Surviving Roseland: A Tale of Two Lives

To celebrate the debut of Michael's first novel One Foot In, the Northwestern Insider is proud to publish an excerpt from Chapter 1.

By Michael Broadway

One Foot In is available for purchase on Amazon.

I grew up in Roseland, a community on the far south side of Chicago, infamously known as the Wild Hundreds.

This section of the city got its name for its tendencies toward violence. This once-thriving middle-class white community made its living working in the steel mill factories located there on the far southeast side of the city and over in neighboring Indiana, which was a short commute on the Bishop Ford Expressway.

By the late sixties, many of these factories began closing and moving their operations overseas. This caused Roseland's white residents to move away, making room for poor Black families that migrated from the South, escaping harsh Jim Crow laws. With the absence of job opportunities, it didn't take long for the Roseland Community to deteriorate, and crime quickly rose.

It has been decades since those closings, and nothing has changed for the residents of Roseland or its surrounding neighbors. Roseland became a poor working-class community with a high crime and poverty rate, a progressive drug and alcohol epidemic, a pervasive gang culture, and a corrupt and deadly police presence, crime essentially became a way of life, and families learned to live with the violence.

An armed struggle ensued over the only limited resources still available—drug blocks. For me and Dupree, it was the same. We were determined to carve out our own little existence right there in Roseland.

Dupree and I grew up next door to one another, and we were raised more like brothers than anything, but we were polar opposites. Where I was well-liked, he was despised, but most of that could be attributed to Dupree being misunderstood.

Dupree experienced some shit growing up that no one, especially a kid, should have had to, so my crib became a safe haven for Dupree whenever his mother would flip out on him. At one point, it got so bad that she allowed her boyfriends to discipline Dupree, however they saw fit, and that was never pretty.

Over the years, there were a few good men that came along and treated Gloria well. That's Dupree's mother, but Gloria always found reasons to run these men away. If you weren't going upside of Gloria's head, then you wasn't man enough for her. Gloria equated love with abuse because the more abusive the men were, the longer they stayed around.

At night, I could hear Gloria yelling and throwing things around her own house whenever she was fighting with one of her boyfriends. Someone would always call the police to report the domestic dispute, but I would worry about Dupree. Around ten years old, Dupree began coming over to my crib to escape the madness at his. I would sneak Dupree into the crib through my bedroom window, where we would play Madden until we fell asleep.

But Dupree needed someone to talk to. I was only ten years old; what was I supposed to say? So, we played video games.

When Dupree turned twelve, he had a serious growth spurt and stood about five feet ten inches with a lanky build. He had a dark complexion, exceedingly white teeth, bright eyes, and a mass of curly black hair. But that wasn't his only change.

Dupree's whole disposition about life changed, and Gloria let him do whatever he wanted. Which meant Dupree ran the streets with some of the older guys from the neighborhood.

He even helped Gloria fight off her boyfriends, believing if he protected his mother, she would show him some love, but that never happened. Once they fought off her attacker, Gloria would turn on Dupree, accusing him of ruining all her relationships. We laugh about it now. Just the thought of Dupree ruining anything for Gloria was hilarious. She would never let such a trivial thing as raising a child get in the way of her living her life. But back then, it was hurtful, and Dupree suffered socially because of it.

At school, Dupree was always suspended for fighting other students and cursing out our teachers. This behavior was in direct correlation to his problems at home, but no one cared enough to find
out.

Dupree was labeled a troubled kid that no one wanted any part of, but to the guys in the hood, he was a kindred spirit, someone with which we all shared a bond.

I guess it was our collective experiences growing up together that bound us, like the first time we were arrested for armed robbery.