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meaningful conversation.

0:29

This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

0:32

By the time writer Donovan X. Ramsey

0:34

was about four or five, he'd learned

0:36

a word that could stop people in their tracks,

0:39

a slur that could win an argument or put an end

0:41

to a bully's wrath. The term

0:43

was crackhead and growing up in the nineties,

0:45

they were seen as pariahs, both feared

0:47

and ignored. Who are these

0:49

people besides addicts? Ramsey's young mind

0:52

wondered, and what led them to crack

0:54

cocaine in the first place? Decades

0:57

later, Donovan X. Ramsey examines the destruction

0:59

of the crack cocaine era through the experiences

1:02

of addicts, drug dealers, families, and

1:04

community members. His new book is

1:06

called When Crack Was King, a People's

1:08

History of a Misunderstood Era. Donovan

1:11

X. Ramsey is a journalist and author

1:13

whose work has appeared in the New York Times,

1:16

The Atlantic, GQ, Ebony, and

1:18

Essence. He's been a staff reporter

1:20

at the Los Angeles Times, News One,

1:22

and the Grio, and has served as an editor

1:24

at the Marshall Project and Complex.

1:26

Donovan, welcome to Fresh Air.

1:29

Hey, Tanya. Thank you so much for having me. So

1:32

you start off this book writing about

1:34

a woman named Michelle, who was a crack

1:36

addict who lived down the street from

1:39

you growing up in Columbus, Ohio. And

1:42

you know, this story is so familiar to me and

1:44

really anyone who grew up in a city ravaged

1:46

by the crack cocaine epidemic. Everybody

1:48

seemed to have a Michelle on their block,

1:51

which kind of makes it surprising that a book

1:53

like this hadn't been written already. Why

1:56

did you want to write about it now? Yeah.

1:59

Um. I wanted to write this

2:02

book for lots of big grand

2:04

reasons that have to do with, you

2:06

know, understanding our criminal justice system

2:09

or that have to do with, you

2:11

know, trying to kind of set the record straight

2:13

about the period. But really, I also

2:16

just wanted to get to know this

2:19

kind of mythical figure, Michelle, from down the

2:21

street better.

2:23

I remember,

2:26

you know, my mom, you know, kind of whispering

2:28

on the phone to her girlfriends, you know, dragging

2:30

that house phone with

2:32

the long cord room to room and,

2:35

you know, complaining about this woman down the street

2:38

that had people coming in and out

2:40

of her house at all hours or,

2:42

you know, sometimes people would come knocking on our door

2:44

thinking that they were, you

2:46

know, looking for Michelle and thinking that maybe she

2:49

lived there. And that was quite, you know,

2:51

scary and disturbing to my mom, who was

2:53

a young single mom. And

2:56

you know, but also at night, you know, I would lay in

2:58

bed and like clockwork, you know, once

3:00

Michelle got to, you know,

3:03

her activities, she would always

3:05

put on a Patti LaBelle

3:08

record

3:09

and she would play the song, If Only

3:11

You Knew on a Loop.

3:13

And you know, the lyrics are

3:16

like seared in my head, you know, Patti's like, you

3:19

know, you don't even suspect could probably

3:21

care less about the changes I'm going

3:23

through.

3:24

And you know, in my

3:27

little, you know, five year old heart, I

3:29

could tell that she was really in pain.

3:33

And you know, as like time went on and

3:35

she really disappeared from our neighborhood,

3:38

I just never stopped wondering about

3:40

what exactly it was that she was going through.

3:43

You know, most people of a certain age know

3:46

this already, but maybe we should first

3:48

explain what crack actually is. There's

3:51

this misconception that crack and cocaine

3:53

are actually different.

3:55

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know,

3:58

crack is a drug. It's really a substance

4:00

that completely upended

4:03

our society for a while. It

4:05

launched

4:06

a new phase in the world on

4:09

drugs. It created lots of myths

4:11

and stereotypes about

4:14

black people in urban centers. But

4:16

it is no different from powdered cocaine, which

4:19

existed for

4:21

really time memorial, this idea

4:24

of taking something like

4:26

coca leaves and ingesting it

4:28

to get a sort of stimulant

4:30

experience. But

4:32

its original name

4:34

was freebase. And that

4:36

was a chemical term used,

4:39

the process of making it smokeable, which is

4:41

separating the base

4:43

of the cocaine compound from its other

4:45

elements, which then makes it smokeable.

4:49

That sounds kind of scientific and

4:52

kind of hard to wrap your mind around. But I would liken

4:54

it for anybody that has experimented

4:57

with marijuana. It's like the difference between eating

4:59

an edible or smoking a joint.

5:02

That's the same thing. It's the manner, right?

5:04

Exactly. It's the same exact substance,

5:07

but it's a different process. And

5:09

your body breaks it down differently, which

5:11

then spurred different patterns

5:14

of use. So someone who is smoking

5:17

crack gets a very intense

5:19

cocaine high, but it's short

5:21

lived, which means that it's more likely something

5:24

that you would binge

5:25

than powdered cocaine.

5:27

Some of what you wanted to

5:29

get answers to are first the facts of

5:31

the crack epidemic free of the stigma

5:33

and the speculation around it. There's so much of that.

5:36

And to

5:38

who we were, meaning

5:40

the black community before crack, was

5:43

that a challenge for you to parse it out

5:45

for yourself?

5:47

It was. I mean, I think, you know, and

5:50

I'm sure that maybe you can relate to this, but as a

5:52

black journalist, you know, you

5:55

all, and especially if you do work

5:57

around black communities, they are the

5:59

questions that that you know, the sort

6:01

of average reader in middle America, you

6:04

know, whatever, you know, whoever that is, the

6:06

things that they want answered, but also the

6:09

questions that you have for yourself. And

6:11

for me being a

6:14

black man who was born in 1987, the

6:17

crack

6:18

epidemic predates me, right?

6:21

Like I've never existed in a world where crack

6:23

didn't exist. So I had

6:25

this real kind of deep yearning

6:29

to understand who

6:31

we were before and to fill

6:34

in what felt like a gap

6:36

in between the civil rights movement that

6:38

we hear so much about and

6:41

where we are today.

6:43

And the crack epidemic seemed

6:45

like that missing link, right? How do you go

6:47

from the highs of the March

6:49

on Washington

6:51

to, you know, Freddie

6:54

Gray

6:55

being tossed around in the back

6:57

of a police transport vehicle? How

6:59

do you go from the highs of,

7:03

you know, the Voting Rights Act

7:06

to so much of the other devastation that

7:08

we see today in the system that we have

7:11

and the crack epidemic

7:13

was that missing link.

7:15

Did you feel that disconnect growing up too?

7:17

Because I think I felt that way too. You

7:20

put language to it, but you were learning

7:22

all about these wonderful things that happened,

7:25

the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. It

7:27

all seemed so very Kumbaya like

7:30

in the late sixties, early seventies.

7:32

And then you're sitting right in the thick of

7:34

the crack cocaine epidemic and seeing

7:37

all of this devastation around you.

7:40

Was that kind of going through your mind, even growing up and

7:42

learning about the history? It

7:45

was, I mean,

7:47

it's so hard to put this

7:49

into words, but like when you're like a black child

7:52

in America, you're getting lots of mixed

7:55

messages. You're getting an official

7:58

history that has been sanitized.

7:59

completely of

8:03

any sort of dissident

8:05

perspectives that you know exist

8:07

within your community, right? So for every

8:10

Martin Luther King Jr., there is a Malcolm

8:12

X in your neighborhood. You know, when you go to the barbershop,

8:15

there are people who are like, lets

8:17

you know, cast our bucket down where

8:19

we stand and work hard and figure

8:22

out a way to make

8:24

our lives better in this capitalist system.

8:27

And there are the guys that are like, let's burn

8:29

it all down, you know? And

8:33

they're not all represented in the history

8:35

that you get. Beyond that, when

8:37

it came to something like what was

8:39

happening

8:40

with crack,

8:42

I could never really get straight answers.

8:45

So, you know, when I say that, what

8:47

I mean is that the news presented

8:50

super predators and crack

8:52

babies and crack heads and

8:54

crack houses and this

8:58

you know, apocalyptic

9:01

view

9:02

of neighborhoods like mine. And

9:04

then when I actually walked around the neighborhood,

9:06

you know, I saw people

9:08

working hard. I saw the mix of

9:10

working class and poor and middle class

9:13

black people. You

9:15

know, I saw lots of different perspectives

9:18

on what was happening. I

9:21

should also note though that people didn't necessarily

9:23

explain anything to me. You know, I was

9:26

witnessing, but my mother, you know,

9:28

God bless her really shielded

9:30

my sisters

9:32

and I and protected

9:35

us from what was happening. You know,

9:37

her favorite thing to say was, you

9:39

know, mind your business, you

9:41

know, turn your head.

9:43

You know, something was happening that, you know, wasn't, you

9:46

know, didn't directly involve us. It was kind of

9:48

just keep your head down.

9:51

There are several conspiracy theories

9:53

about how crack cocaine actually made

9:55

its way into black communities. And the most

9:58

enduring theory is that.

9:59

the government had something to do with it. You

10:02

actually investigated and interrogated this

10:04

idea and what did you find?

10:07

You know in black communities you know as you're

10:09

growing up people will tell you crack

10:11

was dropped off in our neighborhoods to

10:13

disrupt them. That you know

10:15

to the average black person it seems

10:18

you know that crack was a mystery where it

10:20

came from.

10:22

Why us? You know why did this

10:24

happen to us in this way? I

10:26

should start by saying right that it didn't just happen to

10:28

us like anything else in American life

10:31

that that the majority of the folks that used

10:33

crack were white because

10:36

the majority of Americans are white

10:38

but that black and Latino folks

10:40

did use it at disproportionate

10:43

rates and our neighborhoods

10:45

became sites

10:46

where it was sold so then you had another level

10:49

of disruption beyond the use in

10:51

terms of the dealing and then the violence

10:53

that accompanied the dealing and ultimately

10:56

the policing that was a response

10:58

to it so first I want to say that.

11:01

Right but there was this time period

11:03

where especially during the Reagan

11:06

era we had already been introduced to the war

11:08

on drugs from the Nixon administration

11:10

but then there is really

11:13

the solidifying of that through the Reagan

11:15

era and so at the same time as

11:17

we're receiving messages and of cracking

11:20

down on drugs and drug use

11:23

we were also seeing this infiltration of crack

11:25

cocaine in communities

11:27

of color.

11:29

You actually found that there was kind of a couple

11:31

of things that were happening at the same time not

11:33

exactly that it was purposely left in black

11:36

or brought to black communities but that

11:38

there was kind of a turning away. Yes yeah

11:42

that's a that's the perfect way to put it is

11:44

that the government in

11:47

the 80s

11:48

was aware that there was really

11:51

I mean really just tons of cocaine being

11:53

shipped into the United States from you

11:56

know South and Central America and we

11:58

had a

11:59

ongoing efforts in South and Central

12:02

American countries like Nicaragua, where

12:04

we wanted to support rebels

12:07

known as Contras in Nicaragua

12:10

to overthrow their government, that that was

12:12

in our political interest.

12:15

But Congress would not allow the

12:18

US government

12:19

to fund a war

12:21

in another country. So

12:23

the US government got creative, and

12:25

this is well documented through programs

12:28

to ask to actually deliver weapons

12:31

to the Contras. And when that was no

12:33

longer feasible,

12:35

when that became exposed through

12:39

Ali North and the whole Iran-Contra

12:41

affair, that we

12:43

just allowed them to smuggle

12:45

drugs.

12:47

And so a lot

12:49

of those drugs, cocaine, ended up in the United

12:51

States. And this has been investigated

12:54

by a commission led by John

12:56

Kerry, by efforts led by

12:58

Maxine Waters. It's well documented

13:00

through reporting at the

13:02

time that there were lots

13:05

of Contras

13:06

that were

13:08

selling cocaine to dealers

13:10

in the United States. And a lot of it

13:12

ended up in cities on the West Coast and

13:15

Oakland and Los Angeles.

13:17

But then how cocaine then

13:19

turned into crack was kind of a story of ingenuity.

13:22

It was. Any time

13:24

there's a glut of a substance or

13:26

a commodity that's available,

13:29

people start experimenting with

13:31

other ways to consume and distribute it. And

13:33

crack was no different. I

13:35

did tons of interviewing, and I was able to come

13:38

up with about five

13:40

or six different sources that told me the stories

13:42

of these students at Berkeley who

13:45

were chemistry students that

13:47

were just cocaine enthusiasts. And they were trying

13:49

to figure out different

13:50

ways to consume it. And they

13:52

really popularized

13:55

freebase in their community.

13:58

And it became so popular.

13:59

that there was a book that was published that

14:02

you can actually find on eBay and Amazon

14:05

called The Pleasures of Cocaine. And

14:07

it included the recipe for how

14:09

to create free-based cocaine, not

14:12

with volatile chemicals like ether

14:14

or, you know, alcohol, but with

14:16

water and baking soda. Um,

14:18

and once that book got around and it spread

14:21

to different drug enthusiasts in different cities,

14:24

and then it ultimately made its way to,

14:26

um, you know, dealers, what,

14:29

what it created was a super

14:32

cheap, accessible

14:35

way of getting what had been a very

14:37

glamorous drug, um,

14:39

into the world. And it just spread like wildfire.

14:42

I should say on this question, right? Of

14:44

like a conspiracy. What I

14:47

ultimately determined is that there

14:49

was no group of, you know, shadowy figures

14:51

that sat in a room and said, here's

14:54

how we can destroy black communities, at

14:57

least not in the eighties. Um,

14:59

that the reality is that the

15:01

way that black communities

15:03

are situated, what it means to be black

15:05

in this society is to be

15:08

hit first and worst.

15:11

That like the COVID pandemic, which

15:13

we saw. Yeah, exactly. Like,

15:16

like COVID, like, like Katrina,

15:18

like, like any other disaster

15:20

that, you know, blackness is, you know, more

15:23

than just like this racial category and about

15:25

identity. It's about where you

15:27

are positioned in terms of harm

15:30

in a society. So if blackness

15:32

is, you know, blackness is this buffer that

15:34

allows whiteness to be an area for, for

15:37

safety and for comfort. So

15:39

when something like crack becomes,

15:42

you know, widely available and

15:44

a problem, we will be hit first

15:46

and worst. And that's exactly what happened

15:49

to make matters worse.

15:51

The government decided, you know, or at least

15:53

politicians decided that they wanted to build

15:55

careers on then criminalizing,

15:58

you know, this sort of public. emergency. And

16:01

that's the part that I think really gets to

16:04

ill intent

16:05

and racist ideas

16:09

and efforts to really be disruptive

16:11

was not necessarily

16:13

the drug epidemic, but the

16:16

response to it.

16:17

At first, when crack cocaine made

16:19

its way to the streets, it

16:22

felt kind of like, as you put it, a gold rush

16:24

for black communities, a chance for people who

16:26

lived in poverty to actually

16:29

gain some wealth to get rich. What

16:31

did that look like?

16:33

I hadn't really considered this when I set

16:35

out to write the book because, you know, in my

16:37

family, drug dealers had

16:39

really kind of always been villainized,

16:42

you know, even though I had relatives that sold

16:44

drugs, we,

16:45

you know, that there was distance between, you

16:47

know, at least, you know, my mom

16:50

and sisters and me and them.

16:53

And, you know, what it looked like for

16:55

the average, usually

16:57

young man, someone like Sean McCray,

16:59

who I write about in my book, is

17:01

that you saw people

17:03

who had walked holes in their shoes,

17:06

whose, you know, families struggled to pay

17:09

the rent,

17:10

be able to provide,

17:12

you know, basic necessities to have

17:14

some, you know, piece of what maybe

17:17

felt like the American dream. Not

17:19

most drug dealers got rich,

17:21

right? That like not most were kingpins.

17:25

Most were able... Like

17:26

media portrayed them as these really

17:28

wealthy guys who lived in these big homes, lots

17:30

of cars, lots of stacks of money. Right. That

17:33

was more rare than actually portrayed.

17:34

Exactly. Or

17:37

as super predators who were, you

17:39

know, out to get, you know, kids hooked

17:41

on drugs and who were eager

17:44

to get into gun battles in the middle of streets,

17:47

that most of them were

17:48

terrified for their lives. But

17:51

it was really the only way that

17:53

they could make money in a period where

17:56

unemployment was so high. And, you know, black youth

17:58

unemployment was was even higher.

17:59

And anybody that's been a black

18:02

teenager trying to find a job understands

18:05

just how frustrating that can be

18:07

and you know how kids want

18:10

things more than anybody else.

18:13

I was actually really struck by something you wrote

18:16

about the media that we were consuming in

18:18

the early 80s especially that

18:20

played a part in black kids' desire

18:22

and imagination about wealth.

18:25

You write,

18:26

popular culture was obsessed with wealth

18:28

and upward mobility. Black children

18:30

were presented almost exclusively with media

18:32

that encouraged them to transcend the ghetto

18:35

and reach toward whiteness. And

18:37

the drug trade was one way to do

18:39

that. But what got me was your

18:41

astute observation about the entertainment we

18:44

were consuming at the time. So shows like Different

18:46

Strokes and Gimme a Break and Benson. I

18:48

had never really put that together, what those

18:50

shows were actually

18:52

setting the scene for in our desires.

18:55

Oh it's so wild to look back

18:58

on because I mean none of it will fly today

19:00

but you know it was a period where

19:03

in television

19:04

basically it's just show after show

19:07

of black person being snatched

19:09

out of the ghetto

19:10

and then moving in with the white family whether

19:12

it's Webster or Different

19:14

Strokes or Gimme a Break and I mean

19:17

really one after the other. Even

19:20

the Jeffersons right is about moving on up. So

19:23

you know if you are a black kid

19:25

growing up in the ghetto what looks

19:27

like a real healthy

19:30

American life is so far

19:32

away and so unattainable and

19:35

then overnight there's this substance

19:37

now that's available that you can sell

19:39

and you'll make more money than you could have ever imagined.

19:42

Our guest today is Donovan X. Ramsey,

19:45

journalist and author of the new book When Crack

19:47

Was King, a people's history of a

19:49

misunderstood era. I'm Tanya

19:51

Mosley and this is Fresh Air.

20:02

A million

20:07

magic crystals painted pure

20:10

and white A multi-million

20:12

dollars almost overnight

20:15

Twice as sweet as sugar Twice

20:18

as bitter as salt And if

20:20

you get hooked, baby It's nobody

20:22

else's fault, so don't do it! Rock!

20:27

Free! Rock! Free!

20:33

Rock! Free!

20:37

Rock! Rock!

20:41

Higher, baby Get

20:44

higher, baby Get higher,

20:46

baby And don't ever come down! Free

20:49

Face!

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22:39

This is fresh air I'm Tanya Mosley and

22:41

my guest today is journalist and author Donovan

22:44

X Ramsey, author of When

22:46

Crack Was King, a People's History

22:48

of a Misunderstood Era.

22:50

Donovan

22:52

you paint this roadmap of how policy

22:54

informed the way we view drugs from

22:57

Richard Nixon's War on Drugs to

22:59

Ronald Reagan's promise of a drug free America

23:01

to

23:02

George H.W. Bush's tough on

23:04

crack efforts and you tell this history

23:06

that I almost forgot about when

23:09

the first Bush administration had this plan

23:11

to unveil their anti-drug program

23:13

on national television

23:16

by holding up a bag of crack. Can

23:18

you remind us briefly of what happened

23:21

there? Sure yeah

23:24

George

23:25

H.W. Bush really

23:27

wanted to start his administration with

23:30

a bang and you know being tough

23:32

on crime and was a

23:34

big part of that so his

23:36

office made a decision that they wanted to give a big

23:39

address on drugs and they wanted to

23:41

use crack cocaine as a prop

23:43

so they you know thought

23:45

well naturally you know crack is this big

23:48

you know kind of scary thing that's everywhere we can

23:50

just go outside the White House and get some crack

23:53

and they discovered that they couldn't

23:55

right that there was tons of you know

23:57

police presence around the White House and that you

23:59

know

25:59

directors and writers to send their scripts

26:02

to the White House for approval. Ways

26:04

of working in anti-drug

26:06

messaging. So yeah, so this is how

26:09

you get Nancy Reagan

26:10

on an episode of Different Strokes. This

26:13

is how you get Jesse on

26:16

Saved by the Bell saying, I'm so

26:18

excited, I'm so excited, I'm so

26:20

scared because she's hopped up

26:22

on speed. On amphetamines,

26:25

right. Yep. And this is

26:27

the birth of the very special episode.

26:32

And we have them to thank

26:34

for that. And

26:37

sadly, I'm a kid of the 80s, I

26:39

remember so much of that messaging.

26:42

And it really

26:44

more than taught me any, because it didn't really

26:46

teach me anything useful about drugs. What

26:48

it really did was just made me deathly

26:50

afraid of drug addicts.

26:52

It made me keep people who

26:55

I even suspected

26:57

of being drug addicts, right? The average,

26:59

you know, houseless person on the street, so

27:02

far away from me because I was terrified

27:04

that they were just these zombies that were out

27:06

to get me and to get me hooked, you

27:09

know, on drugs, it made them untouchables.

27:13

And

27:15

you know, it's something because I think that

27:17

many people will try to credit

27:20

Nancy Reagan and the Just Say No campaign

27:22

and DARE and all that stuff for ending

27:24

the drug epidemic

27:26

or the crack epidemic. There's

27:29

no evidence of that.

27:30

But I do think there's lots of evidence

27:32

that it really, that

27:34

the propaganda

27:36

made us not understand addiction

27:39

in

27:39

ways that we're still paying for.

27:42

Yeah, this propaganda, it included

27:45

movies and music. It also

27:47

included journalism.

27:49

And one of the more well-known

27:51

pieces of journalism was this investigative

27:53

report about an eight-year-old third-generation

27:56

addict published in the Washington Post, and

27:59

it was called Jimmy's

27:59

world. It was so

28:02

popular that when it was published, it was then

28:04

republished in papers throughout the country.

28:06

And it resonated so deeply with readers that

28:09

even Nancy Reagan spoke about it.

28:12

The only problem is that it wasn't

28:14

true. The reporter made it up.

28:17

Yeah. Now Tanya, had you known about this

28:19

story before you read it? I

28:22

only knew about it because I read about

28:24

it like five years ago. But no, I didn't

28:26

know about it in the moment. I didn't know

28:28

about it when it was published.

28:29

It is. It's so wild, right,

28:31

that even us as black journalists,

28:35

a lot of people don't know

28:37

that Janet Cook is the only person

28:39

to ever give back a Pulitzer and

28:42

that the story that won this Pulitzer

28:45

was Jimmy's World. It was a complete fabrication

28:48

about a nine-year-old heroine addict that

28:50

was published in the Washington Post. It ran on the

28:52

front page with

28:54

illustrations, of course, because there were no photos.

28:58

It was published under the leadership of Bob

29:00

Woodward, who, you

29:03

know, is a journalism icon

29:05

and legend. And

29:08

what you see when you peel back the layers

29:10

of Jimmy's World is a

29:12

real willingness, really

29:15

a eagerness, I should say, to

29:17

tell a story like this, to tell

29:19

a story of a nine-year-old

29:22

heroine addict in DC who

29:24

lives in a shooting gallery,

29:26

who is the product of

29:28

an incestuous relationship between

29:31

his grandfather and his mother, whose

29:33

stepfather shoots him up whenever he gets

29:35

a little too rambunctious.

29:37

The details were wild. Absolutely

29:40

wild. And, you know, black

29:42

reporters at the Post at the time said, do

29:44

not publish this. This is completely

29:47

made up. It doesn't sound right that

29:50

we've been in these communities. We've never heard of a Jimmy.

29:53

You know, Janet Cook, who was the reporter, could

29:55

not produce any

29:58

additional information about it. about

30:01

Jimmy or about his family when she drove

30:03

other reporters around to find the house that he

30:05

supposedly lived in. She couldn't find it. And

30:08

then ultimately, right, because they couldn't, the

30:11

Post decided to run illustrations based

30:14

on her recollections of Jimmy.

30:18

As somebody that has worked in a metro

30:20

section of a newspaper, this

30:23

is highly unlikely,

30:26

right, on like a procedural level

30:29

of how the news is made. But lots

30:31

of corners were cut

30:33

because the story mapped

30:35

so well onto

30:38

notions of black pathology because

30:40

people wanted it to be true,

30:42

to be honest. Right, because you basically

30:44

say, I mean, it represents

30:47

something else. The country's appetite for stories

30:49

about black suffering.

30:51

Yeah, yeah. And that suffering

30:53

hasn't, I mean, that sort of appetite hasn't changed,

30:56

I don't think. That, you know, I've

30:59

been in lots of editorial

31:02

meetings where people are

31:05

willing to

31:07

say the wildest things

31:09

about black people and

31:11

to entertain the

31:14

wildest notions about black people. And

31:18

like otherwise smart people, right, like otherwise

31:21

smart journalists will suspend

31:23

their rational

31:26

thought if a story seems

31:30

good in that way. And they're often too,

31:32

I don't want to say

31:35

too good to be true, they're often too messed up

31:37

to be true. One of the biggest

31:40

instances of misinformation

31:43

spread by mainstream media during that time

31:45

was also the myth of the crack baby.

31:48

I actually remember my ninth grade algebra teacher

31:50

talking almost every week about how he had

31:52

to retire within a few years because

31:55

that's when the crack babies would be entering high

31:57

school. I mean, we've talked

31:59

about this quite a bit.

31:59

over the years, but we now know that the fears

32:02

about black babies never really, um, black

32:05

crack babies never really materialized.

32:08

But you write about how that

32:10

myth impacted all black children,

32:12

including you, in your education

32:15

growing up.

32:17

Absolutely. That, um,

32:20

a researcher named Ira Chaznov

32:22

in Chicago did one study

32:25

of a handful of black

32:27

mothers who were cocaine users.

32:30

And what he found, um, after

32:33

those mothers had, had given birth

32:36

was that, um, many of their babies

32:38

had things like tremors and low

32:40

birth weight and they sort of,

32:43

um, struggled to meet benchmarks, you

32:45

know, in their infancy. And from

32:47

that, he published a report about cocaine

32:49

exposed babies that then launched

32:51

what became this crack baby notion.

32:54

And, you know, lots of reporting was done

32:57

about these irredeemable

32:59

babies, mostly black and Latino

33:02

children, and how they were going to be a huge

33:04

weight on society that they wouldn't

33:06

sort of never be able to, um, come

33:09

back from, from what their mothers had

33:11

done to them. Charles Krautheimer,

33:13

um, a columnist who was writing for

33:15

the post at the time said that, that

33:18

death would have been more suitable for these

33:21

babies than to actually live. And

33:24

what we've seen, um, through the

33:26

research, um, longitudinal

33:28

studies of cocaine

33:29

exposed babies was that one,

33:33

the symptoms that

33:35

Chaznov were seeing were actually related

33:37

to premature birth, that,

33:39

um, that the effect of

33:41

cocaine is that it can cause

33:44

complications that then leave to, that

33:46

lead to premature birth and that the

33:48

tremors and the developmental

33:50

things that were being seen in infancy were

33:53

actually associated with

33:55

the babies being born early and

33:57

not necessarily with the cocaine exposure. And

34:00

then, you know, decades later, there

34:02

is no measurable difference

34:05

between those children and

34:08

their counterparts, children born at

34:10

the same time, raised in the same areas,

34:13

you know, with the same sort of resources.

34:17

So I say that to say that the crack baby myth

34:19

has been debunked. Debunked,

34:21

yeah. For me as a

34:23

black child growing up in the 80s and

34:26

90s,

34:26

I was treated as though I was a suspect

34:29

of, you know, of being

34:31

a crack baby. That, you know, the ways

34:34

that teachers

34:37

treated me and really other black

34:40

children in my class as mainly

34:43

black boys was as though there

34:45

was something fundamentally wrong with us.

34:48

That we needed to be maybe medicated

34:50

to be able to be in

34:52

class. Or that any

34:55

challenge that we

34:57

presented as students, whether it was talking too

34:59

much, which was my problem, or,

35:02

you know, if it was not being able to sit

35:05

still, that that was evidence

35:07

that something was wrong with us.

35:10

Let's take a short break.

35:12

If you're just joining us, my guest today

35:14

is Donovan X. Ramsey, author

35:16

of the new book When Crack Was King, a

35:18

People's History of a Misunderstood Era,

35:21

where Ramsey explores the history of the crack epidemic

35:24

and the people who live through it. We'll continue

35:26

our conversation after a short break. This

35:28

is Fresh Air.

35:30

Support for NPR and the following message

35:32

come from Airbnb. Maybe you've stayed

35:34

in an Airbnb before and thought to yourself,

35:36

this actually seems pretty doable.

35:39

Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. It could be as

35:41

simple as starting with a spare room or

35:44

your whole place when you're away. Say

35:46

a big music festival is coming to your city,

35:48

and even though you get the hype, you'd prefer

35:50

to get out of town for a little peace and quiet.

35:53

Or maybe your kid's off to college this fall, and

35:55

you're looking to convert that extra room into

35:57

a cozy space to welcome guests.

37:59

that's according to research by the Department

38:02

of Justice, where they surveyed

38:05

the hardest hit cities around the country and interviewed

38:07

young people and said essentially, why

38:10

aren't you doing crack? And they

38:12

said that

38:14

like that whole world is too scary. So

38:17

what you see when you look at the

38:19

stats is a rise in

38:22

crack use starting about 1982, 1983. It

38:26

completely takes off about 1987. It

38:29

then plateaus

38:32

between 1990, which is

38:34

really the hardest years of the crack

38:36

epidemic in 1992. And

38:39

as a really interesting kind

38:42

of a side, throughout

38:45

my research, writing

38:48

and writing the book, I listened

38:50

to a lot of hip hop at

38:53

the time.

38:54

Yeah. And

38:55

I came across this, I mean, this

38:57

litany of anti-crack messaging.

39:01

Jane stopped this crazy thing by MC

39:03

Shan and Hey Young World by

39:05

Slick Rick, Night of the Living,

39:07

Bass Heads by Public Enemy.

39:10

I mean, song after song, Dope Man

39:12

by

39:12

N.D.C. What about Yo Mamas on Crack Rock? Yo

39:14

Mamas on Crack Rock by The

39:16

Boys, I think. Yeah.

39:19

An absolute wild song right where you

39:21

have, I mean, in a really interesting

39:24

way, right? Like young

39:26

people from these communities

39:29

giving messaging back to other young

39:31

people from these communities. And I

39:33

think it was more powerful than what

39:35

Nancy Reagan was doing on different strokes.

39:38

It had more credibility. You

39:41

know, you also see it in the filmmaking

39:43

of the time, what I would

39:44

call kind of hip hop filmmaking, you

39:46

know, films like

39:48

Boys in the Hood, I

39:50

would even say, Clockers,

39:53

Jungle Fever, right? Samuel Jackson is

39:55

Gator in Jungle Fever, scared the

39:57

mess out of me. You know, he's like,

41:50

because

42:00

it happened to those people over there. And

42:03

now we're seeing it come back

42:06

to new populations, but

42:10

we still live with the residue of

42:12

the crack era, that we still live

42:14

with this dragnet that we created,

42:17

that we just applied across communities of color.

42:20

And today,

42:22

that's all that we have in terms of real

42:24

policy when it

42:26

comes to trying to put out

42:28

something like

42:31

the fire of a drug

42:34

epidemic. So I would love

42:36

to see the

42:38

end of the mandatory

42:40

minimums that came about during

42:42

the crack era, which basically

42:44

take away the discretion from judges

42:47

when it comes to possession

42:50

charges. It says, basically, you

42:52

do the crime, you have to do X, Y, Z time.

42:55

And it doesn't allow judges to be able

42:57

to use their discernment to determine

42:59

maybe who should go to jail for decades and who

43:01

shouldn't. I also wanna see an end

43:04

to this disparity

43:05

that you mentioned between sentencing

43:08

for crack and powder cocaine. It

43:11

was originally 100 to one, meaning

43:13

that you got essentially 100

43:16

times the amount of time

43:18

for crack than you would for

43:20

the same substance and powder form

43:23

under Barack Obama and Eric

43:26

Holder as his attorney general. That

43:29

was reduced to 18 to one around 2010,

43:31

but

43:34

it still exists. With all that

43:36

we know about

43:38

crack, with all the compassion that we have

43:40

now for addicts, we

43:42

still haven't moved far enough

43:45

to eliminate that disparity entirely.

43:50

Our guest today is Donovan X. Ramsey,

43:52

journalist and author of the new book, When Crack

43:54

Was King, a people's history of a misunderstood

43:57

era. We'll continue our conversation after

43:59

a short.

43:59

break. This is fresh air.

44:02

This message comes from NPR sponsor

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44:35

You know it was so deeply rewarding to

44:38

see these experiences written

44:40

on a page that not

44:42

long ago society didn't really think were

44:44

stories worth being told

44:46

but I also had to take a lot of breaks reading

44:48

this book because it was also very

44:51

triggering to me and I read that it

44:53

was the same for you in writing it.

44:56

It was. I

44:58

have you know in covering black

45:00

America I've you know also had

45:03

to cover a lot of tragedy and

45:05

you know hear a lot of traumatic

45:07

things from people and I'd always prided myself

45:09

on being able to kind

45:11

of like you

45:12

know alchemize it you know

45:14

to kind of take it in and to process it and

45:17

turn it into something beautiful

45:20

and meaningful and not be affected but

45:23

after five years of putting together this book

45:26

I was completely wrecked. I

45:29

lost 40 pounds. I

45:32

had a heart trimmer where I had to

45:34

wear I was getting palpitations and

45:36

I had to wear a heart monitor. Every

45:39

loud noise scared me.

45:42

I mean my nerves were

45:44

completely shot and I realized

45:48

well you know first that I didn't know what

45:50

was going on you know of course it can't be this book that I'm

45:52

writing you know it. You

45:54

know like maybe I'm just dying and

45:59

you know I had to I had to take seriously what had

46:02

happened and what

46:05

had happened to the people that I talked to and

46:07

how

46:08

seriously impactful those events were

46:11

in their lives

46:12

and how the

46:14

stuff that I went through impacted

46:17

me. I was a kid having

46:19

to get down on the ground when I heard

46:21

gunshots

46:22

and that was just a normal thing. You

46:24

know, you're in the middle of play. You hear gunshots,

46:27

you get on the ground, you get back up and you keep playing.

46:30

You know, having my first bike stolen

46:32

by a crack addict and the fear

46:35

of having to go home and explain that to my mom

46:37

that I had given somebody

46:39

my bike to fix and he

46:42

never came back with it,

46:43

that that stuff lived in me and

46:45

it needed to be excavated. I

46:49

wanna say that I'm doing much better now,

46:52

including having gained the weight back unfortunately.

46:56

But I think the message

46:59

from that for me is that lots

47:01

of us that live through that period,

47:03

we still have some stuff that we have to deal

47:06

with. You know, we need to ask

47:09

our family about that aunt or uncle

47:12

who kind of disappeared and nobody talks about.

47:15

We need to honor

47:17

those people and lift up, first learn

47:19

their stories, then lift their stories

47:22

up as a part of our stories and

47:25

that we won't heal until

47:27

we make sense of the

47:30

crack epidemic, not as this

47:33

aside, but as a part

47:35

of who we've been and what we've been through.

47:38

Well, Donovan, X. Ramsey, I think

47:40

you did a good job. Thank you for this book.

47:43

Thank you for bringing language to a time

47:45

period and an experience that so many

47:48

people experience and

47:50

are living with. Thank you so

47:52

much.

47:53

Thank you, Tanya. It's been such a pleasure.

47:56

Donovan X. Ramsey is the author of When

47:58

Crack Was King, a people's- history of

48:00

a misunderstood era.

48:03

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

48:05

Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our

48:08

interviews and reviews are produced and edited by

48:11

Amy Salat, Phyllis Myers, Sam

48:13

Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman,

48:16

Theresa Madden, Anne Marie Baldonado,

48:19

Bea Chaloner, Seth Kelly and Susan

48:21

Yakundi.

48:21

Our digital media producer

48:23

is Molly C.B. Nesper. Roberta

48:25

Shorrock directs the show. For Terry

48:28

Gross, I'm Tanya Moseley.