Eddie Tate
Eddie Tate: August 4th 2006 in SF County Jail, and in his house-box February 21st 2016
Eddie Tate: August 4th 2006 in SF County Jail, and in his house-box February 21st 2016
On the 20th of December 2016, I was in the Phoenix airport waiting on a delayed flight and leafing through headlines when I read “Two people shot and killed in the Mission”. It was the story of the killing of Eddie Tate and his partner, latter named as Lindsay McCollum.
“My nickname is “Tennessee” because I was born in Tennessee. I came out to San Francisco right before the earthquake in ’89,” Eddie Tate told me on 10 Oct 2011.
To a limited degree I knew Eddie “Tennessee” Tate. I first took photos of Mr. Tate in “Old Bruno”, the SF County Jail closed in August of 2006, in part due to a lawsuit brought by 7 prisoners including Mr. Tate. In 2011, I saw him again in “Old Bruno’s” replacement, and recorded a few stories of his life.
Mr. Tate grew up in Tennessee and in his own words “was one of them that … lived so far up in the hills of Tennessee that I hardly ever got to go to school. And then when I went to school I was such a pain, and everything that I’d make a straight F, and they would pass me just to get rid of me. What education I got, I got through the prison system.”
As a hyperactive infant his dad put alcohol in his bottle to “knock me out, to get me to go to sleep… and I’ve been on some substance or another my entire life.” But in 2011 when I recorded him, he had been clean for 16 months and was using the time in County to get his high school diploma and take whatever other classes were on offer.
For the next few years I would see Eddie Tate now and again while photographing on the streets. The conversations were never long, one or both us rushing someplace, but he seemed to have settled in to a life outside.
Then in February of last year I again ran into Mr. Tate on the corner of Harrison and Division Streets in San Francisco. He was living in a large wooden box on wheels and, but for the box, was homeless. Working on bikes and clearly the go to person for a number of the homeless folks along Division/13th Street, Mr. Tate was proud of what he had including the wide screen TV and video game. But he was prouder still that he had been out of jail for four years and counting. No some accomplishment for someone homeless, and with his rap sheet.
The City had forced many of the Division Street residents to move there during Super Bowl week and then in March decided the homeless again had worn out their welcome and moved them on. Eddie Tate was one of the last to leave and I lost track of him.
Perhaps in October 2016, on Division St, at Harrison, I ran into him again. He had just scored some new cloths: a couple pairs of pants, a shirt and underwear. I gave him a couple of pair of socks and asked where he was living now. It was perhaps 10 blocks away and while I had every intention to go visit, somehow it never happened.
By 20 December when I read of Eddie Tate’s murder, he and his partner had moved at least once more to 16th Street and Shotwell, were they were shot to death at around 8:43 pm on the 19th of December 2016. Eddie Tate was 51 years old.
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