When Crack Was King

When Crack Was King: a people's history of a misunderstood era
By Donovan X. Ramsey
New York: One World, 2023. 427 pages. Nonfiction

This fascinating book caught my eye with its bright, orange cover and then held my attention with its compassionate storytelling and riveting research. It's a report on how crack cocaine decimated the Black community throughout the 1980s and the 1990s in the United States. The author, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey, vividly recalls his adolescence in Columbus, Ohio, with "kids who grew up like me -- poor and Black in the midst of the crack epidemic." In 2015, Ramsey began deeply researching "the facts of crack -- what it was, where it came from, and how it spread." 

The author compassionately profiles four individuals whose lives were affected by crack and, interwoven with these intimately depicted, gritty stories, is the history of Black America from the 1960s to the end of the 20th century. The four individual stories provide readers with a startling portrait of crack's destruction and devastating legacy: Elgin Swift, an archetype of American industry and ambition and the son of a crack-addicted father who turned their home into a "crack house"; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and sex worker; Kurt Schmoke, the longtime mayor of Baltimore and an early advocate of decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, community activist, basketball prodigy, and a founding member of the "Zoo Crew," New Jersey's most legendary group of drug traffickers.

Though he acknowledges that survivors of the epidemic (particularly Black and brown people) rarely discuss it, the author shines much-needed light on this searingly traumatic ordeal. Each profile ends with the possibilities of hope and change, and Ramsey also dispenses provocative, convincing commentary on criminal legal system reform, social justice, the failures of drug policy, and the complicated relationship between disenfranchised communities and drug abuse in America. Ramsey shows how crack infiltrated and nearly snuffed out entire marginalized communities while an indifferent government stood by and legitimized its demonization. This book is a crucial reevaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.

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LKA