so many of the people his staff determined needed hospitalization were not being treated due to the typical interpretation of New York law, so he began exploring ways to interpret the legal language differently. He was advised that case law could support a reinterpretation of the Mental Hygiene Law's requirement that someone be a "danger to themselves or others" to include a consideration of whether people's behaviors, including self-neglect, might pose a danger to themselves or others in the future, even if there was no immediate danger. While considering these changes, Koch met with people who would be affected by this change, including Brown, who would later become one of the first people involuntarily committed due to Koch's reinterpretation.^[11] On October 28, 1987, Koch announced a new program for removing homeless people with mental illness from the streets for reasons including self-neglect and future harm, using his new legal interpretation, allocating a 28-bed unit at Bellevue Hospital to take care of newly admissible patients.^[12][11][5] Project HELP's psychiatrists could then direct police officers to take people to a hospital, although involuntary hospitalization remained contingent upon not just Project HELP's doctors but also an emergency room psychiatrist and a psychiatrist at the inpatient facility agreeing that the patient met the criteria.^[6]

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU, the New York affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union) firmly opposed Koch's program, criticizing it as a violation of the civil rights of mentally ill and homeless people. They argued that the Koch program attempted to hide homeless people, rather than help them through housing assistance and mental health clinics. Following Koch's announcement, NYCLU volunteers distributed fliers to people living on the street detailing their rights and advising them to contact the organization if they were involuntarily committed.^[11]

Life prior to hospitalization

Joyce Patricia Brown was born in 1947, to a working-class family in Elizabeth, New Jersey.^[11] She was the youngest of six children, with four sisters and one brother.^[10] She worked as a secretary after graduating from high school, including for the city of Elizabeth.^[10] She struggled with several forms of substance abuse, and became addicted to both heroin and cocaine in the years after graduating. She began to hear voices and act erratically, resulting in her dismissal from her secretary job, and was later convicted of possession of heroin.^[6] In 1982, she was charged with assaulting a police officer at Newark Penn Station.^[6] She lived with her parents until 1977 and with her sisters in the mid-1980s, moving between their houses as tensions arose. They eventually pooled their money to get her a place of her own instead, but she was soon living in a homeless shelter.^[10][11]

In 1985, after being ejected from a shelter in Newark, her sisters took her to East Orange General Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. She was hospitalized for fifteen days, diagnosed with a form of psychosis likely caused by schizophrenia, and prescribed Thorazine, which she did not take. She lived on disability benefits, alternating between living in shelters and at one of her sisters' houses. In May 1986, after an argument with her sisters, she left home for Manhattan, and her family did not see her again until she appeared on the news years later.^[11]

Brown took up residence on an air vent near Second Avenue at 65th Street by a Swensen's Ice Cream shop.^[13] She spent about a year there, during which time she was approached by Project HELP workers but refused their aid.^[11][13] They began monitoring her in December 1986 following concerned reports from people in the community.^[14] They checked in regularly, and were concerned about her ability to take care of herself, especially given her inadequate clothing during the cold winter.^[15] She was taken to psychiatric hospitals at Project HELP's recommendation three times in 1986 and 1987, each time diagnosed with schizophrenia but released upon determination that she did not pose a danger to herself or others.^[14][10] She was known to people in the neighborhood for alleged behaviors like running into traffic, exposing herself to passersby, threatening and screaming at people (especially black men), tearing up and urinating on money she was given, and defecating on the sidewalk.^[10][13] Neighbors described having conversations with her which were frequently pleasant but could also quickly veer into aggression. On October 28, 1987, she became the first person involuntarily committed under Koch's newly relaxed requirements.^[11]

Hospitalization and trial

Bellevue Hospital

Brown was taken to Bellevue Hospital on the first day of Koch's program, where she gave false names she had used in the past, including "Ann Smith" and "Billie Boggs". The name Billie Boggs was based on Bill Boggs, a former local television talk show host in New York City whom Brown had developed an obsession for years beforehand, and it was that name which was widely published in news stories about her case.^[11][15] Doctors at Bellevue diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia and injected with the anti-psychotic drug Haldol and a tranquilizer, Ativan.^[5] The next day, Brown contacted the NYCLU; staff attorney Robert Levy and Executive Director Norman Siegel took Brown's case. From the start, the case generated extensive media attention. Brown's sisters, who had been looking for her since she left home, went to Bellevue after recognizing court sketches of her in the news.^[11] They spoke to the media, requesting anonymity, urging compassion for the families of homeless people and recommending that Brown be committed to a hospital.^[16]

A trial at Bellevue commenced on November 2, 1988, with Acting Supreme Court Justice Robert Lippmann presiding.^[11] Levy argued that there was insufficient evidence that Brown was severely mentally ill, and that the behaviors she exhibited may not have been normal or in line with social expectations but did not meet the requirement set by O'Connor v. Donaldson for posing a danger to oneself or others.^[5] Levy reframed the actions that had been offered as evidence of her mental illness as things that lots of people do without being called mentally ill, like urinating where it is convenient or making a social or political statement by burning money. He called Robert Gould of New York Medical College to testify that Brown's judgment was limited, but that she was not severely mentally ill.^[11] The city's lawyer, supported by four psychiatrists with Project HELP and Bellevue, argued that Brown's mental illness posed a significant risk to herself in that she exhibited suicidal behavior, was antagonistic to the point of provoking violence, and did not wear adequate clothing to survive harsh New York City winters.^[15] One of Brown's sisters wanted to testify that she needed to be hospitalized, but the scope of her testimony was limited after objections by Levy that someone who has not seen Brown in years could not speak to her current state.^[11]

Brown testified that she lived on the street because she preferred it to a shelter, that what was characterized as talking to herself was actually singing to herself, and that she gave false names to avoid her sisters. She said that she used the sidewalk as a restroom because she was not permitted to use indoor restrooms, and she tore up money she was given because she did not want to be mugged for it.^[5][10] She described herself as a "professional" homeless person and argued that she should be released.^[5] Her clarity and lucidity on the stand shifted the public conversation over her hospitalization. Koch argued that the extent to which Brown was able to clearly present her case was evidence of the effectiveness of the city's treatment.^[5] On November 12, 1988, Judge Lippmann ruled in her favor, granting her release.^[14] Lippmann explained that he based his ruling primarily off of Brown's testimony and demeanor, as the psychiatrists' testimonies differed so significantly from each other that they were largely unhelpful.^[11][14] He ultimately determined that regardless of her mental health, "she is not unable to care for her essential needs".^[11]

The Koch administration quickly appealed the decision, and the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court granted a stay of proceedings, delaying Brown's release. Brown remained adamant in refusing all care at Bellevue. Lippmann's decision was overruled on appeal, with the court stating that he should have given more weight to the psychiatrists treating her and less to the NYCLU psychiatrists that only evaluated her in a "structured, safe environment".^[15] The appeal was granted on a vote of 3–2. The dissenting justices argued that the potential harm Brown posed to herself was too speculative to deprive her of rights.^[15] The NYCLU filed an appeal. The city tried to have the hospital force her to take medication, leading to another State Supreme Court hearing. An independent psychologist, Francine Cournos, testified that Brown had either schizophrenia or manic depression and could benefit from medication, but not if it had to be forced as that may lead her to reject all mental health care.^[17] On January 15, 1988, State Supreme Court Justice Irving Kirshenbaum agreed with Cournos and ruled that New York City could not forcibly medicate Brown. Unable to provide medication, the city released her from Bellevue on January 19, 1988, after 84 days.^[11] Lawyers for the city and NYCLU alike hoped the State Court of Appeals would better define dangerousness in the context of involuntary hospitalization, but the court declined to rule since Brown's release made it no longer necessary.^[11][15]

Post-release

Upon Brown's release, Rick Hampson of the Associated Press called her "the most famous homeless person in America".^[10] Her release was a major media event. The night of her release, she appeared on the 5:00 p.m. broadcast on WNBC, the 6:00 p.m. broadcast on WCBS, and the 10:00 p.m. broadcast of WNYW. In all of the interviews, she expressed that she was homeless, not mentally ill, and that she was being held as a "political prisoner".^[11] During the WNYW interview, anchorman John Roland, who lived in the same neighborhood as Brown, became aggressive and challenged her self-characterization, calling her "a mess" and "a disaster".^[11] Negative feedback from viewers led to an apology and five-day suspension, itself leading to negative feedback defending Roland.^[11] Among his defenders were Koch and Elizabeth Mayor Thomas Dunn, who accused the news programs and NYCLU lawyers of exploitation.^[11]

Brown's lawyers secured a space for her at the Traveler's Hotel, a home for formerly homeless women, and arranged for continued psychiatric care. She received donations during her case and continued to make appearances on television news and talk shows. She was interviewed on 60 Minutes, Donahue, WCBS's People Are Talking, and WABC's The Morning Show.^[10] A month later, she spoke at a Harvard Law School event called "The Homeless Crisis: A Street View".^[10][18] She received offers about books and movies, as well as job offers. When US President Ronald Reagan met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for the March 1988 Moscow Summit, he brought up Brown's case as an example of American civil rights when criticizing the USSR's detention of political dissidents under the guise of treating mental illness.^[5]

Two weeks after the Harvard event, Brown was seen panhandling. A 1988 New York magazine feature on Brown noted that people would frequently recognize her and call out to her, to which she would sometimes respond politely, and sometimes aggressively.^[11] That year, she spent a lot of her time at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, was hospitalized two more times, and arrested for possession of heroin.^[10] Her release from jail was conditioned on psychiatric treatment.^[5]

In 1991, she moved into a supervised group home, not taking psychiatric medication, and living on disability benefits.^[10] She avoided the press, and attempts by reporters to speak with her caused her distress.^[10] The director of the agency that operates her group home and one of Brown's psychiatrists told the Associated Press that the media attention surrounding her case was likely harmful in the long run.^[10]

Joyce Brown died at the age of 58, on November 29, 2005.^[19]

Legacy

Jeanie Kasindorf of New York compared Brown's case to that of Bernhard Goetz and the 1984 subway shooting in the extent to which it polarized the city. Some New Yorkers felt the government did not have the right to tell someone they could not live on the street or had to medicate themselves against their will; others argued that someone with severe, untreated mental illness could not be relied upon to make good decisions for themselves and that other residents should not have to contend with the kinds of behaviors Brown exhibited.^[11]

Writing in the ABA Journal, Alan Pusey stated that Brown's case sparked national discussion over whether forced hospitalization policies actually help the mentally ill or simply remove them from the eye of the public.^[5] In an article for the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services, Alexander Brooks wrote that the case stands in for larger debates over how societies should care for and contend with challenges presented by people with mental illness, with various parties advocating for institutionalization, deinstitutionalization, and bolstering of resources like housing and health care.^[15] According to Brooks, "what is needed...is fewer showcase litigations and more effort made to address the compelling needs of the chronic mentally ill".^[15] Luis R. Marcos wrote that Brown's case "exemplifies the politics of implementing controversial public mental health policy and the role the news media can play in the process".^[6] In analyzing the initial case in which Brown testified, Marcos also emphasized "the critical role that denial plays in mental illness" whereby "serious mental illness is often characterized by the patient's denial of its existence".^[6]

After Mayor Eric Adams announced a compulsory hospitalization program in 2022, comparisons were drawn to Brown's case.^[19][20] Adams' policy relies on a similar legal interpretations as Koch's, expanding the circumstances when someone can be forcibly moved to a hospital to when someone appears mentally ill and exhibits "an inability to meet basic living needs, even when no recent dangerous act has been observed".^[21][22]

References

1.  Roberts, Sam (May 1, 2025). "Overlooked No More: Joyce Brown, Whose Struggle Redefined the Rights of the Homeless". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 2, 2025.
2.  "Legislation". New York State Senate. Archived from the original on December 1, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2022.
3.  Waldman, Ayelet (2020). "O'Connor v. Donaldson (1975)". In Chabon, Michael; Waldman, Ayelet (eds.). Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases. Avid Reader Press. pp. 145–151. ISBN 978-1-5011-9040-7.
4.  Groendyk, Zachary (November 2012). ""It Takes a Lot to Get Into Bellevue": A Pro-Rights Critique of New York's Involuntary Commitment Law". Fordham Urban Law Journal. 40 (1). Fordham University School of Law: 549–585. Archived from the original on March 26, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
5.  Pusey, Alan (January 1, 2017). "Jan. 19, 1988: Woman wins the right to be homeless". ABA Journal. American Bar Association. Archived from the original on December 1, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2022.
6.  Marcos, Luis R. (1991). "Taking the Mentally Ill Off the Streets: The Case of Joyce Brown". International Journal of Mental Health. 20 (2). Taylor & Francis: 7–16. doi:10.1080/00207411.1991.11449192. JSTOR 41344582.
7.  Burt, Martha R. (1992). Over the Edge: The Growth of Homelessness in the 1980s. Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 9780871541772.
8.  Cohen, Neal L.; Putnam, Jane F.; Sullivan, Ann M. (1984). "The mentally ill homeless: Isolation and adaptation". Hospital & Community Psychiatry. 35 (9): 922–924. doi:10.1176/ps.35.9.922. PMID 6479928. Archived from the original on March 29, 2023. Retrieved March 29, 2023.
9.  Putnam, Jane F.; Cohen, Neal L.; Sullivan, Ann M. (Winter 1985–86). "Innovative Outreach Services for the Homeless Mentally Ill". International Journal of Mental Health. 14 (4): 112–124. doi:10.1080/00207411.1985.11449013. JSTOR 41344404.
10.  Hampson, Rick (June 3, 1991). "Whatever Happened to Billie Boggs?". AP News. Archived from the original on September 30, 2022. Retrieved September 28, 2020.
11.  Kasindorf, Jeanie (May 2, 1988). "The Real Story of Billie Boggs". New York. pp. 36–44. Archived from the original on March 2, 2023. Retrieved December 11, 2022.
12.  Barbanel, Josh (October 29, 1987). "Mentally Ill Homeless Taken Off New York Streets". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 1, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2022.
13.  Barbanel, Josh (February 15, 1988). "Joyce Brown's Ascent From Anonymity". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 21, 2023. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
14.  Failer, Judith Lynn (2002). "The Civil Commitment of Joyce Brown". Who Qualifies for Rights?: Homelessness, Mental Illness, and Civil Commitment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 11–28. ISBN 9780801439995. JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctv75d5jg.5.
15.  Brooks, Alexander (July 1988). "Law and ideology in the case of Billie Boggs". Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services. 26 (7): 22–25. doi:10.3928/0279-3695-19880701-09. PMID 3411534. ProQuest 1026707606.
16.  Freitag, Michael (November 7, 1987). "Four Women Reach Out To Their Homeless Sister". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 21, 2023. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
17.  Barnanel, Josh (January 16, 1988). "Joyce Brown Obtains a Ban On Medicine". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on September 5, 2022. Retrieved September 5, 2022.
18.  Page, Clarence (June 5, 1988). "A Case That Baffles Americans, Too". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on August 10, 2020. Retrieved September 28, 2020.
19.  Kim, Elizabeth (November 30, 2022). "New NYC policy to address mental illness will force more people to hospitals. Here's what to know". Gothamist. Archived from the original on November 30, 2022. Retrieved December 1, 2022.
20.  Newman, Andy (December 2, 2022). "35 Years of Efforts to Address Mental Illness on New York Streets". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 20, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
21.  "Mental Health Involuntary Removals" (PDF). Office of the Mayor of New York City. November 28, 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 23, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
22.  Kanu, Hassan (December 8, 2022). "New York plan for forced 'removal' of mentally ill tests limits of the law". Reuters. Archived from the original on July 10, 2023. Retrieved July 10, 2023.

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Overlooked No More: Joyce Brown, Whose Struggle Redefined the Rights of the Homeless

She successfully challenged her involuntary commitment to Bellevue Hospital in 1987, setting a precedent for homeless people that remains relevant today.

Joyce Brown in 1988. She had just been released from Bellevue Hospital with help from the New York Civil Liberties Union.Credit...Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times

By Sam Roberts

May 1, 2025

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

Joyce Brown’s New York minute lasted longer than most. A onetime secretary, Brown became homeless in 1986 and began camping on a heating grate on Second Avenue and 65th Street in Manhattan.

A year or so passed before she was picked up by city officials, involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital — where she was declared mentally ill — and forcibly given medication. Brown, who was better known as Billie Boggs, was the first homeless person to become the focus of Mayor Edward I. Koch’s newly expanded initiative to address the increasing visibility of homelessness and untreated mental illness on the streets.

But, as she would later say in interviews, the city chose “the wrong one.” Unlike the dozen or so other people who would face similar fates, she said she knew her rights, and she would begin exercising them the very next day.

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What followed was a landmark lawsuit centered on mental health, civil liberties and the involuntary psychiatric treatment of homeless people. “I’m not insane,” Brown would say. “Just homeless.”

Before long, Brown was lofted from the pavement to prominence, with a whirlwind of interviews on talk and news programs.

By the time Brown died of a heart attack on Nov. 29, 2005, at 58, she had long been forgotten.

But the repercussions of her transitory fame still echo on the city’s sidewalks and subways, as Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have introduced their own initiatives to address homelessness in New York, including involuntarily hospitalizing people in psychiatric crisis.

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Brown at a news conference at Bellevue in December 1987, the year she was involuntarily committed.Credit...Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Joyce Patricia Brown was born on Sept. 7, 1947, in Elizabeth, N.J., the youngest of six children, most of whom had been born in South Carolina and Florida.

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Her father, William Brown, told census enumerators in 1950 that he was unemployed. Her mother, Mae Blossom Brown, worked in a factory assembling luggage.

Some time after graduating from high school, Joyce Brown worked as a secretary for the Elizabeth Human Rights Commission, where she may have learned a thing or two about her own constitutional privileges. She also worked as a clerk for Elizabeth’s mayor at the time, Thomas G. Dunn, and for Thomas & Betts, an electrical equipment manufacturer, according to a death notice from Nesbitt Funeral Home in Elizabeth.

By 18, though, she was addicted to cocaine and heroin and was stealing money from her mother. Her mother died in 1979, which, her relatives said, might have sparked a further downward spiral emotionally.

By 1985, she had lost her job. She took turns living with her sisters in New Jersey and was treated briefly in clinics and hospitals. Her sisters’ efforts to help her resulted in arguments, and in 1986 she moved to Manhattan, where she made her home on the sidewalk near a Swensen’s ice cream parlor on the Upper East Side, urinating and defecating outdoors nearby.

She adopted the name Billie Boggs, a twisted homage to Bill Boggs, a television host on WNEW (now WNYW), with whom she had become enraptured.

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To some neighbors and regular passers-by, she became a New York fixture, the kind you don’t find in the guidebooks; they would converse with her about the news. To others, she was a menace — cursing and shouting racial epithets, particularly at Black men, and even punching people.

Her sisters sought to have her hospitalized. But doctors said she did not present a danger to herself and released her.

On Oct. 12, 1987, after she had been monitored for months under a Koch administration strategy known as Project HELP (the initials stood for Homeless Emergency Liaison Project) — intended to remove severely mentally ill homeless people from Manhattan’s streets and forcibly provide them with medical and psychiatric care — she was taken to the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital, where she was admitted and injected with a tranquilizer and an anti-psychotic drug.

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Brown in 1987 with Norman Siegel, left, who was the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union at the time and was one of the lawyers assigned to her case. Credit...Ruby Washington/The New York Times

The next day, according to a 1988 article in New York magazine, she called the New York Civil Liberties Union from a pay phone at the hospital. Norman Siegel, the organization’s executive director, was one of the lawyers assigned to her case. In court, a Bellevue psychiatrist presented a diagnosis of “chronic paranoid schizophrenia.”

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That night, one of her sisters recognized her from a courtroom sketch on the TV news.

That image was in stark juxtaposition to a photograph produced by her family, which showed a smiling Brown, wearing a red dress and gold earrings as she was being hugged by a man in a tuxedo with a pink bow tie, her sisters smiling into the camera nearby.

“This used to be my sister,” one of the sisters told Newsday. “This used to be us.”

A State Supreme Court judge ruled that Brown was “not unable to care for her essential needs” and ordered that she be released, but she remained at Bellevue while the city appealed the decision. The city won the appeal, but after a subsequent appeal by Brown’s lawyers, a judge ruled that she could not be forcibly medicated. That appeal was dropped when Bellevue released Brown, saying there was no point in her staying if she could not receive the hospital’s care. She had spent a total of 84 days there.

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Brown in 1989. Before she became homeless, she worked as a secretary for the Human Rights Commission in Elizabeth, N.J., which some believe is how she learned about civil liberties.Credit...Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

She soon evolved into a media star, a symbol of justice who, her lawyers said, presented herself in her lucid and articulate interviews as a more or less rational example of urban bivouacking who was, she said, “under surveillance” for months “like I was a criminal.”

“In a civilized society you don’t just go around picking up people against their will and bringing them to the hospital when they’re sane just because of a mayor’s program,” she told Morley Safer for a 1988 segment of the CBS News program “60 Minutes.” “All of this is political. I am a political prisoner because of Mayor Koch.”

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In the same segment, Mayor Koch insisted that defecating on the street was “bizarre” and said that Brown’s ability to speak articulately on camera demonstrated the efficacy of her hospitalization and the medication she had been given.

That year Brown also appeared on “The Phil Donahue Show,” after being outfitted from Bloomingdale’s, and delivered a lecture to a Harvard Law School forum in which she offered “a street view” of homelessness. Book and film offers flooded the offices of the New York Civil Liberties Union. The Associated Press called her “the most famous homeless person in America.” At his Moscow Summit with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, in 1988, President Ronald Reagan invoked her case as an example of freedom in contrast to Moscow’s policy of detaining political dissidents by claiming they were mentally ill.

“Rather than talking about me, why doesn’t the president assist me in getting permanent housing?” Brown was quoted as saying.

In the wake of Brown’s case, Project HELP faced public scrutiny and criticism. The program’s momentum stalled, and it was eventually discontinued. Brown’s lawsuit continues to serve as a precedent in debates over mental health, homelessness and civil liberties.

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After Brown was released from Bellevue, she worked for a time as a receptionist in the office of the New York Civil Liberties Union.Credit...Chester Higgins Jr/The New York Times

After Brown was released, she worked briefly as a secretary for the civil liberties union. But she quit because, she said, she didn’t like the job.

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“The spunkiness that I had always admired dissipated,” Siegel said of her in an interview.

She put on weight; her gait slowed; she might have been medicated again for a while. Around 1991, she moved into a supervised group home for formerly homeless women, but she also returned to the streets to panhandle, saying that her sisters had delayed forwarding her more than $8,000 in Social Security checks. She continued to live on $500 a month in disability pay and avoided the press.

When Brown was initially released from Bellevue, it was against the recommendation of two dissenting State Supreme Court justices. “We may be approaching the time,” they wrote, “when the problem of the homeless will be confronted with sincere and realistic attitudes and resources.”

“Now,” Siegel said, “35 years later, the hopes of the dissenting justices have unfortunately still not materialized.”