necessary funds to keep up maintenance on these new buildings. But the buildings that had once been the hope of urban renewal were already, a short forty years later, ready for demolition again.
A mid all this uncertainty, I finally heard from J.T. He called with the news that his promotion was official. He asked if I still wanted to join him in meetings with some citywide BK leaders.
“They’re actually interested in talking with you,” he said, surprise in his voice. “They want someone to hear their stories, about jail, about their lives. I thought they might not want to talk because of what’s going on”-he meant the recent gang arrests-“but they were up for it.”
I told J.T. that I’d been talking to my professors about winding down my field research and finishing the dissertation. I had completed all my classes and passed all my exams, and I was now focused on writing my study about the intricate ways in which the members of a poor community eked out a living. Bill Wilson had arranged for me to present my research at various academic conferences, in hopes of attracting a teaching position for me. My academic career probably started the day I met J.T., but the attention of established sociologists made me feel as though I had just now reached the starting gate. Katchen had completed her applications to law school, and both of us were expecting to leave Chicago soon.
There were other factors, too: Many of the tenants in Robert Taylor felt betrayed by me, cops were warning me not to hang out, and now the projects themselves were about to come down. All this combined to make it pretty clear that I wouldn’t be spending time in the projects much longer.
J.T. reacted dismissively, saying I shouldn’t even think about leaving now. “We’ve been together for the longest,” he said. “If you really want to know what my organization is about, you got to watch what happens. We’re on the move, we’re only getting bigger, and you need to see this.”
J.T. wouldn’t take no for an answer. There was something child-like about his insistence, as if pleading with someone not to abandon him. He laughed and chatted on spiritedly about the future of the BKs, about his own ascension, about the “great book” I would someday write about his life.
I tried to take it all in, but the sentences started to bleed into one another. I simply sat there, phone to my ear, mumbling “Uh-huh” whenever J.T. took a breath. It was time to acknowledge, if only to myself, exactly what I’d been doing these past several years: I came, I saw, I hustled. Even if J.T. wouldn’t allow me to move on just yet, that’s what I was ready to do.
Not that this acknowledgment of my inner hustler gave me any peace. I was full of unease about my conduct in the projects. I had actively misled J.T. into thinking that I was writing his biography, mostly by never denying it. This might have been cute in the early days of our time together, but by now it was purely selfish not to tell him what my study was really about. I tended to retreat from conflict, however. This was a useful trait in obtaining information. But as my tenure in the projects was ending, I was noticing the darker side of avoidance.
With other tenants I played the role of objective social scientist, however inaccurate (and perhaps impossible) this academic conceit may be. I didn’t necessarily feel that I was misrepresenting my intentions. I always told people, for instance, that I was writing up my findings into a dissertation. But it was obvious that there was a clear power dynamic and that they held the short end of the stick. I had the choice of ending my time in the projects; they did not. Long after I was finished studying poverty, they would most likely continue living as poor Americans.
EIGHT. The Stay-Together Gang
One July day in 1995, I drove to Calumet Heights, a neighborhood that lay just across the expressway from Chicago’s South Side. In an otherwise run-down working-class area, Calumet Heights stood out for its many middle- and upper-class black families who took great pride in the appearance of their houses. The neighborhood was also home to several of the most powerful gang leaders in the Midwest, including Jerry Tillman and Brian Jackson of the Black Kings. In a practice common among gang leaders, Jerry and Brian had each bought a big suburban home for their moms, and they both spent considerable time there themselves.
Today they were throwing a BK pool party at Brian’s house; Jerry was supplying the food and beer. Brian lived in a long, white, Prairie-style home built in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright. Parked on the lawn were a dozen expensive sports cars, which belonged to the BK senior leadership, and a lot of lesser sports cars parked along the curb, which belonged to the junior leadership. A bunch of young men stood around idly on the lawn, caps shading their eyes from the sun. These were BK foot soldiers, in charge of guarding their bosses’ cars.
I parked my own rusting Cutlass at the curb and approached the house. I spotted Barry, one of J.T.’s foot soldiers, standing next to J.T.’s purple Malibu. He nodded me toward the house’s rear entrance.
J.T. had been meeting regularly with Chicago’s highest-ranking BK leaders for some time before he invited me to this party. I was excited. I had envisioned half-naked women sitting poolside and rubbing the bosses with sunscreen while everyone passed around marijuana joints and cold beer.
What I saw for real was far less glamorous. True to stereotype, there was an expensive stereo blasting rap music through a dozen speakers and some big crystal statues of wild animals, and a few people were indeed rolling joints. But overall the place looked as worn as an old fraternity house. The leather couches were badly stained, and so were the carpets. I found out later that the gangsters’ mothers felt lonely in the suburbs and told their sons they preferred living in the ghetto, with their friends. Nor were there any half-naked women to be seen, or any women at all. It was a members-only party, and seemingly a pretty tight-knit affair. J.T. had told me that these gatherings were held every few weeks, more often if there were pressing matters to discuss. Although the events were mostly social, he said, the gang leaders inevitably wound up talking business as the evening wore on: Which wholesaler was offering the best and cheapest cocaine? Which neighborhood gangs were acting up and needed discipline?
I bumped into J.T. as he came out of the kitchen. We shook hands and hugged; he seemed to be in a good mood. Small groups of men were congregating in the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room; I could hear the roar of computer games in a back room. Everyone seemed relaxed and at ease.
J.T. brought me over to a group of men and introduced me as “the Professor,” which prompted laughs all around. Most of the men were large, their potbellies perhaps the best evidence of a capacity for self-indulgence. They were all tattooed and wore showy gold and silver jewelry. As I would find out later, every one of them had been jailed on a felony at least once.
J.T. hadn’t told me exactly how he’d explained my presence to his colleagues and superiors. I just had to trust him. No one seemed even remotely threatened-but then again I wasn’t walking around with a tape recorder or asking intrusive questions. In fact, I didn’t need to. The men would randomly come up to me and start talking about themselves and, especially, the history of the Black Kings. “In the 1960s, gangs were leading a black revolution,” one of them said. “We’re trying to do the same.” Another took a similar tack, echoing what J.T. had told me many times: “You need to understand that the Black Kings are not a gang; we are a community organization, responding to people’s needs.”
One of the men put his arm around me warmly and escorted me into the dining room, where a poker game was being played. There must have been thirty thousand or forty thousand dollars in bills on the table. My guide introduced himself as Cliff. He was a senior BK, in his late forties, who acted as a sort of consigliere for the gang, providing advice to the up-and-coming leaders. “All right, folks, listen up!” he said, trying to gain the poker players’ attention. They glanced up briefly. “This is our new director of communications,” Cliff said. “The Professor is going to help us get our word out. Make sure you all talk with him before you leave.”
I shuddered. J.T. was sitting on the couch with a beer in his hand. He just smiled and shrugged. Two thoughts ran through my mind. On the one hand, I was impressed that J.T. had the confidence to invite me and nominate me for such an exalted position (although part of me felt like I was on the receiving end of a surreal practical joke; perhaps they were just testing my mettle?). On the other hand, knowing that these men managed an organized criminal enterprise, I was scared that I was falling into a hole I could never dig myself out of. I had repeatedly tried to distance myself from the gang, or at least stake out my neutrality. But J.T.’s warning from years earlier rang just as true today: “Either you’re with me or you’re with someone else.” In this world there was no such thing as neutral, as much as the precepts of my academic field might state otherwise.
