In 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a number of articles about Wes Moore. One of the articles celebrated the outstanding achievement of twenty-two-year-old Wes Moore (Moore) from Baltimore City and the Bronx in being named the first black Johns Hopkins student to receive the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. The other articles concerned twenty-four-year-old Wes Moore (Wes), another black man from Baltimore City, for his part in the robbery of a jewelery store and ensuing murder of the store’s security guard. The guard was also an off-duty police officer and father of five small children.
Moore left for Oxford University in England, where he earned a master’s degree in international finance. Wes was convicted on a number of charges stemming from the robbery and murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Despite the soaring trajectory his life was taking, Moore found it hard to distance himself from a question forming in his mind since reading the news of the other Wes Moore. He questioned how two men with the same name and from similar neighborhoods could have taken such different paths. Moore decided he needed more information. He wrote a letter to Wes in prison, beginning a correspondence and eventual face-to-face relationship with the inmate.
The Other Wes Moore is a compilation of hours of conversations between Moore and Wes and interviews with family and friends regarding the timeline of events and aspects of the two men’s lives.
Both Moore and Wes grew up without fathers. Following Moore’s father’s untimely death when Moore was three, his mother, Joy, struggled to overcome her grief. After two years of raising three children alone, she decided to move her family to her childhood home in the Bronx to live with her parents.
Joy did her best to provide Moore with every opportunity to improve his life and get on the path to success. She enrolled him in a predominantly white private school north of the burrough and set strict rules for his social activities. The Bronx had slipped into a severe state of drug- and gang-related violence since her youth, and the streets were no place for a young black boy.
Despite Joy’s efforts, Moore was apathetic about life. He felt caught in the tug-of-war between his black community in the inner-city and the affluent white community at school. He became self-conscious, lethargic, and truant. Eventually, he was suspended from school and almost arrested for vandalism. These events prompted Joy to enroll Moore in military school at the age of twelve.
Wes’s childhood was different. His father was absentee. The two had only ever been in the same room three times in Wes’s life. His mother, Mary, raised Wes and his older half-brother Tony on her own, attending college part-time to fulfill her dream of earning a college degree. But federal funding supporting Mary’s tuition was canceled, and she went to work full-time.
With Mary out of the house often and Tony embroiled in the drug trade he’d entered as a young boy, Wes was left to his own devices. He lacked guidance and emotional support and had a quick temper that was not addressed. His decision-making skills were poor, leading to a number of ill-advised behaviors that had lasting effects.
For instance, when a boy punched him at eight years old, his anger and embarrassment made him go after the boy with a kitchen knife and earn his first stint in handcuffs. He was apathetic about school, but no one noticed or intervened. He started working for a drug dealer without considering the implications so he could earn money for flashy clothes. And when Wes was fifteen, he impregnated his girlfriend, then shot at the cousin of a different girl he was seeing after the cousin beat Wes up. These incidents led Wes further down a difficult path and gave him a lengthy rap sheet.
Moore’s parents and grandparents tried to instill good values in him, but his continued spiral into reckless and lazy behavior made them fear for his future. They hoped enrolling him in military school would do the trick, and it did.
Moore gained valuable lessons about discipline and responsibility from his commanders at school. His Uncle Howard also stepped in as a surrogate father. He steered Moore in positive directions and tried to help Moore make sense of his life. Later, Moore received guidance from counselors and city officials, all with the purpose of opening opportunities to him.
The care and support from these individuals made Moore realize how much people cared about his success, and in turn, he started to care, too. People wanted him to succeed, and he worked to meet those expectations.
However, Wes’s only role model was Tony. Tony did his best to keep Wes from falling into the gang life he was wrapped up in, but Wes never heeded Tony’s advice. He looked up to his brother and envied his independence and growing income. The more Tony pushed Wes away from a life of crime, the more Wes followed in his brother’s footsteps.
There was no one else in Wes’s life who set expectations for him. And even if they did, such as his Aunt Nicey, who tried to force Wes to either get an education or a job, there was no follow-up to ensure his success. Wes was free to take the easy and increasingly problematic routes.
From rocky beginnings, Moore was able to turn his life around. He became a decorated officer in the Army, a successful student, a Rhodes scholar, White House Fellow, and businessman. Although he was originally forced down this better path, little successes allowed Moore to become more confident and have more faith in his abilities. He credits his family and the important mentors in his life for helping him see that he could be more than his environment dictated.
By contrast, Wes’s rocky beginnings sent him down a path of darkness. Wes’s record and lack of education made it difficult for him to find work. He’d also fathered four children by the time he was twenty.
At some point, Wes wanted out of the life of drugs and crime. He enrolled in a job-training program and earned his GED. However, living the straight life was more difficult than Wes had imagined. He struggled to find permanent work and earned a minimal salary for the jobs he did find. With a large family to support, Wes struggled to make ends meet and sank into despair. He wandered back into his old life, which placed him back on the path of crime. After participating in a robbery and murder, Wes landed behind bars for good.
Moore has tried to parse the trajectories of both his life and Wes’s to find the factor that made the difference. He is the first one to admit he hasn’t found it yet. What Moore does believe is that young people need strong mentors in their lives. The tendency to focus only on what is right in front of them is strong in young people. What made the difference for him were all the people who steered him to look for more than that. They helped him see that being black and poor, not having a father, and living in underserved and crime-ridden communities didn’t dictate what kind of future he could have. They allowed him to understand what freedom meant.
At the end of the day, Moore knows everyone has choices, and the choices you make are yours alone, even if the circumstances and influences are negative. Moore makes no allowances or excuses for Wes’s choices. But he also can’t discount the impact of positive influence in his. The solution, perhaps, is support. Society cannot predict who will make the right choices, but society should ensure that each young person, regardless of economic or demographic considerations, is provided the tools and resources needed to see all the options before they choose.
(Shortform note: Because this book surrounds the lives of two men with the same name, differentiating between the two in the summary can be confusing. For this reason, the Wes Moore who is the author of the book will be referred to as “Moore,” and the Wes Moore serving a life sentence will be referred to as “Wes.”)
In 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran several stories about two young men named Wes Moore. One story was filled with accolades for Wes Moore, a recent Johns Hopkins University graduate who had received the prestigious honor of becoming the first black Rhodes Scholar—an academic postgraduate award granting fellows the opportunity to study at Oxford University in England—in university history. The others stories were about a jewelry store burglary that resulted in the heinous murder of an undercover police officer. In these stories, Wes Moore was the target of a massive manhunt and eventually one of the suspects charged in the crime.
The commonality in the names sparked the Johns Hopkins graduate and decorated military service member’s interest in the story. Moore felt a strange connection with this other Wes Moore because of their shared histories. Both were originally from West Baltimore, the impoverished and gang-heavy community located in Baltimore City, both grew up during the same era, and both were raised by single mothers.
The glaring disparity in their trajectories caused Moore to wonder where their paths had diverged. He wondered what had allowed him to succeed and the other Wes Moore to end up serving a life sentence in prison. He decided to reach out via letter to the prison and was surprised to receive a response shortly after.
What started was a friendship and a journey into their pasts. Moore began to visit Wes in prison. He felt there was something to try to understand regarding their life paths. He believed there was a larger meaning to their intersecting origins and diverging futures.
From the stories shared through glass dividers in the prison’s visiting room and interviews with other significant people in both their lives, Moore wrote this book to seek an answer to the question, “Why him and not me?” He organizes his book into eight chapters, with each chapter representing a significant year for both men.
Moore is adamant that he is not passing judgement on Wes’s behavior or excusing his participation in the murder of a father of five. His book aims to examine the circumstances that influence decisions and opportunities in a person’s life, both personally and socially. Finally, Moore aims to show that we are not merely a representation of our actions. Wes’s involvement in the book is a testament to the possibility of humanity even in the face of evil.
On one of their first visits together, Moore and Wes discussed growing up without a father. Moore asked Wes whether he ever thought about how different his life could have been if his father had been around. To Moore’s surprise, Wes said he didn’t. When Moore questioned the truthfulness of this sentiment, Wes told him their situations were different.
Moore’s father had died when Moore was three years old, so he was gone through no fault of his own. Conversely, Wes’s father was gone because he wanted to be gone. Although the result was the same, the origins were different. Therefore, they were going to mourn their fathers differently.
Wes repeated a version of Moore’s question back to Moore, wondering about the impact losing his father had on Moore’s life. Moore didn’t know what to say. All he knew was that he missed his father every day. In that moment, Moore saw the difference between their stories. He was encouraged to always remember. Wes was encouraged to forget.
Moore has few memories of his father, Westley Moore, but he remembers the day his father taught him what it meant to be a man.
Moore was three years old and living with his parents and two sisters in a house along the border of Maryland and Washington D.C. One day, Moore was playing with his older half-sister, Nikki. They had a routine—Nikki would entertain Moore by blowing air into his face and then elicit a game of chase around the house.
On this particular day, Moore caught up to Nikki and punched her in the face. His action wasn’t an aggressive one. He was simply playing and surprised to have actually caught her. He didn’t know what else to do, so he hit her. Unfortunately, his mother, Joy, walked in right as his fist connected with Nikki’s face. She was livid. She screamed for Moore to go to his room, reminding him that he was never to hit a woman.
Moore didn’t know what he’d done wrong—after all, they’d been playing—but he feared the punishment that was sure to come.
Moore’s father was often the voice of reason in the house. Westley was a slender man, standing six foot two with a large mustache and manicured afro. He told Moore that physical violence is never the answer, especially when females were involved. Westley also reminded Joy that Moore was only three and didn’t have the capacity to understand what abuse was or its consequences. For the moment, anyway, Moore was exonerated from punishment.
Joy was so quick to admonish Moore for hitting Nikki because of her own history with abuse. Joy Thomas was born in a tiny parish called Trelawny in Jamaica. At the age of three, her parents moved the family to one of the roughest boroughs in New York City, the Bronx.
When Joy started college at American University in 1968, the country was in upheaval with the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War. She struggled to find the balance between the America that helped her family find better opportunities and the America that made them second-class citizens.
She found solace in the Organization of African and African-American Students at the American University, helping to organize and mobilize black students to join the conversations relating to injustice. Another member of the group, Bill, was two years older than Joy. They met and immediately fell in love. They were engaged after only two months and married two years later.
Joy’s dream of a wonderful life with Bill soon turned into a nightmare. She began to see that Bill’s free spirit and fierce rebellion—qualities that excited her in the early days—were not the best qualities for a husband. His dabbling in drugs turned into a full-blown addiction, and Joy desperately wanted to help Bill get through it. She put her energy into making a life that would satisfy Bill, including having a child. But Bill’s addictions to drugs and alcohol grew worse. He became physically, emotionally, and mentally abusive.
The final straw was the night Bill came home and assaulted Joy over dirty dishes. He threw Joy on the ground and began to punch her. Joy had had enough. She grabbed a knife from the butcher’s block and threatened that if he ever laid a hand on her again, she’d kill him. A month later, she and her daughter, Nikki, moved out.
Westley Moore was an intelligent, hardworking man with big dreams. From a young age, he dreamed of working in television as an influential reporter. His voice was deep and resounding, and he was socially conscious. After he graduated from Bard College in 1971, he traveled the country working as a reporter. Eventually, he made his way back home to Maryland and started hosting a public affairs show. He sought the services of a writing assistant and hired a young woman who would become his wife.
Joy thought Westley was everything Bill wasn’t. Westley was smart, driven, patient, kind, and sober. Best of all, he loved Nikki as though she were his own. They were married, and two years later, Joy gave birth to Moore.
Westley wanted to give his son a middle name with meaning. He chose Watende, a word derived from the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe that meant “revenge will not be sought.” This ideology was something Westley wanted his son to live by. It also represented who he was as a man, what Moore calls a “gentle spirit.”
One of the only other memories Moore has of his father is the night he died. On April 15, 1982, Westley felt sick. He tossed and turned that evening with a sore throat and fever.
The next morning, Westley drove himself to the hospital. He was weak, disoriented, and had trouble holding his head up. The doctors assumed he was overreacting and diagnosed him with a sore throat and lack of sleep. They merely gave him an anesthetic for the throat pain and questioned Joy about his mental state. The doctors sent Westley home to sleep it off.
Less than two hours later, at 6 p.m., Moore heard his father collapse on the stairs. He saw his father convulsing on the floor, gasping for air, his hands on his throat.
An ambulance arrived and took Westley to the ER. But it was too late. Westley was pronounced dead shortly after arriving to the ER. He’d died from a rare condition called acute epiglottitis, a virus that attacks the epiglottis and causes it to enlarge over the airways to the lungs. The condition is treatable, but without treatment, the patient suffocates to death.
The tragedy of Westley’s death is in the mishandling of his case by the previous doctors. He’d come in seeking help, but he was unkempt and from a poor neighborhood. The doctors had written him off. If they’d seen a man deserving of care, they could have saved his life.
The lives of six-year-old Wes Moore and his mother changed in different ways one day in 1982. The two lived alone in West Baltimore. His older brother, Tony, spent most of his time with his maternal grandparents or at a housing project with his father. Wes was for all intents and purposes the man of the house. So when his mother, Mary, told him to pack a bag for his grandmother’s house with tears in her eyes, he was concerned and wanted to do something to help.
Wes had never met his father up to that day. Despite this, his paternal grandmother spoiled him and loved him. Wes loved going to her house, but he knew something wasn’t right with Mary. It was his job to take care of Mary, so he pressed her about what was wrong.
Mary had found out she would no longer be able to afford to attend college. Her Pell Grant, a federal financial award provided to underserved citizens as part of the government’s Basic Educational Opportunity program, would no longer be funded. Without this funding, the sixteen credits she’d already completed would go to waste.
When Wes learned of his mother’s lost grant, he offered to help earn money so she could still go to school. Mary appreciated her six-year-old’s gesture, but she said she would work things out.
Mary grew up in West Baltimore during the turbulent era of Civil Rights. Although never an affluent neighborhood, conditions worsened following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Riots broke out in the streets, and the atmosphere became so volatile, Mary’s parents wouldn’t let her or her seven siblings go outside. King’s death was the impetus for the street warfare, but the energy behind it was decades of injustice.
By the time the riots ended, the damage to the city totaled nearly $14 million, and close to five thousand people, including children, had become casualties, whether through injury, arrest, or death. The situation sparked a fire in Mary. She vowed to get an education and leave her neighborhood for a chance at a better life.
Mary’s parents, Kenneth and Alma, had similar ideas about getting out. Shortly after the turmoil ended, they purchased a three-story row house in a nicer neighborhood close by. However, life had other plans for the family. Alma suffered kidney failure shortly after the move and began dialysis treatments. Also around this time, Mary became pregnant with Tony when she was sixteen. Alma was adamant that Mary’s pregnancy not destroy her chances at an education and promised to be there to help Mary raise her child.
For a minute, it looked like Alma would be able to keep her promise. The hospital had found a long-awaited kidney for her. Mary had given birth by the time Alma went in for surgery. Without her mother around to help, Mary struggled. Tony was a fussy baby, and she’d lost all connection with the social world. Tony’s father didn’t want to be involved, and Mary’s father was little help because of his struggle with alcoholism.
Unfortunately, Alma rejected the new kidney and died at the hospital three days after her surgery. Alma’s parents moved into the house and helped raised all eight children. Mary was the first to leave, making good on her promise to get an education and change her life.
Mary’s dream was to earn a college diploma. After she graduated from high school, she worked toward an associate’s degree at the Community College of Baltimore. She had her sights set on Johns Hopkins University, which stood only a few miles away geographically. However, psychologically, the school felt a million miles away.
Johns Hopkins was a prestigious university for mostly affluent students from out of town. But Mary tempted fate and applied. Her heart soared when she received her acceptance letter.
Mary had started working as a secretary at Bayview Medical Center. She earned $6.50 an hour, and with the Pell Grant, she was able to cover part-time tuition and support her household, which now included Wes.
Mary met Bernard, Wes’s father, at Bayview when he came to visit one of her co-workers. He took an immediate shine to her. The two grew close quickly, and within two months, Mary was pregnant with Wes.
Unlike Mary, Bernard hadn’t graduated from high school and didn’t have a stable employment. He was a heavy drinker and abusive. By the time Wes was born, he was already out of Mary’s life.
When Mary and Wes arrived at his grandmother’s house six years later, Wes received the surprise of his life. The smell of fried chicken was in the air as Wes ran through the house. He stopped cold once he reached the living room.
Slumped on the couch stinking of booze was a strange man. The two stared at each other for a long time until Mary broke the silence by entering the room. With a cold demeanor, Mary introduced Wes to his father for the first time.
Moore’s life was turned upside down after his father died. Joy struggled to keep life going for her family. She was haunted by all of the things she could have done and should have done to save her husband’s life.
Joy took legal actions against the hospital, settling out of court to avoid years of legal proceedings. With the money, she created a foundation to help train paramedics to save others afflicted with the virus that killed Westley. His life could have been saved by a few easy procedures, but the first responders didn’t have the knowledge.
Still, her grief was too immense, and she realized she needed help. She packed up her home and children and moved them to the Bronx to live with her parents.
Moore was happy to see his grandparents. They were regular fixtures in his life and spoiled their grandchildren. His grandfather was a retired minister and grandmother a retired schoolteacher. They’d always intended to return to Jamaica after retirement, but that plan was abandoned when they saw how much Joy needed them.
Joy had no idea how much the Bronx had changed when she regaled Moore and his sisters with stories about the close-knit and safe community she’d grown up in. But on their drive to the family’s three-bedroom home, Joy grew nervous when she took in the burned-out buildings, a memorial shrine dedicated to a young girl, and a drug deal involving a child on a street corner a few blocks from her parents’ home. Moore’s grandparents told them about the drugs and violence that had taken over the streets. The introduction of crack had made everything worse, and people were scared and felt helpless.
Moore was governed more strictly in his grandparent’s home than he had been in Baltimore. He and his sisters had to be home as soon as the streetlights came on. And all chores had to be completed before they were allowed to play.
It wasn’t long before Moore found a community of friends in his new home. One day, he was granted permission to walk to the basketball courts five blocks away. He dribbled his ball, practicing his crossover dribble and savoring the time outside.
Moore found salvation that day on the Bronx basketball court. After waiting on the sidelines, he was called in to play. He played his best, and despite not winning or succeeding against the older, bigger kids, he was opened to a new world.
Pick-up games are common in many urban environments. People, old and young, unemployed or professional, gang-affiliated or straight, came together on the neutral territory of a basketball court. Moore picked up the style and language quickly, growing in both skill and personality among this newfound brotherhood. Moore had found his tribe.
Despite the six-year age difference between Tony and Wes, the two had a close relationship. Wes looked up to his older brother, and Tony felt a fierce protective instinct for Wes. Mary had started working full-time at Bayview Medical Center, and Tony looked after eight-year-old Wes during the day. But Tony’s presence had started to diminish, and Wes was often unsupervised.
Tony’s father lived in the Murphy Homes, also known in the community as the Murder Homes. They were the worst projects in Baltimore—rundown, with poorly lit hallways, grotesque conditions, and a menacing gang presence. Most of the residents lived in fear of the boys and young men who ran the drug trade and carried guns in and around the complex. Tony was one of those boys.
By age ten, Tony was already involved in drug deals. By 1984, at fourteen, he was a notorious gangster. He was thin and boyish, but his eyes stopped people in their tracks. Tony had what was known as the “ice grill,” a cold, fierce, and hostile gaze that made the receiver tremble.
Despite his gangster lifestyle, Tony was like any other young boy growing up in poverty. He was sad, angry, insecure, and struggling to understand who he was and what he could be. He didn’t have anyone who believed in him, so he didn’t believe he could do more with his life. But Wes didn’t have to follow his path. Tony wanted to be the person who had faith in Wes. He showed Wes love and support and did everything he could to make sure Wes felt it.
Tony hammered home the importance of school in Wes’s life and the need to make something of himself. He knew he was being hypocritical, but he didn’t care. If Tony had another chance at life, he would do things differently. At least he could use his experiences to save Wes from falling into the same trap.
Despite Tony’s efforts to save Wes, his advice would eventually be Wes’s undoing. Part of Tony’s attempts included making sure Wes knew how to protect himself. Tony knew all too well the struggles Wes would have to face growing up in their neighborhood, so he taught Wes how to fight back and “send a message” to anyone who disrespected him.
Part of this training included throwing Wes into make-shift fight clubs at Murphy Homes. Tony taught Wes to strike back with intensity so the offender would never step to him the wrong way again. Wes, admiring his brother’s strength, internalized these lessons.
Mary moved many times during Wes’s childhood to try to put distance between their lives and gang activity. One of these moves was to a nicer neighborhood of black professionals called Northwood.
After moving to Northwood, Wes met Woody, a boy he would be friends with for the rest of his life. Woody was from a home with two parents who both worked. His father was a Vietnam veteran and former sergeant in the Army. Wes loved going to Woody’s house not only for the father’s war stories, but also to experience a world that included a father.
Wes and Woody played football for the Northwood Rams, a well-known and nationally respected recreational football team. Wes was athletic and thrived on the field. He loved playing football and cherished his jersey as a symbol of camaraderie and strength.
Wes had thrown himself so completely into football that his schoolwork started to suffer. Despite being bright and feeling smarter than the rest of his class, he barely scored high enough to make it to the next grade. The constant switching of schools and his quiet manner allowed him to float under the radar. No one noticed that Wes wasn’t learning anything.
One morning, Woody came over early to toss the ball around in the streets. Other kids came out to join their game, and things seemed fine for a while. Wes was aggressively guarding a boy who was smaller and weaker than he was. He pushed and shoved the boy around so much, the boy finally reached his limit and confronted Wes. The two argued until the smaller boy punched Wes in the face. It was the first time Wes had been punched like that. His lip was broken and bleeding, and blood dripped onto his favorite jersey. Wes formed fists at his side, but instead of attacking the boy, he ran home.
Of all the advice Tony had given Wes, the only thing he ever listened to was “send a message.” As Wes ran from the fight and entered his house, this advice echoed in his mind.
Woody followed Wes and found him in the kitchen with one hand holding a towel against his bleeding lip and the other holding a knife. Woody tried to talk his friend down, even blocking Wes’s way out of the kitchen, but Wes would not be deterred.
What neither knew was that neighbors, witnessing the fight, had called the police. Two cop cars pulled up and cornered the boys still in the street. Woody became distracted by the red and blue flashing lights and didn’t see Wes slip by him.
Once outside, Wes didn’t see the police or their flashing lights. All he saw was rage and the boy who had caused it. Wes was angry, confused, hurt, and scared. He screamed and charged at the boy, ignoring the commands of the officers to drop the weapon.
An officer grabbed Wes and threw him down face first on the hood of the police car. Wes pleaded with the officers that he wasn’t the one who started the fight, but it did no good. The officer placed handcuffs around his wrists.
Wes was taken to the police station and booked. He used his phone call to call Tony, and Tony’s father picked him up. Wes was back at the house before Mary was done with work. She wouldn’t find out that her eight-year-old son had been arrested for years.
Like any inner-city community, drugs were a part of life. In the Bronx, marijuana, heroin, and cocaine had been around for decades. But crack was a different beast.
The introduction of crack changed the drug game. Crack was more available and more addictive than other drugs. It was cheap and easier to produce. And the high demand for the drug created more volatile competition and more violence among the street gangs. It also created a need for more manpower. Many of the boys Moore new from the neighborhood were getting recruited.
But Joy was going to see to it that her children didn’t become casualties of the streets. Joy would make sure her children were given every opportunity to make something good of their lives. For Moore and Shani, that meant private school.
Joy knew that her kids would not be suitably educated in public schools. She’d attended Bronx public schools as a child, and Moore’s grandmother had taught in one for twenty-six years. During the period of deterioration in the community, the schools had not been spared. There were few resources, and almost half of the student body did not make it to graduation. Even if they did, they were still light years behind in knowledge and skills.
Joy had heard of Riverdale Country School as a young girl. The stories made it seem like a fantasy school—a sort of non-magic Hogwarts for wealthy kids. The school sat on a lush acreage along the Hudson River and boasted prestigious alumni, such as John F. Kennedy.
Riverdale provided a safe and advantageous environment, and Joy saw it as the place where Moore could get the experiences he needed to change his life. In reality, the school changed Moore’s life in ways none could have predicted.
Moore stood out as one of a handful of black students at Riverdale. Another was a boy named Justin. Justin lived close to Moore’s neighborhood, and the two hung out together almost daily. They had a crew of other boys from their neighborhood they hung out with, but all of those boys went to public school.
School affiliation was a big deal in the neighborhood. Different schools carried different statuses, or street cred, and by association, a person also was given that status. A white school like Riverdale was not part of the hierarchy and, in fact, had the result of marking a kid from the hood who went there an outsider.
Whenever Moore was questioned about going to the white school, he’d try to change the subject. When that failed, he’d pretend the other students were intimidated by him.
Going to Riverdale was like walking into a different reality for Moore. The dichotomy wore heavily on him. Whenever he was on campus, seeing the beauty and opulence, he felt lost and guilty. He knew his mother struggled to keep his enrollment active, and he felt like an outsider among the privileged students.
Moore did everything he could to hide how poor he was. He only had three outfits that were good enough for school, and he created a schedule by which to rotate them to hide the fact. At a certain point, he started borrowing some of Nikki’s more gender-neutral clothing for variety. When the other kids talked about where they would “summer,” Moore tried to make up a vacation home in Brooklyn.
Moore always hung out with Riverdale students on their turf, never his. But one day, he tried to bring the two worlds together.
Joy’s younger brother, Howard, was back in the Bronx after dropping out of medical school. To try to help his nephew, he organized a baseball game to bridge the gap in Moore’s two worlds. Moore was excited about introducing his friends from home to his friends from school.
Things didn’t go according to plan. When one of the wealthy kids from Riverdale taunted a boy from Moore’s crew, a fight broke out. They’d only been on the field for fifteen minutes. Over the next four innings, two more fights would occur. Finally, Moore realized there was no way to bring his worlds together.
Moore felt like he was becoming too uppity for his neighborhood crew and was too street for his schoolmates. He suffered emotionally, feeling self-conscious in both scenarios. His grades began to diminish, and his personal standards for success plummeted. He was getting mostly Ds and Cs, with the pleasant surprise of a B every now and then. He was in third grade, but he was reading at a level a grade below him. He was on his way to fulfilling the future that statistics predicted for poor kids reading below their age group: prison.
In contrast, Justin was a model student. He cautioned Moore that he was going to be put on probation or kicked out if he didn’t turn things around, but Moore only had excuses for his friend. Moore blamed the long ride to school, his father’s death, his mother’s stress, anything he could think of. But in front of Justin, who lived farther out and whose family was worse off, there was no one to blame but himself.
Not even his mother’s threats of sending him to military school could whip him into shape. He knew she was bluffing. She wouldn’t send her only son away when she had no husband. Moore believed there was no way military school was a viable option and did nothing to change.
For the fourth time in Wes’s life, Mary moved them to a new neighborhood. Dundee Village was only ten minutes from his old home but miles away from the atmosphere of the streets. For one thing, Dundee Village was located in Baltimore County, a separate jurisdiction that encloses Baltimore City like a horseshoe.
The neighborhoods were nicer and more spacious, with yards, trees, and flowers, and the quality of life and opportunities were greater. Wes’s neighborhood differed from his old one in demographics, as well. Where Baltimore City was made up of almost all blacks, Dundee Village was home to people of various races and backgrounds.
Part of what motivated Mary to move to Dundee Village was the first of three times Tony was shot in his life. Tony was still heavily ingrained in the drug culture. He’d moved up from foot soldier to crew leader and was considered a veteran at eighteen.
Another part was Wes’s poor performance in school. Wes had failed the sixth grade. Mary’s hope that the move would be enough to turn things around for Wes was high, but he couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm. Wes wasn’t fazed by Tony’s troubles. He still idolized his older brother.
What did concern Wes was his image. He wore secondhand clothes and old shoes. He didn’t mind as much when he was in Dundee Village, but when he went back to his old neighborhood, he felt ashamed of his attire. Tony always had new gear and the latest fashion, as did others raking in the spoils of the drug enterprise. Wes was desperate for the same.
Wes knew the only way to get the cool threads he wanted was to find a way to make money. One Saturday afternoon, when he was strolling through a nearby neighborhood, he found a solution.
Wes came upon an older boy standing on a corner wearing headphones. There was a microphone attached that hung in front of the kid’s mouth. The kid was also wearing a flashy diamond ring. Wes was enthralled. He questioned the boy about where he could get a similar headset. The response was music to Wes’s ears: if he wanted a headset, he just had to agree to hang out on the corner for a few hours and call out cop sightings. At the end of his shift, he’d be given a small stipend.
Dollar signs flashed before Wes’s eyes. He couldn’t believe how easy it sounded. Wear a headset, inform on the cops, and get paid? He could afford the fancy shoes and clothes Tony wore, and it wouldn’t require an education or a degree. Making money would free his life up from the constricting responsibilities of a maturing boy.
Wes understood the game. He would essentially be a lookout for drug dealers, but he rationalized that he wasn’t actually selling drugs or involved in the deal. He dismissed Tony’s warnings about the difficulty in escaping that life once you were in it. He didn’t think about all of the dangers that came with the game. He just wanted an easier way of life.
Wes had learned a valuable lesson about the relationship between drugs and money a few months before meeting the boy on the street. He and Woody planned to skip school one afternoon and throw a barbeque at his house. The boys were meeting up as soon as Mary left for work to buy party supplies.
Mary had a jar full of change in her closet from which Wes frequently pilfered. On that morning, he went searching for party funds and stumbled upon a bag of marijuana Mary had hidden in the closet. Wes had never seen drugs up close before. He’d also never tried drugs before. But the marijuana would be an excellent addition to his afternoon plans, so he took it.
Wes and Woody decided to cancel the barbecue and get stoned. They met up with friends and took the bag and a bottle of cheap malt liquor to a spot under a bridge.
The group stayed under the bridge for hours, smoking and drinking. When they stood to leave, Wes was so drunk and high, he fell over. Wes got up and hopped on his bike, feeling discombobulated and vulnerable. He was so out of it, he mistook a garbage can for an attractive girl.
Wes went straight to bed when he got home, but not before Mary’s boyfriend got a good look at him. The boyfriend told Mary what was happening when she came home, and she laughed the incident away. She was sure this experience would turn Wes off from drugs and alcohol now that he knew how bad they made him feel. But Wes was pondering a different implication for his experience.
Never before had Wes understood the intrigue of drugs. Now, he started to see things more clearly. Even though he had felt uneasy and overwhelmed, being high slowed life down. The act of rolling the joint, inhaling the smoke, and basking in its creamy haze made the rest of the world fall away.
In an environment like his, escape was a hot commodity. He understood how people could become addicted to that sensation and chase it again and again. They would spend all their money trying to achieve it, and whoever sold the drugs could make a fortune. There was plenty of money to be earned, even by someone low on the list like a lookout.
For this reason, Wes accepted a pair of headphones that day in Dundee Village. He felt more mature and excited about the future.
The stories of both Wes Moores finding themselves as young men shows how difficult it can be for young people to understand themselves and the world around them. How does reading about the different paths the boys went down affect your reflections on your own childhood?
Who were some of your social influences as a child? How did those people help shape your understanding of yourself?
Are there things you wish you would have done differently as a child? What are they, and how did those choices affect your life?
Does reading about the two Wes Moores’ journeys make you understand your choices in a new way?
Moore had been visiting Wes for a few years by Wes’s thirty-second birthday. When Moore arrived for a birthday visit, something about the beautiful sunny day and the reality of aging in prison struck him. He became aware of how lucky he was to be a free man. Against the odds, he’d taken a path that allowed him to live in the world and feel the warm sun on his skin.
By now, Moore and Wes were close and spoke honestly about their lives. This day was no different. When Moore sat down, Wes asked him when he’d first felt like a man. Moore answered that he grew into a man when he realized his accountability to others. However, he wasn’t sure that this was true.
What Moore thought was closer to the truth was an involuntary shift of paradigm. His childhood hadn’t ceased as much as the events of his life had dictated greater responsibility. His wasn’t a gradual move into adulthood, like some boys experience. His was a jarring thrust into adult situations, and for boys like him and Wes, they are either forced to sink or swim.
Wes agreed that accountability to others was hard. Sometimes, you do the wrong thing so you can take care of other people. Often, you only get one chance to make a mistake. Even if there is a second chance, sometimes it’s not possible to make a different choice.
Moore didn’t understand. When he asked for clarity, Wes stated that both of them had made some big mistakes in their childhoods. Both had opportunities to try again and do better. Wes said the difference was contextual. If the circumstances surrounding the first mistake are exactly the same, sometimes a second chance is just another chance to fail.
Moore had more advantages than most kids in his neighborhood, but he never appreciated them. He didn’t take life seriously, and his arrogance and aloofness cost him.
Moore’s performance in school continued to deteriorate at such a rate, his teachers were convinced he had a learning disability. Joy was starting to believe them. She couldn’t think of another explanation for her son’s poor grades and seeming inability to retain information.
One day, Joy learned that Moore’s inability to learn was not the problem. She heard Moore singing along to a new hip-hop song on the car radio, reciting every word verbatim. Joy had already traversed the first four stages of grief over Moore’s behavior, moving through denial, anger, and bargaining before becoming stuck in depression. But after hearing her son’s flawless rapping, depression swiftly changed to anger.
Moore was more apt to remember the words to hip-hop songs not simply because he loved hip-hop, but because hip-hop was essential to figuring out his life. Hip-hop had moved from a black cultural secret to a national obsession. Moore, like many blacks in inner-city communities, found a voice in the hard anthems of artists like NWA and Public Enemy. The lyrics expressed what life was like in the hood and the emotions of its residents. The songs brought a sense of understanding and unity to blacks and showed the rest of the world how they lived and survived. This latter aspect made Moore more approachable at Riverdale.
Still, a focus on hip-hop instead of school wasn’t at the core of Moore’s poor educational performance. Moore was skipping school as often as he was attending.
Because of Joy’s multiple job responsibilities, she was often not at home. Moore’s grandparents were always around, but they were old and wore down easily. Moore and his sisters were tasked to look out for each other, which they did, but they were also children dealing with their own interests and issues.
With almost no supervision, Moore was able to devise a strategy for skipping school without punishment. Attendance was recorded in homeroom each day. Moore had a young and inexperienced homeroom teacher and took advantage of her. He tormented her by goofing off in class until she became so frustrated, she didn’t want him around. A sort of mutual understanding was developed between them. He wouldn’t show up and disrupt her class, and she would turn a blind eye to his absences.
A few days a week, Moore would walk toward school and wait until his grandma drove away. Then, he’d meet up with other truant students and hang out until it was time to be picked up. Although Shani was dropped off with him, she was always loyal and never told.
After leaving the basketball courts one day, Moore ran into Shea, a friend from the neighborhood. Shea was also eleven years old, but he’d become entwined in the predominant neighborhood business: drugs. He worked as a “runner,” a low-level position within the drug hierarchy that transported packages from place to place for the dealers. Boys like Shea were less likely to raise suspicions by law enforcement.
Moore and Shea had lost touch since Shea had started working, so the two hung out in front of a local billiards lounge taking in the graffiti on the wall. “Tagging,” or spray-painting a personal moniker on city walls, had become popular. Even Moore had a moniker: “KK” for Kid Kupid. He fancied himself a Romeo with the ladies.
Shea took off his backpack and revealed cans of spray paint inside. Shea asked Moore if he wanted to tag, and Moore jumped at the chance. The two scanned the area for cops, then went to work. Spraying their tags on the wall only took seven seconds, but it was enough time for a police car to drive by.
The two boys ran in opposite directions, but it didn’t matter. They were rounded up in seconds. Moore was thrown against the hood of the car and searched. Shea was face first on the ground down the block having the same done to him. Both boys were handcuffed and placed in the back of the cruiser.
Whereas an incident like Moore was involved in would once have been deemed a youthful prank, with the surge of crime and drug-activity, the implications of a black youth breaking the law were more significant. To compound things, Moore was caught with a drug runner. He was frightened of the consequences he might have to face.
Sitting in the back of the car, Moore worried about what his arrest would do to his mother and their relationship. Despite his lackadaisical approach to life, Moore very much wanted Joy to be proud of him and for their relationship to be strong.
Moore was also considering what his fate would be. He and his neighborhood crew had seen their friends and others get tangled up with the law and either abused, killed, or sent to juvenile detention.
Shea advised Moore to play dumb, but Moore thought this plan was idiotic. The cops had Shea’s backpack with the evidence inside. Therefore, when one of the cops asked them what they were doing, Shea stuck to his plan, but Moore started to apologize, desperately trying to mitigate the consequences. His eyes were filled with tears, while Shea stared straight ahead, defiant.
Moore realized how foolish he’d been. He’d willingly put himself in a situation where the cops could legally take control of his future, all for a silly tag.
After another long moment, the cops pulled both boys out of the vehicle and uncuffed them. As one cop was releasing Moore, he leaned in and whispered to Moore that he hoped Moore realized how stupid he’d been and how likely it was that he would find himself arrested again if he didn’t change. Moore said he understood and was set free. He knew he’d been lucky and swore to stay out of trouble. The next week, Moore was up to his old tricks again, and the tag KK was painted on another city wall.
Wes was too immature to understand the implications of the new life he was leading as part of the drug trade. But Tony wasn’t. Tony towered over Wes in the front yard, questioning Wes about the mountain of new and expensive Nike sneakers Wes had amassed in his room. Tony knew how much each pair of shoes cost, and the math didn’t add up to anything good that Wes could be up to.
Wes stood in front of his brother, avoiding eye contact. He did his best to sound convincing when he told Tony he’d become a popular DJ and made some extra cash working parties. The story had been good enough to fool Mary, but Tony wasn’t buying it.
Rage pulsed through Tony’s body. He repeated his warnings about getting mixed up in the drug game, the same ones he’d delivered a million times before. He pounced on Wes and punched him over and over, perhaps trying to release his helpless frustration or beat some sense into Wes. When Mary heard the scuffle, she intervened.
Tony aired his frustrations about Wes’s obvious entry into the world that had trapped Tony, but Mary defended Wes. She touted the same flimsy DJ story in support. Tony switched his anger to Mary, questioning how she could be so blind. Mary was caught in the middle. One son was a lost cause and one son might still be able to be saved. Wes needed her support more than Tony did, so she chose Wes.
Wes was hurt and confused by Tony’s reaction. He understood why Tony always warned him against the business, but he also thought Tony was exaggerating. If that life was as bad as Tony said, Tony would have done something to change by now. Tony never talked about solutions or other ways to live except education, and school was a low priority for Wes. He was making money and doing something with his life, the same way Tony had done. How could his brother not see that?
Defeated, tired of being a broken record, and tired of being the only person who seemed to care about Wes’s future, Tony shut down. He told Wes he was finished trying to save him. He turned and stalked off. It was the last time he would ever talk to Wes about drugs again.
Wes felt rejected by the one person he looked up to. He had lost his guide. But he was fourteen. He wasn’t a child anymore. He could go it alone from now on.
For Mary, the events of that day had a different effect. They triggered a suspicion she was no longer able to ignore.
The day after Tony’s visit, Mary searched Wes’s room while he was at school. She silently prayed she would find evidence to support Wes’s DJing story. What she found instead were two shoeboxes full of drugs, including pills, cocaine, marijuana, and crack.
The truth of Wes’s lie hit Mary hard. She sat lost, not knowing what to do. After a moment, she took the boxes into the bathroom and flushed Wes’s supply down the drain.
When Wes came home from school, his heart dropped at the sight of the boxes on top of his bed. His mom knew what he was up to. He was busted. But his fear was quickly replaced with anxiety when he took the lids off and saw the vacancy inside.
All thoughts about how his mother would punish him or how he would explain his way out of trouble vanished. His focus became on how much he’d lost of other people’s drug stash and how much he now owed people who didn’t like to lose money.
He confronted Mary, asking her if she had any idea what sort of trouble she’d just created for him. He owed $4,000 to drug dealers, he said. The only thing that could have shocked him more than his predicament was Mary’s reaction.
Mary admonished Wes for lying to her. But more than that, she was livid that he’d brought drugs into the house and put the entire family in jeopardy. She told Wes he was never to bring drugs into the house or sell drugs again.
Wes walked out of Mary’s room reeling. He had to come up with a plan. Making the money back was relatively easy. As long as there were drugs to sell, there would be people to buy them. He just had to get a new supply and turn it around quickly. He would also need to find another place to hide it.
Despite all of Joy’s threats about military school, Moore never took her seriously. Joy may not have taken the idea seriously either, but once she learned about Moore’s behavior at school, things changed.
The dean of Riverdale phoned the house one night with news of Moore’s academic and disciplinary probation. His grades were poor, his attendance was worse, and there’d been an incident with a smoke bomb at school. Joy listened to all of it with a stoic face.
Meanwhile, Moore and Shani were upstairs watching television. Moore was bored, so to entertain himself, he started pestering Shani. He punched her lightly in the arm over and over again, but she wouldn’t pay him any attention. He started punching her harder until she finally turned to tell him to stop. Moore was in mid-punch and connected with her face, splitting open her bottom lip.
Before Moore could stop her, Shani turned on the tears and ran to their mother. Moore sat in the bedroom waiting for Joy. On top of everything she’d just learned from the dean, this new situation would add fuel to the already blazing fire. He could hear her dragging up the stairs and prepared to explain everything, but there was no need.
Joy entered the room, but instead of the tirade Moore was expecting, she slapped him across the face. They stared at each other, Joy waiting for a reaction and Moore trying hard not to give her one. She pulled her hand back and slapped him again.
Moore had grown significantly with puberty, and he now stood five inches above Joy. She saw his clenched jaw and fists at his sides. He could see the slightest bit of fear in her eyes that he might hit her back, but Moore would never do that. He loved her too much.
Joy left the room, and both retreated to separate corners to cry.
After learning about Valley Forge Military Academy, Joy took her desire to enroll Moore to her parents. They all agreed it was the best chance they had to save the boy.
However, Valley Forge was even more expensive than Riverdale, and the family didn’t know how to afford it. Joy reached out to a network of family and friends, explaining the situation and asking for any help they could provide. Likewise, Moore’s grandparents searched for ways to gather the money.
For most of their lives, Joy’s parents had invested their earnings into their house. The plan had been to cash out and use the money to retire back in Jamaica. But with that plan no longer on the table, Moore’s grandparents decided to take the equity out of the home and used it to pay for the first year’s tuition at Valley Forge.
Military school was the last place Moore thought he would end up, but that’s exactly where he found himself at the age of twelve. He received a rude awakening his first morning at 5:30 a.m., when he and the rest of the incoming cadets were called to order.
In his typical apathetic manner, Moore ignored the roll call and stayed nuzzled in bed. His supervisory commander came into his room and screamed for him to get up, but Moore could not be persuaded. He gave a flippant reply, and the commander stormed out.
Moore lay in bed, feeling cocky about his commander leaving his room. He assumed his Bronx bravado had intimidated the commander. He thought maybe he could make it through this new ordeal after all. He was drifting back to sleep when his door crashed open again.
All eight of Moore’s chain of command superiors entered the room and dumped him from his mattress. This was when Moore realized military school was no joke.
Valley Forge Military Academy was located thirty minutes from Philadelphia in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Moore quickly learned that who he was and where he came from no longer mattered. He and his incoming class were “plebes,” the lowest on the totem pole, and their histories were as meaningless as their birth names.
For days, Moore woke up angry and went to bed angry. He focused his anger toward Joy. He was mad that she’d sent him away, but more so, he felt hurt, betrayed, and alone. In the first four days of being at Valley Forge, Moore tried to run away four times.
On the fifth day, his sergeant commander told Moore that no one wanted him there as much as he didn’t want to be there. He gave Moore a map that would lead through the campus and take him to the train station in town. Moore was delighted. He made a plan to escape after bedtime.
At midnight, Moore grabbed his bag and headed out. With only a small flashlight to guide his way, he followed the map through a forest on one side of campus. He walked deeper into the woods, becoming increasingly confused and scared. He got lost in the dark and finally sat on a rock and started to cry.
A few moments later, Moore heard a rustling behind him and turned to find his chain of command laughing. It had been a trick, and he now knew there was no escape. When the group got back to campus, his commanders took him straight to their superior’s office.
New cadets were not to have contact with the outside world for a month to help them transition. This meant no television, no radio, no visits, and no phone calls. But when the superior officer saw the state Moore was in, he agreed to let him call home for five minutes.
When Joy answered the phone, Moore immediately began pleading his case. Moore promised Joy he would go to school, do better, and help out more, but Joy calmly told him he had to give the school a chance. She said they were all proud of him and hoped he would succeed. She also told him that too many sacrifices had been made to give him this chance.
The day after Moore’s great escape attempt, he noticed a tall and muscular black man talking with his superior officer while in line for lunch. Moore had seen the same man in the office the night before but didn’t know who he was.
After the two men were finished talking, the man, Cadet Captain Ty Hill, walked over to where the F Company stood. The F Company was the most renowned squad in the academy and made up of college freshmen and sophomores. Moore assumed Hill would fall back in line, but instead, all one hundred twenty members of the squad snapped to attention. Hill took the front of the line as their leader.
Moore couldn’t help but be impressed by Captain Hill. He had seen people in his neighborhood, like Shea, command respect because of their association with the gangsters, but he’d never seen anything like this. He now understood how different his new surroundings were to the Bronx. Respect wasn’t a product of fear or intimidation. It was earned through meritorious actions.
Although Wes had been participating in adult activities, his transition from child to man was prompted by another life-altering event when he was fifteen. Wes had started attending Perry Hall High School in West Baltimore. The bus ride to school was twenty-five minutes. One day, he and his godbrother Red boarded the bus and saw two girls sitting together.
Girls were nothing new for Wes. He’d grown into a muscular young man, and his demeanor was relaxed. He also wore the latest in name-brand fashion and had added to his sneaker collection. Wes was popular and went out with many girls. But he’d never had a serious relationship before.
Wes and Red approached the girls, each choosing one to go for. Red’s conversation didn’t go according to plan, but Wes and his chosen girl, Alicia, talked the whole ride to school. She was older and attractive, and Wes asked for her phone number.
Wes and Alicia came together fast. They were both unsupervised after school, which gave them plenty of time to become acquainted. After only two months, Alicia was pregnant.
Wes didn’t know what to do. He didn’t tell anyone for a month, hoping the tests were wrong and the pregnancy would go away. But time moved on, and Alicia started to show. When Wes realized a child was inevitable, he told Tony, who’d recently had his own child.
Tony couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Mary had also given birth to another son only a year before. Wes would have a baby, a baby brother, and a baby nephew at the same time.
Tony promised not to say anything to Mary about the baby, but when the family and respective girlfriends gathered to celebrate Wes’s new brother’s first birthday, he wasn’t able to contain his amusement. Tony spilled the news of Alicia’s pregnancy while Mary was cutting the cake. Mary took a moment, seeming to steel herself, then continued cutting the cake without saying a word.
Wes was bereft over the news of his unborn child. Teen pregnancy was not uncommon in Baltimore, with one in every ten teenage girls giving birth in 1991. He’d never thought about his future, so he wasn’t worried about losing anything he’d planned for. The problem was that this baby would create a change in his life he was unprepared for.
Wes had only encountered his father three times, and the last time, a few months earlier when Bernard was passed out at Wes’s aunt’s house, Bernard hadn’t recognized him. With Bernard as his only role model for fatherhood, Wes didn’t put much weight in his own responsibilities as a father. In his world, Mary had done everything, and he assumed it would be the same with Alicia.
Despite his situation with Alicia, Wes still engaged in dalliances with other girls. Alicia hoped things would change once the baby was born, but she began to understand that Wes would not or could not be the father she wanted for her child.
Wes started seeing a new girl. They weren’t in a relationship, but they were sexually involved. She didn’t live in Dundee Village, but she often stayed with her cousin who did. The two moved from her cousin’s house to Wes’s house, wherever they could find time alone.
One night, the girl woke up frantic that she’d fallen asleep and hadn’t gone home. She rushed to get dressed, and Wes accompanied her downstairs to make sure his mother didn’t wake up.
When Wes and the girl got outside, a built teenage boy jumped up from the curb and started yelling at her. The boy and girl argued loudly on Wes’s front lawn. Wes watched with curiosity, then decided it was none of his business. He only wished they would be quiet so they didn’t wake up Mary and the baby.
Wes turned to go into the house, but the other boy grabbed him, threw him down, and started punching him. Wes wriggled free and ran inside covered in blood, but he had no intention of staying inside for long. Once again, Wes’s hurt pride turned to tunneled rage. He ran to his room, grabbed a 9mm gun, and stormed out of the house.
Wes searched for the other boy. By now, most of the neighbors were awake and watching from their windows, including a member of Wes’s drug crew. The boy grabbed his own gun and joined Wes outside. The two patrolled the street, looking for the boy. All of a sudden, the boy jumped up from behind a car and took off. Wes and his partner chased after him, firing as they ran.
The sound of gunshots reverberated throughout the neighborhood. Wes and his friend kept firing as the boy lunged forward, hiding behind cars as he made a dash for his house. Then, they heard the boy scream and saw him drop to the ground.
Wes and his friend ran home and tried to avoid being recognized by the neighbors. Wes was pumped up from the chase, but he was also scared. The one thing he wasn’t was sorry. He’d had to “send a message” after what the boy had done to him.
When Wes got home, he discarded his bloody clothes and washed the blood from his face. Then, he went to his bedroom and hid the gun underneath sand at the bottom of his aquarium.
Wes grabbed a clean shirt and threw it on at the same time the sound of frantic footsteps reached him. Wes waited in his room with his hands in the air ready for the police. He was handcuffed, led outside, and thrown into the back of the police car.
The cops left Wes to collect statements from neighboring witnesses. Mary had woken up and was hysterical, crying and yelling at Wes through the closed car window. She asked Wes if he had shot the boy. Wes stared at her without answering.
As the police started to drive away, Wes asked if he could tell Mary something before they left. The driver stopped, and the window was rolled down. Wes called to his mother. When Mary came up to the window, he told her he didn’t know the answer to her question.
Military school had grown on Moore. With the help and support of Captain Hill and other commanding officers, Moore realized that people were rooting for him to do well. Somewhere along the way, he started rooting for himself. He was now a platoon sergeant, a cadet master sergeant, and the youngest officer in the corps. Young men now followed his command, and he commanded well.
He’d done so well, the academy had offered him both academic and athletic scholarships after his first year. The strain of the tuition was removed from his family’s life.
Despite his success, Moore still longed to be home at times. These moments were especially hard when he received letters from his friends and family, such as the one he received from Justin one day. Two items of information hit him hard.
His old friend Shea had been charged with “possession with the intent to sell.” More than simply possessing drugs, the intent to sell carried a hefty mandatory sentence. The situation was not good for Moore’s friend.
The other news was more significant. Justin’s mother was dying from cancer. Justin was the only person still around his home, and his mother’s care fell to him. He was running back and forth between the hospital, school, and basketball practice. The strain of it was too much, and he’d started to fall behind in school.
The news about Justin’s mother fanned the flames of Moore’s already disrupted heart. His mother and Shani had decided to move back to Maryland, and he wanted to be there to help and protect them from the Baltimore he remembered. Now, he wanted to be home for Justin to help during this difficult time. He hated missing out on the lives of the people he loved. He felt sheltered from the real world at Valley Forge, but that illusion was about to shatter.
One Saturday night, Moore and Dalio, another platoon leader, had just put their platoon to bed and were rushing to make it to a pizza place before they closed. Dressed in uniform, they walked into town down a dimly lit street. They’d only been walking for ten minutes when a car pulled up next to them. The boys peered into the car, ready to assist the driver they assumed was lost. What they found instead was a group of drunk white teenagers.
The teens teased Moore and Dalio. One of them said he was the son of a colonel at the academy and chided the boys about their conduct and condition of their uniforms. He said he was going to report Moore and his friend, despite the fallacy of his accusations.
The car pulled away, and the two sergeants continued their journey to the restaurant. A minute later, the car returned, heading for them at full speed. Moore and Dalio jumped out of the way. The car stopped, and the boys started running. They were saved from another close call when a different car drove by.
At that moment, Moore’s military training slid away, and the boy from the Bronx surfaced. He looked at Dalio’s scared and bewildered face and said they were getting their pizza, no matter what. They moved to the shadowy edges and started speed-walking.
The pizza shop appeared across the street. As the boys crossed to the entrance, Moore heard someone yell a racial slur at him. He stopped, turned to confront the voice, and was struck in the face with something hard. Moore was bleeding from the mouth and had a chipped tooth. The car drove off, but he knew they weren’t gone for good.
With Moore’s injured mouth and the danger of a hate crime sitting heavy in the air, Moore and Dalio knew they had to get back to the safety of campus. Moore was conflicted. He was filled with rage but also embarrassed to be treated like that in front of his white friend. He also felt shame at running away, instead of staying to fight.
Still, Moore knew going home was the right decision. He was from the Bronx, but he wasn’t from the streets. He knew the street code of “strike back harder” when someone attacked you, but he also knew the likely consequences of confronting a group of drunk racist boys. He might get his payback, but if he didn’t succeed, things could go from bad to worse to the worst.
He also thought about the middle name his father had chosen, Watende—“revenge will not be sought”—and wanted to live up to it. Remembering the night with the fake map, Moore told Dalio to follow him. They made their way to the field on the cusp of the forest, hiding behind cars and running through yards along the way.
They hit the forest and ran until the lights of campus came into view. Moore couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. These forests had once been a path to salvation away from the academy. Tonight, the place he once ran from was now the place he ran toward with all his might.
Wes was sent to a juvenile detention center for six months for the shooting. The bullet had hit the boy in his shoulder, and it was a clean shot straight through. Therefore, Wes was only charged with attempted murder. His attorney had persuaded the court to try Wes as a minor. For these reasons, Wes avoided a charge of murder as an adult.
Wes started attending a new high school after his release, but he was two years older than the students in his class. He was behind in the basic educational requirements, and the school was too crowded and the teachers too overworked to provide Wes with the extra assistance he needed to catch up. Wes eventually dropped out during his sophomore year after Alicia had her baby.
Wes also moved out of his mother’s house. He was staying with his Aunt Nicey, who had strict rules about his behavior in her home. If he wanted to stay with her, he had to either go to school or get a job. But Wes struggled to find a job with no education and an attempted murder charge on his record.
To avoid Aunt Nicey, Wes stayed out of the apartment. When she was at work, he would rest and manage his drug business. When she was home, he pretended to be job-hunting. Wes was now a lieutenant leading a small drug crew, and he ran his business like an organized CEO. His operation was so successful, his crew was taking in four thousand dollars a day.
Even though Wes’s business acumen was strong, he was still immature and greedy. He was annoyed by the amount of money he had to turn over to the head dealers. He and his crew were taking all the risks, but the guys at the top were raking in the real cash.
One afternoon, Wes was hanging with his crew on their corner. He was about to head into the city to meet a girl when a lanky, clean-shaven man approached the crew. This man was not someone they’d seen around the streets before. That was the first red flag.
Another red flag went up when the man asked where he could buy some “rocks.” Wes and his crew knew enough to know that if someone seems like a cop, they probably were. They told the man to go away. But Wes couldn’t shake the thought of pocketing this man’s cash. He ignored the red flags and ran to a phone booth, placing two packets of crack in the change bucket.
Wes, again, tried to parse whether or not the man was a threat. But the thought of profit shut down the warning signals in his head. He told the man he’d heard (he didn’t remember where) that if he gave Wes twenty dollars, he’d find what he needed in the phone booth. Wes looked at the man’s hands when he took the money. They were smooth with clean fingernails, not the hands of an addict. Wes tried to play it cool. He pocketed the money and walked off. Then, he heard the dreaded call, “Stop. Get your hands up!”
Two police officers ran at Wes. They told him to get on the ground. Other officers suddenly appeared from other hiding places. Ten officers surrounded Wes. He tried to plead ignorance, but once again, he found himself in handcuffs. This scenario was becoming all too familiar. He was no longer scared of being arrested, just annoyed that they wouldn’t leave him alone.
Both Wes Moores’ made mistakes in their lives, but one was able to rise above them, and one continued to spiral out of control. However, there are points in each story that seem to lead to these results.
Think of an event in your life that had a significant impact. How did this event change your life for the better or worse?
How could the result have been different if you’d had a different response?
Moore couldn’t believe it when Wes said, as he often did during their time together, he wasn’t there the day of the robbery and murder, the crimes for which he was serving this life sentence. No matter how many times he heard it, Moore was always shocked at Wes’s inability to admit what he’d done.
More than once, Moore questioned what he was doing at the prison. After three years, he realized that Wes was still just a stranger convicted of murder. He didn’t really know Wes at all. Moore wondered whether Wes’s repeated mantra of innocence was an attempt to wash it from his mind. If he said it enough, did Wes think he could make it true?
Moore avoided the topic and asked if Wes thought that people were products of their environments. Wes said he thought people were products of the expectations others had for them. What others expected from you tended to be what you believed about yourself. Moore agreed, but he knew it wasn’t that easy. Other’s influence was powerful, but at the end of the day, everyone was responsible for their own actions.
Moore had been playing varsity basketball for Valley Forge since his sophomore year. He was tall and good, and colleges had started to take an interest. By Moore’s senior year, he’d become a hot prospect for college recruiters. The New York Times had even published an article about his successes and the expectations for his future. He’d been paraded around campus after campus and felt wanted. He’d always dreamed of playing in the NBA, and these visits strengthened his belief in his future professional success.
However, Moore’s mind soon started to turn in a different direction. He started to think maybe he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. He attended recruiting camps and tournaments and got a firsthand look at who his competition was. In the mid-90s, that competition meant players like Kobe Bryant.
Where Moore had to work hard on the court, the game came naturally to others. They were more agile, graceful, and talented. He had potential, but he was never going to reach the level of skill and swagger these other players had. His Uncle Howard had always told him to have a backup plan, so Moore turned his focus to becoming known for more than just basketball.
Moore had become more academically minded throughout high school. He attributes some of this to Joy. She saw how much he loved basketball but hated reading, so she bought him Fab Five, a book that details the historic national championship runs of the Michigan basketball recruiting class from 1991 to 1993.
Moore finished the book in two days. He was riveted by their journey and hip hop swagger. He learned that books were a way to enter different worlds and others’ lives. He started reading everything he could, including classic and contemporary fiction he’d avoided in the past.
One book, in particular, influenced his shift in life goals. Colin Powell’s memoir, My American Journey, spoke to Moore in a way no other book had. Powell was a Bronx native, and he spoke of his struggles with discrimination and civil rights as a young man and soldier. Powell believed in the military, in which black Americans had more freedom than at home. He saw how the military helped spawn progress at a national level, and he was grateful for the way the Army helped him learn to love his country.
Powell’s book spoke to Moore’s experiences. Moore wanted to rise above the stereotypes held about young black men, especially those from urban environments. Like Powell, he also sought a path to something greater than himself. Moore wasn’t foolish enough to believe he could overcome the tenets of racism in America. But Powell had shown him a different perspective of race and opportunity, and Moore began to think about his life differently.
When Moore thought about who’d been the most influential people in his life, he realized that, besides his family, all were military men. These men had taught him the value of public service, the importance of history, and the difficult nature of leadership. They taught him to respect integrity, strength, and the significance of hard work.
In the Bronx, the impermanence of life created apathy or resentment in many people. But the military had given him another way to look at the fleeting nature of life. The impermanence of life highlighted the importance of making each day count. Moore knew that life was precious, and he wanted his to have meaning.
Basketball was not his future. He decided to enroll in Valley Forge’s junior college and work his way up to a leadership role in the U.S. Army. After high school, Moore was promoted to regimental commander for the 70th Corps of Cadets. This position made him the highest-ranking cadet and responsible for training more than seven hundred cadets in the program. He was eighteen years old.
In 1997, Wes, now twenty-one, was the father of four children. His first and second were with Alicia, born a year apart. His third and fourth were with an older woman named Cheryl, who he’d known from Dundee Village. Wes had tried to ignore Cheryl’s growing drug problem since before their children were born. But when he found her passed out and drooling from heroin one night, he knew he’d been wrong.
Wes couldn’t help but compare Cheryl to the other junkies who wandered the streets and sold anything and everything to score their drug of choice. It disturbed him to realize that he was responsible for keeping them that way. He left the house, heading anywhere that wasn’t home.
Wes was fed up with his way of life. He was sick of getting arrested, sick of contributing to the destruction of other’s lives, and sick of watching his community be destroyed. He wandered the streets, where the manifestations of his frustrations existed all around him. After walking for hours, he turned down the street where his friend Levy lived.
Levy had recently gotten out of the drug game and was trying to go straight. Wes was confused by his decision at first. With so much money coming in, how could you walk away? But that day, he started to understand. Levy was happy to see Wes and invited him in. Wes sat in the living room, tired and exasperated, and told Levy he wanted out. He wanted to change his life.
Wes’s desire to change his life became more than a pipe dream that day with Levy. Levy had recently been accepted into the Job Corps program. Job Corps was a federal program that started in 1964 to help underserved youth enter the workforce. Levy had also dropped out of high school, but Job Corps had a GED program, and he was planning on earning his diploma.
Job Corps was nothing new to Wes. One of his aunts had joined but dropped out. But Wes was skeptical about joining Job Corps because of the time away from his family. With his kids, their mothers, and his own mother to look out for, leaving didn’t seem viable. Wes looked at the Devil tattoo on his arm. The symbol was meant as an affront to God. What sort of God would allow people to live like those in his community? This was who Wes was, but he wondered who he could become.
Two weeks after that day in Levy’s house, Wes and Levy boarded a bus to the Job Corps campus. The ride was only thirty minutes long, which meant Wes could return home every weekend to look after his family.
The campus was beautiful. It reminded Wes of what he imagined a real college campus might look like. The room he and Levy shared was huge. Wes was glad he’d trusted Levy.
Wes took a test to determine what level of GED instruction he needed. He scored well, almost at the top of the class, and received his GED a month later. He also found out he could read at a college-sophomore level. These results gave Wes a different perspective of who he was and what he was capable of. He placed his diploma in a frame and hung it in his home.
As he had in the drug game, Wes rose to leadership status quickly in Job Corps. Other students sought him out for advice on life, help with their studies, or friendly companionship. Once he was finished with the academic portion, Wes signed on for training as a carpenter.
Wes was used to using tools. He’d often been tasked with fixing things around the house or repairing part of the structure. He’d enjoyed the steady nature of the work and appreciated the finished product. Carpentry was tangible joy, and he was excited to learn how to do it properly.
Wes’s class was tasked with deciding on something each student wanted to build. Wes’s mind immediately turned to his children, in particular, his five-year-old daughter. He’d missed most of her life and wanted to provide for her and keep her safe. He decided he wanted to build her a house.
Over the seven-month course, Wes worked on his daughter’s house. He cut, sanded, and shaped each board. He fastened them together with nails. He made shutters for the windows and a workable door. The final product was a beautiful five-foot-tall structure.
Working on the house was one of the best experiences Wes had ever had. He worked hard, felt strong, and found faith in himself. The house was a symbol of everything he was working toward in the program and his life.
On the day Wes graduated from Job Corps, he was excited but scared. He had excelled in the program, but it was a safe, controlled environment. He’d be on his own now in the real world. Whether he could really change or not would be put to the test.
Wes’s first legitimate job was working for a private home in Baltimore County as a landscaper. The position was only for five months, and when that time was up, he started renovating homes in need of rehab in the city. That work was also temporary. His next job was working food prep at a Baltimore mall.
Wes had been out of the Job Corps for a year and had yet to find a permanent position or one that paid more than nine dollars an hour. He worked ten-hour days and still barely had enough to care for his children properly. He was also tired after work and found it hard to have energy to spend time with his family.
But he’d been successful in changing his life. He hadn’t been to his old stomping grounds since he’d started working. But one day, after finishing a shift at the mall, he returned to West Baltimore to pick up a package. When he saw his old neighborhood, he saw how little things had changed during his own transformation. Crews were still on the corners, and addicts were still looking to score. The only difference was a slew of new faces.
During his job training, all the worries and problems of his old life had melted away. Now that he was back, he realized he had bigger worries and problems to deal with. Wes went home to his apartment, where he lived alone. His children were living with Alicia and his mother, both of whom needed more money than he could offer. He sat at the kitchen table and felt the world weighing down on him. He banged his fists against his skull and blinked back tears.
After a moment, he opened the package he’d picked up moments before. Like riding a bike, he grabbed a pot and boiled water. He pulled baking soda out of the fridge and poured it into the water. He opened the bag of cocaine and added nine ounces to the pot.
Moore hadn’t been sure what to do with his life after he earned his associate’s degree from the Valley Forge junior college. His advisor had suggested he meet with a friend of hers who worked as the assistant director of admissions for Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins seemed like a long shot. It didn’t seem like the right place for Moore, but he agreed to meet with his advisor’s friend anyway.
Moore was surprised to meet Paul White, a friendly and animated black man. The two talked over a long lunch. Moore told Paul about his history, and Paul told Moore about the university and how it could be a good fit for him. Moore was sold on Johns Hopkins, but he still never thought he’d get in.
Moore was sure his SAT scores would put him out of the running at such a prestigious school. Even as a military officer with an associate’s degree, his scores were well below the average. Therefore, nothing surprised him more than receiving his acceptance letter and scholarship offer in the mail.
Moore knew that Paul White had played a massive role in his acceptance. Talking with Paul had made him more than simply demographics and test scores on paper. Paul had heard his personal journey and gotten to know his disposition. He was a person for which Paul felt he could advocate for, and having that level of support on the inside had meant everything.
Moore experienced a shift in his perspective about the world. He understood more clearly how privilege, such as access to resources, more educational and professional opportunities, and more financial stability, helped people advance in life. Kids like Moore from the Bronx and Baltimore never saw an avenue toward a better life. Even if they did find one, resources were scarce and social programs to reduce inequality were often the most expendable at a federal level. How many students had seen their hard work and dreams die after programs like Pell Grants were defunded? Unless you had someone like Paul to help pull you through the gate, the options for a bright future were dim.
Moore’s status and successes continued to increase throughout college. He was on the brink of graduating from Johns Hopkins University as a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve and completing his second internship with the mayor of Baltimore City.
Moore had been working for Mayor Schmoke since returning to Baltimore two years earlier. At one of their final meetings, Mayor Schmoke suggested he apply for a Rhodes Scholarship after graduation. Some of the most important and influential people had been Rhodes Scholars, including the mayor and Bill Clinton. The mayor also knew that Moore was spending his final semester studying abroad in South Africa. He advised Moore to take in as much as he could about the legacy of apartheid and find a way to bring that experience into his application.
What Moore didn’t understand was that Cecil Rhodes, the founder of the scholarship, was a white racist. Schmoke was telling Moore to immerse himself in the legacy of racism and find his place in the world despite it. Like Colin Powell, Schmoke was guiding Moore to create meaning out of the oppression blacks had suffered for centuries.
Moore was placed with a black family in Langa, one of the oldest townships in South Africa. During apartheid, the townships were the designated segregated areas in which blacks were allowed to live. Despite the end of apartheid only half a decade earlier, economic inequality was severe between the black and white residents. Segregation was now a social construct, rather than a legal requirement.
Langa reminded Moore of Baltimore and the Bronx. He saw black people suffering and being more or less stuck without a clear path for change. The only difference was that poverty in the townships outdid anything Moore had seen in America.
Moore’s host family was made up of a mother, a son a few years younger than Moore, and an eight-year-old daughter. They welcomed Moore like family. Moore and the mother, whom he called “Mama,” talked for hours about the history of apartheid and South Africa. Moore was horrified by the stories she told. He asked how she could be so full of love and forgiveness instead of rage and resentment. Her simple answer, “Because [Nelson] Mandela asked us to,” blew his mind wide open.
Moore realized that humanity was more than just a word to represent people living among each other. It was a way of life. Humanity meant respecting each other’s lives, knowing when to fight and when to come together. His outlook on the world changed, and he felt a stronger connection to the name chosen by his late father.
Toward the end of Moore’s time in South Africa, he spoke to Joy on the phone and heard some interesting news. A man with his name and from his old neighborhood was wanted for the grizzly murder of an off-duty police officer.
This news wasn’t surprising beyond the similarity in names. Young men from impoverished communities often entered the system for one crime or another. Like his friend Shea, multitudes of young black men fell through the cracks and wound up behind bars. It wasn’t until a conversation with his host-brother, Zinzi, that Moore started thinking about the young men back home differently.
Zinzi was seventeen and preparing to be exiled for four weeks in the wild for the traditional ceremony of moving from boy to man. In Xhosa tradition, the tribe of Moore’s host family, adolescent boys were circumcised and taught the history of their tribe from tribal elders, including the struggles and perseverance of Xhosa leaders. They were taught to be good men, good fathers, and respectable husbands. They prayed and healed together over the month and returned home as men.
When these men returned home, they wore white for a month to symbolize their transformation and were celebrated by a feast in their communities. As Zinzi told Moore about this ritual, Moore saw a man dressed in white. His features were those of a boy, but he carried himself with an air of dignity and wisdom. Moore noticed how confident and sturdy this young man appeared and how Zinzi still lacked that demeanor.
Again, Moore was struck with the similarities and differences between life for young black men in South Africa and those at home. Both groups struggled to survive a life of poverty, crime, oppression, and low expectations. But in South Africa, the young men were supported and guided by their communities toward a better future. The movement from childhood to adulthood was celebrated and respected. In America, when a young black boy comes of age, they are feared and assumed to be more dangerous than before.
For one nation, the legacy of pain was a catalyst for growth. For the other, the legacy of pain was a catalyst for further division. Moore was on the cusp of this transition, and he wanted to find a way to rewrite the script for young black men in America. He wanted to take the legacy of those who’d struggled before him and use it to guide his path to manhood.
The store was J. Brown Jewelers in Baltimore County. Two masked gunmen entered on the afternoon of February 7 and forced everyone to the ground. Two other masked men entered, smashed the glass cases housing the jewels, and put the loot in bags.
One of the people on the ground was the security guard Bruce Prothero. However, people mostly knew him as Sergeant Prothero of the Baltimore County police department. He was thirty-five years old, a thirteen-year veteran of the police force, and the father of five children under the age of six, including baby triplets. It was his day off, but he was covering for a friend.
Sergeant Prothero watched the robbers pillage the store and make their way out with almost a half-million in jewels. The masked men ran to two cars in the lot next door. Sergeant Prothero ran through the entrance, gun in hand, and followed the perpetrators through the lot. He hid behind cars, peeking up to see where the men had run to. He had no idea that one of the cars he stooped behind was a getaway car. As he raised up to look through the window, a gloved hand aimed a gun at him and fired.
Prothero was shot once in the head and once in the chest. He stood and ran back toward the store, but he didn’t make it far. After ten feet, he collapsed and bled out.
Baltimore City averaged three hundred murders a year, making it one of the deadliest places in the country. But in Baltimore County, murders weren’t as common, especially those involving law enforcement. The jewelry store crime had hit two nerves at once, and everyone wanted to catch the vicious criminals.
The day after the burglary, a wiretap of an uninvolved drug dealer led to the capture of one of the burglars when he tried to sell the stolen items to the dealer. From him, they received the names of the other men. This information led to the capture of another suspect. Both claimed they weren’t the shooter.
Mary Moore sat in front of the television one February night, unable to move and unwilling to answer the phone ringing off the hook. Her eyes were glued to the newscast about the grizzly jewelry store burglary from three days earlier. Her hands shook as she saw two pictures of the suspects and targets of a massive manhunt. The faces were those of Wes and Tony.
Mary crumbled after seeing her sons’ faces on the screen. She was sick about the dead officer and desperate to believe her sons had nothing to do with it. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate on anything except the fact that their lives were going to change forever, regardless of her sons’ guilt or innocence. She hadn’t heard from her sons for days, but she knew the focus would soon turn to her.
At 4 a.m. a few mornings after the shooting, Mary put a robe on and ran to answer the door. When she cracked it open, two detectives stood on her front step and nearly a dozen other officers were in her yard and street. They had a search warrant.
The swarm of police flashed through the house, weapons drawn, in search of Wes and Tony and other evidence. Mary was led outside to the front steps. One of the officers began grilling her about her sons’ whereabouts, and Mary said she was also concerned about the location of her sons. She said she wasn’t a criminal and didn’t appreciate being treated like one. The police left, but they said they would keep coming back until they found Wes and Tony.
Mary wasn’t the only family member whose life was disrupted by the robbery. A couple of days after the search of Mary’s home, Nicey’s daughter was getting married. Tony was meant to walk her down the aisle, and her solo procession kept the crime and manhunt hanging like a cloud over the day.
Twelve days after the robbery, Wes strolled down a Philadelphia street with Tony. He carried a sandwich and a new pair of jeans. He spotted a police cruiser down the block. When they got closer, he saw two men inside speaking into walkie talkies. This wasn’t the first time Wes had seen the cruiser. Twice earlier in the day, the same car had been parked nearby in different parts of the city.
Wes figured if the men were after him and Tony, they would have picked them up by now. He kept walking without giving it much thought. The two went back to their uncle’s house in a rundown neighborhood on the north side. Wes went up to the room he and Tony shared and started to eat his sandwich. Tony said he needed to run out and went back down the stairs. Wes heard Tony’s footsteps bounding down, but he didn’t hear the door shut behind him.
Wes took another bite, then went to shut the door. When Wes reached the bottom of the stairs, his eyes landed on Tony face first on the ground. A cop was cinching handcuffs on his wrists. A pack of officers jumped on Wes before he could move and pointed guns in his face. The manhunt was over.
A year after the shooting, Wes sat at a table waiting for the jury’s verdict. He was the only one of the four who’d gone to trial. The other three had accepted plea deals. In Tony’s case, his confession to being the shooter had saved him from execution. All three men had received life in prison without parole. Wes knew his fate would be the same if he was found guilty.
Wes went to trial because he said he was innocent. He contended he wasn’t there the day of the shooting. His lawyer defended him by saying Wes had been calm when questioned by the police when they canvassed his neighborhood. He hadn’t been a suspect at the time. The lawyer insisted that Wes’s only error was accompanying Tony to Philadelphia without asking what Tony was running from. The last line of defense was Wes’s conversion to Islam in the year he’d been awaiting trial in prison.
The prosecution fired back with eyewitness testimony that placed Wes at the crime, despite the masks worn. The police had also found a necklace with Wes’s DNA on it. The defense claimed Tony had borrowed the necklace.
The jury deliberated for only three hours. When they walked into the courtroom that day, none of them looked at Wes. He knew he was going to jail for the rest of his life.
Wes had never thought much about making plans for the future. His life was one of survival. On the streets, survival sometimes included a few stints in prison for possession and other drug-related crimes. But he’d never imagined this was how things would turn out. Now, Wes thought about the rest of his life, a life without plans. His path was carved in stone.
Both Wes Moores had people in their life who served as mentors or advisors, and those people played significant roles in how their futures turned out.
Were there people in your life you looked up to as mentors or advisors? How did they influence your life?
How would your life have been different without the influence of those individuals in it?
How could your experiences be used to help mentor a young person down a good path?
As a Rhodes Scholar, Moore earned a master’s degree in international relations at Oxford University. After a year as an intern in Washington D.C., he decided the best way to understand America’s role in international policy was through finance. He joined the world of Wall Street.
Moore’s time on Wall Street was cut short when he decided to join in the war in Afghanistan as a member of the renowned 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division as a paratrooper. Being back among American troops reminded Moore of why he’d enlisted to begin with. He had missed feeling part of something bigger than himself.
After his year-long deployment, Moore became the recipient of a White House Fellowship. He worked as a special assistant to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state at the time. That same year, he married a woman named Dawn.
Moore’s life has been filled with adventures, from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to singing in Carnegie Hall with a group of choir cadets. He’s traveled the world and spoke at the Democratic National Convention when Barack Obama accepted his nomination.
In 2007, Moore started work on this book to try to understand how two boys from the same community could end up so different. He interviewed countless people from both his life and Wes’s life to piece together their pasts and experiences. He spent two years filtering all of it down into this manuscript. He felt like a journalist while researching this book, and he hopes he has done his father and his father’s profession proud.
Wes works as a carpenter in the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland. He is paid fifty-three cents a day. He wakes up, eats, uses the restroom, and goes outside when he is told to by the guards. He gets two hours of yard time a day, in which he plays basketball or simply talks to other prisoners.
When Wes first went to prison, he attended Friday mosque services to see Tony, the only time they could meet despite living in the same prison. But the more he heard about the Muslim religion, the more he wanted to learn. He now serves as a devout leader in the Muslim community behind bars.
Mary, Nicey, Alicia, and the children continue to visit Wes, but he mostly listens to what is happening in their lives. Nothing ever changes for him, and he has nothing new to say when they ask how he’s doing. He loves to see them, but he hates not being there for them.
At the time this book was written, Wes had started his tenth year in prison at thirty-three years old. He has become a grandfather. He still claims he was not present during the robbery or ensuing murder of Sergeant Prothero.
Joy Moore works as a consultant for foundations, helping them learn to use film and media to get their messages out. She lives outside of Baltimore City, where life is calmer and quieter.
Nikki lives in Virginia and owns an event-planning company. Shani lives in Los Angeles with her husband. She attended both Princeton and Stanford, earning a full scholarship for law school at the latter.
Uncle Howard is still an influential presence in Moore’s life. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children. He was one of two best men at Moore’s wedding.
Justin was the other best man. After his mother died, he finished high school and earned a scholarship for college. As a senior, his father died in a fire and Justin was diagnosed with cancer. Today, he is cancer-free and the dean of a prestigious high school near Philadelphia, where he works to reduce disparities in education.
Captain Hill continued his service in the Army until 1999. He now works as a corporate lawyer in New York. He was a groomsman in Moore’s wedding, and the two are still close.
Moore’s grandmother still lives in the Bronx house. Her husband died of stomach cancer in 2005. She is still the fierce matriarch of her family.
Mary Moore lives in Aberdeen, Maryland, an hour away from Baltimore. She works in medical technology geared toward elder care. She is raising three of Wes’s children, her youngest son, and her niece and nephew on her own.
Aunt Nicey also works in elder care as a social worker for the State of Maryland. All of her children graduated from high school and live in either Maryland or Pennsylvania.
Alicia is raising the child that doesn’t live with Mary. She also lives in Aberdeen and works as a TSA officer at an airport. She lives close to Mary and still sees her other child.
Cheryl died a year after Wes’s sentencing at twenty-four years of age. She struggled with drug addiction for years, eventually losing all parental rights to her two children. She became paralyzed after falling down a flight of stairs, and her death is a result of the injuries sustained.
Wes’s friend Woody also had a number of stints in prison after graduating from high school. When his second child was born, his sister helped get him on his feet. He found work as a truck driver and still holds that job. He has three children and lives in West Baltimore.
Tony’s fate was the same as Wes’s for many years. However, in 2008, Tony developed kidney failure and died in prison at the age of thirty-eight.
Moore is often asked what the difference was that allowed him to succeed and Wes to live a life behind bars. Moore is the first to admit that, after everything, he still doesn’t know.
He’s learned that both nature and nurture play important roles in people’s lives, and pinpointing which one or which moment led one of them this way or that is difficult. Sometimes genetics and environment are strong indicators of one’s future, and sometimes people just experience a string of bad luck.
Moore believes there isn’t anything concrete that will determine whether a young person goes one way or another. But he does think that ensuring our youth have the resources, knowledge, and support they need to head down a good path is essential.
Moore also believes that young people need strong mentors in their lives. The tendency to focus only on what is right in front of them is strong in young people. What made the difference for him were all the people who steered him to look for more than that. They helped him see that being black and poor, not having a father, and living in underserved and crime-ridden communities didn’t dictate what kind of future he could have. They allowed him to understand what freedom meant. Both he and Wes hope that kids today will understand that this freedom exists. Moore believes it is the responsibility of all of us to make sure they do.
Moore’s hope was that these stories would help bring awareness to the struggles facing America’s underserved youth and start a conversation. Within both men’s stories are some key ideas relating to the general manner in which our society operates.
What are your main takeaways from the story of the two Wes Moores?
What do you find to be the most compelling difference between the boys?
What are some possible solutions for dealing with this difference?