Growing up in the early ’70s, the Black Power Movement, informed by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, and its offshoot the Five Percent Nation, informed the thinking of the best minds of my generation — including mine, if I may boldly state such — especially in major urban centers. In fact, it was this generation most affected by hyper-incarceration — young Black men trying to find a way in a world that both feared and admired them. The fear factor though dictated criminal justice policy and the solution was to lock them up for the best years of their lives. Oh, what am I saying? I just wanted to tell a story about people I knew growing up in the crazy world of the early ’70s after the Decisive Decade, the ’60s, and the assassinations of the boldest and the best minds of that generation, which created this awful, violent, chaotic void during my coming of age.