When Crack was King

When Crack was King by Donovan X. Ramsey is the recounting of the crack Cocaine epidemic in American and what led many black Americans to experience its futile depths.

In 1970’s America, there was a feeling that the black American could do anything if given the chance. Unfortunately many were not given that chance. According to Ramsey, “Unbridled ambition requires a vehicle. Without one, it can torture those who have it, perverting their judgment until ambition meets opportunity and is finally satisfied. It seems that’s what happened for many young Blacks in the late 1970s determined to let “nothin’, nothin’ ” stand in their way. Cocaine seemed tailor-made for the moment.”

Cocaine, or Crack after the crackling sound it makes while cooking, spread through the urban American poor in the 1970s, relieving the pain of those who could get ahold of it for a short while. As with so much in the cultural zeitgeist, cocaine was taken both too seriously and not seriously enough in the beginning. Black America was seen by White America as both pathetic and degenerate while refusing to take any of the blame onto themselves for decades of systematic racism (sound familiar?).

I found this book interesting because much of this was happening as I grew up. I was born in 1985, just a year after the “Just Say No” (to drugs) campaign was launched. I was a part of my school’s DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance) Program - largely considered a failure.

The author seamlessly integrated both the history of “the war on drugs” was well as personal accounts into the narrative. Instead of just reading the facts from a distance we are able to experience with heart-wrenching clarity why people used cocaine.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the politics of addiction and crime as well as the history of how Cocaine impacted black America.

Rating: 5/5
Genre: Addiction/History/Politics

Donovan X. Ramsey's sweeping but intimate account of the crack epidemic is a story of Black resilience in late 20th century urban America. Ramsey documents the damage that crack did to individuals and their communities, but he also shows how that damage was intensified by the accompanying moral panic, born of anti-Black racism and political opportunism. Ramsey weaves together social science, political history, cultural history, and personal narratives of those whose lives were altered by crack to make the compelling argument that Black communities emerged from the crack epidemic not because of clumsy health interventions and overbearing police responses, but through their own communal antibodies, generated in response to a destructive presence.