the ’hood. Her mother had moved her out to Pomona to get her out of the gang environment, and she now lived in close proximity to Y.T.S. Our visits went like clockwork, but eventually we grew tired of each other, so I took her off my list. For a short time I replaced Ayanna with Felencia, Tray Ball’s sister. This didn’t work out too well either, because she wanted me to stop gangbanging and I just wasn’t having it. I was not giving up my career for no female, so I ended up putting Tamu back on the list. As long as I got my visits and could keep my music, the Rock wasn’t shit.
In my cell on the Rock, I reread for the hundredth time
We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.
As I read on I felt the words seeping deeper into me, their power coursing through my body, giving me strength to push on. I was changing, I felt it. For once I didn’t challenge it or see it as being a threat to the established mores of the ’hood, though, of course, it was. Muhammad’s teachings corresponded with my condition of being repressed on the Rock. Never could I have been touched by such teachings in the street.
The prison setting, although repressive, was a bit too free. But on the Rock, the illusion of freedom vanished, and in its place was the harsh actuality of oppression and the very real sense of powerlessness over destiny. Because there was no shooting war to concentrate on, your worst enemy was easily replaced by the figure presently doing you the most harm. In prisons this figure is more often than not an American. An American who locks you in a cage, counts you to make sure you haven’t escaped, holds a weapon on you, and, in many instances, shoots you. Add to this the fact that most of us grew up in an eighty percent New Afrikan community policed—or occupied—by an eighty-five percent American pig force that is clearly antagonistic to any male in the community, displaying this antagonism at every opportunity by any means necessary with all the brute force and sadistic imagination they can muster.
It was quite easy then for Muhammad’s teachings to hit me in the heart. However, my attraction to the facts involving our national oppression was grounded in emotionalism, and eight years of evolutionary development in Crip culture could hardly be rolled back by one pamphlet and a few trips to Islamic services. But I did feel the strength. I called off the move on the Sixties after Tray Ball killed himself. Everyone asked why, but I really had no answer. I told them that we’d handle it in a little while.
Stagalee was my neighbor on the Rock; he and I would talk through a small hole in the wall. I sent him over the
“Cuz,” I said bending down so as to talk through the hole, “what you think ’bout that paper I sent over there?”
“I don’t know, some of these words too hard fo’ me, cuz. But I can see that this is some powerful shit.”
“Well, what you could catch, what did you think?”
“Cuz, really, I think Muhammad is some kind of terrorist or somethin’.”
“Stag, you trippin’. Muhammad ain’t no terrorist. Shit, Muhammad is down for us.”
“Who?” he asked, “the set?”
“Hell naw, nigga, black people!”
“Ah, cuz, fuck all that, ’cause soon he gonna be tellin’ us to stop bangin’ and shit—”
“Stag, Stag.” I tried to slow him down.
“Naw, cuz, I can’t see me being no Muslim. I just can’t see it. They be standing on corners selling pies and shit. Do you know how long one of us would live standin’ on a corner, not even in our ’hood? Monster, let me catch a Sissy, Muslim or not, and I’ma blow that nigga up!”
“I don’t know, homie, I just feel that there is something there.”
“Yeah, muthafucka, a bean pie!” Stag answered and broke out laughing.
“Stall it out, cuz,” I said, feeling myself getting angry.
“Monster, you ain’t thinkin’ ’bout being no Muslim, is you? Cuz, don’t do it. Muhammad cool and everythang, but cuz, you Monster Kody. Ain’t nobody gonna let you live in peace. Plus the set needs you, cuz. Here, cuz.”
Stag had rolled up the pamphlet and was pushing it through the hole.
“Naw, cuz, I ain’t thinkin’ ’bout turnin’ no Muslim. I’m just sayin’ that what Muhammad be stressin’ is real.”
“Right, right.”
“Well, I’ma step back and get some z’s. I’ll rap to you later. Three minutes.”
“Three minutes.”
I lay on my bed with the rolled-up pamphlet on my chest and thought about what Stag had said.
“You Monster Kody. Ain’t nobody gonna let you live in peace… . The set needs you…”
My young consciousness screamed back in an attempt to exert itself.
“Who
The words reverberated again and again.
“Nobody gonna let you live in peace…”
“
“Black men, black men, black men…”
“
I had no answer. The confusion gave me a headache. I knew that I was reaching a crossroad, but I didn’t know how to handle it. Should I accept it or reject it? In a perverted sort of way I enjoyed being Monster Kody. I lived for the power surge of playing God, having the power of life and death in my hands. Nothing I knew of could compare with riding in a car with three other homeboys with guns, knowing that they were as deadly and courageous as I was. To me, at that time in my life, this was power. It made me feel responsible for either killing someone or letting them live. The thought of controlling something substantial—like land—never occurred to me. The thought of responsibility for the welfare of my daughter or a nation, New Afrika, never crossed my mind. I was only responsible to my ’hood and my homeboys. Now I was being subjected to a wider reality than I had ever known.
Then I heard it. As I was struggling with this dilemma I grasped the point that Muhammad was trying to make.
“When you were born you were born black. That’s all. Then, later on, you turned Crip, dig?”
In this light I found clarity. But, I asked myself, what was Muhammad really asking of us? Did I have to be a Muslim to be black? I surmised that it was like being a Crip or a Blood, as opposed to being a hook or a civilian. Where I came from, in order to be down you had to be “in.” Did I have to be “in”—that is, a Muslim—to be down with blackness? Surely much thought and internal debate had to go into this issue.
My thing was this: I didn’t believe there was a God. I just had no faith in what I couldn’t see, feel, taste, hear, or smell. All my life I have seen the power of life and death in the hands of men and boys. If I shot at someone and I hit him and he died, who took his life? Me or God? Was it predestined that on this day at this time I would specifically push this guy out of existence? I never believed that. I believed that I hunted him, caught him, and killed him. I had lived in too much disorder to believe that there was an actual design to this world. So I had a problem with believing in anything other than myself.
My interest here was drawn by the militancy of Malcolm X and Muhammad, not by the spirituality of Islam. The first book I got was
I was subsequently taken off the Rock and put back in Unit Three, in company U-V. While attending school for my G.E.D., I met a brother named Walter Brown. Bro—who worked at Y.T.S. as a teacher but functioned better as a guiding light—had been a prisoner himself in the 1960s. He was stern but flexible and held great influence over most of us who were considered O.G.s. Brown was militant but responsible. Not to imply that militants are irresponsible, but Brown was specifically responsible for the upbringing of us—young, New Afrikan males. His degree of effectiveness can be measured by the fact that he was designated to “teach” parole classes. That gave him access to prisoners for one week, one hour a day, before they were paroled. This skimpy time frame could not possibly
