by Miles Harvey
Endnotes
37 William Recktenwald, “On the Wall,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 10, 1984.
38 In recent years, Cerda has returned to Mexico several times to conduct anti- violence workshops. These trips were sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
39 Menard Correctional Center is a state prison in downstate Illinois.
40 The Chicago Crime Commission Gang Book, published in 2012, still lists Cerda as an active gang leader. He vehemently denies this and has filed a complaint against the Crime Commission for false depiction. See James D. Hubbard and Katherine Wyman, eds., The Chicago Crime Commission Gang Book: A Detailed Overview of Street Gangs in the Chicago Metropolitan Area (Chicago: Chicago Crime Commission, 2012), 78-79.
41 Zenith was a radio and television manufacturer. It had a factory in Melrose Park, a western suburb adjacent to Maywood.
42 Cerda is referring to a deadly war that broke out between the Insane
Unknowns and the Spanish Cobras.
43 See Bonita Brodt, “2 Slain in New Gang Terror: Shooting Linked to Street War,” Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1979.
44 Joliet Correctional Center opened in 1858 and closed in 2002. After closing,
it was used as a set for the Prison Break TV series.
45 Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum-security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois.
46 People and Folks are the two major gang alliances. They were formed in
the penitentiary system during the mid-1970s by incarcerated gang members seeking safety in numbers.
47 Luis Rosa is a Puerto Rican nationalist. In 1981, he was sentenced to 75 years in prison for his illegal activities with the FALN, the Spanish-language acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation. He was released from prison in 1999 after President Clinton gave him and other members of the group clemency.
UNANSWERED PRAYERS
PAMELA MONTGOMERY-BOSLEY
Pamela Montgomery-Bosley is an energetic, 40-something South Side resident who is not fond of sharing her real age. In 2006, her 18-year-old son, Terrell Bosley, an aspiring gospel musician, was gunned down in the parking lot of the Lights of Zion church on the city’s Far South Side. In 2008, a 27-year-old man named David Stanley was acquitted of murder. Despite extensive publicity surrounding the case, and a $5,000 reward, Terrell’s killing remains unsolved.
While she spent more than 20 years in the banking industry, Montgomery-Bosley now devotes her considerable talents to ending youth violence. In addition to her full-time job with a community youth center at St. Sabina Church in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, she is the co-founder of Purpose Over Pain, an advocacy group started in 2007 by parents who lost their children to gun violence.
My greatest wish is to get my baby back. When I go to visit my son in the cemetery, I say to God, “I won’t tell nobody; just give Terrell back to me.” And I know that God can do this. I’m lacking in a lot of other ways, but
I believe He can do it. My faith is that strong. I know He can do it, but
He won’t.
Even so, I still have Terrell’s stuff down in my basement like I’m waiting for him to come back. My husband and I are waiting for him to come and ring the doorbell. We wait for him to call. This is something that you cannot accept as a parent; no mother or father should bury their child.
I grew up in K-Town, on Kedvale Street in North Lawndale on the West Side. Violence wasn’t what it is now. We had people on the West Side just hanging out. Everyone liked to stay outside and enjoy the weather. I would ride my bike to downtown. We’d walk to school and feel safe.
My son Terrell grew up in the Rosemoor neighborhood, which is right next to Roseland, on the Far South Side. My husband, Tom, grew up in that area, which is why we purchased a home there in 1991. It was okay when we first moved there, and then as the years progressed, it started changing. Once the city started tearing down public housing projects in the 1990s, people started renting out homes to different individuals, and that changed our neighborhood. We didn’t hear guns on my block, not till the later years. Now, I can be in my house and hear pow, pow, pow, pow! And everyone just walks around desensitized.
Terrell had freedom, to a certain degree, but not a lot. My boys now—I have a 17-year-old and I don’t even want him to walk around the corner; I drive him around the corner. I know that I am sheltering him too much. He even says that he feels like he lives in a bubble. It’s overbearing for
him and his brother. I’m not letting them grow up. I’m not letting them feel like teenagers.
But that’s my biggest fear—to lose another child. If I lose another child, I probably will lose my mind. People seem to think that I am doing good, but I’m not. I’m horrible. I can put on my “front face” the majority of time, but my heart is broken; it’s torn apart. To this day, I don’t understand why God allowed me to be in this situation, because I was an excellent mom.
My goal was to protect Terrell as much as possible—from the gangs, the drugs. I didn’t want him to be connected to nothing negative in the neighborhood. When Terrell met friends, I made sure I met their mother and father. That was something that he said parents don’t do anymore, but I did it. I wanted to know whose house he was going to, and a little bit about their families. Is the father living in the home? I just needed to know some information. And then I monitored his friends. They would bring their book bags in the house and leave them lying around and, at times, I would peek in their book bags to make sure that their bags were okay, because I needed to know who my children were around.
Terrell had always been an advanced student. He started speaking and walking earlier than a lot of children, and he skipped a year ahead in grammar school. He was outgoing, outspoken, had to get the last word in. At school, his principal and teachers used to tell him he was a leader and to remain positive because other young people followed after him.
He started playing the bass guitar in his freshman year. The bass was his passion. He played for a lot of gospel artists—he played for a quartet group called The Victory Travelers. He actually got a chance to play on the Main Stage at the Gospel Fest with The Victory Travelers and some great choirs.48 Terrell was doing everything that I always wanted to do. I sang, too, and was in the choir, but Terrell was making it and accomplishing everything in the gospel music world that I wanted to do. So I enjoyed supporting him and cheering him on from the audience. I was known in the music world as Terrell’s mom. It was just awesome to see him on the stage playing. His goal was to travel around the world and play the gospel music with his six-string bass guitar. But this did not happen.
My husband and I taught Terrell right from wrong, just like any parents who love their children. I’d stay up and watch him come home, just to make sure his eyes were clear. If I’d smell cigarettes, I would say, “You know what we studied about the lungs?” I’d grab this lung picture and show him everything. So my husband and I stayed on him, building him up to be the great young man that he was.
The day before everything happened, I had cooked a pot roast and meatloaf. I had made pot roast for that Monday night and meatloaf for that Tuesday. So that Monday night, he was talking to his girlfriend on the phone and he was like, “You gotta come over here—my mom, she threw down! She cooked some pot roast today.” The next day was the meatloaf day and, when I came home from work and the meatloaf had been eaten off of, I called him to ask, “Why did you eat the meatloaf before I got home?” The moment I left the message was probably when everything was happening because he didn’t pick up his phone.
At 6 o’clock that evening, Terrell took his girlfriend to church for her praise-dance rehearsal. While she was practicing, he was in the church playing his music. His friend, Darren, had drums in the car, so he put his bass down and went outside to help Darren, because he was helpful. That was something that he did. Then, this other car pulled up with some more musicians in it. They were out there talking for a moment at this car on church grounds, and somebody cam
e by shooting.
Somebody said that the person was on foot, somebody said he was in the car. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know that somebody came by shooting. My baby, after he was shot in the shoulder, he struggled back to the church for help, but they didn’t know he was shot. They thought that he was just panicking or something. He started shaking, and they just kinda stepped over him.
That made me mad, because my baby got shot, and nobody even knew it. They were so busy running outside the door of the church, and everybody was stepping over my baby. So he stumbled to church, the place where you’re supposed to get help, and they finally realized he got shot. He told one guy that he think he got shot. Those were his last words.
Me and my husband and my other two children was doing homework and preparing dinner. As soon as we got the call, we all ran out and went to the church on 116th and Halsted. They were bringing Terrell out to the ambulance. He was still breathing then. My regret is that I got back into my car, ‘cause that’s what they told me to do instead of getting in the ambulance. I wish I would’ve gotten into the ambulance. I wasn’t thinking. I was just trying to get to the hospital as soon as possible. I never thought I was going to lose my son. He’d been hit by a car before—and he made it. And I thought that must be because of my prayers. So I never would have thought…
It was an eternity driving to the hospital. On the way there, I was calling friends and family and I said, “Praaaaaay and meet us at Christ Hospital—praaaaaay!” I’m calling everybody and telling them to just pray for Terrell and meet us. And my husband kept saying, while he was driving, “Breathe, Terrell, breathe!”
So when we got to the hospital, we were waiting, and I was wondering when they were gonna let me back there with my baby. The doctor came out to talk to us, and I wasn’t really comprehending what he was saying to us, until my husband said, “Are you talking…you’re talking in the past. Are you saying my son didn’t make it?”
And that’s when we found out that—and I lost it from there. This devastated my entire family. The first year without Terrell was horrible for my entire family.
When we got to the first-year anniversary of his death, I tried to take my life. And, you know, I’m a Christian, God-fearing woman, but I couldn’t take the pain of him not being with me anymore. I took a whole bottle—a bottle of pills—and went to sleep. And then I woke up the next morning—I didn’t wake up, God woke me up—and I saw the sun and I was mad. I was like, “Come on, God, you left me here again?”
I believe that if all of the kids got the love and attention they needed, we wouldn’t be in this situation. True, you have parents out there who want to help their children but don’t know how. But there are some parents not trying to raise their kids, not putting forth the effort. Like the ones who don’t have nothing to do with their kids, but when they go to court, they say, “Johnny, he was a real good child.” They need to be held accountable. Parents must raise their children, make sure that they get a decent education and do their homework. You need to be a parent and not be your child’s friend, hanging and kicking it with them. It starts in the home.
I used to think that, as long as I raised my children right, as long as I kept them in order, then my boys would be safe. But now I know differently. If I don’t take care of my neighbor’s kids, if I don’t take care of other youth, my own children aren’t safe. So my goal is to work with the high-risk children and be proactive.
Everything that our youth have to look forward to is violence—it’s the games, the videos with shooting at the police, the songs. There’s a whole lot of pieces to this puzzle. Gun legislation, it’s a big one. There are so many guns in our community that I don’t know if they are dropping them out of cargo trains. Our youth can go get guns for $25; some can get them for free. I asked a group of young people, eighth grade and under, “So if you need a gun, where can you go get one?” And one of the boys was like, “I can go to my friend’s house and get a gun.” And I said, “Are you’re serious?” He said, “I can get one. They sell them out of their car trunks.”
People sell guns like it’s candy.
We shouldn’t have to live in fear. We shouldn’t have to be afraid to let our kids walk to the store. We do not have to live this way. When we can get the people in our community to realize this, then we’ll be okay. We don’t need any more mothers in my situation.
We need to speak out. If we don’t speak out, the black community is going to end up being in the museum. We are going to end up there, and people are going to say, “This is where black people used to live. This is how they used to look.” At the rate that we are going now, we’re going to have more black men incarcerated or murdered. And the generation is going to become extinct. So we have to speak out.
—Interviewed by Ann Szekely
Endnotes
48 The Chicago Gospel Music Festival is an annual city-sponsored event. The Victory Travelers are an acclaimed vocal quartet based in Chicago.
A TWIG IN A TORNADO
TIMOTHY CLARK
Timothy Clark—not his real name—is a 19-year-old who lives in Washington Heights, an overwhelmingly African-American neighborhood on the Far South Side, near Beverly and Roseland. He lives with his mother and two maternal siblings. He has eight siblings on his paternal side, although he doesn’t have a relationship with his father or his paternal siblings.
Timothy is tall with a husky build. He is casually dressed for the interview, wearing jeans and a hoodie. He mentions that the hoodie once belonged to his best friend, who was shot to death on Timothy’s birthday in 2009. Timothy’s mother has repeatedly asked him to discard the hoodie because it is so old and dirty. But Timothy cannot bear the thought of throwing out this reminder of his friend, whose name is tattooed on Timothy’s arm.
Timothy attends Community Youth Development Institute (CYDI), a small alternative school on the South Side that has approximately 200 students. He transferred to CYDI in September of 2010 after being expelled from two public high schools, Hyde Park Academy and Julian, because of poor academic performance and repeated fights. He credits the mentor in an after-school program for being instrumental in his determination to “turn a new leaf.” Timothy is proud of his recent academic performance. He rarely misses school and hasn’t had a fight in four months.
I’ve been fighting since I was 8 years old. When I was in preschool and kindergarten, I would come home crying, beating my head on the wall. People used to talk about me; they called me slow and stuff and I didn’t have any friends. But one day, when I was in third grade, I fought somebody who was 14. He was messing with my little brother. I told him to leave my brother alone, but then he started talking about me, so I just hit him. He got to hitting me back, so I got scared and balled up. But then I thought about my big cousin Dee who used to tell me, “Ain’t no losing a fight; you have to win or you have to fight me.” I knew he was serious. The fight led from the alley to my backyard to my gangway to my front. I whupped him in the end, because I didn’t want to fight my cousin Dee. Ever since then, I would tell people, “You ain’t going to do too much talking.”
I joined a gang in fifth grade. I thought it was cool. Everybody I knew was in a gang, even one of my friends. He was like a celebrity. Every girl in the school wanted to go with him. He used to have money. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be in the spotlight.
The process was kinda sweet for me, because my uncles were big-time gang members when I was a shorty. I stayed in their old neighborhood, near 69th and Elizabeth in Englewood, so the gang members already knew me. There was really nothing to becoming a Gangster Disciple, or GDs as they call them now. I just had to learn some rules and I was basically in. When I first joined, they just told me to look out for the police and let them know when they were coming. Later on, I started selling weed.
It wasn’t long before my friends started coming to me when they were getting into it with folks. One time, my friend was into it with a dude, and he came and got me. I told t
he dude he had to leave my friend alone. He was still woofing at my friend, so I jumped him. Another time, my friend smacked my brother. He was our family friend; his mama and my mama had been friends a long time. He hit my brother and tried to run, but my cousin caught him and punched him. I came over and kicked him and we stomped him out. We used to play football and basketball with him every day, but that day we had to beat him up.
When I think about it, I’ve been in quite a few fights. A couple of them were bad, but there was one time when I hurt someone really badly. Dude was short and I was kicking him in his face and stomping him with my boots. They told me he went to the hospital and I was scared that he might be in intensive care. Afterwards, I felt bad for doing him like that. I was like, “Man, I hope he is alive.” Luckily, he was all right. I don’t know why I didn’t stop before it got that far. Sometimes, there is something that just comes over me when I fight; sometimes, I just black out.
Because of my actions, there are a few areas where I gotta look over my shoulder. Like, I work for the Chicago Park District at Fernwood Park. There’s a dude that I got into it with who is always over there. When he sees me, or me and my friends, it’s either going straight to shots or straight
to fighting.
I ain’t gon’ say I’ve never been shot at; I’ve been shot at before, but I’ve never been hit. I’ve never shot anybody, either, but I have owned a gun. I bought it for crunch times, like when my community is in war. That’s when there is so much fighting and gunshots that you can hardly go outside. I bought the gun from somebody I knew. I told him I wanted a gun, he told me what type he had, and I bought it. The gun was $280. Me and my mans bought it together; I put in $100 and he put in $180. I got my portion from my mom when she got her tax return. I told her that I was going to buy some clothes, but I used some of the money to get the gun. Me and my mans realized that we didn’t really need the gun, so we sold it.
