{"id":3771,"date":"2021-12-30T17:09:37","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T22:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newyorkcitygangs.com\/?page_id=3771"},"modified":"2022-01-01T19:34:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T00:34:37","slug":"a-friend-is-a-friend-no-matter-what-he-does","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/newyorkcitygangs.com\/?page_id=3771","title":{"rendered":"A Friend is a Friend, No Matter What He Does"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is long form journalism, at least for a website and it\u2019s the most in-depth I\u2019ve gone outside of writing a book.\u00a0 This is the story of Walter, a teenage boy who grew up in New York City.\u00a0 Harlem to be precise.\u00a0 This story takes place mostly in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

\n

Harlem wasn\u2019t exactly at the top of everyone\u2019s list of desirable places to live in the 1940s and 1950s.\u00a0 It was a tough, poor neighborhood and there was almost a sense of doom about living there.\u00a0 When someone greeted another in Harlem with a friendly, \u201cHow are you?\u201d the reply would often be \u201cOh man, I\u2019m nowhere.<\/em>\u201d It was a distinctly Harlem thing, a way residents connected with each other that others from outside the neighborhood would never understand. I\u2019m reminded of a quote by David Henry Thoreau that describes places like this Harlem where people shared this ennui.\u00a0 He wrote, \u201cThe mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.\u201d\u00a0 There\u2019s more to the quote \u2013 look it up if you want – but these words fit Walter and his story into a tidy little box of misery.<\/p>\n

Not every place starts off as the wasted dregs of the bottom of a barrel.\u00a0 Harlem certainly wasn\u2019t always a slum.\u00a0 In fact at one time it was a great place to live.\u00a0 However, about 100 years ago that changed.\u00a0 By the 1920s, a huge surge of immigrants from the South (like Walter\u2019s family to come) remodeled Harlem into a slum.\u00a0 Between 1920 and 1930, New York\u2019s black population jumped 115% from this southern immigration.\u00a0 And then the Great Depression hit.\u00a0 Unfortunately for blacks who had moved to Harlem, they won the reverse lotto and got the lowest-paying jobs while at the same time paying huge rent.\u00a0 It was like being thrown into the spin cycle of a washing machine with no bell or timer to end the cycle.\u00a0 That was daily life for Harlemites and it was a time when \u201cgive us this day our daily bread\u201d actually meant something.\u00a0 Not like today where finding food is the least of our problems and we have all the junk food, fried foods and candy we want.\u00a0 Indeed, when it comes to the food department things have changed so much that North America is now fighting a battle against the expanding paunch.\u00a0 How the times have changed.<\/p>\n

To cope with high rent, Harlemites carved up five and six room apartments that had originally been designed for wealthy families and took in whatever renters they could find.\u00a0 People were packed in like miserable sardines, suffering and sweltering in tenements \u2013 this was before air conditioning was common.\u00a0 About 500,000 people lived in Harlem and it was the biggest black neighborhood in the entire country.\u00a0 It was built to hold less than half of that.\u00a0 Overcrowding was putting it lightly.\u00a0 Poverty, squalor, gambling, prostitution and juvenile delinquency came along too, like unwanted guests at a dinner party.\u00a0 Schools were overcrowded too.\u00a0 And run down.\u00a0 During school hours, students impatiently waited for their liberation, watching the second hand of the clock slowly pass by each pip.\u00a0 By the time school was done for the day students were like rocks sitting in the pockets of a hundred poised slingshots:\u00a0 All day they had been pulled back, learning their \u2018rithmetic and reading Dick and Jane novels.\u00a0 By the end of the day, frazzled teachers were only too pleased to release their unruly students back into the streets.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t a lot for the kids to do and they looked for excitement in the nooks and crannies of their streets.\u00a0 Anywhere they could find it or anything to do to dull their minds to their cramped existence.\u00a0 They banded together into street gangs, roving to and forth like army ants scurrying to battle.\u00a0 A thirst for love and rebellion tied these gangs together.<\/p>\n

But, it wasn\u2019t supposed to be like this.<\/p>\n

New York City was supposed to be the Promised Land.\u00a0 The shiny apple of opportunity was just waiting to be plucked from the tree of plenty.\u00a0 Whoever had the gumption, energy and courage could do so.\u00a0 The great American dream was for everyone.\u00a0 One grandma told her grandson on the long bus ride from Augusta Georgia to New York that everyone in Harlem had their own indoor bathrooms, electricity, running water and everyone had big cars they drove around in.\u00a0 Hunger pains would never happen again.\u00a0 Claude Brown, a famous Harlem writer later wrote that moving to Harlem was \u201cgoodbye to the cotton fields, goodbye to \u2018Massa Charlie,\u2019 goodbye to the chain gang and most of all, goodbye to those sunup-to-sundown working hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

I can imagine the excitement of moving to the Promised Land slowly turn to bitter reality for thousands of blacks who moved into Harlem.\u00a0 Blacks like Walter and his family who moved from South Carolina.\u00a0 The first immigrants must have arrived with high expectations and an excitement in their bellies.\u00a0 Perhaps a high paying job waited for them. Or a better school for Johnny and Suzie.\u00a0 But by 1950, that was a pipe dream.\u00a0 When you wake up enough times in the morning staring at the mirror with nothing for you other than a poor paying job, danger in the streets and a dump for a home, anger bubbles up.\u00a0 Or as Claude Brown put it, \u201cnow their children inherited the total lot of their parents \u2013 the disappointments, the anger.\u00a0 To add to their misery, they had little hope of deliverance.\u00a0 For where does one run to when he\u2019s already in the Promised Land?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ralph Ellison, a novelist who lived in Harlem in the Great Depression had a deep connection to the neighborhood:<\/p>\n

To live in Harlem is to dwell in the very bowels of the city; it is to pass a labyrinthine existence among streets that explode monotonously skyward with the spires and crosses of churches and clutter underfoot with garbage and decay. Harlem is a ruin\u00a0\u2014 many of its ordinary aspects (its crimes, its casual violence, its crumbling buildings with littered areaways, ill-smelling halls, and vermin-invaded rooms) are indistinguishable from the distorted images that appear in dreams and, like muggers haunting a lonely hall, quiver in the waking mind with hidden and threatening significance. Yet this is no dream but the reality of well over 400,000 Americans; a reality that for many defines and colors the world. Overcrowded and exploited politically and economically, Harlem is the scene and symbol of the Negro\u2019s perpetual alienation in the land of his\u00a0birth.<\/p>\n

The Harlem of the 40s and 50s \u2013 the time period of this story \u2013 thus exposed itself in an array of pathologies:\u00a0 the man ducking in and out of traffic shouting and throwing pretend grenades that had actually exploded in World War 1.\u00a0 A boy joining in a rape-robbery of his own mother; a man beating his wife up in the park using strict boxing rules \u2013 no punching below the belt or rabbit punching (punching the back of the head).\u00a0 Two men holding a third while a lesbian slashed him to death with a razor blade.\u00a0 Or boy gangsters flashing homemade zip guns and shooting gang rivals.<\/p>\n

A brief word about these gangs.\u00a0 They were real and they were deadly, even with rudimentary weapons.\u00a0 Sometimes they even got real guns in their arsenals.\u00a0 Here\u2019s just one example of that.\u00a0 In September 1945, in Harlem, five members of a gang called the Slicksters stopped another teenager.\u00a0 Witnesses described them as \u201ctough-looking.\u201d\u00a0 The first Slickster placed his .38 caliber revolver against the victim\u2019s right shoulder and pulled the trigger.\u00a0 He stumbled and fell to the sidewalk, when four other Slicksters joined in.\u00a0 One boy held his gun against the victim\u2019s right hip and he too pulled the trigger.\u00a0 Another boy did the same thing shooting the left hip.\u00a0 The other two boys moved forward and each fired a bullet into the victim\u2019s legs.\u00a0 Despite his numerous wounds, the victim somehow got up and started running only to collapse forward onto his face in a bar and grill.\u00a0 There are other violent stories of these gangs I can share including murder, not just of gang members, but innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n

And now, we are ready to jump into Walter\u2019s story.\u00a0 It was important you got a sense of what Harlem was like in the 1940s and 1950s.\u00a0 For as I mentioned at the very beginning of this story, Walter and his family didn\u2019t just move to New York.\u00a0 No, they moved to Harlem.\u00a0 Walter was one of those restless, young black teenagers in Harlem looking for a better a life.<\/p>\n

\"Harlem<\/a>

Harlem 1948<\/p><\/div>\n

It was May 20, 1949 and it was the dead of night.\u00a0 The time was 3:00 a.m. and Chew Teck Joon, a Chinese man had just entered his apartment house at 517 West 124th<\/sup> Street in Manhattan.\u00a0 Why he was up so late isn\u2019t clear.\u00a0 Maybe he had shift work and he just finished another day and all he wanted was to get some sleep. \u00a0Or maybe he was out on the town and the fun was over. Two teenage boys were also in Teck Joon\u2019s building, hanging around and up to no good.\u00a0 But these two boys didn\u2019t live there.\u00a0 They should have been fast asleep in their warm beds.\u00a0 As Chew Teck Joon was about to open the door to the hallway, one of the boys pointed a knife at his stomach and the other placed a hammer on his forehead.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the report actually said: that the hammer was \u201cplaced\u201d on his forehead.\u00a0 How does one place a hammer on another person\u2019s forehead?\u00a0 Was he gentle about it, with the cold steel a reminder of what could be?\u00a0 Or was the hammer roughly placed against his head, giving the impression they could smash it in at any moment?<\/p>\n

Scared out of his mind, with a knife at his belly and a hammer on his head, Teck Joon didn\u2019t resist.\u00a0 The boys took a pay envelope which had $45 inside, $1.17 in change, personal papers, a wristwatch (worth $24) and an umbrella (worth $9).\u00a0 In total, the boys got away with $79.17.<\/p>\n

The two boys bolted out of the vestibule, and Joon immediately shouted for help.\u00a0 Other Chinese people in the area heard his shouts and told a nearby Patrolman from the 30th<\/sup> Precinct who was on duty nearby.\u00a0 The Patrolman went into a building the boys entered and found them on the stairs going up to the second floor landing.\u00a0 The boys claimed that they first went to the roof, where they inspected their ill-gotten gains for about 10-15 minutes.\u00a0 They were arrested when they descended back down the stairs.\u00a0 The Patrolman didn\u2019t see any evidence the two teens had been drinking.\u00a0 One boy said they didn\u2019t drink any liquor before the armed robbery, but the other said they had been drinking earlier that night, but weren\u2019t drunk at the time of the crime.\u00a0 When the policeman asked them where they got the knife and the hammer, they refused to answer although later the boy with the knife claimed he found it in Morningside Park three or four days previously.<\/p>\n

When the patrolman searched the boys, one had a large hammer, Joon\u2019s watch and umbrella.\u00a0 The other had a switchblade with a 4\u201d long blade and $1.17 in coins.\u00a0 There was no way they could wriggle out of this one.\u00a0 One of the teens admitted that they picked Joon as their victim because \u201che looked easy,\u201d and that he \u201clooked like he had some money.\u201d\u00a0 They ordered him to \u201cstick \u2018em up,\u201d and according to them, Joon immediately raised his hands so they had no reason to use the knife or hammer on him.\u00a0 This was a different story than what Joon shared.<\/p>\n

They took his umbrella because it was raining and they didn\u2019t think Joon needed it since he was already home.\u00a0 The preposterous selfishness with this reason shows the morally bankrupt state of mind they were in.\u00a0 Certainly they were lying about not using the knife and hammer on him.<\/p>\n

Because the vestibule was well-lit, Joon identified both of the armed robbers to the Assistant District Attorney.\u00a0 Thankfully he wasn\u2019t injured, although I wonder how long it took him to recover from the experience.\u00a0 The $45 in the pay envelope was never recovered.\u00a0 Supposedly Joon told the boys to \u201ctake everything\u201d and since the $45 was in the pay envelope, it might have been thrown out with the other stolen papers.\u00a0 It could be the two robbers didn\u2019t even know they had $45 in their possession, no small amount of money to the boys.\u00a0 The Patrolman thought that a passing pedestrian might have found the pay envelope and taken the contents.\u00a0 Or maybe nobody found it and the envelope fell into a sewer, or got swept up with other garbage, never to be found, an entire week of working flushed away to who knows where \u2013 a complete waste.<\/p>\n

Actually the fact that he had his pay envelope with him tells me that Teck Joon probably got paid that day and was on his way home from the night shift.\u00a0 In the 1940s and 1950s, the average wage of the lower class was $30-60 per week.\u00a0 Losing $45 would have been crippling to Joon and I wonder how much scrambling he had to do.\u00a0 To help put it in perspective, imagine you lost a week\u2019s worth of wages in a violent robbery.\u00a0 Would you be put out?\u00a0 Did Teck Joon have to beg the landlord for extra time to pay?\u00a0 Did he have family to help him with groceries or medical?\u00a0 Did he have to borrow money from the local loan shark and have that debt hanging over his head reminding him to pay up or else?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how Teck Joon dealt with this robbery, but I do know about the two boys.\u00a0 Who were these urban brigands anyhow?\u00a0 Were they close partners in crime, fast friends from birth? Or was this merely an aimless, chance encounter between two thieves, greased by a desire to make an easy buck?<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out that the two boys had been close friends for six or seven years up to this terrible May night.\u00a0 One boy was Herbert Taylor and the other \u2013 the object of this story \u2013 was Walter, aka \u201cHatchethead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Walter,<\/a>

Walter, aka \u201cHatchethead,\u201d 1949<\/p><\/div>\n

Not only had Herbie and Walter been friends for years, they had actually participated in a similar crime three years prior.\u00a0 It happened on June 1, 1946, and both Herbert and Walter brazenly held up a woman on the street in the middle of the day.\u00a0 They used a knife to hold her up and got away with two bucks, keys and personal papers from her purse.\u00a0 Both boys were arrested only two blocks away from the scene of the crime.\u00a0 The precedent had been set and although there was a three year gap between this armed robbery and the one in 1949, I wonder how many other heists they committed in the three year gap that weren\u2019t found out by the police.\u00a0 I ask you: do you think they stopped robbing people for three years only to start again in 1949?<\/p>\n

Thing is, Walter knew that Taylor was a bad character, but he still associated with him because according to him, \u201ca friend is a friend, no matter what he does.\u201d\u00a0 Herbert was lucky to have such a loyal friend.<\/p>\n

Herbert Taylor was born in South Carolina and was the youngest of 9 children.\u00a0 His father died when he was 5 years old and it destroyed him.\u00a0 He reacted to his father\u2019s death with \u201cfeelings of insecurity\u201d and developed neurotic symptoms, became unstable, tense and had \u201cmemory drops.\u201d\u00a0 His mindset soured like milk sitting in the hot sun.<\/p>\n

Herbie\u2019s first tangle with the long arm of the law happened when he was 15 years old.\u00a0 He grabbed a woman pedestrian, pressed what she thought was a gun into her side and tried to rape her.\u00a0 He got probation for that.<\/p>\n

Herbert\u2019s next arrest was in April 1946 when he broke into a tailor shop, but this case was dismissed.\u00a0 Then it was the June 1, 1946 robbery with Walter mentioned above.<\/p>\n

Between the two teens, Herbie was more aggressive than Walter and he was sent to Warwick.\u00a0 Warwick was where juvenile prisoners under the age of 16 did their time.\u00a0 Less than a year later, Herbert was sprung from Warwick and he moved to Sumter, North Carolina with his mother.\u00a0 In November 1947, he stole a bicycle and was sentenced \u2013 get this \u2013 to work on a chain gang.\u00a0 They sure didn\u2019t fool around in Sumter, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Although he was sentenced for a year to the chain gang, Herbie was released after three months and moved back to New York City.\u00a0 When he got there, at some point he joined a fighting gang called the \u201cMidtown Manhattan Midtown,\u201d for self protection.<\/p>\n

I doubt the gang was really called \u201cmidtown Manhattan Midtown.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s too awkward to say.\u00a0 Imagine being a member of the gang and calling out to the enemy right before a fight that \u201cwe\u2019re midtown Manhattan Midtown!\u201d\u00a0 No, it had to be something more simple than that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been studying New York City youth gangs for 20 years and I am confident that Herbie\u2019s gang was simply the \u201cMidtowners.\u201d\u00a0 The Midtowners were a real gang at that time and in that area too.\u00a0 As luck would have it, Life<\/em> magazine had a photographer named Gordon Parks who followed the Midtowners around the Harlem streets in 1948, taking pictures of the gang.\u00a0 The images are timeless, and you can easily find them online.\u00a0 There\u2019s one of a gang leader with a cigarette balanced on his lips as he stares out a shattered pane of glass onto the street.\u00a0 In another the Midtowners take refuge in an abandoned building after being attacked by an enemy gang.\u00a0 One of the members has a brick in his hand, ready for battle.\u00a0 Another somber picture is of two Midtowners gazing upon the body of their pal, laid out in a coffin in a Harlem funeral home.<\/p>\n

The Midtowners were a \u201cfeuding gang,\u201d and the pictures Parks took showed violence and even murder.\u00a0 Like all these aggressive gangs that had suddenly sprouted all over New York City, the Midtowners were a bellicose bunch.\u00a0 They must have been a large gang because they separated themselves into six groups by age and experience.\u00a0 It started with the Tiny Tims, who were the beginners, mere 12-year-old babies.\u00a0 It went up in age from there, going from \u201cKids,\u201d to \u201cCubs,\u201d to \u201cMidgets,\u201d to \u201cJuniors\u201d and finally \u201cSeniors.\u201d\u00a0 The most active Midtowners were the Midgets, led by their President, \u201cRed,\u201d who had led them since 1946, when the former President was sent to jail for shooting the member of a rival gang.\u00a0 Like all gangs in New York City, the Midtowners had their own \u201cturf,\u201d an area where most of the members lived.\u00a0 Red\u2019s Midtowners were concentrated on a block on West 119th <\/sup>Street.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The war counselor and President of the Midtowners punch it out for control of the gang.<\/p><\/div>\n

Although nothing was said about Walter being in the gang, there are several reasons why I think it\u2019s a fair bet he was:\u00a0 his close friend Herbert was a member and they had committed crimes together; the time frame was in the point where Gordon shadowed the gang.\u00a0 And finally Walter lived at 282 West 127th<\/sup> Street, six blocks south of the Midgets.\u00a0 And as we saw, Walter\u2019s previous crimes were very much like what a gang member would participate in.\u00a0 It was also noted that Walter\u2019s block was \u201chighly congested and delinquent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walter wasn\u2019t a stranger to gangs and knew about their existence already when he was only 6 years old in 1937.\u00a0 This was before the time gangs were a well-known problem in NYC.\u00a0 He was watching a gang fight when he was hit in the left eye by a chucked rock.\u00a0 Walter suffered considerable vision loss and it appeared to affect him for the rest of his life.\u00a0 Innocent bystanders getting hurt by these gang fights were not as unusual as you might think.\u00a0 In fact, one 9-year-old Harlem girl was killed while watching a gang fight from her window.<\/p>\n

Walter, who, as a teenager was described as a \u201cquiet, sad-looking young Negro who at times seems to be in a world of his own,\u201d was born on in Orangeburg, South Carolina.\u00a0 He was the second oldest of three children.<\/p>\n

His father was born in 1914 and worked hard in a cotton mill in Orangeburg; South Carolina had a long history of cotton mills beginning in the mid to late 1800s.\u00a0 Walter\u2019s father was one of those workers \u2013 many of whom were children \u2013 who toiled away, putting themselves at risk of getting \u201cbrown lung,\u201d depending on what part of the process they worked at.\u00a0 Brown lung happened when workers inhaled lint while working near carding machines which took raw cotton and smashed it into flat sheets that were called \u201ccard.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes entire families worked in these factories.<\/p>\n

\"Boy<\/a>

Boy Sweeping in a South Carolina Cotton Mill<\/p><\/div>\n

Even though his father came from a good family, unfortunately for Walter, his mother and siblings, his 5th<\/sup>-grade educated father was a drunkard and didn\u2019t support his own family.\u00a0 When he was drunk, he was abusive and brutal to his wife and children.\u00a0 He also cheated on his wife with many other women, even bringing them into the family home.<\/p>\n

Walter\u2019s mother was also born in South Carolina (Colleton County) in 1913 and did one better than her future husband, achieving a 6th<\/sup> grade education.\u00a0 Her father died when she was about 14 years old and two years later she got married, but \u201cdidn\u2019t know what it was all about.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s a good reminder for us all to really think about how young people got married back in the day.\u00a0 Nobody gets married at 14 anymore, at least in North America.\u00a0 And if they did, it would be the talk of the town.\u00a0 And yet this wasn\u2019t an unusual practice decades ago.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t imagine what it would be like for Walter\u2019s mother to get married at such a tender age, imagine getting a wedding invitation in the mail for a 14-year-old you know.\u00a0 I doubt Walter\u2019s mother had a proper wedding with invitations, but setting that scene up in your mind is helpful to understand Walter\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, with Walter\u2019s father\u2019s two-timing and brutal nature, the parents separated when Walter was 4 years old and the father moved to Columbia, South Carolina, then later to Washington D.C.\u00a0 He never sent support money to his family, and by the time Walter was getting into trouble in Harlem, he hadn\u2019t seen or heard from his father for years.<\/p>\n

When his parents separated, Walter\u2019s mother was pregnant and with the father out of the picture, she moved in with her widowed mother (Walter\u2019s maternal grandmother) who took her daughter and grandchildren in.\u00a0 Because her daughter was pregnant and couldn\u2019t work, the grandmother had to work and supported everyone the best she could by doing day and domestic work, laundry and cleaning.\u00a0 She worked all day and came home to do laundry for other customers in the evening.<\/p>\n

After a year, Walter\u2019s mother moved north, leaving all her children with grandma to support, only sending intermittent and small amounts of money back home for support.\u00a0 Granny worked so hard, she had no time to care for the children who were pretty much left to themselves except when a well-meaning neighbor sometimes checked in on them.\u00a0 The family was very poor and sometimes there wasn\u2019t enough food to eat.\u00a0 Perhaps this is the reason that Walter\u2019s grandmother \u201cexploited him for every cent that he earned.\u201d\u00a0 Walter\u2019s grandmother was a simple woman, \u201cchildlike\u201d was the word used to describe her.\u00a0 She accepted conditions and behavior in the home as satisfactory that would never be considered acceptable by those with higher standards.<\/p>\n

Walter attended a public school in Orangeburg, South Carolina and according to grandma, Walter liked school, didn\u2019t cut class and didn\u2019t have any behavior problems.\u00a0 All was going well.\u00a0 Except for one problem.\u00a0 Although he generally got along with the other kids, he sometimes had fits of rage which became characteristic of him.<\/p>\n

To get closer to her daughter who had moved north, Walter\u2019s grandma visited relatives in New York City to get a lay of the land.\u00a0 The first time she went to scout things out it was for two weeks and the second for three months.\u00a0 During both her visits to savour the fruit of the Big Apple, she left Walter and his siblings with relatives.\u00a0 She was \u201csure they were content.\u201d\u00a0 The reason why she wanted to move to New York City was because she had health issues.\u00a0 Perhaps it was working herself to the bone to care for her grandchildren that played a part in that.\u00a0 Moving to New York City allowed her to be closer to her daughter and other relatives in case she needed financial help.\u00a0 Not that she could really count on her daughter for anything as past experience showed.\u00a0 She finally moved there permanently in 1943.<\/p>\n

When she moved to the city, she got a different home from that of her daughter, but the children were in and out of both homes from that point forward.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help but feel that the children were being pawned off and shuffled around like a macabre game of hot potato.\u00a0 School in New York City was uneventful for Walter; that is, until 1946 when he was in Grade 8.\u00a0 Walter skipped school a lot and his workmanship was poor.\u00a0 His conduct was marked as B and C and on the days he didn\u2019t skip, Walter was often late arriving to school.<\/p>\n

Later, when he was in a reformatory, a teacher in the institution said that Walter was friendly and quiet and could \u201cfall asleep in a minute\u2019s notice.\u201d\u00a0 He also acted like a clown in most classroom situations and tried to cover up his inadequacy.\u00a0 Walter played himself off for a fool and with no effort gravitated to those with the same outlook.\u00a0 This quote explains it fully:<\/p>\n

Basically, this boy feels that he does not have what it takes to get along with others in terms of ability.\u00a0 Because of this low estimate of his own capacity, he does not try in most of the situations.<\/p>\n

And yet, beneath all this, there was a small flicker of hope for Walter academically.\u00a0 It turned out that when he made serious efforts to make a good impression, he had an unusually good vocabulary.\u00a0 And when someone tried to deal sympathetically with him, Walter actually put in a good effort.\u00a0 But who would be there to show him that sympathy he desperately needed?\u00a0 A grandma with health issues who worked day and night for her grandchildren?\u00a0 Or a father who was somewhere in Washington D.C., doing who knows what?\u00a0 Or would that love come from a mother who could care less about her son?<\/p>\n

Attending high school at Benjamin Franklin was no better than elementary school.\u00a0 His attendance was spotty; his work poor and conduct fair.\u00a0 His academic achievement was underwhelming and when he reached the 5th<\/sup> term he left.\u00a0 I wonder what would have happened if someone came alongside Walter to show him the love and guidance he needed?\u00a0 Maybe the great vocabulary he had might have lead to becoming a writer.\u00a0 Or a poet.\u00a0 Or a playwright.\u00a0 Anything really. Maybe underneath the layers of neglect, there was a Mark Twain inside Walter. Or to be more contemporary to Walter\u2019s time, maybe there was a James Baldwin hiding inside.\u00a0 Baldwin was a Harlem writer only seven years older than Walter.\u00a0 He was already on his journey to becoming a famous novelist.\u00a0 All that was needed was someone to burnish and polish away that neglect\u2026<\/p>\n

When investigators poked into Walter\u2019s life to understand him, they only got a vague, hazy idea of Walter\u2019s interests, hobbies and activities from his own relatives.\u00a0 If your own family struggles to explain who you are, you know you\u2019re in a bad spot.\u00a0 However, they gave enough for us over 70- years later to get a picture of Walter:<\/p>\n