Tim grew up in poverty with his single mother and two brothers in a dangerous neighborhood in Cincinnati. By age 11, he was selling drugs and guns for cash just to make ends meet. As a juvenile, he got 27 convictions. By his early twenties, he had spent several years in prison. Things changed for […]
Coss grew up in the Lower East Side with a single mother who struggled to support her family on her factory job salary. He remembers, “The guys on the block had chains and money and clothes and everything I wanted that my mom couldn’t provide for me, so as a kid, the people I looked […]
Marquis grew up in the Bronx in the 1980’s. His dad battled a crack cocaine addiction and his uncle was huge in the drug scene. As a way to pay for Pac-Man and bodega snacks, he began stealing first money from his uncle and then crack, which he sold himself. By the time he was […]
Vidal was raised by a single mother in Harlem. By the time he was 10, he had begun selling drugs with his older brother. By the time he was 16, he had been arrested for robbery and drug possession. At Rikers, he was jumped by a group of 20 teenagers from a rival gang. At […]
In her words: I have always known that education was my key out of poverty. It was pretty obvious to me from a young age, even though I was raised by a single mother who did not complete the 8th grade. But somehow, I just knew that education was the way for me to obtain […]
David was born in Harlem in 1948 and, like many young Black men of time, received his early education in the streets. David began experimenting with drugs and alcohol around the age of 10, and by the age of 14 had moved on to using and selling heroin on the streets of Harlem. For years, […]
