by Jacqueline Marino & Phil Campbell - photos by Roy Cajero
he bell rings
at 2:15 p.m. each weekday at Humes Junior High School. Students pour out
of the building and disappear down such North Memphis streets as Saffa-rans,
Manassas, and Dunlap. They walk in clusters away from the historic brick
building where Elvis once went to school, past a police squad car parked
out front, past yards full of weeds, past filthy cars with tinted windows
and conversation-drowning stereos, past shabby houses with sagging roofs,
past the remnants of houses gutted by fire.
The
walk home from school isn't just a physical path, however. It's a metaphor
representing the connection between the elements that influence the lives
of young people -- school, neighborhood, and family. Unfortunately, the
path is becoming increasingly dangerous. Countless sociological and criminal
studies have shown that, in one form or another, these institutions are
crumbling, that the connections are breaking. And, in the past few years,
the nightly news has reported tragic stories of students getting raped,
killed, and abducted in broad daylight walking home. Some of these threats
are external, from strangers who don't live near them, but most of the dangers
are more immediate, coming from other young people in their own or adjacent
neighborhoods.
Over the last five months, two Memphis Flyer reporters have been talking with five students at Humes. The students were chosen with the help of teacher Kathryn Beasley for two main reasons: They live in different neighborhoods, communities such as Klondike, Smokey City, and Dixie Homes, and they were willing to talk to us honestly about violence, gangs, their families, and their personal aspirations.
The words of these outspoken students were transcribed verbatim, edited by subject but unfiltered by subjective news analysis.
As one student told us, adults don't know what it's like. Perhaps this will give a little more insight.
"It's kind of like we in the same neighborhood but they just got different names, just to give us something to argue about."
Morris: I'm through running track. I got tired of running. Since
the last time you were here, it has just gotten plain out worse. One dude
got jumped. They just flat out jumped him for nothing. He ain't been talking
bad to nobody, doing plain out nothing. There was no reason to jump him,
no reason at all.
And they sprung on a short dude in the seventh grade for nothing. Plain out nothing. Yesterdayit's like Dixie Homes against Klondike. And we chased them home again. Then it's going to happen again today. The same thing over and over. Just fighting. Just fight after fight. Because they get jealous or have a little disagreement, they gotta call somebody else to jump. Won't fight one-on-one. Then now they won't leave it at just jumping them. They gotta shoot them. They gotta beat them bad, send them to the hospital. If they can't get them, they'll get somebody they know. Or somebody they can. Or somebody who stays around, or somebody in their neighborhood. They won't leave nothing alone. It's just more and more fighting. It gets worse and worse.
Now I walk straight out the front door and keep going. It ain't going to help no more now. They starting to wait until whoever come out the door. They see you from Klondike, they gonna get you right then and there. Can't run. Gotta wait until they leave, or leave early. That's all me and my friends going to do, just leave early.
We [students who live in Klondike] got the farthest to go from school. But they stay causing trouble to us. We never do nothing. We just mind our own business for a while, then they just all of a sudden jump one of us, just for the fuck of it. And I'm getting tired of running.
I don't want to end up in the hospital. Sometimes I walk by myself. I have better odds of getting away if I go by myselfI ain't wasting no time to get caught. It don't make no sense to keep on fighting like that. All in the same spot, all I want is to get away.
It's kind of like we in the same neighborhood but they just got different names, just to give us something to argue about. They rent the houses that they stay in, and they rent the apartments that they stay in. So why they go fight over it? They don't own none of this shit.
I got too many problems to try these lit motherfuckers over their shit. If they want to fight over this stupid-ass neighborhood, let them fight. As long as I don't get involved in it. But now they get into something personal, that you can't just stay neutral. You gotta be in something. You can't fight with your neighborhood, because your neighborhood going to whup you, or the next neighborhood going to whup you. You all right this time, but it probably be you that get jumped next time.
Stevin: [After school, students] come back with their people to start the fights, the neighborhood scrap-outs. They have everything from knives to small guns.
Morris: Bricks, bats, bottles
Stevin: Everything they find they use it as a weapon. But they don't use it, they just use it as a threat to make it seem like they're more dominant than the next neighborhood.
Morris: They just want to scare the fuck out of somebody or beat the fuck out of somebody. They catch one person by themselves, Lord bless him because he's going to get hurt.
[Some] Dixie Homes people came up here after school -- they don't even go here no more or on suspension -- and still holding a grudge. They just wanted to get him. They came up on the side his head, acting like they wanted to talk to him like they was a friend. Then one hit him from the back, one grabbed him, and starting hitting him.
Every time he turned around, somebody else hit him
Stevin: Then the next day the neighborhood the [victim] was from, he brought everybody [from his neighborhood]. And they ran Dixie Homes all the way to where they stayed, and then they turned around and walked back.
Terrance: Did I tell you about that incident that, that suspension that I got into with them girls? These quiet girls around here, you might think they quiet, but some of them be carrying weapons to school and she had a razor blade at school. And they be thinking she just a quiet girl. She had a razor blade in her pocket. She had it in there all the time. She had pulled it out, then tried to run and chase me, then somebody grabbed her. That's what they said because I was already gone. Me and her had got into it. And I had told her, `Stay out of my face.' And she got mad. I had a witness with me. He was just walking with me and he told the story right. And they let me back in school, and they let ain't let her in school.
It was in front of the school, in the morning time. And the teacher be talking about she a good girl. You might think she quiet but she be having weapons in her pocket.
We were playing at first, in the morning, then she got for real, started grabbing on me and then I slung her down. She jumped up and beat me on my face, and then I slung her on the ground, then all of a sudden she came out with a blade, I came up, ran around the building and ran through the back door. Went upstairs, then went to my class and they all started to holler. Some man came up and got me and said the principal was looking for me.
Ever since that day, every time the principal see me, he always got something to say.
Lakeisha: If my mother has a feeling something's going to be happening to me at school, she won't let me come to school.One time I got jumped for two dollars at school. From that day she didn't want me to come back to the school no more.
I've been in like five fights [since I've been] at this school, both with females and with boys. Because, it's like, one person don't like somebody in this school, so they'll spread a rumor talking about folks. Folks keep coming up and I'll say, `I don't want to hear that story.' Then I heard one day my cousin told me that some people are going to jump me in school one day, so I didn't come to school that day.
I don't think people like me because the attitude I give off. Because when folks talk to me in the wrong way, I get an attitude with them quick.
Really it's different neighborhoods [fighting]. It's like Smokey City and Klondike, then Hurt Village and Dixie Homes. Hurt Village and Dixie Homes together.
Terrance: No, they're not.
Lakeisha: They ain't together no more?
Terrance: They were getting to get in a fight the other day at that jamboree.
Lakeisha: Once upon a time, it was [those] two neighborhoods together and the other two neighborhoods going against each other.
Tanya: It cooled down since like the beginning of April, like
the first week of April. It lasted a whole week. Klondike and Dixie Homes.
Klondike was walking home and one of the Dixie Homes boys jumped a boy from
Klondike and the next day a boy from Klondike had jumped this boy from Dixie
Homes. But this boy right here had never been -- he don't start nothing.
He be by himself.So he was walking home by the church that's right here
and they just beat him. I mean they just got bikes, picked bikes and just
threw it on his head and he was bleeding and stuff and he went to the hospital.
It makes me not want to come to school. When I know something's going to happen. You know something's going to happen because if they get into it in the hallway, you already know it. If it's not the same day it's the next day they're going to start something. So the next day I'm scared to come to school. I don't even want to go to lunch no more. So I go into some teacher's class and sit in there.
It could be somebody with a gun here today. But most of the time they be trying to show off. You know, show off. So that's how I find out. I just go the other way, try to stay to myself, watch my back.
If I see a gun, I'm running. I know if it's my time to be shot, it's my time to be shot, but I'm going to try my best to avoid it. I'm not going to run up into no crowd if I see a gun. I'm going to go the other way. I'm trying to run from it.
I ain't afraid [about violence after school] because I ain't waiting on nobody after school. After school I be in the school house because I have majorette practice. So I don't be out there when they be fighting. But I be scared for my cousin because he has to walk to the bus stop.
A bullet don't have no eyes. You don't know who's
going to get it. So I be scared for him and I be scared when I be, you know,
trying to walk to the bus stop. I don't go outside. I take the back halls
to the gym.
Morris: If [my 10-year-old-brother] do throw down gang symbols, I'll do exactly what I says and smack the shit out of him. He listen, but he still going to do what he want to do. Not now, but when he get older, he going to do what he want to do. I still got a chance to control the way he act, talk, and all that stuff. If I can keep him away from all these gangs and stuff, then I'm going to do it.
Terrance: When them gang boys be fighting somebody, they oughta be kicking them out instead of letting them back in [school]. They ain't going to do nothing except do the same thing again, and again, and again.
Lakeisha: A gang? It ain't nothing but a lot of folks who think they hard.
My brother told me [about gangs]. He says, "I know almost everything about it." He got some books [about gangs] over at my house. He told me to read, read some of them.And I know some folks in school, they like, yeah, I know, I know a lot of stuff [about gangs]. But this girl I know, I told her I know it, and then she told folks that I'm in it. I don't know everything about them. I know a lot of stuff about it, but I'm still reading. I don't know half of the stuff about gangs.
They write about, like, what is Nike, what is K-Swiss and Fila and stuff like that. I'm still reading that. And they ask, what is a six-pointed star, what is the color of the rainbow, and stuff like that.
Terrance: You oughta walk around these neighborhoods and look on these walls. You see more writing about gangs than anything. I show you a wall full of everything.
Morris: My brother was fighting when he was here, and my momma
was fighting when she came here. It's the same thing, over and over. Same
neighborhoods don't like each other, from a long time back. Probably even
when Elvis went here.
If my little brother constantly see me fighting up here every day after school, he gonna do the same thing when he come up here. If he see me walk away from it, he going to look at me and walk away from it. And that's all I'm trying to show him.
Stevin: I'm the youngest of all my brothers. I had one. We was real tight. We played a lot. He taught me some things about streets. We was living in Orange Mound at this time. He taught me some things, you know, what streets not to go down, what not to wear, and how to talk to people he thought was in gangs and what to look for. He was my oldest brother. He educated me mostly on street life.
One day he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, standing in Lauderdale Court visiting his girlfriend. And he just, somebody tried to rob him, and I guess he didn't want to give up what he had.
[He was] 19.
Morris: My cousin was 19 when he died.He was passing out flyers, and he threw up a gang sign to one of his friends, just showing love, not to make a gang sign or nothing to get trouble started over, and they just started shooting.
He got hit in the chest. He was the only person I really looked at all to. One of the only people in my whole family to graduate.He would tell me what not to do, the easy way out, or how to stay out of trouble. If I got in trouble with my grandma, he would tell me what to say so he wouldn't be in trouble, to calm her down, to keep me from getting whupped and stuff like that. He used to take a whupping for us sometimes.
He just stayed in the neighborhoods where there was a lot of gangs and stuff that, and you was either in it or did it. So he had to fake like he was in it. He had no choice. Dude that so-called "blessed him in" [initiated him into the gang], he got killed before my cousin did, by a junkie. He got stabbed.
Tanya: One of them [her brothers] died when he was three and one of them got killed when he was 17. The one died when he's three when we were in Chicago and it was a driveby at the playground and he got killed. And the other that was 17, he got shot. I don't know if it was intentional or not. Last yearWell, it affected me for about a month. I didn't come to school
I run out of fingers trying to count everybody I know that's got shot. There's a lot of stuff they don't say. They on the news don't say. There's a lot of things they cannot put on the news.But I betcha somebody get hit in the head with a rock in East Memphis somewhere and I bet it'd be in the newspaper.
Morris: I'm trying to get [my little brother] more involved in school. Then I got a little nephew to look out for. I got a baby brother to look out for. I ain't starting none of this shit. I'm just ready to get the fuck away from over here. I ain't wasting no time. I just want to get my education, get a good job, and move. I can't wait until this school year just over with. I already passed. I'm happy for that, but I still gotta come up here to have good attendance and all this stuff. So I don't want my record bad.
I got all of my problems solved. I'm getting the best education that I could for now. But I want to go to art school.
First
I'm going to go in the military. I'm going into the military for four years.
Then I'm going to re-enlist for another four years while I'm going to college.
So while I'm in college I'll be in the military trying to figure out what
I'm going to do. Like, if I'm going to do electronics, what field of electronics
I'm going to be in? Write poetry, write books, a lawyer? Anything. I'll
find out then. Right now I'm trying to be too picky about what I'm going
to do. I'm trying to see how many options I've got, and work the best one
that I can.
Lakeisha: I don't have a role model. I had one, my grandmother, but she died when I was 10. She died two days after I turned 10. On my birthday.
One of my dreams when I grow up is to be a doctor, like my grandma.
When my grandma died, she said, if you ever want to be a doctor like your grandma, you've got to go to college. When she died, she was holding my hand and I was hugging her, and then she died. I was 10. I told my mom, I think I killed my grandma.
When I hugged her, I was hugging her for a long time. I gave her a kiss, and then she just died.
If Martin Luther King were my dad, he'd be my role model. Martin Luther King went and died for us like Jesus died for us. He wanted black and whites to get along, and back then I didn't think they could get along then. I told my momma that I have nothing against nobody white. I have white folks in my family, white friends. I had a white boyfriend when I was young. Just because they white don't mean nothing. We just people.
Stevin: I'm making it a short-term goal to graduate from school. I would be the first of all my three brothers to graduate. I was held back a couple of times, but I ain't dropping out. Most kids my age, they dropping out because they think they too old and they grown, want to be grown, want to act like they want to act. Trying to get up by my bootstraps right now. But I need help, because there's very little to encourage me in my neighborhood. The only encouragement I got is from my mother, and my brothers telling me how it is. They thought it was going to be fun -- I could quit going to school, [and] be staying at home, watching TV, or doing things on the street.
Tanya: [There's one teacher] who tells us, "Y'all ain't going to do nothing. Y'all ain't going to be nothing". . .[He tells us] "At least get halfway. I know you ain't going to make it to the top. At least get halfway."
When I do mine [her report card] good, I highlight mine, make sure they [school administrators and teachers] see it. I want to graduate with honors. I want them to have a good word for me when the job call looking for [a reference] for me, I want them to be like, "Yeah, yeah, I remember her."
I want to take up mortuary science. [Ten years from now I'd like to be] somewhere owning my own business. Far away. I don't got no neighbors, no nothing, just by myself. A mile away from everybody.
I'm going to miss the school because the school in the inside, without everyone starting violence, the school would be good because we got a lot of activities. It's [got] a lot of clubs. It's good.
Morris: A lot of people just don't care. That's the problem. Too many people just don't care about their life and how they're going to live it, what they're going to do with the rest of their life so they make everybody else's life into a hellhole.
You can't make nobody care[But] If you do your best and hope for the best, the best is probably going to come to you.