Help Get Clifford Glover’s Headstone

Hi, My name is Arlene Armstead, daughter of Darlene Armstead (Sister of 10yr old Clifford Glover).

 

On April 28th 1973, Clifford Glover was gunned down from the back by police officers in Jamaica Queens, New York. The authorities stated my young uncle and grandfather Add Armstead “were thugs” and “they fit the profile of 2 suspects they were looking for”.. No evidence or weapons were found. Officer Thomas Shea was acquitted on the account that the prosecutors presumed he was lying about what happened. He became the first police officer in New York City to ever be tried for murder while on duty.

48 years ago, my family’s lives changed forever. As if growing up poor & African American before the 80’s wasn’t hard enough. My family suffered threats for weeks and were treated by authorities as if the arrest and riots that followed were their fault.

 

Fast forward to 2021 , Clifford is still the youngest but wasn’t the last to be slain by an officer. After George Floyd, my Mom and I visited his gravesite (shown in photo) and while blowing up balloons my mother says :

 

Your Grandma Eloise was told not to put a tombstone or “they’d blow his n*gger a** out of the ground” and so she didn’t because she was scared but I always wanted to be the one to put it there for them.

 

I was so heartbroken and shocked by this information. Borough President Eric Adams said in an interview,

“The pathway of Shea’s bullet physically stopped when it hit Clifford Glover but the emotional pathway probably still continues to this day”. He’s right, it does.

 

Those two statements are the reason I started this GoFundMe. I’m hoping to share this with you to help my family place a tombstone at his burial site and ease some emotional pain from the day he was taken away from us. Thank you for taking the time out to read a piece of Clifford’s history he's gone but NEVER forgotten. Any donations are appreciated! ❤️