by Wes Moore
We walked through the small alley that separated the main road from Mshumpela Street. Our conversation strayed back to sports and gossip, but as we passed through the alley I was struck by the sight of a young man, splendid in an all-white outfit, from his shoes to his wide-brimmed hat. He appeared barely pubescent but was walking with the dignity of a man double his age. Because of Zinzi, I knew exactly what that man had gone through and the pride and admiration his family now shared about his accomplishment.
My head turned, and I stared at the young man. His bright eyes and straight back demanded attention. The confidence in his stride was something that Zinzi did not yet have, something that Simo did not yet have. Something that I did not yet have.
And again I thought of home. I realized just how similar were the challenges the young boys here and kids like the ones I grew up with faced. In both places, young men go through a daily struggle trying to navigate their way through deadly streets, poverty, and the twin legacies of exclusion and low expectations. But they are not completely unequipped--they also have the history of determined, improvisational survival, a legacy of generations who fought through even more oppressive circumstances. One of the key differences between the two was in the way their communities saw them. Here, burgeoning manhood was guided and celebrated through a rite of passage. At home, burgeoning manhood was a trigger for apprehension. In the United States, we see these same faces, and our reflex is to pick up our pace and cross the street. And in this reflexive gesture, the dimensions of our tragedy are laid bare. Our young men--along with our young women--are our strength and our future. Yet we fear them. This tall South African who now captured my attention wore his manhood as a sign of accomplishment, a badge of honor. His process was a journey taken with his peers, guided by his elders, and completed in a celebration. He was now a man. His community welcomed him.
His tribe's influence in making him a man was obvious and indelible. At that moment, I realized the journey I took was never mine alone either. Our eyes met, and he smiled and nodded his head. I nodded my head in return.
Epilogue
Wes has spent every day of his life since 2000 in the Jessup Correctional Institution, a maximum-security facility in Maryland. His day begins at 5:30 A.M. He works as a carpenter, making desks and tables, and sometimes he makes license plates. He gets paid about fifty-three cents a day, which he can use at the prison commissary to buy toothpaste, snacks, stamps, and other miscellaneous items. Lights go out at 10:00 P.M. Guards tell him when to wake up, when to eat, and when to go to the bathroom. He has two hours of free time a day, "outside time" that he can use to play basketball or talk to other inmates.
Wes is now a devout Muslim. Initially, he went to Friday mosque services because they were the only opportunity he had to see his brother, Tony, who was also in Jessup, but eventually he started to pay attention to the message and decided to learn more. He is now a leader in the significant Muslim community in the Jessup prison.
Wes's family still visits him occasionally, but the visits are not easy on Wes. He is exhaustively searched before being let into the visitors' area. The joy he feels when he is sitting across from a loved one quickly dissipates at the end of the visit as he walks back through the gate to his cell. It hurts him that he has no control over what's happening with his family on the outside. He has stopped answering questions like "How are you doing?" His answer doesn't change. His days don't change. When he gets visitors, he mainly sits and listens.
In 2008, Wes and many of his fellow inmates followed the presidential campaign closely, hoping for the election of the first black president in American history. The inmates celebrated when Barack Obama won, but their enthusiasm faded quickly. Wes and the other lifers realized that, no matter who the president was, their fate was sealed.
At the time of this book's writing, Wes has just become a grandfather. He is serving the tenth year of a life sentence. He is thirty-three years old.
Here's what some of the other characters in this story have been up to since 2000:
My mother retired from her job with a foundation for disadvantaged children, where she managed communications for grantees. She is now running her own consultancy focused on helping foundations use film and media to tell their stories. She works in Baltimore and lives just outside the city. She says she enjoys the slower pace and quiet. She remains the rock of our family.
My sisters are both doing very well. Nikki runs her own event-planning business in Virginia. Shani graduated from Princeton University in 2001, after which she attended Stanford Law School on a full scholarship. She and her husband live in Los Angeles.
Uncle Howard has remained a mentor and guide in my life and was the co-best-man (along with Justin) at my wedding. He lives in southern New Jersey with my aunt Pam and their two daughters.
Despite having a difficult time with the death of his mother, Justin managed to finish high school strong and received a scholarship to college. While he was in his senior year of college, his father passed away in a house fire, and Justin himself battled and beat a rare form of cancer. Since graduating from college, he has worked in education and now serves as dean at a prestigious high school outside Philadelphia. He has devoted his professional life to addressing the educational disparities in this country.
Captain Ty Hill graduated from Valley Forge Military College and earned the rank of second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve. He served in the Army as an officer from 1992 to 1999 and has worked as a corporate lawyer since. He was a groomsman at my wedding and remains a cherished friend and mentor. He lives in New York and still intimidates the hell out of me.
My grandfather passed away from complications of stomach cancer in 2005. Despite the best efforts of my chain of command to get me back to the Bronx from Afghanistan, I could not get there in time to say goodbye. Fortunately, I was able to be home for his funeral and was one of hundreds who were there to pay their respects and let him know how much he meant to us as he was laid to rest.
My grandmother still lives in the same home in the Bronx, presiding as ever as the family matriarch. She is in her eighties and still watches over her family like a lioness protecting her pride. She still makes a mean batch of codfish whenever we come over.
Wes's mother, Mary, works in medical technology, specializing in elder care. She is raising six children: three of Wes's kids, her niece, her nephew, and her youngest son. She lives in Aberdeen, Maryland, a little under an hour away from Baltimore City.
Wes's aunt Nicey has been working for the State of Maryland doing home visits for the elderly, sick, and shut-in for a decade. Her children live in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and her youngest just graduated from high school. All of her children finished high school.
Wes's brother, Tony, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after he was convicted as the trigger man in the death of Sergeant Prothero. The death penalty was taken off the table after Tony agreed to cooperate with the state. Sergeant Prothero's sister told Tony as he was leaving the courthouse after sentencing that "Bruce stood for everything that was good in society, and you stand for everything that is evil." Never remorseful, Tony coolly replied, "Same to you." In March 2008, Tony died in prison from kidney failure. He was thirty-eight years old.
Wes's best friend, Woody, spent many of his years after high school going in and out of prison. When the second of his three children was born, his sister had a stern talk with him about getting a legitimate job so he could watch his kids grow up. She helped him get work as a truck driver in Baltimore, a job he holds to this day. Now in his mid-thirties, Woody lives in West Baltimore and has three children.
White Boy dropped out of high school to be a waiter. He lives just outside Atlanta, where he works for a magazine, running the printing press. Woody was the best man at his wedding.
Alicia is currently raising only one of her two children with Wes. She works security for the Transportation Security Administration at a Maryland airport an
d lives in Aberdeen, close to Wes's mother.
Cheryl battled drug addiction for years and eventually lost custody of her two children with Wes. In 2002, she fell down a flight of stairs and was paralyzed. She died soon after from complications of the injuries. She was twenty-four years old.
As for me, after receiving the Rhodes Scholarship, I spent two and a half years completing my master's in international relations at Oxford. It was as revelatory, exciting, intense, and surreal as Mayor Schmoke promised. My time at Oxford began immediately after the attacks of September 11, 2001, which further heightened my sensitivity to being an American abroad but also helped me get a better understanding of the international reaction to those searing events.
When I returned to the States, I interned in Washington, D.C., focusing on homeland security issues. But many of my mentors told me that if I really wanted to understand the changes going on in American and international policy, I needed to understand the global economic system. So, after completing my graduate degree, I joined the world of high finance on Wall Street.
While I was working there, two American wars raged on. The young men and women who were heading to Iraq and Afghanistan to serve and fight weren't just anonymous recruits but friends of mine, brothers and sisters in arms. I spoke with a mentor and great friend, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Fenzel, who had just been named deputy brigade commander of the hallowed 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. The 82nd was preparing to depart for Afghanistan for a yearlong tour, and he told me he would love for me to join them. After weeks of prayer, I decided to take a leave of absence from my career and join the fight overseas. I became a member of the 82nd Airborne and headed to Afghanistan.
For the next several months--from the summer of 2005 to the spring of 2006--I was deployed in the town of Khost, on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Spending so much time with my fellow soldiers reminded me why I'd joined the military. The camaraderie, intensity, and passion for the job, and the sense of duty to something larger than myself, was something I had missed desperately. Our unit conducted lethal operations under the star-filled night sky. We maneuvered through snowcapped mountain ranges and simmering valleys. We felt the joy of a mission accomplished and the heartache of a lost comrade. To serve with young people and the young at heart alike, who live without a fear of dying and who talk about commitment, integrity, and sacrifice without a hint of sarcasm, was refreshing. I could not be more proud of my brothers and sisters in battle. That pride is a badge of honor emblazoned on my heart and will be until my last breath.
Upon my return to U.S. soil, I was accepted in the White House Fellow program. I had the honor of spending a year as a special assistant to the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. It was a fascinating experience to follow a year spent executing American policies as a soldier overseas with one watching how those policies are formulated. The nonpartisan fellowship also gave me the chance to learn from the other fellows, an impressively diverse and talented group from all over the country. And the most important occasion of that eventful year was getting married to Dawn, the most remarkable woman I know and the best friend I have.
I've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and felt how quickly the dense Kenyan heat at the base of the mountain transforms into the chill of its snowcapped peak, where deep breaths are hard to find. I've worshiped with thousands of other Christians in the Yoido Full Gospel Church, the world's largest Christian congregation, in Seoul, Korea. And I've stood in awe as dusk settled on the blue-tiled Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul. I stood in the cell that held Nelson Mandela for eighteen years on Robben Island, and I searched for family in a small Cuban town outside Havana. I have danced all night in Haarlem, Amsterdam, and in Harlem, USA. I have climbed through the Pyramid of Khufu in Giza with nothing but a flashlight to show the way and kissed my wife for the first time in St. Mark's Square in Venice on a cold New Year's Eve. I have sung in Carnegie Hall, chanting with a group of choir cadets acting as a jubilant Army preparing for war, and I've stood in humbled silence at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. I have sat with the former president of Brazil, Fernando Cardoso, and listened intently as he argued the virtues of cane-based ethanol, and I've worked with a small-farm owner in Brazil as we both chewed the honeyed liquid from freshly cut cane stalks. And I proudly spoke in front of tens of thousands of people at INVESCO Field in Denver on a balmy August evening forty-five years to the day after Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech at the historic March on Washington and just hours before President Barack Obama would take the same stage and at the same microphone proudly accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. And, sometime in 2007, I began working on this book.
This book is the product of hundreds of hours of interviews, some with people I have known for years and others with people I met minutes before I interviewed them about the most intimate details of their lives. The process of tracking down these people and listening to their stories has been one of the most interesting experiences of my life. These folks have told me some of the funniest, saddest, and most thought-provoking stories I've ever heard. I have no journalistic experience or training, but I attacked this project with a fervor and excitement that I didn't know I had. For over two years, my days would begin at 5:30 in the morning, and a cup of tea later, I was in front of my computer, taking my notes and research and trying to piece them into a coherent story about these two very real lives. My father was a journalist, and I hope that, in some way, this journey has proven that, as my mother says, I honestly inherited his passion for getting the story right.
I have also enjoyed going around the country and globe speaking to people about these stories--and then hearing back from all kinds of audiences about the Weses they've known, or even been themselves. And when I finish my story, the question that comes up the most is the one that initiated this quest: "What made the difference?"
And the truth is that I don't know. The answer is elusive. People are so wildly different, and it's hard to know when genetics or environment or just bad luck is decisive. As I've puzzled over the issue, I've become convinced that there are some clear and powerful measures that can be taken during this crucial time in a young person's life. Some of the ones that helped me come to mind, from finding strong mentors to being entrusted with responsibilities that forced me to get serious about my behavior. There is no one thing that leads people to move in one direction or another. I think the best we can do is give our young people a chance to make the best decisions possible by providing them with the information and the tools and the support they need.
Things have not been perfect for me in the years since this book's story ended. Like many boys who grow up without a father in the home, I searched for ways to fill that hole, sometimes in places I shouldn't have looked. I made some tremendous mistakes along the way. I have done things I deeply regret, said things I wish I could take back, and disappointed people in ways that still embarrass me. I have fought battles I should not have engaged in, and walked away from causes that needed and deserved a champion. But I've had the freedom to make those mistakes, and the freedom to seek redemption for them.
When we're young, it sometimes seems as if the world doesn't exist outside our city, our block, our house, our room. We make decisions based on what we see in that limited world and follow the only models available. The most important thing that happened to me was not being physically transported--the moves from Baltimore to the Bronx to Valley Forge didn't change my way of thinking. What changed was that I found myself surrounded by people--starting with my mom, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, and leading to a string of wonderful role models and mentors--who kept pushing me to see more than what was directly in front of me, to see the boundless possibilities of the wider world and the unexplored possibilities within myself. People who taught me that no accident of birth--not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless--would ever define or limit me. In other words, they
helped me to discover what it means to be free. As I wrote at the outset of this book: The chilling truth is that Wes's story could have been mine; the tragedy is that my story could have been his. My only wish--and I know Wes feels the same--is that the boys (and girls) who come after us will know this freedom. It's up to us, all of us, to make a way for them.
A Call to Action
I originally agreed to write the Call to Action for this book because of my high regard for Wes's beloved mother, Joy. But as busy as I was when I started to read Wes's manuscript, I could not set it down. The intriguing narrative of Wes and Wes urged me to consider more deeply the wisdom of my dear brother Dr. Cornel West, who steadfastly contends that "our roots help to determine our routes." The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.
The truth is, some of us have been blessed beyond measure. What some call "the favor of God" I call "unmerited favor," that is, grace and mercy. The parallels and trajectories of the two Weses' lives remind me to count my many blessings every day and to pray that when the evening comes and the night falls, I will have done something during the day for others that I can present to the Lord so that I might not feel so ashamed.
The words of the author Samuel Beckett summarize the central message of this text: "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." In fact, I believe that this describes the ebb and flow of life itself--try again, fail again, fail better. Failing doesn't make us a failure. But not trying to do better, to be better, does make us fools.
In the spirit of the Covenant series, The Other Wes Moore is a welcome component of a larger conversation in this nation about the decisions we make and the people we have in our lives who help us to make these decisions. My call to action, our call to action, is this: read these words but, more important, absorb their meanings and create your own plan to act and leave a legacy.