Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, Fixed Fights, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing
By Sean Nam (Foreword by Carlos Acevedo) ‧ Release Date: May 23, 2023
Handsome, brash, and flashy, the lightweight southpaw Tyrone Everett was one of the hottest names to emerge during the fervent Philadelphia boxing scene of the 1970s. But his seemingly unstoppable ascent to superstardom came to an abrupt and gruesome halt on the morning of May 26, 1977, on the second floor bedroom of a row home on Federal Street in South Philadelphia. Only twenty-four years old, Everett was discovered dead with a bullet in his head delivered by his girlfriend, Carolyn McKendrick. On the kitchen table were thirty-nine sealed bags of heroin, primed for distribution. The lone witness to the shooting was a gay, cross-dressing drug dealer who, depending on the source, may have been caught in bed with Everett. McKendrick, who claimed she had been repeatedly abused by Everett, would end up serving a prison sentence, but for years the scuttlebutt on the streets of South Philadelphia suggested there were reasons to doubt the official story.
Even for a sport as fundamentally wedded to the sad and sordid as boxing, the untimely death of Tyrone Everett stands out for its head-scratching irresolution and sorrow. In Murder on Federal Street, journalist and debut author Sean Nam sheds light on Everett’s grim last days, clearing up long-held misconceptions, raising new questions, and, along the way, offering revelatory information, including Everett’s entanglement with the Black Mafia, the harrowing criminal consortium that controlled the dope trade in South Philadelphia during the ’70s.
Nam also parses one of the most infamous miscarriages inside the ring, one that continues to trigger heated debates among hard-core fans: the 1976 lightweight title fight at the Spectrum in Philadelphia between Everett and Alfredo Escalara that took place just six months before Everett’s death. Everett, to the eternal confoundment of the hometown crowd, lost by split decision. Nam shows how the shoddy proceedings of that night were almost certainly the result of a carefully deliberated frame-up. Indeed, whatever walk of life he was on, Everett was seemingly star-crossed at every turn. As award-winning writer Carlos Acevedo (Sporting Blood, The Duke) notes in an astute foreword to the book, Everett suffered from the “crooked overlap” between corruption in the streets and in boxing.
Deeply researched and vividly reported, Murder on Federal Street weaves together racial politics, urban history, and sociology to situate Everett in the wider context of a tumultuous era, one marked by civil rights strife and economic depression. The book also takes pains to show how Everett measured up to his Philadelphian colleagues (Bennie Briscoe, Stanley “Kitten” Hayward, Matthew Saad Muhammad, Bobby “Boogaloo” Watts, Eugene “Cyclone”, et al.) in a bustling boxing culture now regarded as one the last great regional renaissances in American prizefighting. Interviews conducted with key figures—from Everett’s younger brother to his promoter, J Russell Peltz—help flesh out the life of a memorable fighter whose name has been obscured—and distorted—by time.
Murder on Federal Street is a stirring, true-crime account of a modern-day Icarus, whose ambition led him toward a path of distinction but also ultimately his downfall.
