On this date in 1989, the culture shifted.
Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing hit theaters across the country and peeled back the layers on race, heat, and pressure building in the streets of Brooklyn like never before. Starring Spike himself as Mookie the pizza man, the film dropped during a real hot summer, both literally and socially, and went on to rake in nearly $38 million at the box office, but what it gave us was worth way more than dollars.
Before Bed-Stuy was a name known worldwide for Biggie and Jay-Z, it was “Do or Die”, a block-by-block battleground of tension and survival. Spike brought the world right to the corner of Stuyvesant Avenue between Lexington and Greene, and gave America a front-row seat to what was really going on behind the headlines. This wasn’t just a movie, It was a mirror.
Do The Right Thing pulled up right after the Tawana Brawley case and the Central Park Five arrest, and just two months before the tragic killing of Yusef Hawkins in Bensonhurst. The city was on fire, literally and emotionally. Spike’s lens caught it all: the heat, the anger, the love, the music, the pride, the pain. From the boom box blasting Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” to the frozen stares across racial lines on the block, everything felt real because it was real.
The cast was a who’s who of future legends and certified icons: Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee brought gravitas, Bill Nunn gave us the unforgettable Radio Raheem, Samuel L. Jackson played the neighborhood’s voice of reason, and fresh-faced Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez made their big screen debuts. Even Spike’s sister, Joie Lee, stepped into her real-life role as Mookie’s younger sibling.
Do The Right Thing wasn’t just a movie; it was a message. And 36 years later, that message still rings loud and clear.