Black Silent Majority by Michael Javen Fortner

Author:Michael Javen Fortner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780674743991
Publisher: Harvard University Press

The 1966 passage of involuntary commitment and the creation of the Narcotics Addiction Control Committee did little to affect the state’s drug problem. Implementation was harder than enactment. A year after passage, Lawrence W. Pierce, the African American chairman of the New York State Narcotics Addiction Control Commission, appeared on WCS-TV’s Newsmakers and offered a status report on the state’s new drug policy. The chairman tried to put a positive spin on it, but the news was not good. The state slashed the appropriation for the program; there were no full-time doctors and no adequate hospitals. Pierce also acknowledged that the state was ready to accept only 8,400 addicts—not even 10 percent of the state’s addict population. By July 1967 only 1,009 individuals were under the care of the Commission. Delays in legal proceedings also limited the number certified as addicts. Making matters even worse, only 1,841 beds were available. There were incremental bureaucratic shifts to help administrators execute the policy. In 1968 the State Narcotics Commission established the Bureau of Professional Education to provide technical assistance to staff administering educational and rehabilitation programs. The Commission spent much of the early years on this type of bureaucratic and technical activity, but in their defense, implementing the policy required this drudgery. Identifying sites for rehabilitation and education programs was one thing, but officials also needed to evaluate public and private agencies and individuals for accreditation.7

The careful process of implementing a safe and comprehensive rehabilitation regime required more time than the people of Harlem were willing to give. Events continued to galvanize black communities. Walter died in December 1969, but his was just one of many tragic stories. Addiction among youths was on the rise. In 1940 no teenagers (age fifteen to nineteen) died because of drug abuse. That number climbed to 79 in 1967. Then, after dropping slightly in 1968, it rose to 248 in 1969. In early March 1970, a fifteen-year-old girl died of a drug overdose in the apartment of Edward Hamm, the thirty-six-year-old owner of Teen City, a popular teen hangout spot and suspected drug den at 162 West 116th Street. For six weeks, members of Harlem’s Canaan Baptist Church picketed Teen City. One Sunday the pastor, Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a former assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King and an aide to Governor Rockefeller on urban issues, stood on the trunk of a white Mustang parked in front of Teen City and, with the help of a bullhorn, shouted, “We are trying to save our children.” He urged his 300 parishioners and other onlookers, “Let us know the minute you find out the name of a pusher.” He added, “We’ve been living dangerously for a long time and we’re not afraid to name names.… I am convinced God is concerned about the narcotics peddlers on 116th Street.” Walker ended this sidewalk service by leading his church and onlookers in the Lord’s Prayer.8

These overdoses inspired many working- and middle-class African American women to act. Black women had always been deeply involved in grassroots antidrug movements in the city.

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