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Chapter 2

New York, 1971. I was seven years old and was getting a real taste of real life. When I was seven, I learned all about gang life, the real meaning of friendship, and the definition of poverty. I also learned about how to lean on family, the reality of being black in a world where the Black Panthers existed, and an introduction into what would become my lifelong passions. You don’t really know something is going to steal your heart until you give your heart to it. In a split-second decision, I would learn what planting a seed into someone’s life would mean.

Now there was never a time when New York didn’t have issues, but they were different back then. Gangs, for instance, were a whole different thing. Today’s gang mess is just horrible all the way around. Back then, it at least seemed there was a “code”, a purpose beyond just being feared and proving you were harder than the next fool. Don’t get me wrong, territory was still an issue. Each gang would lay claim to their blocks and defend them, but not with guns and random shootings. The innocent kid getting shot down through his or her bedroom window was unheard of, unimaginable.

Gangs were about territory. You and your group claimed an area of the streets. This micro community was controlled or managed by the gang leaders. Like a corporation, gangs had hierarchies like a CEO, an operation manager or COO, management, and then the workers. Everyone in the gang corporation had a job to do and a central purpose: protect our turf, our area, our corporation at any cost. The gang corporation also had a family aspect. Members of the gangs were generally folks in the area of the territory that either had no family or had family that did not care for them. You could always get love and respect while also learning about life from the gang’s perspective, from the gang corporation.

Two of my best friends in elementary school, Tony and Montgomery, both had uncles who were in gangs. The challenge to the gang corporation idea was that the folks in the gangs still lived in the projects and were still super poor. One of the major gangs in Brooklyn were in the projects that Jay-Z grew up in, the Marcy Projects. The members of the gangs and those they protected, still had to hustle and scrape for the basics of life. I remember visiting Tony’s house one day when his uncle wasn’t at home. I went over there with my dad because as a community, if we saw a problem with anyone, we would step in and help where we could. I remember my dad, asking Tony about his uncle, when was the last time he saw him, and if he had food to eat. Tony told my dad that he had food and that he was all right. I think we were both about six or seven years old at that time. I went into Tony’s kitchen to check on how much food he had. I opened the kitchen cabinets, and all I saw were cans and cans, stacked as high as the cabinet, of ALPO chunky dog food. No beans or soup, no rice or bread, no milk or butter in the refrigerator, just dog food, and Tony didn’t have a dog.

I learned that day what poor really meant. I understood how bad it was for people. You hustle or work a job. You are just barely getting by, and still, the best you can do is feed the kids you are responsible for dog food. This was real poverty.

Today, when I look back at how the Black Panther Party was portrayed as a gang, or a domestic terrorist group, it pisses me off. The Black Panther Party in reality was neither a gang, nor a terrorist group. They were simply a group that saw issues in the black community that the government couldn’t understand and wouldn’t contribute funds to correct. Instead of waiting for someone else to fix things, the Black Panthers created solutions. The Black Panther Party that I saw provided resources, information, and programs for underprivileged communities. In my community, the Black Panther Party fought for kids to have summer lunch programs in every community. They were not concerned about race when it came to the underprivileged, except for the fact that most of the underprivileged kids in the communities I knew about were the black kids.

The Black Panther Party also used the strength and intelligence of the members of the party to fight injustices. There was a case in my neighborhood where an elderly white lady caused a riot. When you walked out on the stoop, you could almost taste the smoke from the ashes of the fire that were set some time overnight. When walking to the corner store, it was not surprising to see a massive city bus overturned on the streets. We could hear the clang of metal from chains or crowbars, connecting from the fighting that took place overnight outside our windows. The violence every night, a reaction to the frustration, anger, and outrage of people over the civil injustices, again against the mostly black communities. My parents were afraid for us kids, just walking down our street to the corner store because anything could happen to us from the time we stepped on the stoop and down the stairs outside of the brownstone just trying to get to the store to buy whatever until we got back home.

A teenage black kid that the elderly lady knew from the neighborhood was just trying to make some extra cash. He asked his neighbors for work tasks and odd jobs that he could do for money. One of his customers was this elderly white lady who needed her basement cleaned up. She was elderly, her husband had passed away, and she was unable to clean up the junk in her basement by herself. The young man and the elderly woman came to an agreement that she would pay him for coming over to her house after school to clean and organize her basement. Since the elderly woman had troubles getting down her stairs, she told the young man that he didn’t have to come to her front door to access the basement but, instead, let himself into the basement after school by taking the stairs on the side of the house.

The boy came to the elderly woman’s home within the next couple of days and did as he was told. He took the stairs on the side of the elderly woman’s home down to the basement to let himself in. Unknown to the young man, the elderly woman became frightened by the noises, coming from her basement area and thought there must be a burglar, attempting to get into her home. The elderly woman called the police and told them someone was trying to break into her home by the basement. When the police arrived, they found the young man downstairs in the basement holding a broom. They didn’t ask him what he was doing down there. They shot the boy dead with the broom still in his hand. Them Jokers didn’t give him a chance to explain or try to arrest him by giving him a chance to put the broom down. They didn’t yell, “Put your hands up!” They saw a black boy in a white lady’s basement and, without remorse, shot him dead.

The city was in an uproar over this incident, mostly because everyone in the neighborhood knew the elderly woman gave the young man permission to work in her basement. The parents of the young man discussed the agreement with the elderly woman and gave their blessing for this young man to work for the elderly woman. The police department was so corrupt, even when the elderly lady came forward and admitted she forgot she gave the young man permission to work in her basement. They tried to simply ignore the situation. For more than a week, there were riots within the city. Buses were overturned, people were getting shot and killed. Emotions were running high while hope for a time of justice for the black community was damn near dead. That was until the Black Panther Party got involved. The Black Panther Party demanded and subsequently succeeded in getting this woman arrested for her part in the killing of an innocent black male. To the elderly woman’s credit, her personal guilt made her admit her wrongdoing. However, without the intervention of the Black Panther Party, this injustice would have been swept under the rug.

There are numerous stories about black people, especially black men, being harassed by police. I wish I could say times have changed since the sixties and seventies, but unfortunately, this is the shit that makes black people and real human beings disgusted with the police and the abuse of power. This is the shit that makes you sick to your stomach but also become hardened to the idea that this reality for so many. This is the shit that makes you shake your head, knowing it ain’t right, but this is the fight every day. The fight against the attack on black communities that continues today. It is like a stain on your favorite shirt. Try as you might, it never seems to go away. The difference today is that there aren’t organizations like the Black Panthers on a national level who, with a unified national mission, step in to find solutions for anyone, experiencing the attacks of injustices we see today.

One of the greatest things I saw the Blank Panther Party organize was the summer lunch program. This program was available in every community around Brooklyn, and I believe they covered almost all of the neighborhoods in and around New York City. This summer lunch program was so important to me because I believe my friend Montgomery would have died without it. Montgomery was one of my close friends who, like Tony, was severely poor. Montgomery used to come to school with an ashy face. He looked like he just took a bath but had no lotion all of the time. Montgomery would go days, wearing the same clothing, and he never had any money. During the summer, we would take lunch breaks and head over to the corner store. My mom gave me money, and I would share it with Montgomery to make sure he could get something with me that he would share with his little brother and sister. When the summer lunch program started with the Black Panthers, Montgomery had the opportunity to feed himself, his brother, and his sister at least once a day.

Being friends with Montgomery became one of my split-second decisions. In fact, it turned out Montgomery was the start of the journey to my passion. I remember being six or seven years old, watching the older kids playing basketball before, during, and after school. It was cool to watch, but at that time, I was a nerd and had more fun competing with my cousin Madeline to see who could get the best grades in school. I loved learning new things, even at six or seven years old. However, one day, Tony asked me why I wasn’t playing basketball with our friends. I told him I wasn’t truly interested in the game even though it looked kind of fun. Tony pushed me to ask Montgomery to teach me how to play because he was really good. Finally, my split-second decision: I agreed to go and learn how to play basketball from Montgomery.

Montgomery was excited to teach me how to play, but how and where he would teach me would be very unique. Montgomery was the oldest child of his mother’s as far as I knew. He had a younger brother and sister that he took care of. At six or seven years old, when school ended for the day, Montgomery had to go straight home to take care of his siblings. Seeing that Montgomery wore the same clothes every day and never had any lotion and barely had enough food to keep himself alive made seeing him go home and take care of two younger kids even worse. There was never any food in the house, so seeing him try to put something, anything together to care for them was just sad. We would practice playing basketball outside his house, close enough to make sure that if his brother and sister needed something, he was there to take care of them. I never saw Montgomery’s mom Monday through Sunday. To this day, I have no idea what his mother even looks like. I used to stay at his house with him to try to help him out. Montgomery saw his situation as normal, just like Tony, because at such a young age, the way they lived was all they knew. All they knew was p-o-v-e-r-t-y!

Montgomery, despite his home situation, was a great basketball teacher. I learned to play basketball because it was fun, playing with him and Tony. He broke down basketball in a kid’s way—the only way to learn is to do it. We would run drills, and I was learning while playing something he made fun. Montgomery and Tony would share the professional basketball teams and players they loved to watch play the game. Tony loved Clyde “the Glide,” Walt Frazier, and the New York Knicks was our team. I’d take any chance I could get to watch them on TV, and I would go play every day after school.

I remember going home after playing all day to my parents’ fighting each other all night. It would get so violent that we would have to go stay at my aunt’s house for days on end. My parents would cut into each other, and both would be so drunk that they didn’t care about us. When they got in their moods to fight, we spent a lot of time, looking out for the police on our street because the neighbors would call them on my parents. Their fights would get so loud and physical.

In 1971, Julius “Dr. J” Erving joined the American Basketball Association (ABA) to become the star player on the Virginia Squires professional basketball team. He couldn’t get into the NBA because they had a rule at that time that in order to be drafted, you had to be out of high school at least four years. I began really focusing on basketball and watching Dr. J. play was like a dream I wanted for myself. Dr. J. was originally from New York, and he did some superhuman amazing things with the basketball. His hands were so big, he could hold a basketball in his hands like it was a tennis ball. This amazing basketball player became my idol, and I would follow his every move and career for the rest of my life.

To this day, I truly think that if it wasn’t for Dr. J, I wouldn’t have survived, coming up in New York. My friends, as they got older, began to get involved in more and more gang activities. There were so many gangs in New York. We had the warlords, the disciples, the young bloods, and the five percenters. There were female versions of each of these gangs as well. I remember walking out of school one day and seeing one girl gang, fighting another girl gang while the boys of one gang were fighting the other boys with chains. It was bloody and violent as hell. That was not the pathway for me. I could have decided to go the path of gang life. I mean, I was already running away from the violence in my own home. I could have easily gone the way of the gangs. Unlike my friends, my destiny and my seconds were happily hitched to basketball.