Given a strict Baptist church upbringing in a racially segregated area of Texas, Jamie Foxx had piano lessons from the age of five and became pianist and choir leader at the Terrell New Hope Baptist Church.
I did.Grab your Jamie Foxx tickets today to see this master of comedy perform live. All you will find is trouble, pain and sadness. "Don't join a gang," he tells children in his books, writing from his San Quentin cell. He intends to try in every way he can to guide those youngsters who have imitated him away from the road that led him to death row where he faces State execution. Tookie is determined to make amends for having been a co-founder of the Crips.
The Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence book series for elementary-school-age children is the first fruit of his longing to prevent young people of every color from becoming gangbangers, from ending up in prison, crippled by bullets, or killed. Youngsters in Soweto and other South African cities have formed the Crips copycat gangs Tookie Today Tookie greatly regrets the violent history of the Crips - particularly how so many young black men have hurt each other - and he wants to do what he can to stop it. The gang is now in 42 states and on at least one other continent: South Africa. Only then could Tookie finally begin to care about the many children, mothers, fathers and other family members of this country hurt by the Crips legacy and by its explosive growth. The long, difficult process he undertook to rebuild his character put him in touch with his true spirit, his own humanity. He focused on the choices he had made in his life and then committed himself to make a drastic change. After two years there, Tookie began to look at himself. Life in Prison In 1987, Tookie began what became a 6 1/2-year stay in solitary confinement. In 1981, Tookie was convicted of those crimes and placed on death row. He was charged with murdering four people. Soon the Crips lost both their leaders: in 1979, Raymond was murdered by a rival gang member, and, that same year, Tookie was arrested. By this time, Crips had also become just like the gang members they had once sought to protect themselves from - Crips had become gangbangers who terrorized their own neighborhoods. Growth By 1979, the Crips had grown from a small Los Angeles gang to an organization with membership spread across the State of California. To protect the community, Tookie and Raymond organized the Crips. Those gang members roamed South Central taking property from anyone who feared them, including women and children. Back in the day when Tookie and Raymond founded the Crips, many of the young people of South Central Los Angeles were involved with small gangs. And, around that time, Tookie, along with Raymond Lee Washington, created what would one day be a super-gang, the Crips. He had a fearsome reputation as a fighter and as a "general" of South Central's west side. He was a high school student from South Central Los Angeles. The Beginning In the spring of 1971, when Tookie was 17, he was in a very different situation.