Low Road
Authors: Jr. Eddie B. Allen
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Contents
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For Dad, who taught me to believe
Acknowledgments
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All praises are due to the One divine and unparalleled Creator for the opportunity to take part in documenting the life discussed in these pages.
Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines
is the result of a community effort that could not have been sustained to completion without prayers, support, time, encouragement, and other valuable resources provided by the following: Eddie B. Allen, Sr., and Linell Allen; Charles Glover; my agent and the wonderful ambassador of kwan, Susan Raihofer, who played Mick to my humble Rocky; Joan Coney and Marie Richardson; Monique Patterson and St. Martin's Press, who took the chance; DMX and Brandon Himmel; attorneys Larry Pepper and Barbara Cohen; Paul Lee/Best Efforts, Inc.; Curtis Jamaal Allen; Sam Greenlee; Imelda Hunt/New Works Writers Series; Fred Girard; Dr. Kenneth Cole; John Hollowell; Janet and Bill Mitchum; Maurice Armstrong; Joe Williams; Lisa Montez; my older, wiser sister, Robyn, and the entire Ussery clan; Craig Ciccone; Wil Segars; Ralph Watts; Tim Pharaoh Muhammad; Lisa B. Lee; Roman Godzak; C. Liegh McInnis; Bentley Morriss; Neal Colgrass; Susan Strunk; William Shackleford; Brenda V. Peek; LaShaun Moore; Janerio Morgan; Shondra Tipler; Peter Goldman; Alisa Giddens; Eric Levin; Racquel Ward; Raymond Stevens; Walter Williamson; Marie Teasley; Maisha Maurant; Erik Perry/Kaboodlz Entertainment; Gil Robertson; Kim Trent; Terrence and Kendra Collier; Phyllis Pollack; Denise Crittendon; Sandra Combs-Birdiett; Steven G. Fullwood; Sonya Vann; Jack Lessenberry; Dwight Cunningham; Rev. Charles “Slim” Lake and my friends at God's Church of the Streets; Lynda Crist; William Cooper, Jr.; Ruth Seymour; Ozzie Bruno; Gary Pomerantz; Betty Dooley; Samuel “Rickey” Rowe; Leri Ulmer; Jim Lesar; Liberty R. O. Daniels; Nicholas Parham; Tumika Patrice Cain; Tonya and Brandi Neal; U.S. Navy Master Diver (Ret.) Michael Washington; Bill Thomas; Charles Muhammad and the Self Expression Teen Theater board, staff, and students; Jon Richardson; Jelani Jebari; Christopher Woodard; Rochelle Riley-Wilson; James McCarter, Keith Dye, Toni Smith, Vic Doucette, and Dennis Shea; James and Karla Aren; Ben and Gloria Crain; “Cousin” Ray Allen; Larry Davis; Jacqueline Hardy; Stewart Walker; Mansour Bey; Jerry Jones; Alicia Densemo; Dayjanae Mathews; Marcel Riddick; Toya Hankins; Charlie and Karen Thomas; Margaret and Donna Stevenson; Tricia McCaffrey; John Robinson Block and my friends from The Blade in Toledo; lastly, the most patient and helpful staffs of the Detroit Public Library's Burton Historical Collection and the Family History Center in Bloomfield Hills.
All praises, all praises, and all praises.
Foreword
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The year 2004 marked the thirtieth anniversary of Donald Goines's death. It also marked the year that I produced my first film,
Never Die Alone,
based on the thirty-year-old Goines book. I've read every Donald Goines novel; so as soon as I heard that there was an opportunity for one of them to be turned into a movie, I jumped at the chance.
I was locked up when I first heard of him, when I first read his books. Here were a set of novels that didn't always have a happy ending. He wrote about a lot of things that I could relate to. A lot of the characters I knew. King David's story of living a grimy life, going through personal pain, and gaining a conscience is very relevant to the plight of the black man today. I didn't like the character. He's a bastard, and I'm not a grimy personâI've come through that stageâbut I knew enough about him to try to make him real. I don't think King David is as amped as I am, and I talk kind of fast, so I had to slow it down. Like an old man talkin' shit to the young players.
For all the terrible things he's done, he doesn't see himself as beyond redemption. But reality hits, and despite the fact that he's coming to terms with some of the wrongs that he's committed, he still gets what he deserves. The message is, “You do dirt; you get dirt.”
This is a theme with many of the Goines characters. No matter what crisis or trouble pushed them into crime, they get it in the end. I think Donald Goines understood this about life and wanted us to understand it: Everything we do has a price.
His writing has already inspired me to produce another film. We're going to do
Daddy Cool.
I don't know if I'll play Daddy Cool. I'm not going to star in every one of my movies. But what I will bring to the film industry is the same thing I brought to the record industry when I came into itâthe same thing Donald Goines brought to his booksârealism. Uncompromised, unconditional “dog love.” Not love for
everybody,
but we'll have a clique, we'll be tight, and we'll bring real, official shit to the table. No fake, animated representations. The truth in undeniable. Show somebody the truth, and it can't be ignored. This is what Donald Goines did. Even though it's presented as fiction, truth can be taken from every book.
And even in death, he's still real.
âDMX
(a.k.a. “King David,” of the Fox Searchlight motion picture
Never Die Alone
)
March 2004
Preface
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I can clearly remember the vivid image of the brown-skinned man with the outstretched arm that adorned the paperback cover of my cousin's book. His sleeve was rolled into a bunch as he prepared to inject himself with a syringe. Above the illustration was the word
Dopefiend.
I was probably about nine or ten at the time. My cousin was perhaps sixteen or seventeen.
She read the book intently as we traveled down the highway, my dad at the wheel and Ma riding shotgun. We were on our way to some summer destination or another, as was my family's custom when school let out and the days became long. My uncle's daughters were frequently recruited to baby-sit me, particularly when adult activities, like a Bid Whist game, were in the plans or when there was the possibility of a visit to Cedar Point or a similar amusement park not far away.
I contented myself in the backseat with Rosa, tilting over headfirst onto her shoulder as the steady motion of the vehicle guided me toward sleep. I probably drooled on her arm. It wasn't until maybe ten years later when I once again encountered the book that had so engrossed my cousin. A copy of
Dopefiend
somehow wound up on the shelf of my parents' library. Remembering Rosa's attentiveness, I picked up the book and flipped through its pages.
It didn't take long for me to understand how easily a reader could get lost in the imagery. I found myself taking in the striking descriptions and compelling dialogue as if the characters were acting out scenarios in front of me. Set in the 1970s,
Dopefiend
tells the story of Porky, a morbidly obese loser, who draws his self-esteem and popularity from drug connections. Things run in favor of the social outcast as he participates in the urban dope game. Porky becomes a neighborhood kingpin, with money, respect, and attention from young ladies who would otherwise ignore him. So great is his dominion among the addicts, as a matter of fact, that his female peers perform the most disgusting of sex acts with dogs for his perverse enjoyment, in order to win his grace.
Having decided that I would be a newspaper reporter, specializing in coverage of urban and oppressed people, I appreciated the realism of
Dopefiend
's account. But I had not learned exactly how real the details of the novel were. They had been taken directly from experiences and observations in the life of Donald Goines. The author had been murdered when I was only two years old.
He and I shared similarities, but had little in common: We were both writers born in Detroit during the month of December. We both had been raised in two-parent, middle-class households. But that's about where it ended.
He was a product of the postâDepression-era city, where men of color still walked a fine line between pride and self-preservation. It was months before his seventh birthday when thirty-six hours of rioting on Belle Isle Park and in neighboring parts of the city left thirty-four dead, twenty-five of whom were black, including a man who had been waiting on a bus at the corner of Mack Avenue and Chene. The eruption, which ended only after state and federal troops arrived to rescue an overwhelmed Detroit Police Department, resulted from a large skirmish on the island, followed by two unfounded rumors: that whites had thrown a black baby off the Belle Isle Bridge and that blacks had raped a white woman.
I, on the other hand, could not recall a Detroit where people of color were the minority. For most of my life the mayor, police chief, and many prominent business owners were black people. Arabs had begun to operate a large number of the gas stations and small grocery stores in the Detroit I knew. White neighbors, teachers, and police officers would not be seen until my parents moved to the northern suburb of Southfield. And even then, if I mumbled when I spoke or failed to make eye contact with any one of them, it was because of my early shyness, not because I had any familiarity whatsoever with racism.
But the biggest difference between us lies not in the eras or environments in which we developed. It was the drugs. I had seen the impact of drugs in my own family. Two loved ones had died as a result of using or selling controlled substances. I have never even smoked a cigarette. I considered, and still consider, drugs to be among the worst enemies our communities have ever faced. Mr. Goines, however, became addicted as a youth and, sadly, lived the majority of his life under the influence of narcotics.
So I had never considered telling a story like his when the friendly young general manager of a small Ohio radio station approached me. I liked Charles Glover. He laughed and smiled a lot, never seeming to take himself too seriously. Mark, a mutual acquaintance, had introduced us during the early months of 1999. I had recently been laid off from a communications job in Detroit and was looking for a freelance opportunity in radio. Mark and I had discussed bringing a public affairs and social commentary show to Charles's station in Toledo, where I'd lived until the previous year.
I wrote several scripts, and Mark helped put music together for our proposed segment. After weeks of discussion about the show's focus and sponsorship possibilities, we had all become comfortable with one another in our working relationship. I can't remember how it came up, but one afternoon as we sat in his office, Charles mentioned that he'd had a “crazy uncle” in Detroit. We chatted a little more until he revealed that he was Mr. Goines's nephew. The memories of my cousin reading in the car and the book I found in my parents' library immediately flashed through my mind.
Charles explained to us that his mother, Marie, was Mr. Goines's older sister. He shared memories of growing up around neighborhoods I recognized, while his grandparents, Aunt Joan and “Uncle Donnie,” served as the fabric of his family. He shared how he had approached various writers and literary agents in recent years, hoping to find the person who would recognize the value and significance of a biography about Mr. Goines. There had been one bio, hastily published the same year his uncle died, but Charles said that he and the family regarded it as a poor effort. If I was interested in writing the story, he told me, he would assist by providing not only as many personal recollections as he could produce, but also personal documents, photographs, and other materials that would be helpful in revealing who Mr. Goines was.