When I was young I thought, "I am bad! When I grow up I am going to be a gangster like Al Capone or Bumpy Johnson." I never thought about being a gentleman. I heard through the grapevine about guys like Frank Miller and Herman Fontaine who controlled the numbers racket. I also heard tales of loan sharks who broke kneecaps or took personal property and for collateral if a borrower couldn't afford to pay the money they got into debt for. My first encounter with gangsters was the street gangs now referred to as gang-bangers by sociologists and tele-journalists alike. We used to fight rival members of so-called gangs which lived in one of the city's five housing projects. The Bennett Homes rumbled against my crew, the East Side Press. On the west end of town, the William Penn Projects fought against The McCafferty Village Boys, usually over girls. And in middle town, the Lamokin Village or the LV, as it was called, fought it out with the Highland Gardens or the gang from the Fairgrounds.
I recall as a young boy, gentlemen older than me who were always accompanied by the most beautiful women on their arm. They drove the biggest cars and wore the finest threads that money could buy. They were the Black Mafia and I idolized them and tried to mimic their every move.
The way they walked, talked and dressed impressed me so much that I could hardly wait to grow up to be just like them. The Black Mafia consisted of a boss, an underboss, a capo and lieutenants that governed over the ranks of soldiers who were managed by a captain or skipper. There were different factions or families and a commission or body of bosses that decided how the whole outfit would be governed.
My next experience came when, as a teen-ager, I used to run numbers. Of course, I didn't know what I was carrying on the little slips of paper. All I knew was that I wanted to earn my own money. When I asked my parents for money they almost always said, "No, we don't have any extra money this week, Son." They were forced to budget their meager finances which had to cover food and the water and electric bills, rent and other daily living expenses. Our family had grown very quickly from just me as an only child to four children. Then from six we became eight kids until my immediate family reached its peak when I was the eldest of ten children, six boys and four girls. So, when I was asked to take some papers with numbers scribbled on them to Mr. Jones, by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Green would pay me, I jumped at the opportunity without asking any questions.
Suspicions began to arise when the cops would raid the houses I made my routine visits to. Usually, though a stack of cash had the amazing power to get cases thrown out of court or mysteriously make paperwork disappear conveniently before a racketeer's case was tried. Those gentlemen were the role models of real-life gangsters who engaged in very civil and polite conversations with other gentlemen. They seldom lost their tempers because a gentleman is never violent but smart enough to hire someone else to handle the messy work for him. Work which often included violence, extortion, and whenever necessary, the need to lay somebody down for a long night's sleep.
It was only business. The black mob of my youth didn't differ much from the legitimate companies I came to work for later in life. If someone belonged to the outfit they followed a hierarchy, were held accountable for their actions and represented the family they belonged to with dignity, loyalty and a sense of pride. Everybody looked out for one another in those days. This was especially important when renegade crooks tried to muscle in on the family's action without following the proper protocol.
Today, things have changed and what I did not know then I am humbled to say I have lived to discover that all that the gangster's lifestyle is depicted to be by the media who cash in off of "gangster-rap", much of it full of derogatory comments about women as well as the public's perception of that lifestyle as being somehow glamorous is non comparable to living a productive citizen. To the next generations who subscribe to magazines like XXL or the Source and listen to rap music that glamorize the gangster life I assure you it is nothing like what really happens in reality. Often times the powers that be in entertainment and television depict the two in stereotyped roles. This is often hard or impossible to discern because after all this is big business where image is everything. Some of the original gangsters are now doctors, lawyers, scholars and politicians through the lives of their children and descendants. Their legacy lives only in the imagination of those who characterize them today in tales of murder and mayhem or via the songs that can be heard daily across the airwaves of ones favorite radio station.
Likewise, it is ironic that some of today's professing gangsters came through the lineage of those reputed to be gentlemen in society. For instance, I wonder how many people know that Alfonse "Scar-Face" Capone was the son of hard working immigrants from the Ellis Island exodus who operated a legitimate business when they first came to this county. The syndicate and underworld of today, one would think, does not advertise or record themselves in studios to be blared across radios all over America. If real gangsters did this there would be no need for law enforcement to gather intelligence. Then, prosecutors would not have to earn living building cases against alleged organized crime if all they had to do was buy a compact disc or read a book in which all the explicit and juicy details were laid out.
Real gangsters, in my day would never expose themselves on recordings then pay a criminal defense attorney the proceeds from their illegal activities to defend them in a court of law.
And despite this fact, every popular rising gang-star in hip-hop music today wants to be the next "50-Cent". The gangsters of today would do well to realize that there is no longevity in crime. The ill gotten gains accumulated through much of their own blood, sweat and tears usually go to lawyers, bail bondsmen, prison commissaries, funeral parlors, hospitals and the law enforcement agencies or tax bureaus and district attorney's offices that seize their assets through forfeiture hearing then buy or sell them for pennies on the dollar. And yet the federal, state and local governments still consider them as drug traffickers or smugglers and pass legislation through sentencing guidelines to sentence them accordingly. The majority of so-called gangsters '' of today don't have anywhere near enough capital to invest in legitimate business entities and get out of the drug game.
Of course, each of us is free to choose our own path in life. We have been deluded somehow by a mindless media to believe that this gangster lifestyle is somehow in the pursuit of happiness, liberty and the American dream. However, if a young man or woman of African or Hispanic descent gets arrested and has to call home collect or they hustle to turn fifteen cents into a dollar then they are probably not a gangster in the true sense of the word to begin with. Here's a little secret I would like to share with all aspiring and would be gangsters.
It takes the guts and the grit of a true gangster to support the seed they bring into this world even when they refuse to sell drugs, in spite of the peer pressure or the deceitfulness of ill-gotten gain, because they realize the risks involved and that getting caught means that they will abandon their child or children not if but when they end up in prison if not another sad statistic.
It takes the courage and creativity of a true soldier to apply the street smarts they have acquired in the drug game to get off the broadways to destruction in order to walk the straight and narrow road less traveled and return to school for their GED or to attempt earning college degree. Often I hear people say that we as Americans should not be over in Iraq fighting a war that is not ours to fight but these same people fail to differentiate how we are dying and commit genocide in the wars that are fought daily in urban areas of blight and poverty where drugs are bought and sold. Children are born addicted, in poverty and to face a grim future of neglect and abuse. Of course, it is difficult having wads of cash one day and then suddenly applying for assistance because they have flipped the script and decided that they will no longer be part of the problem but rather part of the collective solution. I have witnessed young men who were just as addicted to the lifestyle of this sub-culture as the addicts they peddled their street pharmaceuticals to.
However, if they don't make the decision to change their lives then society and fate will. If not now then there may never come an opportunity to do so. Now, this very moment, is all we are guaranteed in life. Not to decide to take action is also a decision. Sometimes, we have a hard time distinguishing what's easy from what requires strength and courage. To pull a trigger and take the life of another human only requires the physical stamina that a boy of ten years of age can muster up. It also requires one to act impulsively and think later. Sadly though, when the act of murder is committed in our streets to prove that a man is a gangster there is little, if any, time to think.
A human life is ended right there on the spot and another life ends eventually within the perimeters of a little square foot area called a prison cell. It is a sad drama that is unfortunately all too familiar to us today as parents and American citizens. In some cases, life after a homicide may include visits from friends and family while in jail, mail on birthdays, and even yard, or block out. However, the cold hard reality is that in the final analysis anyone serving a life sentence for murder in Pennsylvania is going to spend the rest of his or her natural life locked up behind bars. People will be born and people will die within a lifer's family. Children will become adults and parents themselves. Divorce and remarriage is not uncommon at all. In other words, it may seem like the world revolved around them when they lived the gangster 'life but if they are the unfortunate soul who stands before the judge's bench when that dreaded sentence, "Life in Prison", is pronounced they will eventually change their view as the world continues to turn in spite of their absence.
But someone, undoubtedly will argue, "Man, I know plenty of hustlers who got their grind on, sold drugs until they got signed to a record label or started their own independent label or launched a clothing line; and now they are millionaire celebrities. " For those who formulate such thinking and defenses or rebuttals please consider the following problems with such irrational thinking. For anyone currently incarcerated within America's criminal justice system then they would know how much one makes as an inmate working anywhere in prison.
Just compare those who die in jail or end up doing life in prison to those who successfully got out of the drug game and lived to write a book or lyrics about their story. Just do the math and the answer becomes self explanatory. Of the magazines that are purchased by our young people today with the gangster turned gentleman featured on the cover and perpetuates the great deception that a life of crime pays that is enough to raise a red flag. Or one simply need look around their environment to see if there are any A&R reps, producers and publishers tearing down prison walls to find them. In the eyes of many, even their peers and significant others, they have simply ceased to exist.
The government name ascribed to them at birth when they were assigned a social security number by the same government has been converted to a number. They are now a product, and not the gangster, more less, the person they once thought they were. It does not seem to require a great deal of intelligence for one to chose between the life of a gangster and the life of a gentleman. Yet the strange truth is that it is a decision young man and woman has to wrestle with each day on a national, maybe even a global scale as our economy and political and religious leaders fail us miserably. If one is considering this question from a prison cell then maybe they have got a little bit of time to think it over and maybe they are still fortunate enough to decide what they really want to do with the rest of their natural lives before it is too late and they join the untold numbers who congregate in the prison yard of regret exchanging war stories of what they could have, should have and would have done if only they had one more chance.
Finally, we have come to the crossroad of decision to make a change or to remain the same want-to-be-gangster headed down a one way street that leads to a dead end. One must spend time to determine the steps it will take to achieve ones goals and the initiative it will require to put ones individual plan into action. Knowledge is only power if applied. Then at least one will have the knowledge at ones disposal to empower oneself to succeed. The power that we seek to make this vision a reality we already possess.
Oftentimes out of excitement we share our endeavors, ideas and good intentions with the wrong people. In so doing, both well meaning and sometimes folk out of jealousy will attempt to talk us out of our confidence because the bold demonstration of courage and creativity it takes to transform your life frightens them. It forces them either to examine their own lives and follow our example or in the alternative if they are comfortable in their complacency they will make every effort to hinder us.
Remember, people can either help us go forward or hold us back. There is no middle ground. So, you do wisely by achieving your desired level of success and then when someone asks you how you were converted from a gangster to a gentleman, you can do like I am doing today, Sell your game plan, and not tell your game plan! Now that's gangster!