Money rock
Subtitle: a family's story of cocaine, race, and ambition in the new South
By: Pam Kelley
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 282
ISBN-13: 9781620973271
Subjects: Drug dealers; Criminals; Biography; Discrimination in criminal justice administration
Description: Meet Money Rock. He's young. He's charismatic. He's generous, often to a fault. He's one of Charlotte's most successful cocaine dealers, and that's what first prompted veteran reporter Pam Kelley to craft this riveting social history--by turns action-packed, uplifting, and tragic--of a striving African American family, swept up and transformed by the 1980s cocaine epidemic. The saga begins in 1963 when a budding civil rights activist named Carrie gives birth to Belton Lamont Platt, eventually known as Money Rock, in a newly integrated North Carolina hospital. Pam Kelley takes readers through a shootout that shocks the city, a botched FBI sting, and a trial with a judge known as "Maximum Bob." When the story concludes more than a half century later, Belton has redeemed himself. But three of his sons have met violent deaths and his oldest, fresh from prison, struggles to make a new life in a world where the odds are stacked against him. This gripping tale, populated with characters both big-hearted and flawed, shows how social forces and public policies--racism, segregation, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration--help shape individual destinies. Money Rock is a deeply American story, one that will leave readers reflecting on the near impossibility of making lasting change, in our lives and as a society, until we reckon with the sins of our past.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Money rock and big Lou; title: Showdown at Piedmont courts; title: Carrie Platt and the American dream; title: Candy kingpin; title: The dealer's mother; title: What went wrong with Piedmont courts?; title: State of North Carolina versus money rock; title: Convictions; title: Heavy in the weight; title: Going down; title: United States versus money rock; title: Coming of age in a world-class city; title: The Christian inmate; title: Sentencing a generation; title: Lost boys; title: The love of his life; title: Freedom; title: Trying to make a change; title: Susan and Mashandia; title: Homecoming; title: Life on the outside; title: Uprising; title: Southside homes; title: Epilogue; title: Where they are now; title: Acknowledgments; title: Notes.