over to the Boys & Girls Club and introduced me to Autry Harrison, one of the club’s directors.
Autry was about thirty years old, six foot two, and thin as a rail. He wore large, round glasses too big for his face and greeted me with a big smile and a handshake. “You got any skills, young man?” he asked brightly.
“I can read and write, but that’s about it,” I said.
Autry led me into the poolroom and yelled at a dozen little kids to come over. “This young man is going to read a book to you,” he said, “and then I’d like you to talk about it with him.” He whispered to me, “Many of their parents just can’t read.”
From that day forward, Autry was happy to have me at the club. I quickly got to know him well. He had grown up in Robert Taylor, served in the army, and, like a few caring souls of his generation, returned to his neighborhood to work with young people. Recently he’d gone back to school to study criminal justice at Chicago State
University and was working part-time there as a research assistant to a professor who was studying gangs. Autry was married, with a three-year-old daughter. Because of his obligations at the club and at home, he told me, he sometimes had to drop classes and even take a leave of absence from school.
In his youth Autry had made his fair share of bad choices: he’d been a pimp and a gang member, for instance, and he had engaged in criminal activity. He’d also suffered the effects of project living- he’d been beaten up, had his money stolen, watched friends get shot and die in a gang war.
Autry sometimes sat for hours, leaning back in a chair with his skinny arms propped behind his head, telling me the lessons he’d learned from his days as a pimp. These included “Never sleep with your ladies,” “Always let them borrow money, because you got the power when they owe you shit,” and “If you do sleep with them, always, always, always wear a condom, even when you’re shaking their hand, because you just never know where they’ve been.”
We got along well, and Autry became a great source of information for me on how project residents viewed the gang. The club, it turned out, wasn’t a refuge only for children. Senior citizens played cards there, religious folks gathered for fellowship, and social workers and doctors provided free counseling and medical care. Just like many of the hustlers I’d been speaking to, Autry felt that the gang did help the community-giving away food, mediating conflicts, et cetera-but he also stressed that the community spent a lot of time “mopping up the gang’s mistakes.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They kill, sometimes for the most stupid reasons,” he said. “ ‘You spoke to my girlfriend…’ ‘You walked down the sidewalk in my territory…’ ‘You looked at me funny- That’s it, I’ll kill you!’ ”
“So it’s not always fights about drugs?”
“Are you kidding me?” He laughed. “See, the gang always says it’s a business, and it is. But a fifteen-year-old around here is just like any fifteen-year-old. They want to be noticed. They don’t get any attention at home, so they rebel. And at the club we’re always mop-ping up their mistakes.”
“How does that work?”
“Well, we settle shit when it gets out of hand. Like the other day-Barry knifed somebody from a different gang because the other boy was hanging out near his building. Just for hanging out! So I called my friend Officer Reggie, and we let the two fight it out.”
“Fight it out? I thought you said you settled it.”
“We did. That’s how you settle shit sometimes. Let boys fight each other-no guns, no knives. Then you tell them, ‘Okay, you-all see that you can fight without killing each other?’ ”
Autry told me that the club played a broad peacekeeping role in the community. He and other staff members worked with school authorities, social workers, and police officers to informally mediate all kinds of problems, rather than ushering young men and women into the criminal-justice system. The police regularly brought shoplifters, vandals, and car thieves to the club, where Autry and the others would negotiate the return of stolen property as well as, perhaps, some kind of restitution.
I never saw any of these mediations in person. Autry just told me about them after the fact. It didn’t seem as if he were lying, but perhaps bragging a little. He told me that he even invited rival gang leaders to the club late at night to resolve their conflicts. My conversations with Autry were a bit like some of my conversations with J.T.: it was not always easy to independently verify their claims.
One busy morning Autry surprised me by asking if I wanted to come to a private meeting at the club later that day. He explained that a few neighborhood organizations were planning a midnight basketball league.
It would be open to all teenagers, but the real goal was to attract gang members. Local community leaders liked the idea of getting unruly teens to play basketball at the club instead of spending their nights on the street. For the young men, the price of admission was to sit through a motivational speech by a pastor or some other speaker before each game. In exchange, the teenagers would get free sneakers, T-shirts, and the chance to win a trophy.
Autry’s work would soon command wide attention, when the Clinton administration used the Chicago midnight basketball league as a model for a nationwide movement. In reality there was only anecdotal evidence that the leagues reduced teenage violence, but in a climate where few programs were successful on any level, policy makers were eager to showcase an uplifting idea like midnight basketball.
When I showed up at the club that afternoon, Autry was sitting at a table bearing coffee and doughnuts, a handmade sign behind him on the wall: MIDNIGHT BASKETBALL MEETING IN CONFERENCE ROOM.
“Welcome, Sudhir,” Autry said, beaming. “Everyone is inside.” He mentioned the names of several tenant leaders, pastors, a Nation of Islam official, an ex-police officer. The basketball league was turning into a big deal for Autry. It represented his entree into the elite group of community leaders, whom Autry very much wanted to join.
“You sure they won’t mind if I sit in?” I asked.
“Not at all,” Autry said, shuffling some papers. “And the niggers won’t mind either.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Man, we got them all!” He rubbed his hands together excitedly.
“We got all the leaders-Disciples, Black Kings, MCs, Stones. Everyone is coming!”
“You didn’t tell me they’d be there,” I said meekly.
Autry could tell I was concerned. “Don’t worry. Just sit in the back and keep your mouth shut. I’ll say you’re with me. But help me with these first.” He handed me three sets of flyers that needed to be passed out to everyone. One of them was titled “Rules for Buy-In,” which specified the mandatory donation of each sponsoring “organization.” Each gang was expected to contribute five thousand dollars and field four teams of ten players. The money would be used to pay for the referees, uniforms, and the cost of keeping the gym open at night.
“You’re getting the gangs to pay for this?” I asked. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“What would you rather that they do with their money?”
“Good point,” I said. “But something doesn’t feel right about it.”
“I see.” Autry put down the flyers and pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Two thousand niggers in this project making money by selling that poison, killing each other, killing everyone who buys it. We can’t do nothing about it. And now we tell them that if they want to be selling that shit, they have to give back. They have to step up. And you look at us funny? It’s them you should be asking these questions to.”
“I would if I knew them,” I said.
“Don’t lie to me, nigger.”
Autry knew I was on good terms with J.T., although I’d been cagey about the extent of our relationship. Many times he’d told me I needed to have the courage to ask J.T. more difficult questions about the gang, even if it would upset him. “At least you can ask one of these niggers the question,” he said. “And he’ll be here tonight.” Autry let out a loud laugh and went outside to smoke his cigarette.
Shit. It would be the first time I’d seen J.T. in several weeks. I was usually careful to ask his permission before attending any event involving gangs, both to show respect and because I needed a patron. Otherwise, as he always told me, my personal safety couldn’t be guaranteed.
I decided to wait outside the club to talk to J.T. when he arrived. Autry offered to wait with me. We stood on the sidewalk and watched the busy, noisy traffic along Federal Street. The club sat in the shadow of a project high-rise. You could hear people yelling from the sidewalk up to the open windows-there was no intercom system-and you could smell the smoke of marijuana and menthol cigarettes.
