Or, you know, sometimes people would come knocking on our door, thinking that - they were, you know, looking for Michelle and thinking that maybe she lived there. I remember, you know, my mom, you know, kind of whispering on the phone to her girlfriends, you know, dragging that house phone with the long cord room to room and, you know, complaining about this woman down the street that had people coming in and out of her house at all hours. But really, I also just wanted to get to know this kind of mythical figure, Michelle from down the street, better.

I wanted to write this book for lots of big, grand reasons that have to do with, you know, understanding our criminal justice system or that have to do with, you know, trying to, like, kind of set the record straight about the period. Everybody seemed to have a Michelle on their block, which kind of makes it surprising that a book like this hadn't been written already. And, you know, this story is so familiar to me and, really, anyone who grew up in a city ravaged by the crack cocaine epidemic. MOSLEY: So you start off this book writing about a woman named Michelle who was a crack addict who lived down the street from you growing up in Columbus, Ohio. Donovan, welcome to FRESH AIR.ĭONOVAN X RAMSEY: Hey, Tonya. He's been a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, NewsOne and TheGrio and has served as an editor at The Marshall Project and Complex. Ramsey is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, GQ, Ebony and Essence. His new book is called 'When Crack Was King: A People's History Of A Misunderstood Era.' Donovan X. Ramsey examines the destruction of the crack cocaine era through the experiences of addicts, drug dealers, families and community members. Who are these people besides addicts, Ramsey's young mind wondered, and what led them to crack cocaine in the first place? Decades later, Donovan X. And growing up in the '90s, they were seen as pariahs, both feared and ignored. Ramsey was about 4 or 5, he'd learned a word that could stop people in their tracks, a slur that could win an argument or put an end to a bully's wrath.

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