Deadskins Me’Angelo Hall Named MVP of Pro Bowl
Me’Angelo doesn’t fail to be himself.
From ESPN.com article,
“I was just about to buy another SUV,” the Washington Redskins cornerback said, “so to come out here and grab one for free, I like that.”
Upset the city’s setup; Josh Lopez for At-Large DC City Council — Donate Now
The Syndicate used to run uptown and in so running ran into and befriended a street fighter from a bygone era: Josh Lopez, current candidate for At-Large DC City Council.
Whereas the old guard and the wannabe new old guard resort to their convenient default hallowed-out rhetoric about the needs of the city’s least, last, and lost in terms of job development, workforce training, First Source, and other agitprop talking points there is only one candidate whose message of the people originates from the people.
We know times are tough for the EBT & TANF dependent to the recent college grads to senior executives with two mortgages underwater, but if you are down for the get down in a way this city has yet to see, only in flashes and glimpses as seen by Josh’s tactics and strategy, then make a donation HERE to Lopez’s campaign.
The city looks back at Petey Greene with a fondness and many try to romanticize the riots when soul brothers and soul sisters destroyed their own city. However, when live and in the flesh there is an emerging voice of the people we want to dismiss him. Not so fast. Lopez was the first candidate to gather 3,000 signatures to get on the April ballot.
Josh Lopez is what this city needs. The city doesn’t need another member of the old guard nor a new member of the wannabe old guard.
Enough is enough. Do the right thing and vote Lopez April 26.
Uniontown Bar & Grill to open Monday, Jan 31st
According to owner Natasha Dasher’s facebook page and event invite, tomorrow is the highly anticipated opening of Uniontown Bar & Grill.
The Syndicate will mob through in the later pm. Catch you there.
Politico: The political education of Michelle Rhee
I’m not the only who sees the supreme irony in the existence of this complete dingbat.
Politico HERE.
Old Neighborhood Movie Theaters of Wards 7 and 8
Before the modern era of corporately owned multiplexes, East Washington had independently owned neighborhood movie theaters from Deanwood in NE to Anacostia in SE. However, there are now no open movie theatres in all of Ward 7 or Ward 8.
Today, there are seven movie theaters in DC from the independent Avalon Theatre, the oldest surviving movie theater in the city, first opening in 1923 as the Chevy Chase Theater in the uptown neighborhood of the same name, to the corporate Regal Gallery Place downtown.
With architectural skeletons of the Strand Theater, on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE, and the Senator Theater, on Minnesota Avenue NE, still standing, it has been more than two decades since a movie lit up the screen of a theater in East Washington. (THEARC on Mississippi Avenue SE, for the purposes of this article, is not considered a movie theater even though they have occasionally shown a movie; it is a performing arts stage.)
“We don’t know where movies were first shown there, but there were probably some venues for films before 1909,” says Robert Headley, author of the definitive guide to DC’s movie theater history, Motion Picture Exhibition in Washington, DC: An Illustrated History of Parlors, Places, and Multiplexes in the Metropolitan Area, 1894-1997.
“A man named T. B. Stallings was showing movies on Nichols Avenue, now MLK Jr. Avenue, in 1909. There was an open-air theater called the Proctor, also on Nichols, in 1910,” according to Headley. “Lloyd Wineland, who would go on to build 4 movie houses in the area, started out in a former Masonic Hall at 2002 14th Street SE in 1923. He converted it into a movie theater and called it the Logan.”
In 1929, Wineland opened the two-story brick and stone Fairlawn, the first theater in Anacostia, “built from the ground up” at 1342 Good Hope Road. Early ads made special mention that the theater would show silent and sound movies, known as “talkies.”
Wineland then built the Congress Theater at 2931 Nichols Avenue to serve the Congress Heights neighborhood. Opening on December 30, 1939 with a live performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” by Lean Brusiloff’s String Ensemble, several speakers from local citizen associations spoke in welcoming the new neighborhood theater. Double or Nothing starring Bing Crosby and Martha Raye was the first feature with admission 20 cents for children under twelve and 30 cents for adults. During its last years, in the 1970’s, so many objects were thrown at and through the screen that it was removed and movies were shown on the painted rear wall of the auditorium. A liquor store now occupies the building.
Wash Syndicate
The Strand Theater opened on November 3, 1928 at 5129-5131 Grant Street NE, now Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE, by Abe Lichtman to serve the black community in the Deanwood neighborhood. Lichtman, known for running the Howard and Lincoln Theaters, would retire from the business in 1946. By that time he ran 46 theaters in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina with a staff of 425 employees, approximately 400 being black and representing all management positions.
“The Strand was an extension of the neighborhood in the sense; we played all kinds of games, hide-n-seek, riding bikes, roller skating, jacks, jump rope. We played in each other’s yards so going to the Strand was an extension of our street we played on,” says Celestia Tobe, who grew up on Grant Street NE.
The experience of seeing movies at the Strand made a lasting impression on Tobe. “Imitation of Life stands out, because the neighborhood tough guy cried along with the rest of us.”
“Today moving going is so different. The theaters today are surrounded by so many stores and restaurants, they seem more commercial. My memories of our neighborhood theaters were more like home,” remembers Tobe.
In 1940, the Highland Theater opened at 2533 Pennsylvania Avenue SE and in March of 1947 the Anacostia Theater, designed by John Eberson, opened at 1415 Good Hope Road, replacing the Fairlawn as the main theatre along Good Hope Road. Both theaters were maintained by Wineland.
The Anacostia Theater closed in 1967 and was subsequently razed. In 1977 the Highland was closed and converted into a clothing store and is now a child development center.
On February 19, 1942 the Senator Theater opened at 3946-3956 Minnesota Avenue built by K-B Theaters. In late 1951 it was leased by the Bernheimer organization to operate as an African-American theater. It was closed for a time in the 1970’s but was reopened in November of 1979.
Wash Syndicate
The art-deco building is in use today with a Subway eatery and beauty supply store occupying the ground floor with the Senator’s blue marquee still as visible as it was when it played its last movie in 1989.
“After cutting grass and making some money in the neighborhood we used to go there as kids in the seventies and see Bruce Lee movies,” said Stephon Gray.
The first non-segregated theater to open in the area was the Carver Theater at 2405 Nichols Avenue in July of 1948. The theater was not successful and closed in 1957. The Smithsonian Anacostia Neighborhood Museum opened in the building in 1967 and was there until 1987 when they moved to their current location at 1901 Fort Place SE. The Howard Road Academy’s Middle School campus now occupies the former theater.
The largest movie house in East Washington was the Naylor Theater at 2834 Alabama Avenue with 990 seats. It was built by K-B Theaters and opened following the end of World War II on November 1, 1945. At the time of its opening a newspaper article predicated that “it will take the Southeast community at least 25 years to outgrow the Naylor Theater.” Acquired by Wineland in 1961, the theater eventually closed in 1970, approximately 25 years after it opened.
Great “Where are they now?” story from the Post on eve of State of the Union
Wash Post “The stories behind the visitors in the State of the Union galleries” — Read HERE
True Crime: The Forgotten Story of Robert “Yummy” Sandifer
Published in the February edition of Suspense Magazine.
By: John Muller
Wash Syndicate
At 10:30 in the morning on Sunday, August 28, 1994 eleven year old Robert Sandifer, nicknamed “Yummy” for his love of cookies, left his house at 219 West 107th Place in the Roseland neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago. He said he was off to a gas station at 111th & State Street, more than a half mile away, where local children pumped self-serve gas for customers to earn tips before station workers would chase them away.
At first glance, Yummy’s bedroom resembled most other Chicago children of his age. Posters of Michael Jordan and Disney characters were tacked to the walls and ceiling. However, a closer look revealed a boy whose childhood innocence had long since vanished; gang insignia was scrawled above the door, gang logos were scribbled on the woodwork.
Away from his house “playing all day,” according to his grandmother, Yummy, standing 4 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 86 pounds, approached a group of boys standing at 10758 South Perry Avenue near the corner of West 108th Street around 6:30pm.
Yummy, a tattooed member of the Black Disciples gang, approached 16 year old Kianta Britten, asking him what gang he was affiliated with; the Black Disciples were warring with the Gangster Disciples, another powerful Chicago street gang.
When Britten said he wasn’t in a gang, Yummy, a member of the Black Disciples set called the “8 balls,” pulled out a 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol at nearly point-blank range. Britten ran. Yummy opened fire, striking Britten in the stomach with one bullet and striking his spinal cord with another. Britten would spend the next several months in hospitals and rehabilitation clinics, unable to walk for eight months.
Brazenfaced in his daylight attack, the eyes of the street watching him, the diminutive Yummy quickly scurried off.
Arriving on the scene, Chicago police Officer William Callahan knelt over the young victim, “Who shot you?”
“Yummy shot me,” Britten responded. “I think his name is Robert.” He would later say, “I knew it was Yummy. I saw his face before he shot me.”
As soon as Callahan supplied Sandifer’s name as the probable suspect, other detectives were en route to their offices to look for a recent photo of Yummy when they received word there had been another shooting around the corner on 108th Street.
After walking her girlfriend Chi Chi home about 100 yards from her front door in the 200 block of West 108th Street, Shavon Latrice Dean, excited about her upcoming freshmen orientation at Corliss High School, walked past a group of six children playing football on the street at 108th and Wentworth.
At 8:30 pm, as the sun was setting, Yummy re-emerged bucking his 9 millimeter.
Unloading his gun wildly into the crowd, he struck the rear door of a van parked on the street while another stray round smashed through a living room window.
Sammy Seay, 16, had just caught a pass when he suddenly dropped the ball at the eruption of gunfire. Falling to the pavement he saw sparks from bullets hitting the street. He was grazed in the leg while another bullet pierced his left hand. “I hit the ground,” Seay said. “It was the second or third shot before I knew I had been shot. So I got up and I just ran, trying to save my life.”
After others at the scene identified Yummy as Seay’s attacker, Seay reluctantly admitted that Yummy shot him.
Shavon, 14, a next door neighbor of Yummy, was struck in the head. She was 30 feet from her front door. Less than an hour later she died at Roseland Community Hospital. “She was lying on the ground,” Delia Gildart, 15, Shavon’s cousin said. “It was a shock to see her lying there.” “He probably didn’t mean to hurt her,” Delia told to a newspaper reporter. “He was just shooting.”
“It’s just really terrible, but the Bible says all these things will happen,” said Ann Jones, Shavon’s grandmother.
As Yummy fled the second shooting scene he was seen wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word, “Boss.”
Wash Syndicate
By the fall of 1994, fatalism began to afflict the spirit of the city of Chicago where the murder of a child was becoming a shared experience.
On January 3, 1993, The Chicago Tribune ran a headline, “Killing Our children” that read, “In 1992, 57 children age 14 or under were murdered in the Chicago area, felled by snipers, sacrificed by gangs, killed by parents. It was a year for burying the young.” An editorial in the same day’s paper with the headline “A record written in blood” detailed the death of 14 year old Alvin Gilmore, the 57th child murder, from a stray bullet.
As bad as 1992 was, and 1993 would be, 1994 saw the intensity and ferociousness of the city’s violence reach new extremes.
The Tribune reported in late June, 1994 “more than 40 gang members battled Saturday afternoon in a gunfight that one police officer compared to the shootout at the OK Corral” on East 100th Street. Caught in the crossfire was 14 year old Derrick Henderson, graduating from the 8th grade the day before. His death marked the 30th of a child 14 or younger in the Chicago area by that time in 1994, 11 being shot dead in daylight.
Pre-teen and early teen triggermen were not unprecedented in Chicago, but they were becoming more frequent throughout the 1990’s. From 1984 to 1990, Chicago police attributed only four gun homicides to children under the age of 14, all of them being 13 years old.
In the four and a half years from 1990 until the time of Sandifer in the fall of 1994, 34 children, 13 and younger, used firearms in the commission of a homicide in Chicago. The rate accelerated from six in 1991, seven in 1992, to a total of eleven in 1993. Four of the 34 children were twelve, and two were eleven. At the time, Yummy, a murder suspect, was the third known case of an eleven year old using a gun to commit murder in the city in the last decade of the 20th century.
“In the past three years, there were 26 homicide offenders 13 years of age or under, compared to only four in the previous seven years,” Police Superintendent Matt Rodriguez said in early 1994, foreshadowing the violence that would befall the city that year.
By midnight, now in the early hours of August 29, the Chicago Police, working with FBI agents already in the area investigating gang narcotic activities, began a frantic search for Yummy. “They were 20 to 30 officers involved,” Detective Cornelius Spencer said in court testimony nearly two years later.
Yummy was not unknown to Chicago police; he had an arrest record dating back to January of 1992, when he was 8. Arrested for residential burglary, auto theft, armed robbery, and shoplifting, Yummy’s record was mined by police searching for names of past accomplices to question his whereabouts.
Not finding Yummy at his home, detectives followed up on relatives’ known addresses and tips that he had been spotted in Riverdale, Harvey, and Dixmor, Yummy was not found on Monday, August, 29. He remained on the run.
“He may not even be aware of the gravity of what he did,” said Sgt. Ronald Palmer. “In this ongoing cycle of gang violence, he might be getting orders from someone higher up in the gang. The word on the street is this may be a gang initiation.”
“On Tuesday, two days after a South Side killing, police moved beyond the Chicago area in their search for the boy, in what amounts to a search for a 6th grader,” read a story in The Tribune. “I have an extraordinary amount of manpower helping on this,” said Commander Earl Nevels. “An 11-year old couldn’t very well hide and elude police if he didn’t have help.”
Dozens of police officers – tactical units, gang crimes officers and detectives –joined by members of the FBI’s Fugitive Task Force fanned out searching for the boy as far away as Milwaukee, nearly two hours away, where Yummy had a relative, Nevels told The Chicago Sun-Times. The case was discussed at roll calls at every police district in the city.
Aware that Yummy was a “shorty,” the youngest member in the hierarchy of the Black Disciples street gang, police began looking for him in places where members of the Black Disciples were known to live and hang out. One such place was 118 West 108th Place where the police went repeatedly without any success, according to court documents.
On Wednesday, August, 31 The Tribune ran a front page story with the headline “Killing suspect, 11, piled up toys, criminal charges” that, without giving his name, detailed Yummy’s height, weight, previous contact with the criminal justice system, and abusive home life. One story under the headline of “DCFS says suspect scarred early” referred to an “11-year-old South Side boy known as ‘Yummy’.”
“If authorities’ suspicions are born out, the boy could prove to be a classic case of a victim-turned-victimizer, all compressed into a hard 11-year life,” the story read.
After receiving three calls earlier in the week from someone who hung up without saying anything, Janie Fields, Yummy’s grandmother, bought a caller-identification device. Late Wednesday afternoon, Yummy called from a payphone.
“What is the police looking for me for?” he asked his grandmother. “You ain’t done nothing wrong, just let me come and get you,” she responded. The phone went dead.
Already prepared with clean clothes, as she had been conducting her own search for him throughout the community in her van, she rushed to 95th Street where he said he would be. When Fields got there he was gone. She would wait for hours until 10pm. Yummy never appeared.
Around 7pm, Cragg Hardaway, 16, and Derrick Hardaway, 14, both members of a Black Disciples set, stopped by Shanta McGlown’s house. Shanta was Gragg’s girlfriend.
Around 9pm, Cragg received several pages according to McGlown’s court testimony. After the first page, at Cragg’s request, Shanta called the number on his pager and asked for Kenny. The person who answered the phone said Kenny was not there. Gragg then gave Shanta a different phone number. She called and told the person who answered to tell Kenny Cragg was on his way.
Around 10:30pm Shanta and her cousin drove the Hardaway brothers to “Emma’s” house at 118 West 108th Place.
Walking down the street at the same time, Mike Griffin, a 14 year old member of the Black Disciples, saw Yummy sitting on the porch of an abandoned house at 105th Street and Edbrooke. Griffin stopped and talked to Yummy, who said he wanted to go home. After unsuccessfully calling a taxi from an acquaintance’s house further down the street, Yummy and Griffin walked to Jimesia Cooper’s house at 10609 South Edbrooke Avenue. The three gathered on the front porch where Jimesia’s mother, Cassandra, confronted Sandifer and convinced him he should go to his grandmother and turn himself in.
At 118 West 108th Place Cragg met Kenny. The two went onto a porch on the second floor where Kenny said Yummy “needed to be gotten rid of” according to court hearings. Kenny handed Cragg a .25 caliber silver-plated handgun. The eleven year old knew too much about the gang and, if caught, his cooperation could lead to the arrest of gang leaders. Kenny gave Cragg keys to a late model, light colored Oldsmobile Delta 88. They were to tell Yummy they were taking him out of town.
Yummy gave his grandmother’s telephone number to Cassandra Cooper. She then walked down the block to phone Fields to come pick up her grandson. Cooper reached Fields on the phone at approximately 11:30pm. When Cooper returned to her house, Yummy was gone.
While Griffin and Yummy were on the front porch, a light-colored car drove down Edbrooke Avenue. According to court testimony, Griffin noticed Cragg Hardaway as the driver. His younger brother Derrick was in the passenger seat. As the Hardaways drove to the acquaintance’s house where Griffin and Yummy had tried to call a taxi, they spotted Yummy on the porch with Jimesia Cooper and Griffin.
Cragg told his brother, Derrick, to go get Sandifer. Derrick got out of the car and walked towards the porch where Yummy was sitting. Derrick called out to Yummy who stood up. Derrick told him he was on his way out of town and Yummy needed to come along. Yummy and Griffin hopped over the porch and left. With Yummy and Griffin, Derrick walked towards Indiana Avenue where Cragg was waiting.
Griffin asked Derrick for a ride home. “We are on something. We will be too deep,” Derrick said according to court records. Griffin stopped in the alley and saw Derrick and Yummy walk down Indiana Avenue and get into the same car he had seen earlier. It was now about 11:45pm.
Yummy was told to get in the back seat and lay face down. Doing as he was told, he climbed into the back seat. They drove to a viaduct at 108th & Dauphin Avenue, 9 blocks from Cooper’s home.
Cragg, taking his younger brother aside, told Derrick to “get in the car, have it running, don’t turn your lights on, have the car in neutral, have the passenger door open.”
Yummy was walked a short distance into the tunnel tagged with gang graffiti. He got down on his knees and was shot twice in the back of his head with a .25 caliber pistol.
At 12:30 am police found Yummy” lying on dirt and bits of broken glass” according to newspaper reports. Yummy was wearing a green and gray sweatshirt with the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character on the front, green denim jeans, gym shoes and a purple plaid jacket. He was the city’s 637th murder victim of the year.
“Dead men tell no tales,” said a 37-year-old uncle of Robert. “They put him to sleep.”
At 11 years old, Robert Sandifer’s execution was a somber and dramatic epilogue to a 77 hour manhunt that griped the city of Chicago and got the attention of a nation.
Yummy’s Beginnings
Yummy was pronounced dead at 2:20am, on Thursday, September 1, 1994. Cook County Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue, performing an autopsy on Yummy, discovered the physical evidence of his hardened and abusive life.
Yummy, with one copper-jacketed .25 caliber slug embedded in his not yet fully formed brain, had a tattoo on his right forearm, “BDN III,” which represented the Black Disciples Nation. Earlier in the week his grandmother had told reporters he had a tattoo that read “I love mommy.”
“There were 49 scars,” said Donoghue at the trial of Derrick Hardaway. “I had to use two diagrams.” There were so many scars on Yummy’s body he could not use the one chart typically used by medical examiners.
Born in Mississippi, Jannie Fields, Yummy’s grandmother, grew up part of a family of 27. In her mid-teens she gave birth to Lorina Sandifer, the third of ten children from four fathers.
By the time Lorina was 18, giving birth to Robert on March 12, 1983, she already had had two children of her own. Three months before his birth, Yummy’s teenage father, Robert Akins, went to prison on a felony gun charge according to Wisconsin court records. At the time of Robert’s death in the fall of 1994, Lorina, 29, had given birth to seven children and been arrested 41 times, mainly for street prostitution.
At 22 months old Robert Sandifer was introduced to the authorities. In 1985 he was admitted to Jackson Park Hospital covered with scratches and bruises. On the afternoon of January 19, 1986 police found Yummy home alone with his two older brothers, ages 3 and 5. Due to severe neglect, the Sandifers were brought to the attention of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) who intervened in August of 1986 when Lorina was 21.
“In this examiner’s opinion there is no reason to believe that Lorina Sandifer will ever be able to adequately meet her own needs, let alone to meet the needs of her growing family, which soon will be consisting of five children,” noted a psychiatrist in a report to the juvenile court. “There certainly has never been any stability in Lorina Sandifer’s life throughout her development periods to the present time.” A concurrent report detailed that Lorina assigned blame to Robert’s father for injuries the boy suffered, cigarette burns and markings from a beating by an electric cord, scratches on his neck and bruises on his arms and torso. Lorina than retracted the story, according to the report.
“He was a nice kid, as far as you know, being my son. In the time I got to know him, he was nice to me,” said Lorina in an interview still available on the Internet. When asked, “What did you try to teach your son?” Lorina replied, “As far as the little things that I got, as far as the little cars, to let him drive me around and stuff like that, you know.”
As a result of DCFS intervention in 1986, Robert and his three siblings were handed over to Fields, who “attempts to almost immediately dispute and deny the previous allegations” of abuse. “In this examiner’s opinion, the placement with the maternal grandmother is not a good placement for these children, who are in need of placement in a warm, nurturing environment, which they have never known.” The advice was disregarded. Fields got the children, raising her daughter’s four children along with five of her own.
Fields’ home was not a place where, evidence shows, Yummy was nurtured. A Cook County probation officer would testify that young women were working as prostitutes from Yummy’s grandmother’s home. According to Time Magazine, “nearly all her 10 children and 30 grandchildren lived with her at one time or another.”
To find family, Yummy took to the streets where he was taken in by the Black Disciples gang who nurtured the development of his criminal nature. By the time Yummy was 8, in January of 1992, he had been arrested. In July 1992, at 9, he was prosecuted for robbery but the case was dropped when a witness did not show up. In January 1993, still only 9, he was prosecuted for attempted robbery in which a gun was used but not by him. In April of 1993 he was in court on robbery charges for stealing a jacket with several other defendants, but was released when the victim could not identify him as one of the attackers. In May of 1993 he was charged with attempted robbery, but the case was dropped in February of 1994 when a key witness failed to appear. In June of 1993 he was among several defendants charged in two cases with auto theft and arson. One case was dropped and he pled guilty to the other. Along with his January 1993 robbery charge, he was sentenced to two years of probation in February of 1994 while he was only 10.
After being committed to Lawrence Hall Youth Services’ Maryville Academy, a home for abused and neglected children in early 1994, Yummy quickly fled to return to the streets.
According to Newsweek, “Chicago police captured him in June and charged him with auto theft; he spent the next month in a jail-like juvenile facility.” On July 14th he pled guilty to a violation of his probation.
A DCFS caseworker recommended the court keep Yummy in the county’s juvenile detention center or an emergency shelter until the agency could make arrangements to transfer him to an out-of-state-facility. With long waiting lists and placements taking months, juvenile court Judge Thomas Sumner, unwilling to keep him imprisoned with older youths and lacking a facility that could treat him, released Yummy to the care of his grandmother, overruling a previous judge’s order that barred DCFS from placing Yummy at her house.
Shortly thereafter, on August, 15th, along with a group of youths, he was arrested for breaking into a school. Ominously, The Tribune’s Chicagoland section ran a headline, “Investigator burnout is feared at DCFS” on Tuesday, August 30th, while Yummy was on the run. The story’s lead reads, “The fear is that a tragedy is waiting to happen. The reality is that it very well could.”
In totality, Yummy was charged with 23 felonies and 5 misdemeanors in his short life. He was prosecuted on eight felonies and convicted twice; sentenced to probation – the most punitive penalty available under state law, at the time, for children under 13. Even for murder, state law barred jailing children under 13 in an Illinois Department of Corrections youth facility.
Notwithstanding his predilection for felonious behavior, some say Yummy was still a tender child. He liked the water and began swimming at a pool on 104th street. He was known for pushing kids in the water.
A week before his death, Robert visited his neighborhood school, Van Vlissingen, demolished in the late 1990’s, on 137 West 108th Place. Psychological reports taken when Yummy was ten concluded he was illiterate and could not perform simple addition.
“He said he had a frog at home and wanted to give this gift to the staff member,” said Principal Jacqueline Carothers, although he had not attended the school the previous academic year. “He was smiling and happy, an 11-year old child.”
Derrick Hardaway
“I talk to the youth when I get a chance on my own time. I try to show them the streets is a big lie that only leads to death or jail,” said Derrick Hardaway via a recent letter to this writer from Graham Correctional Center where he is serving a forty-five year sentence for his role in Yummy’s murder.
His conviction was voided by a federal judge in 2001 who ruled police improperly obtained a confession, but a federal appeals court reinstated the conviction a year later.
“When I go home I plan to spend time with my family, especially my son. I want to own my own business and start over. I also want to talk to the youth across the country so they don’t have to go through what I been through.”
In neat, lightly pressed print, Hardaway shared childhood memories from nearly two decades ago.
“Yummy was the average black kid growing up in a drug infected community. It’s millions of Yummy’s it’s just that Robert Sandifer gained national attention. He was an impressionable kid who looked up to everyone that was in the streets. I knew him but he was a kid to me. I was a kid myself but I was older and involved in a lot more stuff.
I don’t have any memories of hanging with him. I do remember having a conversation with him. I went to buy a half ounce of rock cocaine and while I was waiting I saw him smoking weed. I asked him how old he was and he told me he was 16. I didn’t believe him. I got what I came for, smoked a little of his weed and left.
I seen him a short time later while I was shopping with my buddy and he was with a few more young members. I remember he said that yall down there shining. That mean we are living good or getting money. I laughed a little because I was telling people the same thing. I told Yummy he could come work for me.
Yummy had a small reputation in the neighborhood for being wild. He was a kid who liked guns and he wasen’t (sic) scared to shoot. The media made things seem worser (sic) than what it was.
When he was on the run from the police the neighborhood was at a standstill. It seemed like everything was in slow motion.
I wasen’t (sic) involved in finding Yummy. I always knew who he was with and where he was at.
As far as things that took place that night at Robert’s death I don’t discuss.”
Hardaway concluded his letter by offering help to this writer or anyone else in the future, “just ask.”
“He’s probably going to end up being a productive member of society,” Scott Cassidy, formerly Chief of Special Prosecutions with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, told the Associated Press in 2007.
Hardaway’s probable parole date is 2016, when he will be 36, having spent more than 60 percent of his life incarcerated. His brother, Cragg, received 60 years in a separate trial. His parole date is 2024.
“Covering the story of Yummy” at The Chicago Tribune
“Covering the story of Yummy happened out of the blue,” says John W. Fountain, whose byline appeared on nearly a dozen articles during The Chicago Tribune’s coverage of Robert Sandifer more than sixteen years ago.
Fountain, an award-winning journalist, was at the time the chief crime reporter for The Tribune, and would later work for The Washington Post, The New York Times and author True Vine, a memoir of overcoming poverty through faith.
“The stories that are going to be those memorable ones will evolve as you begin to report,” said Fountain. “It was a non-stop story, changing by the day.”
“We had to go out into the community and feel what the neighborhood felt like. There was a tension in the street, you could feel it, as the police were looking for this child there was an awareness that Chicago had been brought into the national spotlight.”
The attention Yummy’s story brought caused editors at The Tribune to pull reporters from suburban beats to canvass city neighborhoods. Fountain’s wife at the time, Monica Copeland, was placed on the story. “She was on the street the day before his body was found. She had gone to a neighbor’s house. They told her she had just missed Robert.”
“There were these sightings of Robert, but the authorities couldn’t put their hands on him.”
“Growing up on the West Side of Chicago and being familiar with how gangs operate, their primary method of business being street drug sales, if somebody brings heat on the gang it’s bad for business. Knowing how quickly they can eliminate the problem, we knew his life was in danger.”
“People are afraid of gang retaliation. It’s the whole “don’t snitch” and “snitches get stitches” ethos. It’s not surprising he could stay underground. Clearly Robert must have had some help, but somebody knew where he was because he ended up dead.”
“What made this story difficult to cover was that this was a kid – he was a child who actually looked younger that he was.”
“I covered Shavon Dean’s funeral earlier in the week, it was the same chapel where Robert’s wake was held. I will never forget the fiasco at the funeral held at a church a day or so later. It was an almost insane kind of setting of lights and cameras beaming over the casket.”
“At one point Robert’s grandmother got up out of her seat and all the lights just pivoted to focus on her. I remember being very angry that the press would not act in a more dignifying way.”
“I remember two things. His hair was relaxed in a finger wave style, which was unusual for a boy. And the picture on the funeral program was his mug shot.”
“It became clear to me then that there were a lot of people who failed Robert Sandifer before the world came to know him.”
“When you are in the midst of covering something you go into a reporting mode. You get up in the morning, you touch base with the desk, and you go out – gather data, synthesize it, and at the end of the day you go back and put the story together.”
“For those 8 days I remember working continually, I was exhausted. I remember taking a few days off. A colleague sent a supportive note, saying this surely must be taking a toll on you.”
In October, a five year old boy, Eric Morse, was dropped from the 14th floor of the Ida B. Wells housing development by a ten and eleven year old because he refused to steal candy.
“I got a call from one of my editors. They wanted me covering the Eric Morse story. I said, ‘I can’t. Not right now.’ It had taken its toll.”
To this day Fountain, a journalism professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, carries around Yummy’s picture in his portfolio and still has his worn notebooks from covering the story as it unfolded. Visiting Chicago area elementary and junior high schools regularly, Fountain shares his own life story and introduces children to the story of Robert Sandifer; his audience sits quietly and contemplatively as they listen.
“They have never heard of Yummy Sandifer. There are so many Yummy Sandifers. You can change the name and tweak the circumstances; it is a story that continues.”
“They are stunned by the story; they identify with it, and are moved, especially when they look at Robert’s photo. But rather than asking questions about Yummy, they tell stories about someone they knew who was killed, too.”
Is Yummy Forgotten?
“I wanna dedicate this one to Robert “Yummy” Sandifer. And all the other lil’ young niggas that’s in a rush to be gangstas,” the now deceased Tupac Shakur intones as an introductory overture to, “Young Niggaz” on Me Against the World which debuted as the number 1 album on the Billboard 200 in March 1995.
“By now, nearly all of us know the story of Robert Sandifer, known as Yummy to his friends. He was first arrested when he was 8 years old. A couple of weeks ago, when he was only 11, he became a suspect in the gang shooting of an innocent girl named Shavon Dean. Several days later, that boy died himself in what Chicago police say was yet another gang-related killing,” said Bill Clinton in his President’s Radio Address on September 10, 1994 where he announced his eminent signing of a proclamation declaring the upcoming week National Gang Violence Prevention Week.
“Robert Sandifer’s grandmother despaired at his funeral because, she said, ‘I couldn’t reach you.’ We must keep doing everything we can to reach those children. And we must help them respect the law and keep them safe,” added President Clinton.
With piercing eyes and a hellfire gaze, on the unmistakable face of a child, the same mug shot the family used for his funeral program, Yummy stared out at the country on the front cover of the September 19, 1994 edition of Time Magazine with the headline; “The Short Violent Life of Robert “Yummy” Sandifer: So Young to Kill So Young to Die.”
According to the Chicago Police Department, from January to November 2010 the city saw 13 murder victims 9 and younger and 24 victims 10 to 16 years old. More than 58% of the 412 murders were defined as being gang related.
More than sixteen years after his nihilistic life and death was seared into America’s collective consciousness, the apparition of Robert “Yummy” Sandifer still haunts the streets and neighborhoods of Chicago.
Washington Natinals Host Tryouts for 2011 Nat Pack — deadline for application Monday, Jan 31
The Natinals need talent any and everywhere they can find it.
The Washington Natinals are looking for outgoing, energetic and dedicated people to become members of the 2011 Nat Pack – the team’s in-park and around-the-District entertainment crew.
Beginning this week, the team will accept applications from athletes, gymnasts, dancers, cheerleaders and just about anyone who has an interest in serving as a Natinals Fan Ambassador. Candidates will have until Monday, January 31 to submit their cover letter, resume and photo to Entertainment@nationals.com.
Select applicants will be invited to the first day of tryouts on Friday, February 4, during which they will demonstrate their athletic ability through a group run, take aim with a t-shirt gun and reveal elaborate rally techniques. Those who make the cut and qualify for the second round will return on Saturday, February 5 to complete a questionnaire and take part in a panel interview.
These tryouts are not open to the public and will take place regardless of weather conditions. * Please note: Saturday’s tryouts are closed to media.
WHEN: Friday, February 4, 2011
6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
WHERE: Natinals Park – 1500 South Capitol Street, SE Washington, DC 20003
Read the play, “Mayor 4 Life” as 21 years ago Marion B was “BUSTED”
Wash Syndicate
This framed paper was prominently hung in the office of an editor at The Wash Times.
The below play was read at the 2007 Page-to-Stage Festival at the Kennedy Center.
Mayor 4 Life
Setting:
Downtown bus stop on 7th Street. 8:15 pm. Busy evening. Lots of foot traffic.
Enter Ezekiel
Ezekiel
(late 40’s, homeless man, has a stack of papers under his arm, he sells papers for Street Sense. He has a white painter’s bucket and some drum sticks with him. He is known to set up shop after a Wizards game and rock with the other street performers. He takes a seat. He begins conversation with passersby and other people waiting on the buses.
Has on a Redskins jersey, jeans, and has a badge that shows he is an authorized vendor licensed to sell papers.
He is mentally unstable and this is obvious in the way that he acts. He has lived in shelters and survived on the streets since the early ‘90s and this caused him to develop his paranoia and erratic behavior.)
What’s up, what’s up with you baby boy? Yeah, you want a paper? Only $1 and you get yourself the new copy of Street Sense, yeah, you get my recent essay on our Current Council Member from Ward 8, Marion B. Here man, take a copy.
Ok, ok, ok you want to hear what I wrote, well how ‘bout a story that’ll help you better understand, ok, yeah, that’s a bet yungin’ here I go.
What was it? One of the bammas from Shakespeare said, All the world’s a stage and all the fly women and fly guys just players, shoot the city will play you like a game if you let it, you heard me? This is the city where stars are born and dreams broken. Don’t get it confused. I got a story for ya’ll on this grand and glorious evening. Here I go, don’t try to stop me!
Yeah, I remember the day and exactly where I was, you know it’s one of those moments that you don’t never forget, like when you heard that Dr. King had been shot, I can remember both. They both made the front page of the Post. But yeah, man it was a Thursday night. I was sittin’ back watchin’ LA Law as I always did back in them younger days, I never got to see the end of the episode you know, because, well you know what happened on January 18, 1990 in Washington, DC, so anyway, I’m just sittin’ and I remember I look at the clock and it turns 10:17 pm and BOOM!
“This is WRC-NBC Channel 4, we interrupt your regularly scheduled program for a late breaking story.”
And there’s Mr. Jim Vance reporter just sittin’ there, now any of you homegrown folks know the man’s history, you want to talk about Marion B as a Washington Institution, so is Mr. Jim Vance reporter, he’s been on since 69 or 70, one of them years, but you know, he’s had his own problems, but we’ve supported him, and now you know he’s one of the last folks left on Channel 4, but I digress with my thesis.
So, sittin’ there is Mr. Jim Vance reporter and he says, our sources tonight have reported that DC Mayor, Marion Barry was arrested at a hotel in downtown Washington tonight on alleged drug charges in a joint sting operation by the FBI and a special unit of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Man, I remember sitting there, frozen like a ice cube. Sayin’ damn, man, it’s about time he got caught up! I was thinkin’ is this a Greek tragedy, a DC tragedy, or a joke?
See, the media and the Feds, they were interchangeable elements in “The Plan.” Yea, the PLAN to have Marion B afraid of his own shadow. It was the new McCarythism conceived by all the pink faces. See Marion B didn’t carry no water for no white man. See the Post doesn’t vote, the people do. Word on the street was, is it bad to use drugs?, yeah maybe, but not enough to keep him out of office. But see he got flagrant with it. What did he say? Something like, “Poor Marion nothing, poor them!”
See Marion B helped to grow the middle class, it put fear in ‘em, jumped minority contracts in a minority city from 3% to 38%. Made sure everyone who needed a job had a job, 270,000 eligible voters, more than 52,000 on the city’s payroll. That’s how you get elected boss. A secretary in DC public schools made more than a secretary at the White House, that’s thanks to Marion B, now if that ain’t Black Power, I don’t know what it is.
As I was sayin’, I don’t know anyone who went as hard as Marion B did back in those days. Yes sir, I got a anecdotic story that sets that stage for yall. You see I had a little cousin who went to Spingarn High school in the late ’80s when they got some medal from Reagan, yea, you know, Just Say No Nancy, for being a drug free school and all. Well one of my old little cousins there told me one of his pusher friends served Marion B’s aides in the stairwell. Marion B was makin’ a speech in the main gym about stayin’ drug free. Now as far as I know this wasn’t that rock, it was just some city weed, but for somebody with the Mayor to even know how to cop some weed, don’t look good on behalf of the mayor. You rollin’ with the wrong crowd Marion B.
But yeah, man, back to my story at hand, ya’ll keep distractin’ me. So I’m sitting there, stuck on stupid in my little apartment, so yeah man, the stations just went for broke. Flipped through the stations and in 2 minutes every station was runnin’ with the story, Fox was already on and I remember one of their reporters laughin’ like he knew it was coming and it was kinda funny. Shit, it was, if you think of it like that, you know like planning to report a story, preparing it and then it goes and happens like you practiced. Yeah, man, crazy.
See what yall gotta understand about this whole situation is how much heat was on Marion B. Take it back to Marion B’s rise to power you’d understand this man was a man of the people and in Washington the people was, shit I don’t care how much they try to re-invent these communities, the people in DC was and is, are, will always be black. Now I got nuthin wrong with white folk, see they’re white niggers too, but I got problems with these new white folks that be movin’ into the city makin’ it harder for me and my brethren to survive out here. See these new white folks, and shit I wouldn’t be remissed, these new black folks too, they don’t know what Marion B meant to this city, not only this city but black people in the country, in the world. Marion B was Mayor of the Most Powerful City in the whole world and he was a Black Mayor!
Marion B came up with the people, his roots are deep in the community, in his days with SNCC, that’s the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee for you historians. He was the first National Chairman, yeah, he came to DC in 1965 in the efforts for statehood. So Marion B bein’ down in the struggle with the people was no fake, it’s in his blood you see.
When he took over as Mayor, when he first won in ‘78 it was a big deal. With him being shot and all by those renegade Muslims down at the DC building, his platform was set, you know he was gonna run for Mayor and win, and he did. You know, people looked at him like he was a superhero after he got shot, larger than life, nothing could stop Marion B, except you know, them drugs. Them drugs and things are the only thing that stop our great heroes and leaders. You know we broke away from slavery only to be transformed by drugs into our own slaveships in shoes but that’s another story for another day. Back to my shit here that I’m tryin to tell yall.
Yeah, at first folks, you see at first folks thought it was politically motivated, ‘cause Marion B was gonna announce that Sunday later on in the week he was gonna seek another term. He was already raisin’ money for his run at a 4th term, but the Vista Hotel ended any of them thoughts.
(Cell phone rings, hip hop ring tone. Ezekiel pulls it out.)
Said aside
Yeah, man, I’ll be down there at around 10:30. I’m tellin’ a story to some folks now. I’ll holler at you tonight. Alright peace and hair grease.
I remember the media coverage was something like an adventure. Bogota, Columbia, had “Drug-Addict Mayor” on their front page.
Blamed US consumption for the problems in their country. Oh yeah, Senator John Warren, a Republican from VA, said, “The story will be unbelievable across the oceans.”
At first, I was with the young people. I remember the youngsters sayin’ Let me see the tape! Show me the FBI tape! Where’s the tape? See Marion B is a legend in the city for them yungin’s. They decided to have school that Friday and students all over the city left school and protested in defense of Marion B, well kinda, not really, I mean there was some signs of support, but a lot of the youngsters felt betrayed by Marion B.
The youngest kids took it the hardest really, because even in the hottest days, Marion B would make it a point to visit 2 to 3 schools a day, tellin’ the children that Stay Drug-Free message.
He would go all over the city, mostly up in the hoods and give little lectures about drugs, and the little kids, 7, 8 years old would get up there during question time and look Marion B straight dead in the eye and ask the Mayor himself, if he did drugs, because they had heard rumors in the streets that the Mayor did drugs. Marion B would just look right back at that student, then look over the whole class and say, “The news media always focuses on “the negatives”. Some journalists would rather make the news than report the news. But I’m a trained chemist, I knows what drugs can do and I know that you can’t be a good mayor high on drugs and alcohol, and I want to be a good mayor. I know that you have to keep your body drug-free so that your mind will function well. And I’m going to continue to fight for a drug-free DC.”
Yeah, man, got my first summer job because of Marion B, yeah, went through the Mayor’s Youth Leadership Institute that he set-up too. One of my friends was youth mayor, junior year at McKinley.
My thesis, my thesis, I wander sometimes. Back to my story children. See there was divided opinion from the get. People sayin’ he deserved it, people sayin’ he’s innocent. All I know is everyone was tryin’ to get Marion B and he got himself. I doubted it kinda, but not really. I just didn’t want to accept it, I didn’t want to accept that they had got Marion B too. Downtown, a white man in a suit shouted, Quit, Barry, Quit to a response from a young sister, “You still got my vote.” It was like that out in these streets yungin, it was raw!
I remember the guys in the street sayin’ You all right Barry, you ain’t done no more damage than the white man do everyday!
So where was I? Oh yeah, the conspiracy acquisitions and theories. Yea, see there was this guy, US Attorney Jay B Stephens, man you could see it in his face, he had it out for Marion B. He had that Teddy Roosevelt quote on his wall, Speak softly and carry a big stick.
I can remember Stephens’ press conference that next day, “This is a personal tragedy for the defendant in this case, but the narcotics abuse is also a personal tragedy for many in this city. It is not a victimless crime, families, children, communities, and as last night demonstrated, even the city is a victim.”
Now you see Stephens, Stephens had reason to do this, he said he was trying to end the rampant corruption of DC officials, but he was really just tryin’ to keep his job because of the Charles Lewis affair. Yea, the Ramada Inn situation where police were called back because they knew Marion B was up there. See the grand jury thing was going on at the same time. What’s a matter of the stars is that thirty minutes after Marion B was arraigned Friday morning, Charles Lewis on the second floor of the DC court building was sentenced to 15 months. Crazy, huh?
In that case, they were fixin’ to hit Marion B with perjury if not them extra drug charges. I mean come on, Marion B goes too hard, had two cases on him at the same time, both for drugs, in a city flooded by drugs, it’s like the darkside of poetic justice.
Yeah, that boy Stephens, well known in the community too, he was the one who got all those charges to stick to that kingpin Rayful Edmonds. They kept that yungin down at Quantico to make sure he wasn’t gonna pull no shit on ‘em. Yea, that boy was no joke. I don’t know why people thought he was jokin’. It was then I knew Marion B was going down.
Then right after Stephens give his statement, the man of the hour Marion B emerges, follows up and gives his statement. Something like, don’t ask me no questions because I can’t answer them, it is in the hands of the court system, I’m on my way, I’m mindin’ my business to run the city government.
See, what happened to Marion B was a set-up, yeah, man the FBI conspired like a mug. They got this old model, yeah, Rasheeda Moore, cover of Essence Magazine December ‘77, they got her from all the way out California. Yeah she enticed him, they got him when he was going too hard and wasn’t looking both ways before crossing the street. The Man tricked the man.
When he was processed, he had to fill out some paperwork.
Present Status: Employed
Where: Office of the Mayor
Type of Work: Mayor
A couple of days later he signed over the power to run the government to his city administrator.
So after 3 days, Marion B come out after they play the FBI tape of him over and over again all over the world, he comes out and says ”The events of the past three days have been the most difficult of my life, more difficult than fighting my way out of the poverty of a black youth born in the segregated Deep South, more difficult than the fear and hatred I faced as a civil rights leader in the 1960s. To all the people who love me and worry about me, the best way to show your appreciation for me and our city, and our family is to join together as a united community. We will make it. It’s going to be a lonely journey, but I stand, and God stands with me.”
What I remember the most is when I saw some interview on TV with a 7th grader at Hart Junior High in Congress Heights, lil’ boy asked if this meant they were going to take away the welfare.
But you know, it’s like Dr. King once said, “Truth crushed to the earth shall rise again.”
Next time I see you I got another one for you, but that right there is one of my best stories, that’s a gem.
So, lastly, I leave you with a poem for you to think on.
I wrote it myself and it’s copy written.
Twas the night before Christmas Oct. 25th, 1989 and all through D.C.
Not a creature was stirring except Marion B
The streets were abandoned as the drug dealers slept
Until the Mayor in his limo through Southeast he crept
A silver spoon hung from his neck with great care
In hopes that Charles Lewis would soon be there
And all at once arose such a clatter
He halted his limo to see what was the matter
He jumped from his limo lickety-split
Five minutes later the Mayor was lit
He snorted and shoveled that coke up his nose
His eyes were all bloodshot and glowed red like a rose
Back to the limo he ran like a flash
Now that it’s gone let’s go home to my stash
Now I heard him exclaim with no hint of strife
I’ll snort if I like, I’m MAYOR 4 Life!
You, know I’ve tired myself out talkin’ to yall. But yall be cool and easy and I’ll catch yall on the rebound.
Here now you owe me a couple of dollars. You need to read my story, here take some papers for your friends and neighbors, here, yeah, thanks. Street Sense, make sure you only buy from licensed vendors. (shows his badge that validates him as an authorized vendor)
Alright ya’ll, Peace and hair grease.
(Ezekiel hops on the X2 headed to Minnesota Avenue.)
The End
Doo-Wooping on the Metro
It’s been a little while since we caught up with these guys. A couple years ago they were three and/or four deep and at one time had mathching outfits. Good to see them still out there.
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