Money Rock: A Family’s Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South

237 Pages·2018·4.01 MB·English

by  Pam Kelley

© 2018 by Pam Kelley
All rights reserved.
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Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2018
Distributed by Two Rivers Distribution
ISBN 978-1-62097-328-8 (ebook)
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Book design and composition by dix! Digital Prepress
This book was set in Minion
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Trent, Jackson, and Emma
For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an
abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will
be taken away.
—Matthew 13:12
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the
very bottom of hardships.
—W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
With cocaine, my success came speedy Got me twisted, jammed into a
paradox Every dollar I get, another brother drops Maybe that’s the plan,
and I don’t understand —Ice-T, New Jack Hustler
CONTENTS
Prologue
Map of Money Rock’s Charlotte
1. Money Rock and Big Lou
2. Showdown
3. Carrie Platt and the American Dream
4. Candy Kingpin
5. The Dealer’s Mother
6. What Went Wrong with Piedmont Courts?
7. State of North Carolina Versus Money Rock
8. Convictions
9. Heavy in the Weight
10. Going Down
11. United States Versus Money Rock
12. Coming of Age in a World-Class City
13. The Christian Inmate
14. Sentencing a Generation
15. Lost Boys
16. The Love of His Life
17. Freedom
18. Trying to Make a Change
19. Susan and Mashandia
20. Homecoming
21. Life on the Outside
22. Uprising
23. Southside Homes
Epilogue
Where They Are Now
Acknowledgments
Notes
PROLOGUE
I
n May 1986, I made a trip to Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, to
meet Money Rock. He was an inmate, recently convicted; I was a reporter for
the Charlotte Observer, hoping to get the inside story of a cocaine turf war
between him and a guy named Big Lou. We sat across from each other in a
visiting room, sparsely furnished with a large metal desk. Affixed to its front,
unaccountably, was North Carolina’s state seal, with female figures depicting
Liberty and Plenty and the state’s Latin motto, Esse quam videri: To be rather
than to seem. The motto struck me as a promising omen.
I’d covered Money Rock’s trial weeks earlier, watching him at the
defendant’s table from my seat in the courtroom. After his conviction, I’d
requested an interview. When he agreed, I was hopeful that he wanted to come
clean, and I’d get a great story. I was twenty-six, a middle-class white woman
from Ohio listening to testimony about African American dealers battling over
turf in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was all new to me—except for the cocaine.
Coke had been big when I attended college at UNC Chapel Hill in the late
1970s. I’d tried it, and I’d known classmates who sold it. None of us had gotten
caught.
That day of our first conversation, he wore prison-issued khaki and a patchy
beard, a stark contrast to the Money Rock diamond rings and earring stud he’d
worn in court. I shook his hand. He smiled. But almost as soon as we started
talking, I could tell I wouldn’t get the truth. His goal was to convince me he was
innocent. Persecuted, even. He wasn’t a cocaine dealer. He was a Christian who
made his money cleaning Hardee’s restaurants. “The devil has put me here
because of all my works and all the stuff I did to help people,” he told me. “He
done put me here to try my faith.”
I doubt the interview lasted an hour, and while I left without my big story,
there were memorable moments. One was his description of his nemesis, Big
Lou, as a dinosaur. “You know,” he told me, “little old brain, big old dinosaur.”
It made me smile. But when it became clear he wasn’t going to tell me anything