When Crack Was King

February 1, 2023

Reconsidering When Crack Was King and the consequences for social justice issues today, journalist Ramsey focuses on four individuals--former crack user Lennie Woodley; former Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke, an advocate of decriminalization; businessman Elgin Swift, whose father turned their home into a crack house; and Shawn McCray, community activist, basketball coach, and former drug trafficker. Prepub Alert.

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July 1, 2023
In his first book, journalist Ramsey, who has bylines in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and many magazines, writes about the crack epidemic and its impact on U.S. communities from the 1960s to recent times, with a particular focus on the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on news media, government and medical reports, archival materials, and interviews with over 100 people across the country whose lives were affected by crack, Ramsey shows how the drug devastated communities--especially Black communities--and how the policy, politicians, and media upholding the so-called war on drugs all negatively targeted low-income communities and communities of color. Ramsey traces the impact of and recovery from crack addiction via the stories of four individuals and explains the inherent racism of terms like crackhead, superpredator, and crack babies, all of which, he makes clear, need to be put to rest. Readers interested in the history of drugs in the U.S., substance use and recovery, and urban studies will find a thought-provoking study of the crack epidemic and contemporary racial injustice.

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Starred review from August 7, 2023
In his illuminating debut, journalist Ramsey interweaves a history of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s with the stories of four people who lived through it, demonstrating how a racist and overly punitive government response added to the trauma of addiction endured by many Black Americans. His profile subjects include Lennie Woodley of Los Angeles, whose crack addiction led to prostitution before she got sober and became a substance abuse counselor, and Kurt Schmoke, Baltimore’s first Black mayor and an early advocate for decriminalizing drug offenses. Along the way, Ramsey shows how the moral panic around crack “continue to distort the image of Black communities.” For example, he tracks the rise of hysteria around “crack babies,” which was based on a study of only 23 women that was later disproved in studies with larger sample sizes. He also revisits the link between the Iran-Contra affair with crack distribution in the U.S., which was substantiated by the 1989 report on the findings of the Kerry Committee, a three-year effort led by Senator John Kerry that also revealed efforts by government officials to cover up the connection. But Ramsey’s focus remains on the injustice of the response to addiction, not its cause: “The crack epidemic was not the product of an anti-Black conspiracy but the product of an anti-Black system.” It’s an essential reconsideration of a troubling era.

Starred review from June 1, 2023
A definitive report on how crack cocaine decimated the Black community throughout the 1980s and '90s. Journalist Ramsey chronicles two devastating decades when crack use was rampant and many entities turned a blind eye to the nationwide catastrophe. The author vividly recalls his adolescence in Columbus, Ohio, with "kids who grew up like me--poor and Black in the midst of the crack epi-demic." When the epidemic finally subsided, Ramsey and many other survivors were left with "speculation and innuendo." In 2015, he 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: Elgin Swift, a White man who became an ambitious, self-made success story despite being raised by a neglectful addict father; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and Los Angeles sex worker who became a substance abuse counselor; Kurt Schmoke, the first Black mayor of Baltimore, who was both praised and criticized for his early plans to defuse the drug war with decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, a former Newark drug trafficker-turned-upstanding community leader. Interwoven with these intimately depicted, gritty stories is the history of Black America from the 1960s to the end of the 20th century. Ramsey shows how crack infiltrated and nearly snuffed out entire marginalized communities while an indifferent government stood by and legitimized its demonization. Though he acknowledges that survivors of the epidemic (particularly Black and brown people) rarely discuss it, the author dutifully 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. Passionate, important reportage on a tragic era in American history from an author who lived through it.

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