Made it Out: Surviving Being Born in the Federal Housing Projects

By Gerard Ellis Green

Only by God's grace, I am still alive and not in prison. I was born in a federal housing project, and my mother was fifteen years old when she became pregnant with me. Both of my parents served time in prison for trafficking heroin. My father had eight sons, and I am the only one who did not spend time in the penitentiary. Two of my brothers and four of my nephews have been murdered in the streets because of gang wars. After being raided by the police, I was luckily given probation. I would either get a job and work or spend the rest of my life in and out of prison. My life has been an incredible journey, and I am happy to share my story of survival with anyone who is interested.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889601555

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Made it Out

Surviving Being Born in the Federal Housing Projects

Gerard Ellis Green

Copyright © 2023 Gerard Ellis Green

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88960-144-9 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-155-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

About the Author

Iwas in the emergency room having ninety stitches put in my arm from a really bad cut that I received while helping my son Nick move into the house next door to mine. Immediately after the doctor was finished sewing my arm up, I received another one of those phone calls to tell me that a family member or friend had been killed. I refer to phone calls like this one as death calls. I call them death calls because whenever I get a call from a family member and it is not one of my brothers, then I immediately know that someone in my family or a friend has been killed. I talk to most of my brothers on a daily basis. The only time that I receive a phone call from other members of my family who are not one of my brothers is when someone has been shot and killed. This time, it was my nephew Steve who had been shot and killed. Steve is the fourth nephew of mine that has been killed, along with my brother Andre and thirty to forty of my friends that I had grown up with in the projects. No human being should have to go to as many funerals as I've had to attend.

I collect obituaries like some people collect baseball cards, and that's a damn shame. Over the years, I have collected at least fifty obituaries. How many people in America other than combat veterans can say that they've amassed fifty obituaries? Steven Curtis was better known as Shine in the Clarksdale housing projects in Louisville, Kentucky, where he had grown up. Steven was a cocaine dealer, but he was also known for robbing and shooting Crips gangsters all over the city. Steve was loved very much by his family and feared by many Crips gang members. I am not sure how many Crips gangsters Steve shot and robbed, but I know that there were at least ten. A few months before Steve was murdered, I turned on the local news and saw that Steve had been charged with shooting and killing a Crips gang member in the Newburg neighborhood of Louisville. My younger cousin, the rapper ESTG, whose real name is George Stone, had just filmed a music video with the rapper Yo Gotti in that same Newburg neighborhood. A fight broke out during the filming of the music video between the Bloods and the Crips gang members. Crips and Bloods, including Steve, started shooting and trying to kill each other. After the smoke from the shootings cleared, one Crips gangster was shot and killed, and the police charged Steve with his murder. Steve was arrested for murder, but our family and his favorite cousin, the world-famous rapper ESTG, got Steve out on bail. Steve and George Stone were raised in Clarksdale housing projects together. ESTG's mother was my father Robert James's youngest sister, and her name was Sheila.

Sheila was one of the nicest people you could ever meet. My aunt Sheila was not only a nice person but also amazingly beautiful, like most of the women on my dad's side of the family. My aunt Sheila was a carbon copy of my grandmother Lilly Mae. Sheila was short with long, black, beautiful Indian hair just like her mother. My aunt was so beautiful that guys were known to fight over her in the past. She was beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside. All of my dad's sisters are so nice and kind, but to me, my aunt Sheila was the kindest of them all. My aunt Sheila died before she turned fifty from ovarian cancer. Why did God give my aunt—one of the sweetest people that I've ever met—a death sentence? When I went to see my aunt Sheila in the hospital, we talked about everything except her cancer diagnosis. I visited my aunt Sheila in the hospital several times while she was battling cancer. I am not sure whether me writing this is appropriate or not, but sometimes I have to quit writing and take a break from writing because I can't stop crying. Sheila's death still crushes me to this day.

Most gangster movies involve lots of people getting killed, drug dealing, and everything else illegal, but I can assure you that when gangsters are alone, we cry. When you hear of gangsters killing each other on the news, the only thing that comes to mind is cold-blooded criminals killing each other with no remorse. After all, can you imagine Al Capone or Pablo Escobar crying? I can assure you they had friends and family members killed too, and you can bet they shed tears just like the rest of us. Gangsters, believe it or not, are people too. Gangsters have to cry alone because crying is not permitted in our culture. Crying is a sign of weakness if you have grown up in a housing project.

My aunt Sheila was a quiet and classy lady, who handled her cancer diagnosis like a soldier. Sheila fought cancer for a very long time but eventually lost the battle and died with dignity. She never complained or felt sorry for herself while she was sick with cancer. My aunt Sheila managed to always smile and stay positive about her medical situation until her death. I still can't believe that she is gone now, and I can never talk to her again. Some people die before they are supposed to die, and my aunt Sheila was one of those people. She was too nice of a person to die at such an early age. Sheila's only son, George Stone, was an all-state running back at St. Xavier high school in Louisville.

As a matter of fact, Tom Cruise, the famous Hollywood actor, also went to St. Xavier High School when he lived in Louisville. George was an incredible athlete, and he was a standout running back at St. Xavier High School. As a matter of fact, George was so good that he went on to play college football. Ever since George Stone played pee-wee football, his mother Sheila was always his biggest fan. She went to every one of her son's football games since George was a little boy because she was a loving and supportive mother. George Stone, also known as the rapper ESTG, adored his mother as well, and he wears a one-hundred-thousand-dollar diamond chain with a pendant dangling from it to honor her. The pendant has a picture of his beloved mother in the center of it, which he shows off in every one of his music videos. It is apparent that George loved his mother, my aunts Sheila, as much as she loved her only son. My aunt Sheila would be so proud of her son, George Stone, who has made millions of dollars as a rap artist.

After my aunt Sheila died, her son George Stone became really close to my younger cousins Rico and Eric Mosley. Eric and Rico were my brothers Andre and Shawn Mosley's younger cousins. After all, we are all historically joined by our identical genetics. The Mosleys were a very close-knit family that did everything together. Since the Mosleys were so close as a family, Eric and Rico Mosley were practically raised by my brother Shawn. My brother Shawn and my brother Andre were a little more advanced as drug dealers than myself or my other brothers because they had grown up in Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland was only about seven hours from New York, and my brothers were taught how to sell drugs by some guys from New York. After my brothers Andre and Shawn had been schooled in the streets by New York hustlers, they moved back to Louisville. Shawn Bo was not only a huge drug dealer but also a great basketball player. As a matter of fact, my brother Rob, Kerry, Chauncey, and I had enough athletic ability to play college basketball. Rico and Eric's mother was a typical teenage mother from the hood who had to raise her two sons without their father. Rico and Eric's fathers existed, but they were all young drug dealers, and at that time, they were not capable of being effective parents. My brothers Andre and Shawn took it upon themselves to help raise Rico, and Eric Shawn was not only Rico's and Eric's older cousin but also their father figure.

I will never forget the time that I watched Eric score thirty points in division one of a game in the NCAA basketball tournament. Watching Eric take jump shots was like watching my brother Shawn shoot the basketball. Eric shot the ball just as my brother Shawn had taught him how to shoot it. Eric's jump shot with the basketball was identical to my brother Shawn's. My brother Shawn taught his younger cousins how to become great basketball players and how to hustle and sell cocaine. Eric was a great college player, but he was too small to be successful as a guard in the NBA.

After my brother Shawn was sentenced to fifteen years in the federal penitentiary for his second cocaine conviction, Eric and Rico started selling cocaine. Eric and Rico had learned well how to hustle and sell cocaine from their older cousin, my brother Shawn. They became kingpins in no time at all. I've seen guys sell cocaine for years and never make enough money to even buy a kilo of cocaine. Rico, Eric, ESTG/George Stone, and Shine/Steve were closer than ever. Those guys were family members, and if you're a drug dealer, you can trust people with the same DNA that you have more than just some thug in the streets. They partied and sold cocaine together.

Most authors have a plan of action when they sit down and start writing a book. I'm an ex-drug dealer who was lucky enough to work for a company that paid for my tuition so that I could get a college degree. The degree has enabled me to get a decent-paying job so I don't have to sell drugs anymore. I am not writing a book; what I'm writing is a testimonial of my life and all of the horrors of growing up in a federal housing project. I was planning on writing about some other terrible experiences when I got another one of those damn death calls. This time it was my little brother Shawn, or Bo. He had just been ambushed while he was about to get out of his truck and go into the halfway house that he was staying in. My little brother Shawn, a.k.a. Bo, had been shot in the head at close range nine times. For the last few years, he had been serving time in Milan, Michigan, in a federal prison. This was his third time in the federal penitentiary. My little brother and I wrote letters to each other every single week. Honestly, I hated writing letters, but I wrote my brother Bo each week because I wanted him to know that he has a family that loves him. There are thousands of people who are serving time in prison, and they never receive letters from anyone because no one gives a damn about them. After most people who are incarcerated serve the majority of their sentences, they are allowed to transition into a halfway house. You are still locked up, but you are allowed to go out for ten hours so that you can work.

Years ago, while my brother Shawn was still in prison serving his second prison term, his only son, Lil Shawn, was killed. I was told that Lil Shawn was hanging out with a group of young murderers, and they were killing other drug dealers for money. I also found out that Lil Shawn and this group of killers that he was doing hits with had killed