"King Hoover, King Shorty . . . six-pointed star,
connected all together . . . We are strong together . . . Whether we’re in
here now or outside doing our own thing . . . I am what I am, a Black
Disciple, and what I’m not I’ll never be . . . I am what I am, a Black
Disciple.” As I listened to the “gang prayers” chanted from the tiers around
me, I wondered how long I’d stay alive in this cell block. I’d seen people
getting jumped on, knocked around. I knew it was going to come to me pretty
soon, but that was nothing new. I’d spent most of my life fighting one thing
or another.
I was born in Chicago during the 1930s. There were a lot of rough
neighborhoods; where we lived I had to hide behind cars every time I went
outside because the other kids always tried to beat me up. One day I got fed
up with it and went out fighting. I beat up all the kids around. This one
kid’s mother brought him outside to fight me again because she didn’t believe
it.
About this time World War II broke out and everyone not enlisted was
working. I shined shoes during the day and set pins at the bowling alley at
night. I took the money home to my mom because we were having trouble with my
stepdad. He didn’t like me and I felt the same way about him.
Finally, one day we got in a huge fight, he, my mom, and I. He got hurt
pretty bad and was bleeding all over. He left and we had to fend for
ourselves. I was twelve.
That’s when my real father showed up. To me he seemed awesome. When he said
something, he made you listen. You never ever disagreed with him! Just
walking down the street he’d grab someone and make them give him a light and
then toss them back like nothing; he got respect. He’d tell me these stories
of Prohibition, gangsters, and bank robberies, and what to watch out for,
down to the right type of alley to park in. Dad never wanted me to do the
kind of things he did. He was just bragging, but I hung on every word.
The streets became more and more familiar to me. I met this sixteen-year-old
girl who was a hooker and she introduced me to Benzedrine. You could get
those pills for a nickel a piece then. We got ourselves a little gang, up on
Winchester and Adams, called the Blue Shirt Gang. It was real official,
initiation and everything. We robbed newspaper boys and other kids for money
for our dope.
I didn’t spend much time at home anymore and things got rougher for my mom.
She worked, but there wasn’t enough money to pay the rent. They threw us into
the street with six rooms of furniture, even though it was January. I didn’t
understand what was going on. I just knew the cops were there with papers and
that made it all legal. People rummaged through all our stuff, taking things
out of the drawers. I was embarrassed; I couldn’t protect it all. We ended
up losing everything we had.
Mom hated me stealing and doing dope; she wanted me to do right. So in 1951 I
joined the Army. There was a war in Korea, but to a seventeen-year-old,
what’s the difference?
I signed up for the tank division, but when we got over there they didn’t
care what we were—cook, truck driver, or a tanker; they just gave us all
rifles and sent us to the front. I saw a lot of guys around me fall. We
crawled over dead and wounded men. Dope lessened the shock of it a little.
I got wounded in one attack, shell fragments in my left leg. I was hollering
for the medic but nobody helped me. They ran right past me, throwing their
rifles away so they could run faster. But this one guy who knew me did stop.
He tried to drag and carry me; I slowed him down so he tried to leave me but
I had him around the neck and wouldn’t let go. We made it. I was sent to a
MASH unit.
When my division was replaced by the 45th a few weeks later, we were all sent
to Japan. Right off, they let us go to town on a pass. Here we were, a bunch
of American boys just off the front lines.
I had one thought in mind, to find me some drugs. I couldn’t speak Japanese
so all the girls I saw, I’d roll up their sleeves to see if they had tracks
like I did. When I found one I said, “You and me, same-o, same-o, you know?”
That’s how I got involved with this speed called pone. It’d make you see
things and hear things. And that’s what I wanted, to see and hear anything
except what I was really around me. I started doing the stuff real heavy.
The problem was I was still in the army and had to go on marches and report
for duty while I was all wired up. But I was so tired from being up at night
on that speed that I would doze off during the day. The sergeant had it in
for me and put me on KP duty until one day I couldn’t handle it anymore.
It was early in the morning.
The sun wasn’t up yet, but here I was in a small room with pots and pans
stacked higher than my head. The cooks hassled me all day long, and I didn’t
get done till midnight. When I got back to the barracks the guys had
everything laid out for this big inspection scheduled for early the next
morning, and there I was filthy dirty, covered with grease. I stepped into
the shower, but there was only cold water left. I was fuming. I didn’t know
what to do. I sat on the edge of my footlocker for two hours, and the only
thing I could think of was, “I’ll get my shovel and bayonet and go kill that
sergeant.”
Before I made it to the sergeant’s barracks I saw this other guy I didn’t
like either, so I figured I’d just waste him first. I cracked his head open
with the shovel; when he tried to get up I caught him in the back with the
bayonet.
I went over to my barracks and woke my buddy up. “Frank, what
happened, man? You got blood all over yourself.” He was pretty shocked. About
that time the MPs came running in with .45s and threw me in the stockade.
Luckily, the guy I’d whacked didn’t die. The company commander gave me two
choices: court-martial or the front lines. So I volunteered to go. Four
months later they shipped me back to the States.
The last thing I remember
about the army was the company commander saying, “Listen, kid, you gotta stay
in the army ‘cause people like you and me, we don’t being out there in
civilian life. If you go out there, you’re gonna wind up in one of two
places: in an insane asylum or prison.”
In February of 1954 I got out of the
army. I went back to Chicago but just couldn’t hold down a job. I ran around
with a couple of crazy guys, stealing and ripping people off. We committed at
least one felony a day to get enough money to shoot dope. In July of 1955
they sent me to the penitentiary. I got three 1 to 3s run together but did
only thirty months for the whole thing.
When I got out I started with this
cop’s girlfriend. She had yellow jaundice and a broken leg when he caught up
with us. He didn’t like the condition she was in. About that point, people
whispered to me, “Watch it, Frank, John’s out to get you.” I decided to waste
him first.
The guy sat with some other cops in a bar, and I staked him out
from a restaurant across the street. Just like my father taught me, I had a
friend in the alley behind the restaurant, ready to make an escape. After I
shot John I’d run out the back, jump in the truck and “Chavoz” would drive
off like nothing happened.
There was only one problem. I’d eaten all this speed, and it made me feel
like I could do anything. I picked up the phone and called the bar. “John,
this is Frank, man, and I’m tired of your mouth. Come on out of that bar and
come out shooting.”
I put the receiver down and
started for the door. I could barely focus, but I was going to blow his face
off.
He didn’t come out, but I don’t know how many squad cars did. They were
all over the street. I split out the back and got away.
I spent the next few years in and out of jail, for dope, robbery, larceny; I
wasn’t particular. Between 1963 and 1976 I did manage to stay out of jail,
not because I quit committing crimes, but I got smarter and didn’t get
caught.
For nine long years
I’ve wasted here,
A menace to society.
I wonder if they sent me here
To gain a mien of piety.
I wonder if they really think
My attitude has changed
And if my thoughts and values of
This world are rearranged.
I wonder if they really know
What they have done to me
And if they do, I wonder, too,
How they can set me free.
—Frank Simmons
|
In 1971 I moved
in with this girl. I got a haircut and a steady job. If there was any such
thing as love in me, that’s what I felt toward her. We’d been living together
for a year and a half. One night we shot up and everything was great, but
when I got up the next morning, I couldn’t wake her. I tried everything I
could think of, hoping to revive her. This couldn’t be happening! I tried
cold water, I tried mouth-to-mouth, everything, but she was gone.
I stumbled
down the street to call the cops. When I came back and saw them in front of
the house, I got scared they would somehow pin it on me. But the thought of
her up there alone with just them forced me into the house. Lying to the
cops, I said, “We had a fight last night and I left. I found her like this
when I came back this morning.” Apparently they believed me. The cause of
death was found to be morphine poisoning.
I couldn’t handle it, her being gone and the memory of that day. The same
night I tried to kill myself. I jumped in front of a car but just got banged
up. Nothing mattered anymore.
After that I messed with other men’s wives, not just one time but over and
over again. I made enemies pretty fast. Some of them wanted to kill me. I was
so paranoid from that and speed, I wouldn’t sleep in the bed in my hotel
room. I put a dummy there and slept in the closet.
I began hearing things. I
went crazy looking for the wires and light beams I thought people had rigged
in my room. I heard voices in walls, through doors, phone conversations, even
the pigeons were spying on me. The radio played and the words to the songs
rhymed, about how they would kill me and how nice it was going to be when I
was dead.
Sometimes I had such torment that my heart would pound until I thought I’d
have a heart attack. All this seemed so real; I didn’t know who was after me
and who wasn’t. Obviously one angry husband was. I came home one day and my
room had been burned out.
I realized I was losing it so I tried to
get some help at a clinic. I sat next to a guy who said, “Two Eskimos ate my
grandma and they didn’t even have Illinois license plates.” After listening
to him I thought I was doing pretty good, but I still heard voices.
I ran
into Sonny, a guy I did time with back in 1955. We decided to make some money
so we went and looked at this bank, then went back to get some guns. We only
had one, a .38 magnum, so we bought a replica. We didn’t want to buy a real
gun because it could be traced too easily. This was February 9, 1976.
We went into the bank, pulled down our ski masks, and told everybody to
“freeze. Nobody will get hurt. All we want is the money.” A minute and a half
later, we split with sixteen thousand dollars. I hid out at my hotel because
we planned to take another bank in the area. We wanted more money. As far as
I was concerned, we would never have enough.
The next morning I heard all this
boom, boom, boom, and the cops busted the door in. They flashed badges, guns,
and handcuffs. I wasn’t ready for that. The place was all surrounded, up and
down the hallways. We would have gotten away with it but my friend forgot to
change the plates on his car so they got him and he sent them after me. The
jury found me guilty and I got seven years, cut to five. They thought I was
crazy anyway because of past reports.
Leavenworth became my new home. They gave me real heavy medicine to cut out
the voices I was still hearing. I was so downed out they could have led me
around on a leash. I spent twenty-some months there and never knew who the
warden was.
When they cut my dosage down I was transferred to the Metropolitan
Correctional Center in Chicago on a work release. I got a job, even worked
overtime, but I started to gamble every night. On the weekends I was using a
knife to stick people up. That all ended when I was arrested for stabbing a
guy over on Surf Street.
They slapped five charges on me for the stabbing. The prosecutor was going to
make sure at least one of them held. There was a possibility of getting
eighteen years. I said to myself, “Well, I’m just gonna play crazy. I got the
record for it.” I guess I must have been pretty convincing in the courtroom
because my sentence was reduced to four years.
In the meantime, the Feds wanted me to do more time on the bank robbery. Here
I had just gotten four years, and they wanted me to do nineteen more months;
I was tired of it. Every time I turned around I was doing more time and more
time. I didn’t feel like living.
I got sent to Joliet. Everything was changed there. It used to be, you go
down there, hit a couple of guys in the head or something, and people leave
you alone. But it had all become gangs: the Disciples, Latin Kings, Vice
Lords. A guy just going into the penitentiary had to hook up with one of
these gangs or he’d get everything he had taken away from him, get kicked
around all the time and worse. People got hurt, maimed, disfigured, over
trivial things, nothing heavy.
There was one other choice; you could get protective custody,
but it didn’t help much, because you still had only bars around you and the
guys feeding you were the gang members themselves. You’re just in a cage to
make it easy for them.
Every night on these tiers they had what they called
gang prayers. All the members had to participate or get a “body violation,”
whipped on for a couple of minutes. They had to shout this long, drawn out
prayer proclaiming their king and what they believed in. While this was going
on, nobody could talk or they got rolled on, so you knew enough to keep your
mouth shut.
So I listened to this one night. Everyone chanted pledging
allegiance to their gang, everyone but one guy. On the gallery above me I can
hear this guy reading his Bible real loud through the bars. His name is
Brother Brooks, and they’re telling him, “Shut up or we’re gonna roll on you
and peel your head as soon as these doors open.” But he just said, “ You
can’t do nothing to me that the Lord don’t allow,” and kept reading his
Bible.
I shook my head. “This guy is nuts! He’s gonna get himself killed over
something like that.” I listened, wondering what this guy was willing to die
for. He was reading from Proverbs, chapter 1.
“My son, if sinners entice you,
do not consent. If they say, Come with us, let us lie in wait to shed blood,
let us ambush the innocent without cause, . . . let us throw our lot
together, and be sworn brothers and comrades; My son, do not walk in the way
with them.”
I thought to myself, “These words speak against everything the gangs are
doing here.”
They yelled, told him they were going to kill him, but he kept on. “If you
will turn and repent, I will pour out my Spirit upon you. Whoever listens to
me shall dwell securely and in confident trust, and shall be quiet without
fear or dread of evil.”
Next he sang, and all of a sudden I noticed some other guys were singing,
too. How come I never noticed this before? I was understanding something new.
Then Brother Brooks gave an altar call.
Common sense told me I couldn’t join any gangs, I couldn’t get locked
up in PC, those were stupid moves. I could see that the only thing left for
me was to trust God because I couldn’t trust anything else. Even if I had two
.38s I could only trust them until the bullets were gone.
Brother Brooks couldn’t know who was being saved that night but that’s when I
got down on my knees and accepted the Lord. It was December of 1979.
Less than a year before, a psychiatrist had labeled me a psychopath, a shark,
incorrigible, unable to have feeling or a conscience. Up until this time, he
was right. I had done about nine years in prison, all of it with hate. I
could never go to sleep at night until I had figured out exactly who slighted
me that day and how I could get even. I had to kill three or four people
every night in my mind, torture them, have them locked in cages and different
things, before I could go to sleep. But after I got saved, it was completely
different. Each day I would thank the Lord for all the blessings He gave me,
and for keeping me safe. Nobody bothered me at all, and that is a miracle.
My first major test of trusting the Lord came when I found out I was being
sent to Statesville Prison.
I thought, “Lord, what are you doing? That’s the worst
place around! I’ll never stay alive there!” But he protected me. In fact,
Brother Brooks also got sent there. I still didn’t know what he looked like,
I only knew his voice. I didn’t have a Bible then, but I came back from
eating and there was a Bible lying on the floor from him.
We finally got to meet, and he came by my cell all the time. Brother Brooks
jumped out of line and risked getting a violation from the guards to make
sure people were reading the Word. He was a real chaplain and the Lord used
him.
Other people
who knew me there, from way back, said, “Want some grass, Frank? How about
some beans? We’ll turn you on.” I said, “No, I’m saved now and trusting the
Lord for my life. You know, it’s real simple, man, you just got to tell the
Lord you’re tired of the way you’ve been living and you want to accept His
ways.” But they just mumbled, “ Yeah, yeah, well maybe.” It’s sad for me now
to see gang members and know what they’re going through. If they could just
trust in the Lord to protect them and give them peace in there, the whole
place would be saved. But they can’t see that yet. They can only see putting
their trust in a gang and in numbers. I’m not going to give up on them,
though, because God didn’t give up on me.
Frank transferred from Statesville to Logan and was paroled in June 1981. He
joined JPUSA that same summer. Frank and John, a fellow JPUSA member, were
heading home for JPUSA by el train. Frank gave John a nudge. “Let’s get off
here, instead.” His friend hesitated a moment. “We usually get off at
Washington.” But Frank replied, “What’s the difference, let’s change here.”
As they boarded at Jackson, the static tone came over the speaker, “Next
stop, Monroe.” In another section of town a seventy-year-old woman, Pat,
checked off the final item on her shopping list, then handed the CTA token to
the caged man on the subway platform. Once on the train, she relaxed. But
halfway to her normal transfer stop, she gathered her bags. In a hasty
decision to take another train home, she changed at Monroe.
Pat braced
herself as the train jerked forward, spotted a seat, and sat down. Frank also
moved toward the empty seat but stopped as the woman sat down. He glanced at
the face worn with many years of hardship. Recognition dawned. Bending down,
he touched her hand and said, “Ma? It’s me, Frank. It’s okay. Ma, don’t
worry. I’m saved now and living with the Jesus People.”
“Frank, it’s been almost ten years,” faltered his mother.
“I know, Ma. I didn’t know what your married name was, or where you lived
anymore. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you, but I prayed and trusted the
Lord. He knew, Ma.”
A couple weeks later Frank’s mother came to our Sunday church service. When
the invitation was given, she came forward to meet and accept the real God
who miraculously gave back to her a new son.
As revealed to us in the letter to the Hebrews, “He upholds and maintains and
guides and propels the universe by His mighty word of power.”
