Playing the Game Our Way

Growing up in any major metropolitan city can be extremely challenging, especially when you're African American. I never thought that an everyday normal little kid that I was would experience such a roller-coaster ride of a life. It was almost a guarantee that I would end up in jail, uneducated, or even dead by the time I was sixteen. That's according to statistics in the 1980s.

As time went on as a sixth-grader, I soon found a few ways to escape the ways of my community. Some of my friends ...