Street Bread And Prison

If I wasn't in the rap game

I'd probably have a key knee-deep in the crack game

Because the streets is a short stop

Either you're slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot

…it’s hard being young from the slums

Notorious BIG

Naughty By Nature’s raw brand of hip hop gave them their escape from the troubled streets of East Orange, NJ. By 1993, there music was bumping everywhere from Germany to Japan. That summer Treach, Vin Rock and Kay Gee returned home from a trip out west with two young men who had served as their bodyguards when they were on tour. Luv and True were Blood gang members hailing from Inglewood, California. They endeared themselves to local youth in East Orange, who referred to their home city as “Ill Town.” It wasn’t long before the Double ii Blood gang was born; the name married Inglewood and Ill town. It is said that the Double iis were the first Blood set to exist on the east coast.

(Rev. Harry Williams with Treach of Naughty By Nature)

Tewhan’s Butler’s was just entering his teen years when the Bloods were introduced to his hometown. His book, "America’s Massacre: The Audacity of Despair and a Message of Hope", is the story of what happened next.

American Massacre is a must read for anyone called to minister to youth in the inner city. Butler’s life story lays out a blueprint that leads from the hood to the penitentiary. It’s not a sociology text, it is the life story of any black child who could have been your neighbor if you lived in the hood. He is funny, mischievous and extremely likable. But then there are the influences that have a decided impact on the choices young Tewhan will make; the slick talking gangsters, the heavily jeweled hustlers, even his own father who shows up in the middle of the night and dumps a Hefty bag full of money out on the kitchen table.

As a teenager, Tewhan Butler, who be known in the streets as “Massacre” winds up knee deep in the game. Butler writes: “Now with the paper rolling in I was very much in a position to do for self. There was no more hiding anything from anyone, even my parents. Hell, I had already been sent to the Youth House for selling drugs, so although they didn’t approve, it was no longer a mystery. I began coming home with new outfits, sneakers, jewelry—the whole bit. When I learned how to drive, I took the liberty of pulling up in front of the crib.” Massacre also became the undisputed leader of the Double ii Bloods.

At some point, unbeknownst to Massacre, the federal government has him in a fish bowl. They have his world wiretapped. They have an informant imbedded into the infrastructure of his trusted inner circle. They spend months building evidence against Massacre and his comrades that will lead to an airtight case. All of the time Butler thinks he is escaping punishment, the feds are merely tightening the noose that’s already around his neck.

Massacre has an adoring younger brother who begins to follow in his footsteps, landing in jail himself. Butler becomes the father of a male child. None of this seems enough to slow the shot caller down. Then comes the night the authorities kick in the door to his mother’s home. Tewhan Butler, the son of our community, someone who could be your brother or your son, hangs his head low and says, ’You know, I’m never coming home from this, Ma. I love you.’”

The ability to tell a strong story and yet not sensationalize the criminal acts and their fruits is a fine line to walk. Many urban storytellers end up enticing their young readers instead of cautioning them from following their footsteps. Butler does the job well. One is left shaking their head as he makes choice after choice toward his destiny.

On a bus headed toward Newark Federal Court, Butler contemplates the path that had brought him to the place where in life where he was looking at decades of incarceration. He said, “…I stare out the bus window wishing I had understood then the importance of freedom, it had been mine to lose, and I lost it.” He describes the accommodations at Atlanta prison where he would spend time. “To say the least, it was filled with gnawing rodents, roaches, filth and disease.”

The last chapter in the book is named, “Graveyard of Potential.” In actuality, that could have been the name of the book. Tewhan Butler has the charisma of a rock star, the ability to motivate crowds like a baptist preacher and a sense of determination which applied to anything besides gang banging could have changed the world.

As I read this book, I realized that it was not only Butler who had gone wrong but the community around him, which in effect means all of us. You see we live in a world where there are thousands of young people like Tewhan, failed by the school system, magnetized by the criminal justice system and shunned by local churches. Where were the local pastors brave enough to go out to the drug track where a teenage Massacre was doing business? Where were the churches who invited he and the Double ii Bloods to their back yard barbecues? Where were those charged with the mission to “seek and save the lost”?

Tewhan Butler’s book is subtitled: "The Audacity of Despair and a Message of Hope". The only hope that I can find is that somewhere, someone will awaken to the tremendous potential that is resting in America’s graveyard and prisons in the form of young black men and will doggedly seek pathways to address this crisis. Statistics say that one out of every three young black men will be on the supervision of the criminal justice system at least once in their lifetime. We all know a Tewhan “Massacre” Butler. This book tells me that it falls on us to to try to save him.

#MassacreButler #DoubleiiBloods #IllTown #EastOrangegang #TewhanButler #EastOrange