It has been my experience that because of institutional and individual racism

Chapter 2
The High Steppers
I started to hang with other boys in the Treme when I was around 12. I had a
little job in the grocery store making snowballs, cups of shaved ice covered
with flavored sugarcane syrup. When the owner wasn’t looking I handed out
snowballs to my friends through the back window. At night, we stood under a
streetlight on the corner of Dumaine and Robertson and talked shit for hours,
boasting about things we never did, describing girls we never knew.
Everyone called me Fox.
After school, we’d meet up and figure out ways to get things we didn’t
have. We shoplifted bread from the boxes outside stores, snuck into the
theater to watch movies. For money, we sang and danced in the French
Quarter or stole flowers from the graveyard and sold them to tourists on
Bourbon Street. To eat we met at the bakery on Orleans Avenue before dawn
and stole rolls and pastries from delivery trucks parked behind a tall barbed
wire fence. It was nothing for us to climb over that fence if we had a
pillowcase or cloth to protect our hands. We’d take a tray of baked goods
from the back of one of those trucks, dump them into a bag, then run across
the tracks to Brown’s Velvet Dairy to steal milk or ice cream from their
trucks. We carried everything to the park and ate until we couldn’t eat
anymore.
When we heard about a concert playing at the Municipal Auditorium we
climbed up the back wall to an open second-floor window, ran down the back
stairs, and charged kids admission at the back door. When the Ringling Bros.
Circus came to town we signed up for day jobs to feed and water the animals.
We piled hay in front of the elephants and horses and shoveled shit from
behind them and hauled water to the tigers in cages. When nobody was
looking we’d leave our rakes and shovels in the straw, sneak off, and find an
unguarded back door where we charged for entrance, letting our friends in for

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free.
We never thought we were committing crimes. We thought we were
outsmarting the world. But we watched out for police. Sometimes they’d
come after us if they saw a group of black kids, no matter what we were
doing. We had to especially be on the lookout in the French Quarter, where
we “beat the box” on Bourbon Street, drumming on cardboard boxes. If the
police grabbed us in those years they’d take our money and beat us until we
ran away as fast as we could.
My mom saw into the future and tried to protect me from going to jail. “If
I catch you stealing or doing anything wrong I’m going to whip your ass,”
she’d say. “I don’t want you out there stealing and being a petty-ass
criminal.” If she saw me on the street with a kid she thought was trouble she
would come up to us and tell me to go home. At home she’d yell at me and
I’d yell back. I didn’t think she had any right to tell me what to do. I didn’t
want her controlling me. We still had affectionate times some days, when I
would sit close to her and we’d talk with her arm around me. She loved my
hair. By age 13, though, I wasn’t obedient to my mom anymore. She would
tell me to be home at a certain time and I wouldn’t be home at that time. My
friends and I were hustling to survive, and we loved being good at it. I call
this period of my life the guilt of innocence. We didn’t know any better.
Around this time, we started to think of ourselves as a gang and started
calling ourselves the 6th Ward High Steppers, a name we thought made us
sound like winners. Being in a gang, defending your turf becomes necessary.
I had to learn to fight. I wasn’t a natural-born fighter so I held back at first.
Fighting actually made me physically ill. When I saw boys my age fighting
older, bigger kids, I thought they had something I didn’t have. I wondered if I
was a coward.
My friend Frank had been pushing me to fight this dude my age named
Lawrence, who was constantly humiliating me. If I was eating a sandwich,
when he saw me he’d take it and eat it. Once he took my belt. Mostly he
demanded I give him any money I had on me. I was terrified of Lawrence,
who was bigger than me.
“You can’t let him do that to you, Fox,” Frank said. “When are you going
to stand up for yourself ?”
The next time I saw Lawrence it was on Orleans Avenue neutral ground. I
was scared but this time when Lawrence pushed me I swung my arm and hit
him in the head. That’s when I learned that courage doesn’t mean you aren’t

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afraid. Courage means you master that fear and act in spite of being afraid.
Lawrence and I fought and didn’t stop until I got up and he didn’t. For a
while Lawrence and I fought every time we saw each other. Then he gave up.
I never let fear stop me from doing anything again.
We never wanted to get caught on anybody else’s turf but if there was a
house party outside the Sixth Ward, we risked it. If confronted by another
gang we stayed and fought or hauled ass. When gang members from other
wards came on our turf we beat them up or chased them out. No one had guns
at that time. We only fought with fists. Gang members never attacked the
family members of other gang members. If there was a feud between gangs it
stayed within the gangs. It was understood that family was off-limits.
Everybody honored that. After every fight, I still felt ill and went off to be by
myself but I didn’t tell anyone. By the time I was in my midteens I had a
reputation for being very tough. Only I knew differently.
On hot summer nights when the mosquitos were tearing our asses up we
broke into the pool next to the park and filled it with water. We turned on the
lights by bending back the cover of the switchbox to reach the switch. Then
we started the water pump and let the water run until the pool was full.
People came from the nearby projects to swim. Sometimes park officials
would come around and turn everything off and tell everyone to go home. If
the cops came everybody broke out running. A child who got caught would
be sent to juvenile hall. A grown-up would be charged with trespassing. Most
of the time the police didn’t come. When we finished swimming, we drained
the pool and turned the lights off.
For the most part, we knew how to avoid cops. Police cruisers circled the
neighborhood at the same time every day like clockwork and we wouldn’t be
out at those times. If police showed up unexpectedly we’d go inside or slip
down an alley to avoid them. Or we’d scatter and run. We ran, and were
chased, even when we weren’t doing anything wrong. I got really good at
jumping fences while being chased by police. If they caught us for any real or
imagined crime they beat us with their fists and nightsticks or blackjacks,
which we called flapjacks because they made a flapping sound when they hit
us. They searched us looking for any money we had, pocketing what they
found. For a while they let us go; when we got older they dragged us to
juvenile hall. It never occurred to us to tell anyone they beat or robbed us. It
was accepted. That was just the way life was at that time.

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When I was 14 my mom asked me if I wanted to meet my real father, Leroy
Woodfox. I was surprised because I didn’t know they were in touch. My first
thought was, no. All I knew about by biological dad was that he abandoned
my mom when she was pregnant with me.
“Why?” I asked.
“He said he’d like to meet you,” she said. She gave me the address of his
dry cleaning business, which was nearby. I wasn’t really curious about him,
but I thought he might give me some money so I went. When I walked in I
saw him right away. I looked just like him. I can’t remember what we talked
about, but we didn’t say too much. He offered to clean some clothes for me.
A few days later I took him some trousers and he tossed them onto a pile of
clothes in the corner, telling me to come back in a couple of days. When I
went back to pick up the pants I saw right away they were still on the pile in
the corner. I turned and walked out the door, leaving the pants behind. I never
saw him again.
One of my hustles was working the shrimp boats in St. Bernard Parish,
carrying huge bags of shrimp and oysters to a warehouse. Inside the
warehouse, women stood around a table shucking oysters into gallon-size
cans, juice and all, one after another. They could get through a bag of oysters
faster than anything I’d ever seen. Some of my pay was in oysters and
shrimp, which I’d take home. I think that warehouse is where I heard that
Hurricane Carla was coming and that when it touched down it would be the
“storm of the century.” I always liked to stand in our backyard during a storm
and listen to the rain and wondered what a hurricane would feel like. The
hurricane slammed into Texas on September 11, 1961, and spawned
tornadoes that reached Louisiana. The morning of the storm I made my way
to Lake Pontchartrain, to the seawall steps where I’d played when I was
younger. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. My mom would have kicked
my ass if she knew. At low tide, nine or ten stone steps were visible coming
up from the water’s edge to the shore; when the tide was in, the steps were
covered with water. By the time I got there it was raining hard and the tide
had come in. I looked for a place to stand. I figured the water wouldn’t get
over the wall, but to be sure I crossed the lake road and stood against a sturdy
tree, tying a rope around my waist to the tree so I wouldn’t be blown away.
I was already completely soaked from the rain. The wind hit me now,
mostly from the side. Usually Lake Pontchartrain is as flat as glass. I watched
giant waves develop out on the lake for a long time. By the time I noticed the

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water had come up over the wall it was already past the grass and almost to
the road that runs along the side of the lake. I was surprised watching it creep
across the road toward me. When the water covered my feet. I put my hands
on the rope, ready to untie it. When it got to my knees I untied myself and
waded against the wind to higher ground, then made my way home.
Not long after that, my stepdad showed up at the house and dropped off
my sister Violetta and my brother James. We hadn’t seen them in three years.
After he dropped them off we never saw Daddy again. My mom gave Vi the
top bunk and the boys shared the bottom bunk, until she got a foldout couch
for Vi to sleep on. It was crowded but I wasn’t home much at night to sleep
anyway. My brother Michael remembers me being around the house in those
days, making sure that everybody got home after school and that everyone
had dinner at night. My little brother Haywood says I was like a daddy to
him. I hardly recall those times. I was consumed with what was going on
outside. Soon, a new father figure came along for my brothers and sister. His
name was Jethro Hamlin. Everybody called him Pop Skeeter. He loved my
mother. The saying was if Ruby said, “Jump,” Pop Skeeter asked, “How
high?” A master carpenter, he built cupboards and shelves in our two back
rooms to make them more livable. Pop Skeeter brought stability to my
family. Years later, my mom and Pop Skeeter married. He stayed with her the
rest of her life, through thick and thin.
The most money our gang ever made in those years was from illegally
parking cars, an old hustle that was passed down from one generation to
another. On weekend nights, my friends and I went to the French Quarter or
around the Municipal Auditorium and waved down drivers looking for
parking spots. In exchange for a dollar we’d show the drivers where to park,
directing them to illegal spots in alleys, behind buildings, up hills, or even on
neutral ground. We were always amazed that people parked their cars
wherever we told them to. We always said, “Be sure to lock your car,” to
gain their trust. We could make $50 parking cars on a good night. When the
police were bored they’d come around with police dogs for something to do.
They knew we’d be there and tried to sneak up on us. When somebody saw
them, he’d yell, “Police!” and everybody would take off. Once when I was
running away, a K-9 dog caught me. One of the “rewards” for a K-9 dog in
those days was what was referred to as “Give ’em the bite,” when the officer
stood by and let the dog bite the person he caught, usually while that person

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was lying on the ground. This policeman let his dog chew my thigh.
Sometimes they let us go, other times they took us to juvenile hall. Once in a
while the officers from juvenile hall raided our operation too. Some of the
officers at juvenile hall were black. One of them was Mr. Green, a substitute
gym teacher at my school. He knew all of us. “I see you, Woodfox,” he’d yell
after me.
There was no way he could catch me.
“I’ll get your ass at school tomorrow,” he’d yell. “I’ll call your mama!”
This was all part of the game. He and I both knew he wasn’t going to call
my mom. He wasn’t going to get my ass at school the next day, or any day. It
was like we were acting out roles, set in motion before time, without knowing
why. He was probably parking cars at my age. Threads like this ran
throughout my childhood. History was always repeating itself. These threads
held us together, and kept us apart.
My first arrest was for parking cars. Juvenile hall was a house on St.
Philip Street. Desks and chairs where the officers sat were set up in what
would have been the living room. The bedrooms were converted into holding
cells. The windows on the first floor had bars, but they didn’t think anyone
would be crazy enough to jump from the second floor, so they didn’t put bars
in the upstairs windows. Officially, you couldn’t get out of juvenile hall until
a grown-up came and signed you out. Sometimes when one parent came they
would sign out their child and all of his friends. I usually didn’t sit around
and wait to see who would come because I didn’t want my mom to know I
got arrested. I’d squeeze out a partially opened window from a second-floor
holding room, hang from the window ledge, and drop to the ground. If my
mom found out she would be angry. She’d fuss at me but there was nothing
she could do. When I was younger there might be an ass-whipping with a
switch or an ironing cord but after a certain age I wouldn’t accept that kind of
punishment anymore.
In 10th grade, I was suspended from school for hitting a girl. It happened
at a school assembly. I was head of my 10th-grade homeroom so I was on the
stage with the girl who was class president. She told me in front of all the
students that she had a problem with my shirt because it was untucked, which
was the style then. I told her to mind her own business and she slapped me in
the face. I took my seat on the stage. The humiliation of being slapped in
front of everyone played over and over in my mind during the assembly.
When the meeting ended I picked up a folding chair from a stack and hit the

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girl who slapped me from behind, knocking her out. Thankfully, the girl was
OK. The principal suspended me, though, and told me to show up at school
the next day with my mother. When I got home I didn’t tell my mom what
happened. I pretended to go to school every day for a year before she found
out.
After I was put out of school I had more time on my hands and started
taking more risks. With my girlfriends, I snuck into strangers’ houses when
they were out so we could be alone. I broke into stores at night and stole
money directly from cash registers. Nothing in my days, or nights, was
planned. I never considered the consequences of my actions.
I had a lot of girlfriends but I wasn’t faithful or loyal to any of them.
When I was 16 I went out with a very beautiful, naive, and impressionable
girl I had gone to junior high school with named Barbara. I got her pregnant.
We weren’t together when our daughter was born in January 1964, but when
I heard she had the baby I went to the hospital to see them. The sight of a
newborn baby, my child, was strange to me. Barbara named her Brenda. I
didn’t think I was capable of any emotions at that time but something made
me want to keep Brenda in my life. I agreed to marry Barbara. A preacher
married us in her mother’s living room and we moved into a small apartment
downstairs. That arrangement lasted about three months until the street pulled
me back. I abandoned them.
My only feeling of relief and release in those years came from racing
horses with my friends. There was a stable on St. Ann Street that housed
horses used to pull the buggies for tourists in the French Quarter. At night,
my friends and I snuck into the stable, took the horses, and walked them to
the park. We didn’t have saddles so we raced bareback. We ran those horses
until their mouths foamed. When I was riding horses, it was the only time in
my life that I wasn’t afraid of going to jail. My only fear was not being able
to ride horses anymore.

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