I took a shower and thought about the rest of my day. I had books to read, papers to write, some laundry to do. But none of that seemed very significant. I tried to sleep, but the rest was fitful. I couldn’t get the previous night out of my head. I thought of calling someone, but whom? I wasn’t close with any other members of Wilson’s research team-and they, too, would probably be upset to find out what I’d done. I realized that if I truly wanted to understand the complicated lives of black youth in inner-city Chicago, I had only one good option: to accept J.T.’s counsel and hang out with people. So I headed back to the Lake Park projects to see if I could once again find J.T. and his gang.
I wasn’t really scared as I walked north along Cottage Grove Avenue. A little nervous, certainly, but I was pretty sure that J.T. didn’t see me as any kind of a threat. Worst-case scenario? Embarrassment. He and his gang would ask me to leave or they’d laugh at my desire to get to know them better.
It was maybe two o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived. This time I came bearing a six-pack of beer. There were about a dozen young men out front of Number 4040, standing around their cars.
Some of them began to point at me. A few others were playing handball by throwing a tennis ball against the building. As I drew close, all of them turned to watch me.
“You got to be kidding me,”I heard someone say. Then I saw J.T., leaning back against a car, smiling and shaking his head.
“Beer?” I said, tossing him a bottle. “You said I should hang out with folks if I want to know what their life was like.”
J.T. didn’t answer. A few of the guys burst out laughing in disbelief. “He’s crazy, I told you!” said one.
“Nigger thinks he’s going to hang out with us!”
“I still think he’s a Latin King.”
Finally J.T. spoke up. “All right, the brother wants to hang out,” he said, unfazed. “Let him hang out!”
J.T. grinned and opened up his bottle. Others came around and quickly grabbed the rest of the beers. Then, surprisingly, they all went back to their business. They didn’t seem to be discussing anything very pressing, nor were they talking about any criminal activities. They mainly talked about what kind of rims to put on their cars. A few of them took care of the drug customers, handing vials of crack to the people who walked over from nearby buildings or drove up in run-down cars. In the distance I could see a few churchgoers on a Sunday stroll. A handful of gang members stood guard in front of Number 4040, and after a time some of the guys hanging out near the cars relieved them.
J.T. had a lot of questions for me: You always use those surveys? Can you get a good job after you finish with this research? Why don’t you study your own people?
This last one would become one of his favorites. I felt a strange kind of intimacy with J.T., unlike the bond I’d felt even with good friends. It would have been hard to explain then and is just as hard now, but we had somehow connected in an instant, and deeply.
I tried to act nonchalant when J.T. asked me these questions, but inside I was overjoyed that he was curious about my work. I had a feeling that I was talking to someone about whom most people probably knew little. I didn’t know exactly where our conversations might lead, but I sensed I was getting a unique perspective on life in a poor neighborhood. There were plenty of sociological studies on economically disenfranchised youth, but most relied on dry statistics of unemployment, crime, and family hardship. I had joined Bill Wilson’s team in hopes of getting closer to the ground. My opportunity to do just that was standing right in front of me.
Every now and then, J.T. went inside the building to meet in private with someone who had driven up in a car.
I played a little handball and, showing off my hard-won suburban soccer skills, bounced the tennis ball off my head a few dozen times. Some of the older gang members were curious about my identity, my role at the university, and of course the reason I had returned. They all looked as tired as I was, and it felt as if we were all taking some welcome comic relief in one another’s presence.
In general, I said very little. I asked no “meaningful” questions- mostly about their cars, why they were jacked up so high and whether they changed their own oil-and quickly saw that this strategy might actually work. I had learned the night before that they weren’t very receptive to interview questions; they probably had plenty of that from cops, social workers, and the occasional journalist. So I just made small talk, trying to pass the time and act as if I’d been there before.
When J.T. returned from a trip into the building, everyone straightened up a bit.
“Okay!” he shouted. “They’re ready, let’s go over there.” He ordered a few younger members into the building’s lobby and motioned the others to get into their cars. He looked at me in a funny way. He smiled. I could tell that he was wondering what to say to me. I hoped he was going to invite me along to wherever they were going.
“You got balls,” he said. “I’ll give you that. We have to run. Why don’t you meet me here next week. Early morning, all right?”
This offer took me by surprise. But I certainly wasn’t going to turn him down. J.T. put out his hand, and I shook it. I tried again to think of something witty to say. “Yeah, sure,” I said, “but you’re buying next time.”
He turned and hustled toward his car, a shiny purple Malibu Classic with gold rims. All of a sudden, there was no one left standing around but me.
TWO. First Days on Federal Street
I began spending time with J.T. We’d usually hang out for a little while with some of the more senior members of his gang, and then we’d go for a ride around the South Side.
Although it would take me a few years to learn about J.T.’s life in detail, he did tell me a good bit during our first few weeks together: He had grown up in this neighborhood, then gone to college on an athletic scholarship and found that he loved reading about history and politics. After college he took a job selling office supplies and industrial textiles at a midsize corporation in downtown Chicago. But he felt that his chances of success were limited because he was black; he got angry when he saw white people with lesser skills get promoted ahead of him. Within two years he left the mainstream to return to the projects and the gang life.
J.T. loved to talk about black Chicago as we drove around-the history of the neighborhood, the gangs, the underground economy. Like Old Time and the others who frequented Washington Park, J.T. had his own personal version of history, replete with stories about great gang leaders and dramatic gang wars. He took me to his favorite restaurants, most of which had their own lively histories. One of them, Gladys’s, was a soul-food restaurant where elected community and political leaders used to meet in private. Another marked the spot where two gangs once signed a legendary truce. J.T. always offered to pay for our meals and I, out of appreciation and a student’s budget, always accepted.
J.T. once asked me what sociologists had to say about gangs and inner-city poverty. I told him that some sociologists believed in a “culture of poverty”-that is, poor blacks didn’t work because they didn’t value employment as highly as other ethnic groups did, and they transmitted this attitude across generations.
“So you want me to take pride in the job, and you’re only paying me minimum wage?” J.T. countered. “It don’t sound like you think much about the job yourself.” His tone was more realistic than defensive. In fact, his rejoinder echoed the very criticisms that some sociologists applied to the “culture of poverty” view.
J.T. and I often passed time together at a diner. He might sit quietly, working through the details of his gang’s operations, while I read for my sociology classes. Since he didn’t want to generate tangible evidence of his enterprise, J.T. didn’t write down very much, but he could keep innumerable details straight in his mind: the wages of each one of his two hundred members, the shifts each of them worked, recent spikes in supply or demand, and so on. Occasionally he drifted off, muttering calculations to himself. He didn’t share many details with me, but he did sometimes give me a sort of quiz.
“Okay, I got something for you,” he said one day over breakfast. “Let’s say two guys are offering me a great deal on raw product.” I knew enough to know that “raw product” meant powdered cocaine, which J.T.’s gang cooked up into crack. “One of them says if I pay twenty percent higher than the usual rate, he’ll give me a ten percent discount a year from now, meaning that if the supply goes down, he’ll sell to me before the other niggers
