As a six-year-old boy living in Jackson Mississippi, Joseph was given his first can of beer. By the time he was age nine, he was either buying beer with food stamps, or getting it on credit from neighborhood stores.
At age eleven, he was arrested for train robbery and put behind bars for a short period of time. At thirteen, he had already been shot at numerous times.
His mother told him at thirteen, he would never live to see sixteen.
Finding out he had been shot at earlier in the day, she decides to move her family to Battle Creek Michigan.
Being in Michigan less than a week, Joe is arrested for assault with a weapon.
Seeing that the streets in Michigan were a little tougher to make it on than in Mississippi, he decides to join a nationally known gang.
From the moment he steps foot in Michigan, a reign of terror on family and enemies would last for 13 years.
Giving the street name "Hustler," Joe lives up to the name everyday of the week.
At fifteen and realizing that school was no longer needed, Joe drops out to be on the street full-time.
While being on the streets, Hustler finds ways to make it from robbing arcade games, phone booths and snack machines, to hunting for ten cent deposits and filtering through garbage dumpsters.
Always being at variance with family members and the street life, Hustler decides to go back to school and get his high school diploma.
Having completed that, still on the streets hustling and still a divided family, Hustler decides he’s had enough and joins the army.
Seeing everything from drugs being sold in the barracks to sergeants smoking crack in uniform, Joe is released from the military on a medical discharge after only one year of service.
Returning home from the military with no education and no work experience under his belt, Joe has no other choice but to return to the streets and the life of crime.
Returning to the same neighborhood, old acquaintances have found a new way of making money-- selling crack.
In August 1989, Hustler, with his money making experience on the streets, launches his own operation in the drug world.
Only being in the game three months, Hustler is busted with crack cocaine.
Not letting that small incident get in the way, Hustler continues his operations on the same avenue.
After getting busted for selling crack cocaine five months earlier, Hustler beats a felony conviction case.
The next day, he’s gunned down but lives. Two months later, he escapes a drive by shooting but is still determined to make it in the dope game.
Less than a year later, Joseph F. Henderson IV was born.
To keep the law off his back, Hustler decides to enroll in a business college.
After going for only a year and a half, he receives an associate’s degree in business management.
Realizing he has the potential to be something, Hustler gets out of the dope game to put to use his college degree.
He gets a job in a manufacturing plant doing assembly work.
The urge to get back on the streets is taking a toll on Joe, so he re-enrolls in college to pursue a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He accomplishes that goal also.
December 11, 1995, his sixteen-year-old brother is brutally murdered.
After having been missing for thirty-five days, Joe would learn the fate of his brother on January 15, 1996.
The death of his little brother jolts him into reality and Joe feels it should have been him instead.
Knowing his life is inevitably going to end on the streets, Joe must now convince his enemies and family members he’s becoming a changed person.
But they are not so quick to forgive him, so he decides the only way to live in peace is to live in another state.
Going to Mississippi in April 1997 for vacation made Joe realize the South is not what it used to be, as far as the job situation.
The following month he gave a notice at the job, then moved to Mississippi.
Joe currently resides outside of Jackson and is no longer involved with the streets.
He’s been sober for close to three years and believes that he has been forgiven for all that he has done.
We were still enrolled in school, when Greg moved to Michigan in eighty-two. One day, moms said we were going to Michigan the Easter holiday, for Spring break.
Had never heard of a Battle Creek Michigan.
All that happened was moms bought me, Satan, Peanut, and her, a one way Greyhound bus ticket to Battle Creek.
Come to find out, Kellogg’s, Post, and Archway Cookies, all were started in Battle Creek. Even the great Sojourner Truth is buried there.
It was more to that, for moms to just leave Mississippi with no notice. Especially going to a place that you never heard of.
Didn't move or give notice, just said we were going on vacation for Easter.
That is the longest sixteen-year vacation any one could go on.
Was only thirteen at the time and didn't know what was up. To me she had inclinations to move up there, without the idea of returning.
We went to Michigan with no money, or she said we didn't have any.
Aaron, my oldest brother, gave moma, Claudia Smitten number.
She was the pastor of Bethlehem Church in Battle Creek How Aaron knew her, it still puzzles me.
Pastor Smitten looked out for us, when we first moved there. The first day in Battle Creek, it was April 14, 1982.
After that day, life would never be the same for me. It was so much snow on the ground, you couldn't see the street.
If money were at my disposal, me and Greyhound would have had another date.
We stayed in a hotel for a week, before moms found a house. Or better yet, an igloo. We were cold in Mississippi, but we froze in Michigan. The first house we moved into, we were always cold and hungry.
Moms never really believed in gas, so you can imagine living in Michigan, in the wintertime, with no heat.
Yes we froze. Thought living in Mississippi with no heat was terrible, but icebox Michigan.
The first house we moved in was a disaster. We still had no heat, and it was still cold in April.
It was better for us to live on the outside, because it was warmer than the inside.
We only lived in the first house about seven months, before moving into a different dump.
Nick Wilson, the landlord didn't really own the house, so we had to move. He was just collecting free rent.
It was November, cold and we had to move.
Even though it was on the same street four blocks down, we had to move everything in a grocery cart.
Can you imagine, pushing a couch down the street in a grocery cart?
Glad it was night time, and no one was out.
The second house was no better than the first. It was colder and bigger, and that doesn't mix.
By then, we had met the two of the 'fellas', Marshall and Rodney.
They were walking by one day, laughing at the way we were talking.
You know how it is when you're coming from the South with an accent.
Marshall lived a few houses down, and Rodney lived around the corner.
After we met them, they had started coming over to visit.
They had came over a few times, then they stopped.
We found out later why they quit coming over, no heat.
Wouldn't have gone to their house either, if they didn't have heat.
They would laugh, because it would be ice on the wall paneling.
Ice would be inside the windowsill.
It would be so cold, you would have to go outside and get warm.
You had to put meat in the freezer to thaw it out.
We left milk or whatever out all night, and it wouldn’t spoil, even that would freeze.
Sometimes we put food in the snow also to keep it cold.
Never had roaches in the wintertime, because they couldn’t even take the cold.
But the roaches caught hell in the summertime. Moms wouldn’t let us kill the big black ants, because she said they killed and ate the roaches.
Anyway, you know when it's cold outside, it's colder on the inside.
Felt sorry for the rest of them one day. It must have been below zero outside, and no heat.
Moms had Greg to put some wood in an empty metal garbage can, and made a fireplace out of it.
Then it started to get really smoky in the house, with no ventilation anywhere.
To make a long story short, they almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
You would think after the same thing that happened in Mississippi, would happen anywhere else, and that moms would have gotten some heat. Think again.
Why moms didn't like having heat is beyond my thoughts.
We use to sleep two or three to a bed, so to her that was enough heat.
When morning came, you would hate to get up, because it would be so cold.
Even though we went to bed with the clothes we were going to wear the next day, that didn't help. You had to go and lie in a cold bed to go to sleep.
We, all eight of us, would sit in moms room to keep warm. She had the TV and heater in her room. When it was time to leave the room, it would be so cold outside her door, you would almost cry to get back in. Because of so many house fires with space heaters, we could not burn one all night.
The house was to big, to try and heat it, with the little heaters. We complained about it, but she would tell us to iron the bed, before we laid in it.
That worked, but we still had to get up, and faced the cold weather, in the morning.
And can you imagine taking little baths out the sink. That stuff is ok when you need to get a quick wash up. And you only do stuff like that every once in a while. What about everyday?
Having to boil your own water for a quick bath is cool every once in a while. Having to do it on a regular basis can become a discomfort.
Instead of being cold every night, we just didn’t take a bath.
So what it was eight of us, we still should have had some heat.
When we first moved to Michigan, thought my days of hitting up garbage dumpsters were over. The times when Church’s chicken, or KFC’s garbage dumpsters were hit up, was still fresh in my mind.
The French-fries, or burgers, from Mickey D’s, or Burger King, wasn’t all that bad. It may have had a few coffee grinds on them, but were still good.
A lot of the food was still wrapped in paper, because workers may have dropped it, or, they made the wrong order, and could not sell it. So they had to throw the food away, and we would be there to receive the goods.
The garbage dumpsters were a lifesaver many of times.
When we moved to Michigan, we had to start back hitting garbage dumpsters up for goods.
Sometimes you couldn't resist going into a trashcan to see what's in them. Can't lie about that.
It would be some good stuff. Slightly bent canned goods, chips, and cookies. Whatever you wanted, the dumpster had it. We even knew what were in the canned goods that didn’t have labels. We could guess if it was ravioli, or fruit cocktail, or vegetables.
Each one us probably had our own can opener, so we wouldn’t have to share.
Sometimes, workers would put things in the dumpster for themselves.
Like it used to be in Mississippi at the service station.
There would be whole cases food, milk, or meat, waiting for someone to come along and claim it.
